Philosophy Commons^™

Pasolini's Laugh: Joyful Ignorance In The Decameron, Andrea Privitera

Modern Languages and Literatures Annual Graduate Conference

In this paper, I discuss Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron and its 1971 film adaptation by Pier Paolo Pasolini. To be more precise, I focus on the fifth novella of the sixth day, the one about Giotto and Forese, and its audiovisual re-elaboration, which can be seen as a very brief and at the same time very vivid example of Pasolini’s ideas on society, language and communication.

‘[Os Mentis] Mouth To Mouth’ With Nicola Masciandaro, Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire, Edia Connole, Patrick Zaidan, Scott Wilson

Conference papers

No abstract provided.

Pornography, Ethics, And Video Games, Stephanie Patridge

Religion & Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

In a recent and provocative essay, Christopher Bartel attempts to resolve the gamer's dilemma. The dilemma, formulated by Morgan Luck, goes as follows: there is no principled distinction between virtual murder and virtual pedophilia. So, we'll have to give up either our intuition that virtual murder is morally permissible-seemingly leaving us over-moralizing our gameplay-or our intuition that acts of virtual pedophilia are morally troubling-seemingly leaving us under-moralizing our game play. Bartel's attempted resolution relies on establishing the following three theses: (1) virtual pedophilia is child pornography, (2) the consumption of child pornography is morally wrong, and (3) virtual murder is …

Journey Of A Peace Journalist, Robert Koehler

Center for the Study of Ethics in Society Papers

Presented October 15, 2012. 2012 Winnie Veenstra Peace Lecture.

David Foster Wallace To The Rescue, James K.A. Smith

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Forgiveness In A Political Context: The Challenge And The Potential, Pol Vandevelde

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

In this article I examine the challenging question concerning whether communal forgiveness is possible. In order to show that it is in principle possible I articulate and then respond to two of the most powerful objections to communal forgiveness that have been formulated to date, namely: (1) the argument that only victims can forgive; and (2) the argument that forgiveness is unconditional and thus outside the scope of such things as communal or political deliberation.

I argue that communal forgiveness is a process of transformation that requires at the practical level an institutional framework in which a representative of a …

Go Local: Morality And International Activism, Aleksandar Jokić

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

A step towards constructing an ethics of international activism is proposed by formulating a series of constraints on what would constitute morally permissible agency in the context that involves delivering services abroad, directly or indirectly. Perhaps surprisingly, in this effort the author makes use of the concept of 'force multiplier'. This idea and its official applications have explanatory importance in considering the correlation between the post-Cold War phenomenal growth in the number of international non-governmental organizations and the emergence of the US as the sole, unchallenged superpower. Four moral constraints useful for morally assessing international activism are formulated and defended. …

The Condition Of Permanent War: Is There A Way Out?, Harry Van Der Linden

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

In The United States, we live in a time of permanent war, not only in the sense of continuous hostilities but also in terms of the granting of political and legal emergency measures typical of war time and the maintenance of a war economy. It is a challenge to move out of this condition of permanent war since most citizens do not directly experience the costs of war. This presentation discusses a variety of steps to move from a time of “alienated” war to peacetime.

Sagp Newsletter 2012/13.3 Pac, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

We Should Always Call The Receptacle The Same Thing: Timaeus 50b6-51b6, Christopher Buckels

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Plato’s Timaeus is a challenge to understand and to interpret, but its central ontological innovation, a third kind in addition to the standard Platonic categories of Being and Becoming, is, even according to Timaeus himself, a murky and difficult topic. I endeavor to shed a meager light on this shadowy entity, the Receptacle of all Becoming, by examining an argument Timaeus gives for the claim that “we should always call it the same thing” (50b6-7).[1] This claim comes immediately after the famous gold analogy, about which I will say only a few words, and so it also closely follows …

Science And Religion Take Practice: Engaging Science As Culture, James K.A. Smith

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

This article argues that current paradigms in the theology/science conversation effectively treat “science” as if it were equivalent to “nature”—with detrimental effects for the encounter between Christian theology and the natural sciences. In contrast, I suggest that recognizing science as culture has important implications for reconfiguring the theology/science dialogue.

The Art Of Color: Photography From Stieglitz To Sherman At Milwaukee Art Museum, Curtis Carter

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Good Eats, Elizabeth Foreman

Between the Species

If one believes that vegetarianism is morally obligatory, there are numerous ways to argue for that conclusion. In this paper, classic utilitarian and rights-based attempts to ground this obligation are considered, as well as Cora Diamond’s reframing of the debate in terms of the proper way to view other animals. After discussion of these three ways to ground the obligation and their problems, an attitude-based approach inspired by Diamond’s view (though different from it in important ways) is advanced. It is argued that such a view, by focusing moral attention on the attitudes of agents as opposed to the actions …

Zange And Sorge: Two Models Of 'Concern' In Comparative Philosophy Of Religion, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

The concept of Sorge, as developed in Martin Heidegger’s (1889–1976) classic work, Sein und Zeit (1927), describes an existential-ontological state characterized by “anxiety” about the future and the desire to “attend to” the world based on our awareness of temporality. In Japan, this concept was borrowed and critically developed by Watsuji Tetsurō (1889–1960). In Rinrigaku (1937–49), Watsuji argued that Heidegger’s Sorge remains overly reliant on the philosophical structures of Western individualism and subjectivism, and thus neglects the social dimension of human being. In turn, Watsuji’s contemporary, Tanabe Hajime (1885–1962), developed an alternative theory of “concern” in his reflections on …

Stability Of Art Preference In Frontotemporal Dementia, Andrea R. Halpern, Margaret G. O'Connor

Faculty Journal Articles

We examined aesthetic preference for reproductions of paintings among frontotemporal dementia (FTD) patients, in two sessions separated by 2 weeks. The artworks were in three different styles: representational, quasirepresentational, and abstract. Stability of preference for the paintings was equivalent to that shown by a matched group of Alzheimer's disease patients and a group of healthy controls drawn from an earlier study. We expected that preference for representational art would be affected by disruptions in language processes in the FTD group. However, this was not the case and the FTD patients, despite severe language processing deficits, performed similarly across all three …

Sagp Newsletter 2012/13.2 Central, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Wandering About: Analogy, Ambiguity And Humanistic Mathematics, William M. Priestley

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This article concerns the relationship between mathematics and language, emphasizing the role of analogy both as an expression of a mathematical property and as a source of productive ambiguity in mathematics. An historical discussion is given of the interplay between the notions of logos, litotes, and limit that has implications for our understanding and teaching of Dedekind cuts and, more generally, for a humanistic notion of the role of mathematics within liberal education.

Teaching The Complex Numbers: What History And Philosophy Of Mathematics Suggest, Emily R. Grosholz

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

The narrative about the nineteenth century favored by many philosophers of mathematics strongly influenced by either logic or algebra, is that geometric intuition led real and complex analysis astray until Cauchy and Kronecker in one sense and Dedekind in another guided mathematicians out of the labyrinth through the arithmetization of analysis. Yet the use of geometry in most cases in nineteenth century mathematics was not misleading and was often key to important developments. Thus the geometrization of complex numbers was essential to their acceptance and to the development of complex analysis; geometry provided the canonical examples that led to the …

Il Futuro (The Future), Dereck Daschke

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Il Futuro (The Future) (2013) directed by Alicia Scherson.

Good Karma $1, Dereck Daschke

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Good Karma $1 (2013) directed by Amy Laslett and Jason Berger.