Philosophy Commons^™

Mindful Mending: The Repair Of Thought And Action Amidst Technologies, Bryan Kibbe

Dissertations

My thesis is that the concept and practice of repair, properly understood and circumscribed, can serve to: (1) specify a responsibility to care for individuals who are cognitively dependent on particular configurations of technologies and suffer cognitively significant harms following damage to various technologies, and (2) to act as a standard by which to regulate the design, implementation, and selection of technologies available for human use and appropriation. I begin (Chapters One and Two) by providing a critical investigation of the concept and practice of repair. In Chapters Three and Four, I set forth a proposal to consider what I …

Moral Philosophy And The Art Of Silence, Kristina Grob

Dissertations

In this dissertation I begin with the claim that silence is part of moral life. Moral philosophy must make every attempt to bring within it all that is part of moral life. The dissertation produces a methodology for learning how to see some of the silences that I claim for moral life and it shows the importance of silence to continuing moral self-formation.

International Trade: A Justice Approach, Aaron Crowe

Dissertations

The current international trade regime is flawed, unjust and in need of redress. It largely ignores concerns for global economic justice, and fails those most in need of a strategy to help them move out of extreme poverty. It exacerbates inequalities, both between states in global society and within individual countries. It also creates a competitive pressure on producers to use the differing legal standards and enforcement between countries to externalize important environmental, social /human rights and cultural costs that harm others now or in the future.

In the first two chapters, this dissertation draws out, and considers critically, the …

Poverty Knowledge, Coercion, And Social Rights: A Discourse Ethical Contribution To Social Epistemology, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

In today’s America the persistence of crushing poverty in the midst of staggering affluence no longer incites the righteous jeremiads it once did. Resigned acceptance of this paradox is fueled by a sense that poverty lies beyond the moral and technical scope of government remediation. The failure of experts to reach agreement on the causes of poverty merely exacerbates our despair. Are the causes internal to the poor – reflecting their more or less voluntary choices? Or do they emanate from structures beyond their control (but perhaps amenable to government remediation)? If both of these explanations are true (as I …

Anti-Essentialism, Tom Leddy

Faculty Publications

From the late nineteenth century to the 1950s one of the main foci of aesthetic inquiry was the attempt to develop definitions of art and such related concepts as visual art, music, tragedy, beauty, and metaphor. Clive Bell (1958) famously stated that either all works of visual art have some common quality or when we speak of “work of art” we speak nonsense. DeWitt H. Parker (1939) argued more generally that the assumption underlying every philosophy of art is the existence of some common nature present in all the arts. This search for a common quality or nature …

Everyday Aesthetics And Photography, Tom Leddy

Faculty Publications

Everyday aesthetics as a new subdiscipline within aesthetics benefits by constantly going back to and borrowing from earlier theorists, even those who were primarily concerned with the aesthetics of art. To that end, I will begin my discussion of everyday aesthetics and photography with a look at that classic formalist aesthetician from the beginning of the 20th century, Clive Bell (1958). Bell was notoriously very negative about photography. He basically saw photographs as mechanical imitations of reality. He also famously criticized illustrative or descriptive painting for doing what photography can do better. One of the problems he had with people …

Purpose And Design In Organisms And Artifacts: The Search For A Unified Philosophical Theory Of Function, Mark L. Bourgeois

Dissertations

This work examines the concept of function in both biological organisms and designed artifacts. Function is routinely attributed within both kinds of systems, yet it is unclear whether it can mean the same thing within each, and indeed whether function attribution within natural systems is legitimate at all. Function is typically understood to have teleological content; yet in true teleological causation, the end is somehow the cause of its own means. In artifacts the consciously envisioned design of an artifact is taken to be the cause of its parts and their roles. Yet in naturalistic science there is no prior …

The Limits Of Rationality: Suicidality, Affectivity, And The Rational, Maria Jennifer Kulp

Dissertations

In this project, I expose conceptual and moral difficulties with the concept of rational suicide. After offering a comprehensive list of criteria used to define rationality in the bioethics literature, I turn to the scholarship of Susan Sherwin, Susan Wolf, Rosemarie Tong, Lisa Ikemoto and others to apply feminist critiques regarding the privileging of the liberal individual and claims of value neutrality in bioethics generally to the rational suicide literature specifically. Further, using the work of Genevieve Lloyd, I argue that just as definitions of rationality have been used to marginalize vulnerable populations (e.g., women and minorities), a similar marginalization …

Valuing The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: A Defense Of Countercultural Environmentalism, Mae Manupipatpong

Senior Independent Study Theses

No abstract provided.

Evaluating Inquiry-Based Learning As A Means To Advance Individual Student Achievement, Cherilyn Gwen Ziemer

Theses and Dissertations

Although inquiry-based learning has been debated throughout the greater educational community and demonstrated with some effect in modern classrooms, little quantitative analysis has been performed to empirically validate sustained benefits. This quantitative study focused on whether inquiry-based pedagogy actually brought about sustained and measurable improved learning and higher levels of student engagement, satisfaction, and understanding. The present study employed classic stratified random sampling to form two sample groups. Sixth-grade student subjects in two middle school science classes completed a four step process: all students completed a 40-question objective pretest, students completed a unit of study in either an inquiry-based learning …

Practicing Hope, Rebecca Konyndyk Deyoung

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

In this essay, I consider how the theological virtue of hope might be practiced. I will first explain Thomas Aquinas's account of this virtue, including its structural relation to the passion of hope, its opposing vices, and its relationship to the friendship of charity. Then, using narrative and character analysis from the film The Shawshank Redemption, I examine a range of hopeful and proto-hopeful practices concerning both the goods one hopes for and the power one relies on to attain those goods. In particular, I show how the film's picture of the role friends and friendship play in catalyzing …

[Introduction To] Believing Against The Evidence: Agency And The Ethics Of Belief, Miriam S. Mccormick

Bookshelf

The question of whether it is ever permissible to believe on insufficient evidence has once again become a live question. Greater attention is now being paid to practical dimensions of belief, namely issues related to epistemic virtue, doxastic responsibility, and voluntarism.

In this book, McCormick argues that the standards used to evaluate beliefs are not isolated from other evaluative domains. The ultimate criteria for assessing beliefs are the same as those for assessing action because beliefs and actions are both products of agency. Two important implications of this thesis, both of which deviate from the dominant view in contemporary philosophy, …

[Introduction To] Universal Rights And The Constitution, Stephen A. Simon

Bookshelf

Are constitutional rights based exclusively in uniquely American considerations, or are they based at least in part on principles that transcend the boundaries of any particular country, such as the requirements of freedom or dignity? By viewing constitutional law through the prism of this fundamental question, Universal Rights and the Constitution exposes an overlooked difficulty with opinions rendered by the Supreme Court, namely, an inherent ambiguity about the kinds of arguments that count in constitutional interpretation, which weakens the foundations of our most cherished rights.

Rejecting current debates over constitutional interpretation as flawed, Stephen A. Simon offers an innovative framework …

Maker's Breath: Religion, Magic, And The 'Godless' World Of Bioware's Dragon Age Ii (2011), Kristin M.S. Bezio

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

The core conflict of BioWare’s 2011 digital role-playing game Dragon Age II places the Christianesque Chantry in opposition to both the hierarchical Qunari and the Circle of Magi. In Dragon Age II religious beliefs, particularly those of the Chantry, prove destructive; by demonstrating the chaos of religious conflict, the game guides the player to recognize the danger inherent in extremist devotion to religion, and argues that interpersonal relationships should form the basis of our ethics. In Dragon Age II, the player-character, Hawke, is evaluated by each of his (or her) non-player companions; the mechanic forms the basis for a …

Tang Junyi’S Comparative Philosophy And The Spiritual Value Of Chinese Culture, Sor-Hoon Tan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Tang Junyi (1909-1978) engaged in philosophical comparisons very early in his career. He always philosophized from a cultural perspective in his subsequent philosophical reflection on the development of the mind, the philosophy of life, the relation between culture and moral reason, and the spiritual value of Chinese culture.

The Labor Theory Of Justice, Chandran Kukathas

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Justice is the first virtue of social institutions as truth is of systems ofthought. So John Rawls famously proclaimed in the beginning of hismasterwork, A Theory of Justice. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if untrue. Laws and institutions no matterhow efficient and well arranged must be reformed or abolished if unjust.Justice, perhaps unlike some other values, was not something we mightreadily trade a little of in exchange for other benefits.1In his critique ofRawls, Rescuing Justice and Equality, G. A. Cohen proposes to take justicemore seriously while at the same time conceding that justice might …

Zagzebski On Rationality, Shane Ryan, Shane Ryan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper examines Linda Zagzebski’s (2012) account of rationality, as set out in her rich, wide-ranging, and important book, Epistemic Authority: A Theory of Trust, Authority, and Autonomy in Belief. We briefly describe the account that she offers and then consider its plausibility. In particular, in the first section we argue that a number of Zagzebski’s claims with regard to rationality require more support than she offers for them. Moreover, in the second section, we contend that far from offering Zagzebski a quick way of dealing with radical scepticism, her account of rationality actually seems to be particularly vulnerable to …

Eye For The Gap: Frenzy, Liberty, And The Nietszchean Chorus In Conor Mcpherson's The Weir And Shining City, Frances Krieg

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This study situates The Weir and Shining City by Conor McPherson as embodying elements of Dionysian aesthetics as elucidated by Friedrich Nietzsche. Working through the lenses of Samuel Beckett’s linguistic philosophy and the premium of theater as established by Nietzsche, Artaud, and Brecht, the aim of this paper is to demonstrate how McPherson pierces the boundaries of language in drama by establishing his audience as chorus. Background information on Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy and McPherson’s own comments on the plays are included with the research on the plays themselves. This work articulates the chorus itself but also the choral, …

“For He Contained Within Him A Largenesss Of Spirit:” The Duality Of Billy’S Spirit, The Hope For Humanity In Cormac Mccarthy’S Border Trilogy, Jessica Y. Spearman

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This paper focuses on the contradictory merging of the differentiating forces that drive the natural world and the people in McCarthy’s Border Trilogy, with the most prominent being Billy’s persistent naïve view of the world as he grows from a boy to a man on his journey. The Border Trilogy chronicles the coming of age journey of John Grady Cole and Billy Parham. The second installment, The Crossing, focuses on the various dichotomies that construct the natural world—all of which are mirrored in Billy’s relationships with the mystical she-wolf, his brother, Boyd, the various people that he meets on his …

Through The Eyes Of The Dead Others, Isaac Aaron Ceniceros

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

I use Edith Wyschogrod's figure of the heterological historian to argue that we have a responsibility to learn from the "dead others" of the past in order to better apply in practical ways the lessons we learn from history. I draw on an interpretation of Nietzsche's view on historiography, to examine the claims of Hegel's dialectic, namely, that the Ideal Absolute for which Spirit pines, is actually achievable, particularly through the advent of the Internet. Beginning with a relatively well-known interpretation of Hegel's philosophy of history, Fukuyama's, I show how Hegel's dialectic takes shape in Fukuyama's interpretation as a negative …