Philosophy Commons^™

Naturalism And Is Opponents, Joseph Spencer

Undergraduate Review

Ever since Descartes began his search for certainty in philosophy, many of the great philosophers have taken up this quest. One solution, proposed by W.V.O. Quine in his 1969 essay, Naturalized Epistemology, claims that we must refrain from studying epistemology in philosophy. Quine claims that our study of knowledge must only occur in the field of psychology and that we should refrain from talking about these issues in philosophy. As one can imagine, Quine’s essay was met with much criticism and anger among philosophers. Most notably, Hilary Putnam provides a devastating critique of naturalized epistemology in his essay, Why …

Book Panel Response: Symposium On Ladelle Mcwhorter's Racism And Sexual Oppression In Anglo-America: A Genealogy, Ladelle Mcwhorter

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Unfortunately I do not have space to address individually each issue these four papers raise. Instead, I will first situate my work in relation to identity politics and address fears that my approach is reductive. Then, building on comments from Professors Wilkerson and Al-Saji, I will offer some remarks about aims, methods, and shortcomings.

Is Justification Knowledge?, Brent J C Madison

Philosophy Papers and Journal Articles

Analytic epistemologists agree that, whatever else is true of epistemic justification, it is distinct from knowledge. However, if recent work by Jonathan Sutton is correct, this view is deeply mistaken, for according to Sutton justification is knowledge. That is, a subject is justified in believing that ρ iff he knows that ρ. Sutton further claims that there is no concept of epistemic justification distinct from knowledge. Since knowledge is factive, a consequence of Sutton’s view is that there are no false justified beliefs.

Following Sutton, I will begin by outlining kinds of beliefs that do not constitute knowledge but that …

Epistemic Internalism, Brent J C Madison

Philosophy Papers and Journal Articles

The internalism/externalism debate is of interest in epistemology since it addresses one of the most fundamental questions in the discipline: what is the basic nature of knowledge and epistemic justification? It is generally held that if a positive epistemic status obtains, this is not a brute fact. Rather if a belief is, for example, justified, it is justified in virtue of some further condition(s) obtaining. What has been called epistemic internalism holds, as the label suggests, is that all the relevant factors that determine justification must be “internal” (in a sense that needs to be specified). Epistemic externalism is the …

Heidegger’S Notion Of Religion: The Limits Of Being-Understanding, Angus Brook

Philosophy Papers and Journal Articles

In the last two decades, the question of religion has become a central concern of many philosophers belonging to the Continental philosophical tradition. As the interest in religion has grown within Continental philosophy, so also has the question of Martin Heidegger’s relationship with religion. This paper poses the question of what religion meant to Martin Heidegger in the development of phenomenology as ontology; how he preconceived the notion of religion and why he eventually denied any authenticity to religion. In engaging with this question, the paper will also attempt to disclose some delimitations of Heidegger’s approach to religion.

Shame And Philosophy, Richard P. Hamilton

Philosophy Papers and Journal Articles

Shame is a ubiquitous and highly intriguing feature of human experience. It can motivate but it can also paralyse. It is something which one can legitimately demand of another, but is not usually experienced as a choice. Perpetrators of atrocities can remain defiantly immune to shame while their victims are racked by it. It would be hard to understand any society or culture without understanding the characteristic occasions upon which shame is expected and where it is mitigated. Yet, one can survey much of the literature in social and political theory over the last century and find barely a footnote …

What About The Children? Benjamin And Arendt: On Education, Work, And The Political, Jules Simon

Departmental Papers (Philosophy)

This article is a rough draft of an article that I contributed to an edited volume of articles dealing with progressive education theory. I reflect on articles that Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin wrote that deal with educational reform and innovation, both political in nature.

The Flow Of Nectar And Blood: Maya Philosophy And World Vision, Ferret

Departmental Papers (Philosophy)

No abstract provided.

Incorporeal, Tamsin E. Lorraine

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Satire In Boaistuau’S Théâtre Du Monde, Alison Baird Lovell

Quidditas

Le Théâtre du monde [Theater of the World] (1558) of Pierre Boaistuau was an encyclopedic compilation in three books presenting a litany of vices and miseries in human life; the book proved to be an early modern “bestseller” and was reproduced in many editions and translations across Europe. Boaistuau, the first editor of the tales of Marguerite de Navarre, also edited other story collections, besides investigating religious matters, early modern science and medicine including prodigies and monsters, and other developing forms of knowledge. The Théâtre du monde manifested topoi including the theatrum mundi with its vast spectacle displayed …

Ecocriticism, Paul Siewers

Faculty Contributions to Books

An overview for a dictionary of critical theory on ecocriticism or environmental literary criticism.

Space, Time And The Constitution Of Subjectivity: Comparing Elias And Foucault, Paddy Dolan

Articles

The work of Foucault and Elias has been compared before in the social sciences and humanities, but here I argue that the main distinction between their approaches to the construction of subjectivity is the relative importance of space and time in their accounts. This is not just a matter of the “history of ideas,” as providing for the temporal dimension more fully in theories of subjectivity and the habitus allows for a greater understanding of how ways of being, acting and feeling in different spaces are related but largely unintended. Here I argue that discursive practices, governmental operations and technologies …

Mechanisms, Causes, And The Layered Model Of The World, Stuart Glennan

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Most philosophical accounts of causation take causal relations to obtain between individuals and events in virtue of nomological relations between properties of these individuals and events. Such views fail to take into account the consequences of the fact that in general the properties of individuals and events will depend upon mechanisms that realize those properties. In this paper I attempt to rectify this failure, and in so doing to provide an account of the causal relevance of higher-level properties. I do this by critiquing one prominent model of higher-level properties – Kim’s functional model of reduction – and contrasting it …

Just Military Preparedness, U.S. Military Hegemony, And Contingency Planning For Intervention In Sudan: A Reply To Lango And Patterson, Harry Van Der Linden

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

This paper rejects most aspects of John W. Lango and Eric Patterson’s proposal that the United States should plan for a possible intervention in Sudan on secessionist and humanitarian grounds and announce this planning as a deterrent to the central government of Sudan attacking the people of South Sudan if they would opt in a January 2011 referendum for independence. I argue that secession is not a just cause for armed intervention and that, rightfully, neither the American people nor many of its men and women in uniform would be prepared to engage in an intervention that might easily escalate. …

From Combat Boots To Civilian Shoes: Reflections On The Chickenhawk Syndrome, Harry Van Der Linden

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

This essay is part of a symposium on Cheyney Ryan’s The Chickenhawk Syndrome: War, Sacrifice, and Personal Responsibility (2009). Ryan’s reply to his critics can be found on pp. 181-89 in Radical Philosophy Review, Volume 13, Issue 2, 2010.

Just Military Preparedness And Irregular Warfare, Harry Van Der Linden

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

This presentation explores the significance of just military preparedness (JMP), or jus ante bellum as a new category of just war theory, for just war thinking, especially with regard to irregular warfare. It articulates six just military preparedness (JMP) principles. It further discusses how America’s military preparation fails the JMP principles and how this negatively impacts its capability to justly initiate, execute, and conclude (irregular) war. This critical analysis takes as its point of departure (former) Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s view that the Pentagon needs to be “reprogrammed” toward a “balanced strategy” of preparing for both conventional and irregular warfare.

Aristotle On Pure And Simple Stuff, Tiberiu Popa

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

A view that has been entertained traditionally by Aristotelian scholars is that the four simple bodies in the sublunary world (earth, water, air, and fire) cannot exist independently; a consequence of this view is the general belief that all homoeomers or uniform bodies have to be compounds. i would like to suggest that, while Aristotle consistently maintains that the four basic opposites (hot, cold, moist, dry) cannot exist independently, this is not always the case with the four simple bodies. My central claim is that Meteorology IV – Aristotle’s ‘chemical treatise’ – provides evidence that, contrary to the traditional interpretation …

Liberty And The Normative Force Of The Law In Montesquieu's The Spirit Of The Laws, Cory Wimberly

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The aim of this essay is explore what demands living in liberty places on citizens in Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws. In contrast to the ideas of liberty from many of the thinkers that were to follow him, Montesquieu’s notion of liberty requires that citizens subject themselves to the regulative relationships required by his normative conception of the law. For Montesquieu, living in liberty is not just a situation in which one avoids what the law forbids and is otherwise left ’free’ without interference and coercion. For Montesquieu, liberty is a positively elaborated ideal with normative demands and a …

The Influence Of Spirituality On Servant Leadership Among Small Business Entrepreneurs, Sharilyn D. Franklin

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Servant leadership, which promotes virtuousness and altruism, is gaining attention as a potential solution to the perceived leadership crisis, as evidenced by the ethical breakdown of some of America's largest corporations. Entrepreneurs, who represent 99% of all employers, play a significant role in the American economy as innovative risk takers and early adopters. As such, it is important to understand how they relate to servant leadership. The purpose of this quantitative study was to explore research questions related to (a) the extent to which servant leadership is practiced by small business entrepreneurs, and (b) the relationship between their levels of …

The Thinking Hand: Book Review, Jim Roche

Articles

In this new book Juhani Pallasmaa continues his phenomenological exploration begun in ‘The Eyes of the Skin (2005)’, with the ‘Thinking Hand’ here proffered as a metaphor for his contention that all our senses, have innate imbedded crucial skills which help us perform the most basic daily tasks – and to create inspired works of art and architecture.