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Book Review: Robert Brandom, From Empiricism To Expressivism: Brandom Reads Sellars, Colin Mclear Apr 2016

Book Review: Robert Brandom, From Empiricism To Expressivism: Brandom Reads Sellars, Colin Mclear

Department of Philosophy: Faculty Publications

One of the better known of the many bons mots of the Sellarsian corpus concerns his definition of philosophy: it is the attempt to understand “how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term.” When applied to Sellars’s philosophy in particular, one might be forgiven for doubting the possible success of such an endeavor. Richard Rorty once quipped of Sellars’s followers that they were either “left-wing” or “right-wing,” emphasizing one line of thought in Sellars’s work to the exclusion of the other. The two lines of thought to which …

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A Racism Without Race: A Moroccan Case Study Of Race Denial, Leila Chreiteh Apr 2016

A Racism Without Race: A Moroccan Case Study Of Race Denial, Leila Chreiteh

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This article aims to articulate the ways in which race and race relations are conceptualized in Morocco. Using the concept of racialized discourse as the preconceptual theoretical field for race and racist expressions, the author analyzes the different converging factors which influence the performance of “Moroccan-ness” and how subjectivity can be influenced by a State-driven communal linguistic episteme. Through its insistent hyper-nationalist campaigns, the Moroccan State has deployed racist expressions as a means of face-keeping and sociopolitical management, which have become naturalized through its reproduction in individual subjectivity and interpellation. However, from the independent research conducted by the author, the …

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Fantasy Incarnate: Of Elves And Men, Simon J. Cook Dr. Mar 2016

Fantasy Incarnate: Of Elves And Men, Simon J. Cook Dr.

Journal of Tolkien Research

This essay proposes the idea of incarnation as a key to unlocking Tolkien’s conception of fantasy as set out in the 'Origins' section of On Fairy Stories. Tolkien's intellectual context is explored and his conception of mythology as a blending of imagination and history examined. The essay also establishes the differences between mortal and Elvish fantasy and argues that Tolkien's Elves engage in a different kind of incarnational art than do mortals. In conclusion it is claimed that in ‘Origins’ Tolkien reworked the speculations of mid-Victorian comparative philology into an aesthetic theory of artistic creation grounded upon the notion …

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From Relative Truth To Finean Non-Factualism, Alexander Jackson Mar 2016

From Relative Truth To Finean Non-Factualism, Alexander Jackson

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper compares two ‘relativist’ theories about deliciousness: truth-relativism, and Kit Fine’s non-factualism about a subject-matter. Contemporary truth-relativism is presented as a linguistic thesis; its metaphysical underpinning is often neglected. I distinguish three views about the obtaining of worldly states of affairs concerning deliciousness, and argue that none yields a satisfactory version of truth-relativism. Finean non-factualism about deliciousness is not subject to the problems with truth-relativism. I conclude that Finean non- factualism is the better relativist theory. As I explain, non-facualism about deliciousness is happily combined with an invariantist semantics for the word “delicious”. On this approach, relativism is a …

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Said And The Mythmaking Of Auerbach's Mimesis, Hyeryung Hwang Mar 2016

Said And The Mythmaking Of Auerbach's Mimesis, Hyeryung Hwang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Said and the Mythmaking of Auerbach's Mimesis" Hyeryung Hwang revisits critical debates on Edward W. Said's unwitting participation in the mythmaking of Erich Auerbach's Mimesis and analyzes the degree to which critical discourse overlook what Said actually wanted to revive, namely the spirit of philological methodology. Hwang argues that before Said worked on Mimesis, the book already acquired a sort of myth. Hwang attempts to go beyond the commonly held understanding of philology and suggest it as a methodology for historical synthesis whose dialectical tension between texts and history amounts to the synthesis of "fact" …

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Let Fall: Hysteria And The Psychoanalytic Act, Matthew W. Oyer Feb 2016

Let Fall: Hysteria And The Psychoanalytic Act, Matthew W. Oyer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This text proposes to examine the contemporary crisis of psychoanalysis by taking seriously feminist critiques of the theory’s phallocentrism, but arguing that the phallus cannot be metaphorically or metonymically replaced by any substitutive term, as most revisionist theories of psychoanalysis have sought to do. Castration is the central psychoanalytic concept, though the theory always seeks to cover it over. In order to develop a psychoanalysis that can confront this castration that is always repressed and yet, in its persistent return, continuously disrupts the continuity of psychoanalytic theory, a detour is proposed, returning to the origins of psychoanalysis and taking hysteria …

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Comparative Resources: Continental Philosophy And Daoism, Steven Burik Feb 2016

Comparative Resources: Continental Philosophy And Daoism, Steven Burik

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

I argue that continental philosophical resources are more appropriate for comparative philosophy regarding classical Daoism since they in various ways challenge the dominant metaphysical orientation of Western thought and give us a better and more appropriate vocabulary to make sense of important Daoist ideas within the confines of Western languages. Since classical Daoism is largely non-metaphysical or at least not metaphysical in the same way as the Western history of philosophy is, it makes sense that those within the Western tradition who have sought to displace the dominant metaphysical tradition would be more in tune with such non-metaphysical considerations. I …

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“Don't Think But Look:” Using Wittgenstein's Notion Of Family Resemblances To Look At Genocide, James J. Snow Feb 2016

“Don't Think But Look:” Using Wittgenstein's Notion Of Family Resemblances To Look At Genocide, James J. Snow

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article contributes to the ongoing and growing scholarly conversation concerning how best to define the term “genocide” following Raphael Lemkin’s coining of the term in 1944. The article first shows that the Convention definition ratified in Paris in 1948 was intended solely for juridical purposes and does not reflect Lemkin’s deeper understanding of genocide. It then surveys a range of scholarship after Lemkin that argues for alternative definitions of term or even calls for jettisoning the term altogether. While it is acknowledged that a clear definition is imperative in a juridical context, it is argued that there are problems …

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Toward A Kripkean Concept Of Number, Oliver R. Marshall Feb 2016

Toward A Kripkean Concept Of Number, Oliver R. Marshall

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Saul Kripke once remarked to me that natural numbers cannot be posits inferred from their indispensability to science, since we’ve always had them. This left me wondering whether numbers are objects of Russellian acquaintance, or accessible by analysis, being implied by known general principles about how to reason correctly, or both. To answer this question, I discuss some recent (and not so recent) work on our concepts of number and of particular numbers, by leading psychologists and philosophers. Special attention is paid to Kripke’s theory that numbers possess structural features of the numerical systems that stand for them, and to …

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The Republic Of Ignorance, Daniel R. Denicola Jan 2016

The Republic Of Ignorance, Daniel R. Denicola

Philosophy Faculty Publications

“When did ignorance become a point of view?” the cartoon character Dilbert once asked. It’s a question that has become increasingly resonant these days—especially in our public life, and especially in our political campaigns in which elected officials and those who seek election seem to assume a startling level of public ignorance. Perhaps that’s smart. [excerpt]

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Using Heider’S Epistemology Of Thing And Medium For Unpacking The Conception Of Documents: Gantt Charts And Boundary Objects, Sebastian K. Boell, Florian Hoof Jan 2016

Using Heider’S Epistemology Of Thing And Medium For Unpacking The Conception Of Documents: Gantt Charts And Boundary Objects, Sebastian K. Boell, Florian Hoof

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Documents play a central role for many organizational processes. Current conceptualizations of documents predominantly engage with documents in two different ways. One sees documents as things with specific properties, and a second sees documents as medium enabling communication across different groups of actors. What is currently not well understood is how documents are perceived either as thing or as medium. This chapter engages with this issue by drawing from Fritz Heider’s epistemology of thing and medium, a concept stemming from social and media theory. According to Heider things are uniform and medium are multiform. Applying this concept to documents we …

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Evidence For Anti-Intellectualism About Know-How From A Sentence Recognition Task, Ian Harmon, Zachary Horne Jan 2016

Evidence For Anti-Intellectualism About Know-How From A Sentence Recognition Task, Ian Harmon, Zachary Horne

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

An emerging trend in cognitive science is to explore central epistemological questions using psychological methods. Early work in this growing area of research has revealed that epistemologists' theories of knowledge diverge in various ways from the ways in which ordinary people think of knowledge. Reflecting the practices of epistemology as a whole, the vast majority of these studies have focused on the concept of propositional knowledge, or knowledge-that. Many philosophers, however, have argued that knowing how to do something is importantly different from knowing that something is the case. Hence, in this paper we turn our attention to people's concept …

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Eliciting Acts As Cultural Reflectors In Wole Soyinka's Childe Internationale, Moji A. Olateju Jan 2016

Eliciting Acts As Cultural Reflectors In Wole Soyinka's Childe Internationale, Moji A. Olateju

The Journal of Traditions & Beliefs

No abstract provided.

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Evil And Evidence, Matthew A. Benton, John Hawthorne, Yoaav Isaacs Jan 2016

Evil And Evidence, Matthew A. Benton, John Hawthorne, Yoaav Isaacs

SPU Works

The problem of evil is the most prominent argument against the existence of God. Skeptical theists contend that it is not a good argument. Their reasons for this contention vary widely, involving such notions as CORNEA, epistemic appearances, 'gratuitous' evils, 'levering' evidence, and the representativeness of goods. We aim to dispel some confusions about these notions, in particular by clarifying their roles within a probabilistic epistemology. In addition, we develop new responses to the problem of evil from both the phenomenal conception of evidence and the 'knowledge-first' view of evidence.

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Reason And Emotion, Not Reason Or Emotion In Moral Judgment, Leland F. Saunders Jan 2016

Reason And Emotion, Not Reason Or Emotion In Moral Judgment, Leland F. Saunders

SPU Works

One of the central questions in both metaethics and empirical moral psychology is whether moral judgments are the products of reason or emotions. This way of putting the question relies on an overly simplified view of reason and emotion as two fully independent cognitive faculties whose causal contributions to moral judgment can be cleanly separated. However, there is a significant body of evidence in the cognitive sciences that seriously undercuts this conception of reason and emotion, and supports the view that moral judgments are caused by a complex interplay of psychological mechanisms that are both cognitive and affective, but in …

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The Entanglement Of Anzaldúan Materiality As Bodily Knowing: Matter, Meaning, And Interrelatedness, Robyn Henderson-Espinoza Jan 2016

The Entanglement Of Anzaldúan Materiality As Bodily Knowing: Matter, Meaning, And Interrelatedness, Robyn Henderson-Espinoza

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project weaves together the theoretically rich and diverse work of ancient materialist philosophers, modern philosophy which advanced a theory of monism, and contemporary philosophies that further extends monism into new terrain, including 'new materialism.' While monism is a strand of this project, the core features of this project are materiality and bodies; these two concepts create the particular entanglement and central thrust of this project, which is becoming. While this project is conceptually organized around matter and bodies, and a particular notion of becoming traced from ancient through contemporary thought, this project, also, introduces the importance of Gloria Anzaldúa …

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Phenomenology And Blindness: Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, And An Alternative Metaphysical Vision, Jesse Younger Workman Jan 2016

Phenomenology And Blindness: Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, And An Alternative Metaphysical Vision, Jesse Younger Workman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project addresses the problem of an "ocularcentric" bias in philosophy, with a focus on phenomenological and continental thought. Being a blind phenomenologist, I noticed an ocularcentric tendency dominating philosophers' perspectives, including their arguments, use of metaphors, and choices of examples. As a blind reader I found that such ocularcentrism prevented me from understanding their claims. This made me wonder whether ocularcentric biases might be leading them to unbalanced or invalid arguments and world-views. The questions raised are: Can there be philosophy that is not reliant on vision above all other senses? Is it possible for philosophy to not be …

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The Impact Of Philanthropy, Jonathan F. Denzler Jan 2016

The Impact Of Philanthropy, Jonathan F. Denzler

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Forwarding a narrative framework of philanthropic impact this thesis problematizes the evaluation methods used by social engagement organizations to measure the impact or change that they are contributing to in a community. By focusing on the example of food access, and the corresponding language of the "food desert", this project locates the power to control the framing of social issues in the hands of funders as opposed to those who experience the real life effects of living in poverty or resource-poor communities. This process then lets the philanthropists set a goal and meet that goal without ever truly communicating or …

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A Critical Analysis Of African-Centered Psychology: From Ism To Praxis, A. Ebede-Ndi Jan 2016

A Critical Analysis Of African-Centered Psychology: From Ism To Praxis, A. Ebede-Ndi

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

The purpose of this article is to critically evaluate what is perceived as shortcomings in the scholarly field of African-centered psychology and mode of transcendence, specifically in terms of the existence of an African identity. A great number of scholars advocate a total embrace of a universal African identity that unites Africans in the diaspora and those on the continent and that can be used as a remedy to a Eurocentric domination of psychology at the detriment of Black communities’ specific needs. Another group of scholars argue for a relative African identity, emphasizing diversity and differences among African people both …

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Reference Magnetism As A Solution To The Moral Twin Earth Problem, William Dunaway Jan 2016

Reference Magnetism As A Solution To The Moral Twin Earth Problem, William Dunaway

Philosophy Faculty Works

‘Moral Twin Earth’ thought experiments constitute a central semantic challenge to naturalistic normative realism. This paper first outlines a general framework for understanding the challenge, according to which (i) central normative terms are semantically stable in ways that contrast with many other paradigmatic descriptive terms, and (ii) realists should expect to have a unified meta-semantic theory that explains the difference in stability between the normative and descriptive terms in question. The most attractive way of meeting this challenge, we argue, appeals to the idea of reference magnetism. According to this influential idea, some properties are reference magnets, which (roughly) means …

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The Snowman’S Imagination, Amy Kind Jan 2016

The Snowman’S Imagination, Amy Kind

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

Not all imaginings are successful; sometimes when an imaginer sets out to imagine some target, her imagining involves some kind of mistake. The error can be diagnosed in two ways: (1) the imaginer imagines her target in a way that mischaracterizes it, or (2) the imaginer fails to imagine her target at all and rather imagines something else that is similar in some ways to that target. In ordinary day-to-day imaginings, explanations of type (1) seem most natural, but in discussions of philosophical imaginings, philosophers tend to adopt explanations of type (2). This paper argues against this tendency.

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The Significance Of John S. Mbiti's Works In The Study Of Pan-African Literature, Babacar Mbaye Jan 2016

The Significance Of John S. Mbiti's Works In The Study Of Pan-African Literature, Babacar Mbaye

The Journal of Traditions & Beliefs

No abstract provided.

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Cuasi Factivos, Axel Barcelo Aspeitia, Robert Stainton Jan 2016

Cuasi Factivos, Axel Barcelo Aspeitia, Robert Stainton

Philosophy Publications

We introduce a construction which we label 'quasi-factive'. They are heard like factives, in that we immediately take the complement to be true. Yet they aren't really factive at all. Examples include: 'It's not widely known that Marta was born in Canada' (because she was born in Uruguay); 'Don't tell anyone that Carlos will run as a candidate' (because he won't); 'Did it bother Jane that Miguel came?' (no, because Miguel didn't come). We identify sub-categories of our quasi-factives, and then tentatively explore a pragmatic explanation of how they work their magic.

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Alien Affects: Movement, Migration, And Landscapes Of Citizenship, Michael Andrew Lechuga Jan 2016

Alien Affects: Movement, Migration, And Landscapes Of Citizenship, Michael Andrew Lechuga

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Alien Affects is a materialist examination of the ways citizenship landscapes are shaped by three mechanisms of control - extraterrestrial film, border security, and the legal apparatuses of the State - that accelerate flows of dominant national citizenship and hinder the movements of migrants. As bodies move through borders and through communities in the US, they are subjected to techniques of citizenship control that divide citizens from aliens. This political division maximizes the State's capacity to benefit from the mobility of its preferred citizen groups while subjugating its alien groups - those who might be characterized as such because they …

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Civil Discourse And Religion In Transitional Democracies: The Cases Of Lithuania, Peru, And Indonesia, David Ingram Jan 2016

Civil Discourse And Religion In Transitional Democracies: The Cases Of Lithuania, Peru, And Indonesia, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Respect for human dignity and the common good in democratic regimes cannot be sustained by reason alone. Citizen faith commitments endorsing both of these values are necessary. However, negotiating in practice the relationship between civic values and religious morality is extremely challenging in a democracy. As a contribution to greater balance in these matters, Ingram argues that the capacity of religion to promote democratic reform in a way that respects fair procedures (rule of law) must extend beyond the liberal principle of tolerance. It must extend to recognizing the republican principle of non-domination. Ingram provides a thorough comparative analysis of …

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Trust As A Virtue In Education, L D'Olimpio Jan 2016

Trust As A Virtue In Education, L D'Olimpio

Philosophy Papers and Journal Articles

As social and political beings, we are able to flourish only if we collaborate with others. Trust, understood as a virtue, incorporates appropriate rational emotional dispositions such as compassion as well as action that is contextual, situated in a time and place. We judge responses as appropriate and characters as trustworthy or untrustworthy based on these factors (namely context, intention, action as well as consequence). To be considered worthy of trust, as an individual or an institution, one must do the right thing at the right time for the right reasons, and the action should have its intended effect. By …

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The Ethics And Politics Of Child Naming, Eldar Sarajlic Jan 2016

The Ethics And Politics Of Child Naming, Eldar Sarajlic

Publications and Research

This article examines the issue of justification of government’s intervention in the parental acts of child naming, a neglected topic in the recent philosophical literature. It questions the ability of some of the current theories in family ethics to respond to this problem and argues that both permissive and restrictive theories fail to provide a plausible argument about the proper limits of government regulation of child naming practices. The article outlines an alternative solution that focuses on the child’s right to authenticity and suggests that only those names that infringe upon this right invite justified state intervention.

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The Sophist In The Cave: Education Through Names In Plato's Republic, Daniel Propson Jan 2016

The Sophist In The Cave: Education Through Names In Plato's Republic, Daniel Propson

Wayne State University Dissertations

The Cratylus is often considered an isolated dialogue in Plato’s corpus, and the major theses of the Cratylus are often seen as disposable and problematic elements in Platonic thought. When one carefully compares this dialogue, however, to Plato’s comments elsewhere about rhetoric and dialectic, a set of fascinating connections emerge. In this dissertation, I argue that the Republic ought to be read in light of the Cratylus. In the former dialogue, Plato is vitally concerned with the use of accurate language in his republic, a fact most clearly brought out by his accusation against demagogues: that they “give names” to …

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How Constructive Engagement In Doing Philosophy Comparatively Is Possible, Bo Mou Jan 2016

How Constructive Engagement In Doing Philosophy Comparatively Is Possible, Bo Mou

Faculty Publications

In this article I intend, on the basis of some previous relevant works on the issue, to further examine a range of conditions for maintaining adequate methodological guiding principles concerning how to look at the relation between distinct methodological perspectives in comparative-engagement exploration in philosophy. The purpose of this paper is to explore how, in the global context, distinct approaches in philosophy can be engaged in order toconstructively talk to each other and make a joint contribution to the development of philosophy and society.

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Gendered Virtue: A Study Of Its Meaning And Evolution In Early Modern France, Mariela Saad Jan 2016

Gendered Virtue: A Study Of Its Meaning And Evolution In Early Modern France, Mariela Saad

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Virtue in early modern France was a broad concept considered by clergymen, philosophers, and moralists as an instrument for measuring and implementing human ethics. This unprecedented research seeks to track the development of the notion of virtue from a gendered and dichotomous notion to a unique and undivided term. The word virtue is constantly present in French texts such as manuels de conduite1 , since the medieval period. Thus, it can be regarded as one of the most significant concepts defining genders in Western civilization. However, it is difficult for modern readers to grasp the complexity of the debate unless …

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