Philosophy Commons^™

The Disbanding Of The Self In Poe's Gothic Stories Through Foucault's Concepts Of Madness And Confinement, Carolyn Leigh Elacqua

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This thesis focuses on the relationship of Michel Foucault's concepts of madness and confinement through three Gothic stories by Edgar Allan Poe: "The Imp of the Perverse", "Hop Frog", and "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether". It seeks to recognize the way Poe lures the reader into the unconscious mind of the madman, and how that madness is decisively endured. Also, it investigates how these Gothic texts negotiate the physical and incorporeal boundaries of confinement created by, and established for, the mad.

Ethics In Action : A Study Of Ethical Decision Making In Counterinsurgencies, Marcus Schulzke

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The goal of this dissertation is to analyze the kinds of ethical challenges soldiers encounter during counterinsurgency operations, what decision making processes or values they use to resolve these challenges, and how military institutions and culture influence soldiers' ethical reasoning. The first part of the dissertation is an assessment of various theories of applied ethics and how these can be used by soldiers during counterinsurgency operations. The second part discusses the institutions and cultures of the American Army, British Army, and Israeli Ground Forces. In the third part, I take up the problem of how soldiers from each of these …

Rawls And A Normative Account Of The Permissibility Of Humanitarian Intervention, Tiffany Brianne Redies

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

In this paper, I seek to develop a normative account of the moral permissibility of humanitarian intervention based upon Rawls's work The Law of Peoples. In the first section of this paper, I argue that four specific criteria governing the permissibility of humanitarian intervention result from a close examination of The Law of Peoples. First, there must exist an on-going human rights violation in either an outlaw state or a burdened society. Secondly, this human rights violation must be grave in nature. Third, the intervening state must hold a sincere and reasonable belief that a grave violation is occurring and …

Remembering Gareth Matthews, Peter Shea

Collected Papers of Peter Shea

My experience with Gareth Matthews illustrates some of the ways he helped bring philosophy into the lives of children around the world. He presented a set of clear alternatives to Matthew Lipman’s approach. His work was more accessible to parents, more open to children’s literature, more free-wheeling in the range of its basic teaching strategies, and more cumulative in its methods - than Lipman’s classroom-oriented curriculum.

"Friend" Is A Verb, Dylan E. Wittkower

Philosophy Faculty Publications

An argument against the Aristotelian emphasis on formal and final causes in understanding friendship, and in favor of efficient and material causes. Attempts to establish that social media communications constitute a secondary literacy in the context of a shared asynchronous experience at a distance, and addresses "the sandwich problem:" how we can charitably account for the practice of photographing and sharing one's lunch.

Consuming Direct-To-Consumer Genetic Tests: The Role Of Genetic Literacy And Knowledge Calibration, Yvette E. Pearson, Yuping Liu-Thompkins

Philosophy Faculty Publications

As direct-to-consumer marketing of medical genetic tests grows in popularity, there is an increasing need to better understand the ethical and public policy implications of such products. The complexity of genetic tests raises serious concerns about whether consumers possess the knowledge to make sound decisions about their use. This research examines the effects of educational intervention and feedback on consumers' genetic literacy and calibration -- the gap between consumers' actual knowledge and how much they think they know. The authors find that consumers' genetic knowledge was generally low and that people tended to underestimate their knowledge level. Furthermore, consumers' perceived …

Timelessly Present, Compassionately Impassible: A Defense Of Two Classical Divine Attributes, Philip R. Olsson

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This study articulates a God-concept in the tradition of classical Christian theism, contending with calls to modify significantly or revise classical constructions. Attention falls upon two closely related divine attributes that have, especially in recent decades, come under philosophical and theological attack – God’s timelessness and impassibility (inability to suffer). Is the “classical” Lord truly Immanuel, i.e. with us? This general question motivates the study.

The opening three chapters analyze aspects of the God-concepts put forth by Augustine, Aquinas, and Calvin. Apparent tensions between a timeless transcendence and an affirming union of the Trinity with creation are countenanced, with an …

Covenant Nation: The Politics Of Grace In Early American Literature, Justin M. Scott-Coe

CGU Theses & Dissertations

The argument of this dissertation is that a critical reading of the concept of "covenant" in early American writings is instrumental to understanding the paradoxes in the American political concepts of freedom and equality. Following Slavoj Zizek's theoretical approach to theology, I trace the covenant concept in early American literature from the theological expressions and disputes in Puritan Massachusetts through Jonathan Edwards's Freedom of Will and the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, showing how the covenant theology of colonial New England dispersed into more "secular" forms of what may be called an American political theology. The first chapter provides an …

Wittgenstein And Nietzsche On The Role Of Philosophy: Description, Creativity, Naturalism, And Possibility, Michael Charles Rodgers

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation places Wittgenstein and Nietzsche alongside one another in an attempt to deal with the question: "what is the role of the philosophy?" On the one hand Wittgenstein promotes a descriptive approach to philosophy, which insists that the philosopher should not meddle with practices but rather seek clarity and understanding as ends in themselves. On the other hand Nietzsche promotes a destructive and creative approach to philosophy, where the philosopher both dismantles values and offers a revaluation of values in their place. This work begins with a survey of remarks by the two philosophers and prominent interpretations of them …

The Hyperspatial Self: Henry James And Posthuman Modalities, Christina Patsiokas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the era of computing and ubiquitous media, scholars across disciplines have been developing new models for how humans operate in complex environments. This line of inquiry can be bracketed under the larger term of posthuman thought. This thesis attempts to engage the critical and fictional work of Henry James with several posthumanist texts to challenge the temporal limitations of both. Against the backdrop of posthuman discourse, James emerges not as the cherished father of modernism but rather as a pioneer of distant territories far beyond the ways in which the modernist novel conceptualized the self and its consciousness. James …

From Positivism To ‘Anti-Positivism’ In Mexico: Some Notable Continuities, Alexander V. Stehn

Philosophy Faculty Publications

A general consensus has emerged in the scholarship on Latin American thought dating from the latter half of the nineteenth century through the first quarter of the twentieth. Latin American intellectuals widely adapted the European philosophy of positivism in keeping with the demands of their own social and political contexts, effectively making positivism the second most important philosophical tradition in the history of Latin America, after scholasticism. However, as thinkers across Latin America faced the challenges of the twentieth century, they grew increasingly disappointed with positivism, so that “anti-positivism” stands out as a defining feature of Latin American philosophy in …

When Should Philosophers Be Silent?, Jason Decker, Charles Taliaferro

Philosophy Faculty Work

Are there general precepts governing when philosophers should not conduct inquiry on a given topic? When, if ever, should a philosopher just be silent? In this paper we look at a number of practical, epistemic, and moral arguments for philosophical silence. Some are quite general, and suggest that it is best never to engage in philosophical inquiry, while others are more domain – or context – specific. We argue that these arguments fail to establish their conclusions. We do, however, try to identify and defend several substantive constraints on philosophical dialogue and inquiry. In practice, though, respecting these constraints needn’t …

Derrida, Lacan And Deconstruction, Taylor Konieczka

Undergraduate Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Playing Fair With Prisoners, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

Oddness aside, however, I think there is much to recommend the attempt to restore rehabilitation to a central place in the practice of punishment. Nor do I think that rehabilitation must displace retribution in that practice. Properly understood, the two aims are not only compatible but also complementary. If we are to understand them properly, though, we shall need to see them as components of a theory of punishment that is grounded in considerations of fair play. Such a theory also has the advantage of offering guidance with regard to other controversial matters of penal policy, such as the question …

Social Cognition And The Allure Of The Second-Person Perspective: In Defense Of Empathy And Simulation, Karsten R. Stueber

Philosophy Department Faculty Scholarship

This essay serves as an evaluation of challenges to the orthodox way of conceiving "mindreading" abilities by defending a 2006 claim by the author that those abilities involve basic and reenactive empathy .

The Philosopher-Priest And The Mythology Of Reason, John Panteleimon Manoussakis

Philosophy Department Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Logic Of Divine-Human Reconciliation: A Critical Analysis Of Penal Substitution As An Explanatory Feature Of Atonement, Blaine Swen

Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to offer an analysis of the major conceptual and ethical problems facing penal substitution insofar as it is utilized as an explanatory feature of Christ's contribution to divine-human reconciliation. I present fourteen problems and argue that penal substitution can overcome these problems by embracing a "divine-manifest offering" approach to atonement. On this approach, God mercifully chooses to require satisfaction for sin through penal substitution in order to give God's Self the opportunity to meet this requirement by satisfaction through penal self-substitution. This divine self-substitution is intended by God to elicit a free human response …

Editors’ Introduction, Glenn Hartelius

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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Spirituality And The Mmpi-2 Restructured Clinical Scales, Diana M. Mendez, Douglas A. Macdonald

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

The present investigation examined the relation between spirituality, measured by the

Expressions of Spirituality Inventory (ESI; MacDonald, 2000); and the Minnesota

Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 Restructured Clinical (MMPI-2 RC) scales (Tellegen et

al., 2003) using data from a previously published study (i.e., MacDonald & Holland, 2003).

Zero-order, multiple, and partial correlations were calculated to explore the association.

All multiple correlations, wherein the five ESI dimensions were used collectively to predict

MMPI-2 RC scales, emerged significant for all MMPI-2 RC scales. For zero-order correlations,

all RC scales were found to have a significant relation with at least one ESI dimension.

Existential Well-Being …

Connecting The Spiritual And Emotional Intelligences: Confirming An Intelligence Criterion And Assessing The Role Of Empathy, David B. King, Constance A. Mara, Teresa L. Decicco

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

A viable model and self-report measure of spiritual intelligence were previously proposed

and supported by King and DeCicco (2009). Despite such advances, evidence is needed

demonstrating significant associations with other intelligences. The current study sought to

test this criterion in relation to emotional intelligence. Among a sample of 420 Canadian

adults, results demonstrated significant associations between spiritual intelligence and two

self-report measures of emotional intelligence. Due to the suggestion by some theorists

that empathy be included in a model of spiritual intelligence, associations with empathy

were also investigated. Results bode well for the inclusion of a spiritual ability set in …