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Shaky Ground, William Simkulet

Philosophy and Religious Studies Department Faculty Publications

The debate surrounding free will and moral responsibility is one of the most intransigent debates in contemporary philosophy - but it does not have to be. At its heart, the free will debate is a metaethical debate - a debate about the meaning of certain moral terms - free will, moral responsibility, blameworthiness, praiseworthiness. Compatibilists argue that these concepts are compatible with wholly deterministic world, while incompatibilists argue that these concepts require indeterminism, or multiple possible futures. However, compatibilists and incompatibilists do not disagree on everything - both parties agree that free will and moral responsibility require control - the …

Consciousness, Quantum Physics, And Hermeneutical Phenomenology, Patrick Aidan Heelan S.J.

Research Resources

Two hundred years ago Friedrich Schleiermacher modified Kant’s notion of anthropology—‘hermeneutically,’ as he said — so as to make it inclusive of the tribes that Captain Cook found in the South Sea Islands. This paper honors the late Joseph J. Kockelmans for making a similar hermeneutic move to update Kant’s notion of natural science so as to make it inclusive of the phenomenological lifeworld (For ‘lifeworld,’ see Husserl’s The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Philosophy, 1954, 121–148, and the ‘lifeworld’ theme throughout the Crisis. ) syntheses of classical, relativity, and quantum physics. The new synthesis is in …

The Alchemical Heart: A Jungian Approach To The Heart Center In The Upanisads And In Eastern Christian Prayer, David M. Odorisio

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

The heart is a rich symbol in religious traditions both East and West. When interpreted through a Jungian alchemical lens, the heart emerges as a symbol of psychospiritual

transformation, integration, and healing. This article re-visions the metaphor of the heart in the Upanisads and in Eastern Christian prayer through the use of Jung’s lectures on the heart cakra, his transcendent function theory, and as Spirit Mercurius. Each facet of this lens offers a variegated approach through which to explore the heart as mediating center of psychic polarities, what Jung referred to as the union of opposites. When …

An Anatomical, Biochemical, Biophysical And Quantum Basis For The Unconscious Mind, James L. Oschman, Maurie D. Pressman

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

This article suggests that it may now be possible to develop some theoretical and experimental bases for organic substructures involved in psychological phenomena including the unconscious. Our inquiry arose from mutual interest in the mechanisms involved in peak athletic and artistic performances and in deep therapeutic encounters. We are referring to a state of consciousness is often described by performers as “the zone.” This is a state in which individuals or groups function at an extraordinary level of perception and coordination; or a state in which therapists develop a deep connection with their clients’ repressed feelings or traumatic memories. Here …

The Seasons Of Wellbeing As An Evolutionary Map For Transpersonal Medicine, Donald M. Epstein, Simon A. Senzon, Dan Lemberger

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

The four Seasons of Wellbeing (Discover, Transform, Awaken, and Integrate) refer to distinct rhythms, periods, and factors that influence the accessibility of an individual’s resources during the journey of life. Each season is explicitly and implicitly related to an individual’s experience, focus, and capacity for self-organizational states. Each can be used to understand, organize, and foster behavior change, positive growth, transformation, and human development. A genealogy of the seasons is described, emphasizing the empirical and theoretical foundations of Reorganizational Healing and its roots in models such as Grof ’s Systems of Condensed Experiences (or COEX Systems) and Wilber’s Integral Theory …

A Possible Mechanism Of Action For The Placebo Response: Human Biofield Activation Via Therapeutic Ritual, Marie G. Brook, Randy Fauver

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

The lack of an identified mechanism of action for the placebo response contributes to its perception as clinically unimportant in Western medicine and minimizes its value as a contributing factor to the effectiveness of both conventional and alternative medical treatments. The therapeutic ritual is one of the principle contributors to the placebo response. Two key elements predicting salutogenic outcomes in both the placebo response and therapeutic ritual are patient meaning making and the patient/healer relationship. A detailed examination of human biofield dynamics shows its role in storing, communicating, and regulating the flow of information associated with healing in Western and …

In Control, William Simkulet

Philosophy and Religious Studies Department Faculty Publications

In George Sher’s recent article “Out of Control”, he discusses a series of 9 cases that he believes illustrates that some agents are uncontroversially morally responsible for actions they “cannot help” but perform (2006: 285). He argues these agents exert partial control over these actions insofar as their actions are determined from their character; but this is no control at all. Here I argue that in each of these cases the agent exerts morally relevant control over her actions and that none of these are genuine instances of moral luck, nor counterexamples to the control principle.

Displacement And Gratitude: Accounting For The Political Obligation Of Refugees, Jason R. D'Cruz

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

On what basis, and to what extent, are refugees obligated to obey the laws of their host countries? Consideration of the specific case of asylum-seekers generates, I think, two competing intuitions: (1) the refugee has a prima facie obligation to obey the laws of her host country and (2) none of the popularly canvassed substrates of political obligation*consent, tacit consent, fairness, or social role*is at all apt to explain the presence of this obligation. I contend that the unfashionable gratitude account of political obligation does the best job of accounting for the intuitions. As has been noticed by other commentators, …

Island Universe Problems, William Simkulet

Philosophy and Religious Studies Department Faculty Publications

We share a common space-time with everything that we interact with in our world. An island universe would be a spatiotemporally interrelated segment of reality that is isolated from the rest of reality; it would be part of our world but something that we cannot interact with. Spatiotemporal interrelatedness plays an important role in a number of metaphysical theories concerning possible worlds. Here I discuss four problems surrounding the possibility of island universes. I contend the most troubling of these problems gives us good reason to think that island universes are possible; metaphysical theories that cannot make sense of the …

A Matter Of Habitus: Character Development In The Literary Productions Of Garcia Lorca, Lisa Britt Montes

Wayne State University Dissertations

A MATTER OF HABITUS: CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT IN THE LITERARY PRODUCTIONS OF GARCIA LORCA

by

LISA MONTES

December 2014

Advisor: Dr. Francisco Javier Higuero

Major: Modern Languages (Spanish)

Degree: Doctor of Philosophy

This dissertation explores the development of the characters in particular plays and poems of Spanish writer Federico García Lorca. The main theory that is applied in the analysis is that of Habitus, which was greatly elaborated upon by French philosopher Pierre Bourdieu. The first chapter discusses the character development of the women in the rural trilogy which includes the plays Yerma, Bodas de sangre and La casa de Bernarda …

Thoughts On Film: Critically Engaging With Both Adorno And Benjamin, Laura D'Olimpio

Philosophy Papers and Journal Articles

There is a traditional debate in analytic aesthetics that surrounds the classification of film as Art. While much philosophy devoted to considering film has now moved beyond this debate and accepts film as a mass art, a sub-category of Art proper, it is worth re-considering the criticism of film pre-Deleuze. Much of the criticism of film as pseudo-art is expressed in moral terms. T. W. Adorno, for example, critiques film as ‘mass-cult’; mass produced culture which presents a ‘flattened’ version of reality. Adorno worries about the passivity encouraged in viewers. Films are narrative artworks, received by an audience in a …

Scientific Method In Meteorology, Triberiu Popa

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

This article explores the main aspects of Aristotle’s scientific method in Meteorology IV. Dispositional properties such as solidifiability or combustibility play a dominant role in Meteor. IV (a) in virtue of their central place in the generic division of homoeomers, based on successive differentiation and multiple differentiae, and (b) in virtue of their role in revealing otherwise undetectable characteristics of uniform materials (composition and physical structure). While Aristotle often starts with accounts of ingredients and their ratio (e.g., solids that contain a significant amount of water are liquefiable), the natural direction of his investigation is …

Empowering Clinical Staff To Provide Spiritual Care For Patients With Life Limiting Illness And Their Family Members Under Hospice Cleveland County Care, Terry Pinkney Floyd

Doctor of Ministry Projects

Staff members at Hospice Cleveland County struggle to provide quality spiritual care to dying patients or their family members because the staff members are not trained chaplains. Staff members tend to fall back on "pat" answers that can sometimes cause the patient or family members to have even more unresolved spiritual issues.

This project sought to determine whether or not hospice staff could become more empowered to give quality spiritual care by being introduced to the basics of pastoral care to the dying and their families. Information was shared by way of presentations; practical experience was gained by role-playing and …

Recursive Complements And Propositional Attitudes, Jill De Villiers, Kathryn Hobbs, Bart Hollebrandse

Philosophy: Faculty Publications

The focus of this chapter is in what role syntactic recursion might play in the representation of propositional attitudes. Syntactic complements under mental and communication verbs are recursive, and so also are the propositional attitudes. There is strong evidence that children take some time to master the first order syntactic complementation typical of verbs of communication. When they do acquire these structures, the evidence suggests that this helps children reason about propositional attitudes such as false beliefs. In this chapter we seek to deepen our understanding of the crucial property of sentential and attitude embedding. Is the crucial aspect that …

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Quidditas

No abstract provided.

Silent Voice: Buberian Philosophy And Nonverbal Disability, Elizabeth M. Minium

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

Individuals who are developmentally disabled and nonverbal, possessing little if any symbolic expressive or receptive language, are virtually invisible in the United States. This study presupposes that all persons, including those who are nonverbal and/or developmentally disabled, have a unique “voice” and contribution to the communication practices of humanity and society. This philosophical study analyzes the qualities of communication of developmentally disabled, nonverbal individuals and their communication partners through the lens of Martin Buber’s dialogic philosophy. Conclusions suggest: 1) developmentally disabled, nonverbal persons do relate and communicate, and definitions of “communication” and “dialogue” should include those who do not think …

Empirical Testing And Novelistic Becoming Joseph Glanvill's Evidence Concerning Witches And Their Familiars, Dawn Morgan

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Educating Early Christians Through The Rhetoric Of Hell: 'Weeping And Gnashing Of Teeth' As 'Paideia' In Matthew And The Early Church, Meghan Henning

Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Meghan Henning explores the rhetorical function of the early Christian concept of hell, drawing connections to Greek and Roman systems of education, and examining texts from the Hebrew Bible, Greek and Latin literature, the New Testament, early Christian apocalypses and patristic authors.

This work is a revised version of the author's Ph.D. dissertation, which was successfully defended at Emory University in 2013. It is included in the series Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament II.

She writes, "Now that this work is finished, I am delighted to have the opportunity to thank those who have generously traveled with me on this …

Structural Racism, Institutional Agency, And Disrespect, Andrew J. Pierce

Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

In recent work, Joshua Glasgow has offered a definition of racism that is supposed to put to rest the debates between cognitive, behavioral, attitudinal, and institutionalist definitions. The key to such a definition, he argues, is the idea of disrespect. He claims: "φ is racist if and only if φ is disrespectful toward members of racialized group R as Rs." While this definition may capture an important commonality among cognitive, behavioral, and attitudinal accounts of racism, I argue that his attempt to expand the definition to cover institutional or "structural" racism is less persuasive. Alternatively, I argue that structural racism …

Deconstructing Presence: Rethinking The Intentionality Of The Subject On The Basis Of The Existentiality Of Dasein, Edgar Diaz

HIM 1990-2015

Having begun from the assumption that our most fundamental way to relate to the world stems from an #I think# and that consciousness is at the center of this act, Edmund Husserl sets himself up for a very narrow and specialized view of human experience. In the end, such assumptions in the philosophical tradition and their terms often remain unquestioned and ingrained in a paradigm of discourse. My aim is to move beneath these assumptions-using Heidegger's and Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological work-so as to, first, explicitly undermine the scope of Husserlian intentionality at its foundation and, second, decenter the subject in contemporary …

Husserl's Dyadic Semantics, Jesse Delaney

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

Husserl’s Logical Investigations contain an apparent discrepancy in their account of meaning. They first present meanings, contra psychologism, as commonly available, reiterable, invariant, possibly valid, and independent of our “acts of meaning”. They then present meaning, almost psychologistically, as a kind of intentional experience on which all truths and other transcendent meanings depend. I offer a critical developmental study of this problem within Husserl’s semantics. I argue (1) that Husserl had reason to adopt his dyadic account of signification, (2) that this “two-sided” account shaped, and was reciprocally informed by, the two-step phenomenological method, and (3) that Husserl’s proposed resolution …

Joseph Margolis, Aili W. Bresnahan

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Margolis’s methodology is best located in the pragmatic tradition, broadly construed. His pragmatism lies in his commitment to understanding the world as part of collective and consensual human practice and situated interaction; his embracing of the changing nature of history and science; and his approach to human knowledge as constructed.

In particular this pragmatic bent is evidenced by his affinity for Charles Sanders Peirce’s semeiotics, by which thought shows us the real world through the interpretation of signs and symbols, the existence of mind legitimated as “objective” and “real.” Margolis also uses Peirce’s theory of predicative generals (as constructed but …

Morris Weitz, Aili W. Bresnahan

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Morris Weitz’s initial theory of art was provided in his book Philosophy of the Arts (1950). Here Weitz calls his theory of art “empirical” and “organic,” and he defined “art” as “an organic complex or integration of expressive elements embodied in a sensuous medium." By “empirical” he means that his theory answers to the evidence provided by actual works of art. “Organic,” for Weitz, means that each element is to be considered in relation to the others in a living and not merely mechanical way. Weitz also has a broad understanding of “expressive,” which refers to an artistic property that …

Rare Books And Social Science, Donald J. Polzella

Psychology Faculty Publications

An essay on the impact of the works in the Imprints and Impressions: Milestones in Human Progress, an exhibition of rare books from the collection of Stuart Rose. Exhibition was held Sept. 29-Nov. 9, 2014, at the University of Dayton.

Euler, Reader Of Newton: Mechanics And Algebraic Analysis, Sébastien Maronne, Marco Panza

MPP Published Research

We follow two of the many paths leading from Newton’s to Euler’s scientific productions, and give an account of Euler’s role in the reception of some of Newton’s ideas, as regards two major topics: mechanics and algebraic analysis. Euler contributed to a re-appropriation of Newtonian science, though transforming it in many relevant aspects. We study this re-appropriation with respect to the mentioned topics and show that it is grounded on the development of Newton’s conceptions within a new conceptual frame also influenced by Descartes’s views sand Leibniz’s formalism.

The Relationship Between Aesthetic Value And Cognitive Value, Antony Aumann

Journal Articles

Recent attention to the relationship between aesthetic value and cognitive value has focused on whether the latter can affect the former. In this article, I approach the issue from the opposite direction. I investigate whether the aesthetic value of a work can influence its cognitive value. More narrowly, I consider whether a work’s aesthetic value ever contributes to or detracts from its philosophical value, which I take to include the truth of its claims, the strength of its arguments, and its internal consistency. I argue that aesthetic value does have such an impact, at least sometimes and to some degree. …

(2014) Dialogic Schooling, David K. Kennedy

Collected Papers of David Kennedy

This paper offers a genealogy of dialogic education, tracing its origins in Romantic epistemology and corresponding philosophy of childhood, and identifying it as a counterpoint to the purposes and assumptions of universal, compulsory, state-imposed and regulated schooling. Dialogic education has historically worked against the grain of standardized mass education, not only in its view of the nature, capacities and potentialities of children (and therefore of adults as well), but in its economic, political and social views, for which childhood is understood as a promissory condition. Dialogic education is oriented to what Dewey called “a future new society of changed purposes …

Art As Person: Correlative Personhood In Aesthetic Representation, Michael Dufresne

UNF Undergraduate Capstone Projects and Honors Theses

In this paper, I argue that the metaphor of art as person should be implemented as a way to understand artistic interaction, such that the relationship between artworks and spectators should be understood as one between persons. I begin this argument by first juxtaposing Hans-Georg Gadamer’s notion of aesthetic representation with the values that constitute correlative person in Confucianism. This juxtaposition draws similarities between artworks and persons that make the metaphor of art as person a plausible means for understanding artistic interaction. I then appeal to Michel Foucault for two significant reasons: his subjectfication of the self solidifies the comparisons …

When Words Do Things: Perlocutions And Affordances For Social Action, Charles Lassiter

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

When my spouse once asked me ‘Where’s the milk?’ I thought that my answer ‘In the refrigerator’ was fine. Turns out, I was less helpful than I thought I was. The intended effect of my utterance turned out to be different from what it actually brought about. This feature of utterances is especially salient in discussions of perlocutionary acts, which are utterances that cause an effect in others (Austin 1975: 101). On the one hand, an utterance is produced by the speaker and so facts about the speaker’s mental life should play an important role in understanding what perlocutions are. …

Contemporary Aesthetics: Perspectives On Times, Space And Content, Ossi Naukkarinen

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

What is contemporary aesthetics? The answer to this question is often simply stated rather than carefully elaborated, even if the current nature and scope of the discipline is far from self-evident. To examine how both the concept and the field of contemporary aesthetics can be understood, I suggest that it is useful to consider three themes: the time, space, and content of aesthetics, i.e., the questions of when, where, and what contemporary aesthetics is. Through this, it is possible to construe a conceptual space of contemporary aesthetics and to compare different instantiations of it with each other.