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Zhuang Zi And The Education Of The Emotions, Jeffrey Morgan

Comparative Philosophy

This paper examines and defends a conception of the education of emotions found in the Zhuang-Zi. I begin by exploring four principal features of Zhuang Zi’s philosophy as it relates to the emotions: his epistemological perspectivism, his view of the self, his ethics of wandering and natural spontaneity, and his playful non-seriousness. Together these four features allow us to discern a general orientation to the education of the emotions, including a normative account of a good emotional life as well some suggestions for a pedagogy for the development of such a life.

The Yogācāra Theory Of Three Natures: Internalist And Non-Dualist Interpretations, Matthew Mackenzie

Comparative Philosophy

According to Vasubandhu’s Trisvabhāvanirdeśa or Treatise on the Three Natures, experiential phenomena can be understood in terms of three natures: the constructed (parikalpita), the dependent (paratantra), and the consummate (pariniṣpanna). This paper will examine internalist and anti-internalist or non-dualist interpretations of the Yogācāra theory of the three natures of experience. The internalist interpretation is based on representationalist theory of experience wherein the contents of experience are logically independent of their cause and various interconnected cognitive processes continually create an integrated internal world-model that is transparent to the cognitive system that creates and uses it. …

Knowledge, Hope, And Fallibilism, Matthew A. Benton

SPU Works

Hope, in its propositional construction "I hope that p," is compatible with a stated chance for the speaker that not-p. On fallibilist construals of knowledge, knowledge is compatible with a chance of being wrong, such that one can know that p even though there is an epistemic chance for one that not-p. But self-ascriptions of propositional hope that p seem to be incompatible, in some sense, with self-ascriptions of knowing whether p. Data from conjoining hope self-ascription with outright assertions, with first- and third-person knowledge ascriptions, and with factive predicates suggest a problem: when …

Post-Darwin Skepticism And Run-Of-The-Mill Suicide, John Hadley

Animal Sentience

Peña-Guzmán’s depiction of the opponent of animal suicide as a conservative is a straw man. It is possible to accept that animals are self-conscious and reflexive yet still reject the view that they have the mental wherewithal to commit run-of-the-mill suicide. That animal behaviour can be positioned on a continuum of self-destructive behaviour does not establish that animals can intentionally kill themselves.

Can Nondolphins Commit Suicide?, David M. Peña-Guzmán

Animal Sentience

This Response addresses the scientific and philosophical criticisms of my 2017 target article “Can nonhuman animals commit suicide?” It defends my key claims and explores topics (such as animal judgment, animal theory of mind, and the evolution of suicide) that did not appear in the original article. It also points out areas in which further research is needed and concludes that we should be wary of accusations of “anthropomorphism” in debates about animal suicide.

In Anthropocene Air: Deleuze's Encounter With Shakespeare, Steven Swarbrick

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Two Questions About Interpretive Effects, Robert Stainton, Christopher Viger

Philosophy Publications

We discuss central themes in Lepore and Stone's Imagination and Convention. We begin by laying out their view, and then pose both empirical and methodological criticisms.

Introduction To Discourse, Structure And Linguistic Choice By T. Price Caldwell, Robert Stainton

Philosophy Publications

No abstract provided.

"A Danger At Present Unperceived:" Self-Understanding, Imagination, Emotion, And Social Stance In "Emma", Richard Thomas Eldridge

Philosophy Faculty Works

Philosophers concerned with self-understanding have often conceived of it as either a matter of immediate, unchallengeable introspective awareness or as a matter of gathering evidence about oneself scientifically and impersonally. In contrast, Gilbert Ryle rightly understood self-understanding as knowledge of one’s own commitments, desires, beliefs, wishes, and fears––all things that one has some share in forming and can to some extent alter. What Ryle misses or underplays, however, is the extent to which the forming and revising of commitments, desires, beliefs, wishes, and fears are also social processes, as agents-in-formation are subject to the gazes, expectations, and evaluations of others. …

Socratic Oblivion And The Siren Songs Of Academe: Responding To Anne-Marie Schultz’S “Stirring Up America’S Sleeping Horses”, Glenn "Boomer" Mac Trujillo, Terrell Taylor

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Art Of Morals: A Study Of The Influence Of Musicopoetic Arts On Moral Development In Plato's Laws, Daniele Manni

Dissertations

This dissertation's primary goal is to give a detailed account of the employment of musicopoetic arts in the process of moral development in Plato's Laws. Its secondary objective is to propose an explanation for the different evaluations of musicopoetic arts at the end of the Republic and in the Laws.

To achieve the first goal I analyze the elements of the soul involved in the moral psychology of the Laws, as sketched in the famous image of the marionette; I maintain that the process of habit formation is the pivotal aspect of this moral psychology; I indicate that Plato restricts …

Perspectives On Truth: The Case Of Language And False Belief Reasoning, Jill De Villiers

Philosophy: Faculty Publications

Many theorists take language – vocabulary, mental verbs, syntax, counterfactuals, discourse – to be a significant help in the development of explicit Theory of Mind. Does conversation, with all its point-of-view indicators, betray another’s perspective? By comparing how different linguistic markers behave across clausal environments, I demonstrate that they fall into distinct classes, only one of which – tense – patterns with the truth of the clause in terms of perspective. Sentences with embedded finite complements thus have a special role in representing the truth or falsity of others’ beliefs. Children who master embedded sentential complements can then more readily …

Language, Literacy, And Conscientização In American Public Schools, Julie Ward

Theses and Dissertations

Language, Literacy, and Conscientização in American Public Schools synthesizes poststructural language theory to critique literacy teaching and assessment norms in American public schools in order to theorize a pedagogy of racial and economic justice that embraces globalization and immigration. Chapter I creates a theoretical framework for language that rests firmly on both Lev Vygotsky’s and Jacques Lacan’s sociohistorical approach to language acquisition and language use. Mikhail Bakhtin’s work demonstrates the heteroglossic nature of discourse, while Antonio Gramsci politicizes this framework through an understanding of hegemony. Chapter II sketches ethnographic research on teaching practices of various American communities, focusing on ideology …

Dialogue Or Drama? The Role Of Language As Seen By Gadamer And Foucault, Pol Vandevelde

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

On Defining 'Argument', Jeffrey C. Goodman

Faculty Scholarship

There is no concept more central to logic and critical thinking than the concept of an argument.  I here address extant definitions of ‘argument’ in the logical sense of the term and defend the claim that all are wanting: they are all extensionally inadequate, or at least problematically ambiguous.  An adequate definition of ‘argument’ will entail either an absolutist understanding or a relativistic one.  Current proposals, however, especially those typically found in logic and critical thinking textbooks, all seem to be objectionable no matter which sort of understanding one adopts.  I thus finish with a proposal for how to define …

Smith And Hume On Animal Minds, Richard Fry

SIUE Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

This paper situates Hume’s views on animals in the context of the Scottish Enlightenment by contrasting them with the views of Adam Smith. While Smith is more central to the philosophical establishment of the Scottish Enlightenment, their views on morals resemble each other greatly and both think that the analogies between humans and non-human animals are useful for thinking about morals. Their estimation of the nature and extent of those analogies, however, differ widely from one another. This has been historically obscured by the fact that in no single work does Smith precisely detail what he thinks non-human animals are …

“Whither Then I Cannot Say”: Epistemological Uncertainty And Tolkien’S Transnational Myth, Mitchell Kooh

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

Dissecting The Grandfather Paradox, Ishan Jawa

CMC Senior Theses

In his paper, The Paradoxes of Time Travel, David Lewis posits a defense for the possibility of time travel by arguing that the grandfather 'paradox' is not, in fact, paradoxical at all. Two alternative solutions to the grandfather paradox are discussed in this paper. The first is a result of Paul Horwich’s reply to Lewis and aims to pit the Lewisian conception of compatibility against Horwich’s improbability defense. Proposed by Nicholas Smith and C.G. Goddu, this theory explains that any attempt at backward time travel will lead to the creation of long strings of improbable coincidences. An alternative thesis …

Disarming “Nature” As A Weapon: A Queer Ecosemiotic Reimagining Of Futurity And Environmental Ethics Through Memoir, Sam Lauer

Master’s Theses

In this thesis, I posit that the need for an active, conscious, and radical queering of ecocriticism as a literary and cultural theory has arisen in light of the postmodern problematization of “nature” and the “natural,” along with the queerness of society, culture, and science. The way we understand “nature” (in life and in texts), whether of physical environments, inherent selfhood, or normalcy, begs to be appropriately informed by discourses and realities of queerness in order for both social and environmental healing to take place. I have analyzed three works of queer creative nonfiction—memoirs—to illuminate the ways in which the …

Creator And Creation: Artistic Development In Herman Melville’S Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities And James Joyce’S A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man, Magdalena M. De La Cruz

Dissertations and Theses

This study focuses on the primary protagonists of Herman Melville’s Pierre; or, the Ambiguities (1852) and James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Pierre Glendinning and Stephen Dedalus, as well as Isabel Banford, a supporting character in Melville’s novel, to illustrate how the tensions of contemporary society have a direct influence on the artist-hero’s representations and perspectives on self-realization. This thesis will draw on the major concepts of the artist and artist fiction as put forth in Otto Rank’s Art and Artist (1916), Herbert Marcuse’s “Der Deutsche Künstlerroman” (“The German Artist Novel”, 1922), and Maurice …

(2018) Philosophy For/With Children, Religious Education And Education For Spirituality. Steps Toward A Review Of The Literature, Maughn Gregory, Stefano Oliverio

Collected Papers of Maughn Rollins Gregory

The authors describe the organization of a review of research literature on the relationship between Philosophy for/with Children (P4/wC) and religious education/education for spirituality (RE-EfS). They summarize a debate about whether the two are mutually enhancing or incompatible. They explain delimiting the scope of the project and present a grid of research questions used to analyze the literature. They summarize findings on how P4/wC is relevant to five categories of aims of RE-EfS: hermeneutical, cultural, socio-political, moral/spiritual, and epistemological. Many papers in the latter category promote P4/wC as a method for children’s epistemic agency in constructing their religious beliefs. Some …

(2018) Ethics Education And The Practice Of Wisdom, Maughn Gregory

Collected Papers of Maughn Rollins Gregory

Ethics education in post-graduate philosophy departments and professional schools involves disciplinary knowledge and textual analysis but is mostly unconcerned with the ethical lives of students. Ethics or values education below college aims at shaping students’ ethical beliefs and conduct but lacks philosophical depth and methods of value inquiry. The «values transmission» approach to values education does not provide the opportunity for students to express doubt or criticism of the proffered values, or to practice ethical inquiry. The «inquiry» approach to values education recognizes the need and the capacity of young people to grapple with moral ambiguity and pluralism, to confront …

The Universal Validity Of The Conceptions Of Artistic Creativity And The Perception Of Beauty In Pre-Modern China: A Comparative Examination, Junghwan Lee

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In contemporary aesthetics, artistic creativity and the perception of beauty are the key concepts in explaining aesthetic consciousness. From the birth of modern aesthetics, an underlying assumption has been that artistic creativity and the perception of beauty are each genuinely universal in human experience, which is worthy of particular attention. To examine the universal validity of Western aesthetic claims on these two distinctive subjects, this paper presents a very brief outline of pre-modern Chinese interpretations of both concepts. Specifically, in comparison to Kant’s concept of genius and aesthetic judgment, I draw two conclusions. First, although there was no concept equivalent …

The Aesthetics Of Silence: A Matter Of Spatial Critique In The Works Of Marcel Broodthaers, Elsbeth Dekker

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In 1967 Susan Sontag published her essay, "The Aesthetics of Silence,” on the craving towards silence in artistic movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Even though it appears that notions of silence are still influential within the visual arts, theoretical writings on silence are nearly absent. This article explores how notions of silence emerged in the early works of Marcel Broodthaers, by scrutinizing his works, related to Pense-Bête, together with the writings of Susan Sontag and related ideas from Stéphane Mallarmé and Theodor Adorno. Through a vivisection of these early works of Broodthaers, this article argues how silence …

The Problem Of Thick Representation, Rafe Mcgregor

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to define the problem of thick representation and to show that the problem is a puzzle for representation rather than a puzzle for a specific art form or art, in general, as has previously been suggested. In the course of identifying and formulating the problem, I shall demonstrate why the solution proposed thus far fails to solve either the artistic problem at which it is aimed or the representational problem I define. I conclude by indicating two promising directions in which a solution might be found and by explaining the philosophical and critical …

Mind Als Geist In Der Welt Der Kultur: Kultuphilosophie, "Naturalistische" Transzendentalphilosophie Und Die Frage Nach Dem Raum Der Kultur, Sebastian Luft

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

Abstract: Mind as Spirit in the World of Culture. Philosophy of Culture, "Naturalistic" Transcendental Philosophy and the Question of the Space of Culture. In this essay I present Cassirer's philosophy of culture as a special application of Kant's transcendental philosophy. I then compare and contrast it to another tradition, namely the Pittsburgh School, especially McDowell. The starting point here is the Sellarsian concept of the 'Space of reasons', which McDowell expands through his Aristotelian-inspired concept of 'Second nature'. By way of a rather peculiar interpretation of an early interpreter of Cassirer -Howe- I will attempt to bring 'Marburg' and 'Pittsburgh' …

Homonymy And The Comparability Of Goods In Aristotle, Robert Duncan

Dissertations

My dissertation will draw attention to an underexplored problem in Aristotle's theory of the good and advance two alternative proposals about how it can be solved. Aristotle endorses an inconsistent triad of premises concerning homonymy, comparability, and goodness. First, he argues that the good is homonymous: there is no single characteristic, goodness, which is shared by all good things. Rather, he argues that different kinds of good things require different accounts specifying what it is for them to be good. Second, he holds that homonyms are incomparable. If two things are homonymously F, then we are not entitled to claim …

On Dust: Memory As Performance And Materiality, Natasha Lushetich

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The world's "worldliness" is, to a large extent, perceptually constructed through touch, kinaesthetics, and proprioception. Gesture, too, is embedded in sedimentations of the body's prior sensory exchanges with the environment. Materiality is transitive; it triggers sensory landscapes through performance. Consisting of particles of pollen, human and animal skin, hairs, minerals, soil, and burnt meteorites, dust is usually seen as the antithesis of the performative-material nexus. In this paper, I propose a different view: that dust is and acts as a connective tissue. Borrowing from Hélène Cixous's écriture blanche, Quentin Smith's degree presentism, and theorizing nostalgia as a structuring absence, …

Autographic And Allographic Imitation: Revisiting Counterfeit In Linguistic And Musical Arts, Jeremy Orosz

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Imitation within sonic arts, linguistic, musical, or otherwise, broadly defined, is a heterogeneous set of practices ranging from comical impersonation to outright counterfeit or forgery. This paper provides a taxonomy of imitation and mimicry within both language and music, dividing each into two respective categories, autographic imitation and allographic imitation, the terms for which are repurposed from Nelson Goodman’s Languages of Art.

Marsilio Ficino’S Neo-Platonist Concepts Of Power As Represented In Selected Paintings By Sandro Botticelli: A Study In Representation, Iconography, Iconology And Reasoning, Frank C. Martin, Ii

Theses and Dissertations

arsilio Ficino's Neo-Platonist assessments of differing aspects of powers or capacities associated with the human soul (spiritual, conceptual, influential, and the capacity to engender effects upon material reality), as represented within selected religious and secular paintings by Sandro Botticelli, are discussed in this study for an analysis of the innovative, syncretic conceptual unity of ancient North-African, MiddleEastern, Greco-Roman and early Christian and Medieval philosophical and theological traditions which are advocated by Ficino’s theoretical formulations. Botticelli's paintings are considered for the manner in which they may be understood, within the context of Ficino's conceptual systems, as externalizing, serving as a catalyst …