Philosophy Commons^™

That's Beyond My Imagination!, Kiyohiro Sen Phd

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

According to one strongly supported view, fiction is a functional kind that communicates imaginings. Combining this definitional thesis with a plausible principle concerning functional kinds leads to the following evaluative thesis: features that contribute to communicating imaginings constitute good-making features as fiction, and features that impede this constitute bad-making features as fiction. However, this thesis is at odds with the actual practice of fiction. Critics can show their admiration for complicated works of fiction by stating, “That’s beyond my imagination!” I argue that in resolving this paradox of hard-to-imagine fiction, we should not deny the observation, but rethink the definitional …

Storywood: Collaborating With Opaque Unknowable Others Through Oil Painting, Tanya J. Behrisch

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

This paper demonstrates the use of contemplation and arts-based research (ABR) to explore intersubjectivity between myself and other opaque beings. Through a walking meditation, I experience an affective encounter with a plywood board found lying on a beach. The board radiates agency and mysterious stories about its passage through the world. Drawing on philosopher Tim Lilburn’s concept of permeable attention and Bennett’s theory of vibrant matter, I discover the storied nature of the damaged board and resonances between its stories and my own. By practicing perceptual openness, I discern vitality shimmering beyond the visible surface of the board. During my …

Denigration Of The Body In Plato’S Philosophy, Jamie Alexander

Ursidae: The Undergraduate Research Journal at the University of Northern Colorado

The denigration of the body is a common feature of Western religions, but its origins can be traced back to Plato. His teacher, Socrates, proposed a separation of body and soul, but careful reading of Plato's Dialogues suggest Plato took a particularly negative view of the body compared to his predecessor. Analyzing the effects of the Peloponnesian War on Plato's life and society, this article looks at reasons Plato may have had a developed an unfavorable view toward the body by comparing "war bodies" with "intellectual bodies," and discussing the impact democracy had on Plato's worldview.

Kantian Reason & Epistemic Humility, Elias Seeman

Lux et Fides: A Journal for Undergraduate Christian Scholars

Immanuel Kant continues to be one of the most influential thinkers in the history of philosophy. His thought shapes much of contemporary culture and has dramatically influenced Christian philosophy and theology. While some of this influence is beneficial, there are components of Kantian thought – especially as it pertains to the capabilities of human reason to arrive at true knowledge of God – that are decidedly problematic. In this paper, two different readings on Kant’s work on this subject are presented, followed by a brief overview of key insights and shortcomings. The final section charts a positive way forward for …

Virtue Appreciation And Sustainability In Olafur Eliasson’S Ice Watch, Nicole Hall

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This paper is a case study of Olafur Eliasson’s Paris installation of Ice Watch (2014-2018) that coincided with the Climate Change COP-21 conference at the United Nations in 2015, and whose message was poignantly felt as a reminder of global warming, the melting polar regions, and the current environmental crisis. In particular, I explore how and what might we learn from this installation, to consider and rethink the relationship between aesthetic value, ethical value, and the concept of sustainability. Considering that Eliasson’s work requires relational perceptual-intellectual double awareness, it is argued that virtuous appreciation, judgment, and evaluation emerge if engaged …

Feeling The Environment: Aesthetic Interestedness And Environmental Aesthetics, Roberta Dreon

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Can aesthetic disinterest represent an adequate strategy to develop a sustainable attitude? While aesthetic disinterest plays a basic role in the Kantian foundation of aesthetics, (dis)interestedness has been a puzzling topic of discussion in the debate on environmental aesthetics and is becoming an increasingly pressing one, given the current worsening of the climate crisis.

The first part of this paper will explore the different meanings of the term as it is used within the debate on environmental aesthetics, either in support of or against the adoption of a disinterested attitude toward the environment. I will suggest drawing a distinction between …

Recovering Landscape And Landscape Beauty In Environmental Aesthetics, Paolo Furia

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In this article, I will pin down some elements to recover the concept of landscape in the context of environmental aesthetics. Such insertion of landscape in environmental aesthetics entails the questioning of the dualism between nature and culture that still lays at the basis of much literature in environmental aesthetics. My argument will unfold in three steps: first, I will show how the original question of environmental aesthetics, as elaborated by Ronald Hepburn in 1966, presupposes a distinction between nature and culture rooted in the moral contempt for excessive modernization and urbanization. Second, I will criticize some theories, not all …

Landscape Education, Enskilment, And Aesthetics: Complex Skills For Our Time, Alberto L. Siani

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Environmental education is undoubtedly a pressing need in our time. Landscape education may be seen as something more restricted in scope and necessity, and more disengaged. However, as I will first argue, because of the intrinsically concrete, localized, aesthetic character of landscapes in their difference from environment, landscape education in fact can also be seen as a more complex and challenging concept that can be framed in terms of enskilment. Second, to better clarify this concept and highlight the theoretical and practical difficulties related to it, this paper will then turn to some Wittgensteinian ideas about learning, especially his concept …

No Trace, No Waste? The Art Of Living In Trashscapes, Mădălina Diaconu

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Humans have always striven to overcome their finitude by leaving traces. The phenomenology and hermeneutics of the twentieth century interpreted traces as meaningful sources for reconstructing the past and disregarded their materiality. This culturalist and retrospective approach nowadays has become untenable, as it is impossible to generate significative traces without producing waste as well. Waste itself forms a special category of trace that is unintentional and partly nocuous. Moreover, a final repository appears to have perversely fulfilled the dream of leaving ineffaceable traces that would survive humanity itself. In this new context, a future-oriented approach, one that would engage collectivities …

Frugality. An Aesthetic Category For A Sustainable Art Of Living, Elisabetta Di Stefano

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Climate change has necessitated the exploration of new interpretive models and aesthetic categories to understand our relationship with the environment. In response to this, the concept of frugality emerges as a potential paradigm for a sustainable art of living. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive exploration of frugality as an aesthetic category through the lens of the history of ideas, its connection to everyday aesthetics, and its implications for an art of living. By adopting a frugal lifestyle, individuals can establish a harmonious and respectful relationship with the environment, promoting a more sustainable future. This existential model has been …

On The Significance Of Eco-Phenomenology For Theories Of Sustainability, Kira Meyer

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The Ecosystem Service Approach lays down the several ways in which nature contributes to the welfare of human beings. One important category of this approach is the cultural services that nature offers, which conform to the eudaimonic values in environmental ethics. The cultural services of nature are an important reason in choosing a concept of strong sustainability, as developed by Konrad Ott and Ralf Döring; eco-phenomenology is a method to immerse into these cultural-eudaimonic values and articulate them in nuanced ways. Our overall argument will substantiate the uncommon claim that eco-phenomenology is of focal significance to theories of sustainability.

Imaginaries, Scenarios, And Materialities: The Arts As Part Of Ecology, Peter J. Schneemann

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This contribution seeks to identify some of the methodological implications and challenges for art history as a discipline when confronted with the ecological imperative. There are clear societal expectations to ecological questions, approaches, and attitudes and a new rhetoric by artists and also scientists that anticipates the necessity of an ethical stand. The shift towards notions like sustainability was so fast and so radical, I argue, that we ought to take time to step back and reflect on its implications. I am especially interested in the intersection between the ethical dimension we now apply to artistic production (as a …

Back To Intermittence, Or Rediscovering Web-Materiality: An Artistic Quest For A Sustainable Internet Aesthetics, Diego Mantoan

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Through the digital and public artwork, Solar Protocol (2020-ongoing), artists and engineers Tega Brain, Alex Nathanson, and Benedetta Piantella kickstarted a solar-powered server network that hosts a web page demonstrating how intermittent energy levels affect its very aesthetics and usability. This small-scale participatory experiment stimulates a wider reflection on the interconnection between economic, environmental, behavioral, and aesthetic features that shape the way the internet is produced and consumed in today’s society. Far from being a mere matter of greening the internet’s power supply, rather the artwork turns a spotlight on the implicit attitudes of web producers and consumers as developed …

An Aesthetics Of Minimal Resources: Affective Ecologies At The Encounter With Environmental Ethics In Alicia Barney’S Artistic Practice, Vanessa Badagliacca

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The aim of this article is to present the early works created between 1975 and 1982 by Alicia Barney, a pioneer of environmental art in Colombia. The purpose is to highlight her ability to lead us Toward a Sustainable Attitude, the title of a conference held at the University of Venice (October 6-8, 2022), and also to claim how relevant these works remain in the current climate crisis within and beyond contemporary aesthetics debates. Taking on this approach, it will emerge that despite the attempt of the artist in some of her pieces to adopt a detached, scientific attitude …

School Counselors’ Perceptions And Descriptions Of Their Career Counseling Efforts For Non-Honor Roll Students In Career Management, Sherlette C. Burkhalter

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

High-quality career counseling is freely available at U.S. high schools. However, many students choose not to participate in career planning programs, despite being assigned to a school counselor for guidance. There is a projected increase in demand for school counselors; however, there needs to be more literature regarding whether high school students are taking advantage of career planning and how counselors cope with and manage their role in implementing career counseling programs. The purpose of this study was to explore school counselors’ perceptions and descriptions of their career counseling efforts for non-honor roll students in career management. The theoretical framework …

Will I Even Teach Writing Anymore? An Examination Of First-Year Writing Faculty’S Responsibility To Teach About Or With Chatgpt, Danielle Derise

International Journal on Responsibility

In late November of 2022, faculty continuing to navigate the considerable teaching and research challenges posed by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic were confronted with another existential problem: the juggernaut known as ChatGPT. This article will examine the academy’s response to this sudden intrusion of Large Language Models (LLMs) into classrooms, workplaces, and daily life, with a focus on interrogating the responsibility of and to instructors of first-year composition. I argue that the breathless calls to reinvent courses, assignments, and syllabus policies to “accommodate” LLMs play into a normative system and may pose additional barriers to success for students, including those …

Strategic Justice, Conventions, And Game Theory: Introduction To A Synthese Topical Collection, Michael Moehler, John Thrasher

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

Evolutionary, game-theoretic approaches to justice and the social contract have become increasingly popular in contemporary moral and political philosophy. (Vanderschraaf, Strategic justice: convention and problems of balancing divergent interests, Oxford University Press, 2019) theory of strategic justice represents the most recent contribution to this tradition and, in many ways, can be viewed as a culmination of it. This article discusses some of the central features of Vanderschraaf’s theory and relates them to the contributions in this collection. Some of the contributions directly address Vanderschraaf’s work, while others explore related topics in game theory, bargaining theory, formal philosophy, rationality, equality, justice, …

Observing Cairene Narratives And Subjectivities Towards Covid-19: Reflections On The First Year Of The Pandemic, Sarra Moneir

Future Journal of Social Science

Theoretical and methodological toolkits already existing in the field of political science and social science in the grand sense have been challenged by the tremendous impacts of waves and movements of social change since 2010 in the Arab Region. While political and social scientists were, and still remain, engaged in unravelling questions of how to apprehend the forms of social movements (re-)born, not just in the Arab world but also through the Occupy movements in the US and Europe, they soon had to redirect their focus on issues of migration and refugees, only to find themselves once again confronted with …

Back To The Future? How The Global Powers And The Local Militias Hindered Un Multi-Dimensional Mediation In The Libyan And Syrian Civil Wars After 2011, Ahmed S. Mahdi, Melissia Shapib, Noura Gamie

Future Journal of Social Science

UN mediation efforts in the Libyan and Syrian civil wars, which followed the Arab Revolutions of 2011, were hampered by the great power intervention, and by the belligerents' insistence on solving the problem through military victory instead of negotiation. There is a shortage in the literature which examines an alternative, or how UN mediation can be improved. One of the few models to assess, and improve, UN mediation in civil wars is the so-called Kane Model (2022). Using the model presented by Kane to assess the procedures of a powerful UN mediation process in internationalized civil wars, this paper argues …

Approaches And Tools Of Peace And Conflict Management Between Two Perspectives, Yasmine Z. Radwan

Future Journal of Social Science

This study aims at pointing out the tools of peace and the approaches to conflict management and resolution presented in the Islamic and Western perspectives. It also searches for clarifying the convergent and divergent zones that could help in finding, analyzing and criticizing the basic concepts on which arguments and debates are constructed. This study concluded that the differences between the Islamic and the Western perspective are a human requirement for acquainting and integrating based on a crucial notion, which is identity. Identity is treated in details in many discourses and occupies a large place in the Western literature on …