Philosophy Commons^™

Human Rights And Literature (Fall 2013), Robert D. Tobin

Syllabi

In this class, we will be reading literary and cultural documents to contemplate the concept of "human rights". What rights do all humans have, simply by virtue of being human? Who counts as human? Do current understandings of human rights exclude some people? Do humans have more rights than other species? How do questions of gender and sexuality fit into the discussion of human rights?

As we seek to answer these questions, we will trace the development of human rights discourses from the Enlightenment to the present, looking at literature from a variety of cultures and human rights documents from …

Delno C. West Award (2013)

Quidditas

Ginger L. Smoak

The Delno C. West Award recognizes the most distinguished paper presented by a senior scholar at the annual Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association conference.

“Nothing But Sit, And Sit, And Eat, And Eat”: The Cantankerous Teacher In The Taming Of The Shrew, Eric L. De Barros

Quidditas

By definition, all comedies must end by praising and/or celebrating the elimination of a serious threat to the patriarchy order, and Shakespeare sets up the final scene of The Taming of the Shrew, one of his earliest comedies, to do just that. In short, by the time we reach Lucentio and Bianca’s wedding banquet, Petruccio has effectively tamed Katherine of her shrewishness. However, despite this scene of and cause for celebration, Petruccio remains oddly dissatisfied, as he responds to Lucentio’s encouragement of the sitting, chatting, and eating appropriate to such a festive occasion with these mood-killing words: “Nothing but …

Aethelflaed: History And Legend, Kim Klimek

Quidditas

This paper examines the place of Aethelflaed, Queen of the Mercians, in the written historical record. Looking at works like the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Irish Annals, we find a woman whose rule acted as both a complement to and a corruption against the consolidations of Alfred the Great and Edward’s rule in Anglo-Saxon England. The alternative histories written by the Mercians and the Celtic areas of Ireland and Wales show us an alternative view to the colonization and solidification of West-Saxon rule.

What's Love Got To Do With It? An Exploration Of The Symposium And Plato's Love, Remy P. Pinson

CMC Senior Theses

To many people love is special, sacred even. Love plays a countless number of roles for a countless number of people. Contemporary ideas about love, however, are more in alignment with the philosophies of Aristotle, and not of Plato. Aristotle held that love could exist as many people see it today – wishing well for others purely for their own sake. But Plato disagreed. Plato claimed that love was a way by which one could better themselves and become wiser. In this thesis, I explain Plato’s theory of love put forth in the Symposium. I also explore the textual …

A New Foundation For The Propensity Interpretation Of Fitness, Charles H. Pence, Grant Ramsey

Faculty Publications

The propensity interpretation of fitness (PIF) is commonly taken to be subject to a set of simple counterexamples. We argue that three of the most important of these are not counterexamples to the PIF itself, but only to the traditional mathematical model of this propensity: fitness as expected number of offspring. They fail to demonstrate that a new mathematical model of the PIF could not succeed where this older model fails. We then propose a new formalization of the PIF that avoids these (and other) counterexamples. By producing a counterexample-free model of the PIF, we call into question one of …

Identifying Pathway Proteins In Networks Using Convergence, Kathryn Dempsey Cooper, Hesham Ali

Interdisciplinary Informatics Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

One of the key goals of systems biology concerns the analysis of experimental biological data available to the scientific public. New technologies are rapidly developed to observe and report whole-scale biological phenomena; however, few methods exist with the ability to produce specific, testable hypotheses from this noisy ‘big’ data. In this work, we propose an approach that combines the power of data-driven network theory along with knowledge-based ontology to tackle this problem. Network models are especially powerful due to their ability to display elements of interest and their relationships as internetwork structures. Additionally, ontological data actually supplements the confidence of …

Liberal Education And Moral Education, Daniel R. Denicola

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Mark Van Doren, the noted literary scholar, once remarked, "The college is meaningless without a curriculum, but it is more so when it has one that is meaningless." Many current critics of undergraduate curricula in America assent to the crucial need for programmatic renewal in our colleges and universities. They bemoan the cookie-cutter sameness in far too many of them. The oddity is that U.S. colleges have long touted their "diversity" while largely holding fast to rather traditional pathways. This illuminating volume goes beyond formulaic nuts-and-bolts recipes for constructing curriculum: it seeks to interpret and analyze the contemporary landscape of …

Mukulabhaṭṭa's Defense Of Lakṣaṇā: How We Use Words To Mean Something Else, But Not Everything Else, Malcolm Keating

Philosophy: Faculty Publications

We frequently use single words or expressions to mean multiple things, depending upon context. I argue that a plausible model of this phenomenon, known as laks{dot below}aN{dot below}ā by Indian philosophers, emerges in the work of ninth-century Kashmiri Mukulabhat{dot below}t{dot below}a. His model of laks{dot below}aN{dot below}ā is sensitive to the lexical and syntactic requirements for sentence meaning, the interpretive unity guiding a communicative act, and the nuances of creative language use found in poetry. After outlining his model of laks{dot below}aN{dot below}ā, I show how arthāpatti, or presumption, forms the basis of both semantic and pragmatic processes in this …

Staffan Müller-Wille And Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, A Cultural History Of Heredity, Charles H. Pence

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Marketing The "Good Man" Sir Charles Grandison And The Clementinas, Murray L. Brown

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Unorthodox Transportation And The Enlightenment, Jessika Wichner

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Loyalty Oaths A Reminder From The Enlightenment, A. G. Monaco

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Philosophizing The Game The Morals Of Chess In Diderot's Rameau's Nephew, Florian Vauleon

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

The Paddle Wheel Boat A Technical Invention Of Late Antiquity, Dorit Engster

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Winter Travelers Captain Jones's Treatise On Skating, Jessika Wichner

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Burke's Target In A Vindication Of Natural Society From Bolingbroke To "This Sort Of Writers," Or An Early Burkean Defense Of Church And State, Norbert Col

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Cosmopolitan Friendship In James Boswell's Journal Of A Tour To Corsica, Melvin Pena

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Seafaring Nuns The Journey Of Six Capuchin Sisters From Toledo To Mexico City, 1665, Frieda Koeninger, Raquel Gutierrez Estupinan

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.