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Chapter Ii — Survey Of Ethiopia’S Survival: Definition And Controversies, Messay Kebede

Ethiopian Modernization: Opportunities and Derailments

The last chapter has unraveled the close link between modernization and the emergence of a survival ethos among ruling elites of traditional societies in transition. To approach the case of Ethiopia’s modernization from the same angle of explanation, it is necessary first to make sure that some groups among Ethiopian ruling elites had shown a propensity that could be defined as a salvational will. Sure enough, any ruling elite wants to protect the social order that benefits it. However, the salvational will, as defined in the previous chapter, is less the desire to perpetuate the status quo than the will …

Byu Law 50th Anniversary, J. Reuben Clark Law School

The BYU Advocate (& Annual Reports)

"We are privileged to participate in this great venture. It is our duty to make it great. . . .

. . . [It] must attain a greatness that transcends religious lines and establishes itself in the eyes of legal educators, scholars, the judiciary, the legal profession, the business world, officials of local, state, and federal government, and citizens at large."

– Rex E. Lee (quoting and expanding on remarks by Dallin H. Oaks)

Rulemaking By Ambush: How Prohibitions Against It Became Dead Letters, Arthur G. Sapper

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.

On The Place Of Self-Defense In Public Life: A Hobbesian Critique Of The Supreme Court’S Second Amendment, Rafi Reznik

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

Contemporary Second Amendment law, which originated with the famous Heller decision (2008) and reached a new peak with Bruen (2022), relies on an implicit political theory. This article uncovers and critiques that theory. I argue that the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment jurisprudence positions interpersonal self-defense, and more generally individual response to crime, at the heart of the meaning of American citizenship. The paradigmatic citizen for whom state institutions should be designed is a self-defender, because, per the Court’s interpretive methodology, this is what the American people want. This line of cases thus attempts one of the most challenging feats of …

Updating The Berne Convention For The Internet Age: Un-Blurring The Line Between United States And Foreign Copyrighted Works, Ethan Schow

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

John Naughton, notable journalist and academic, has asserted that “[common sense] should also revolt at the idea that doctrines about copyright that were shaped in a pre-Internet age should apply to a post-Internet one.” And yet, in crucial aspects of international law, this is the situation in which the world finds itself today. The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (the “Berne Convention” or the “Convention”) is one of the most important multinational agreements concerned with copyright law, but it has not been amended since September 28, 1979. Although the internet technically existed in an early …

Population-Level Alcohol Consumption And Homicide Rates In Latin America: A Fixed Effects Panel Analysis, 1961-2019, Guillermo J. Escano, William Alex Pridemore

School of Criminal Justice Faculty Scholarship

Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) possesses 8% of the global population but approximately one-third of global homicides. The region also exhibits high per capita alcohol consumption, risky drinking patterns, and a heterogeneous mix of beverage preferences. Despite this, LAC violence receives limited attention in the English-language literature and there are no studies of the population-level alcohol-homicide association in the region. We examined the effects on total, male, and female homicide rates of total and beverage-specific alcohol consumption (22 nations, 1961-2019) and of risky drinking patterns (20 nations, 2005 and 2010). We collected homicide and alcohol data from the World …

Exploring The Link Between Spatial And Communication Skills In Engineering Students, John William Lynch, Manjeera Vinnakota, Sheryl Sorby, Tj Murphy, Kelsey Shannon

Research Papers

Industry leaders rarely remark that the technical skills of engineering students are lacking; however, they frequently indicate that new engineers should be better prepared in communication skills, particularly written communication skills. In contrast, the visualization ability, or spatial skills, of engineering majors are typically excellent. Prior research has demonstrated that spatial ability is a significant predictor for graduating from STEM fields, particularly in engineering. This paper is part of a larger project that is exploring whether these two phenomena – poor written communication skills and well-developed spatial skills – are linked. In other words, is there a negative correlation between …

Media Discourse And Internal Conflict Of Javanese Power In Yogyakarta, Roro Retno Wulan, Catur Nugroho, M. Nastain

Jurnal Wacana Politik

This paper attempts to reveal how the local media, Kedaulatan Rakyat, produces discourse on the Yogyakarta palace’s internal conflict involving Sri Sultan Hamengku Buwono X and his siblings. The Special Region of Yogyakarta as a province in Indonesia has a special government system that is different from other regions. The governor of Yogyakarta is not elected by the people like in other regions in Indonesia but is determined by the DPRD based on who serves as the King of the Yogyakarta Palace. This phenomenon becomes interesting when there are differences of opinion among the people and within the Yogyakarta Palace …

Teamwork Skills Development In Engineering Education: A Holistic Approach, Callum Kimpton, Nicoleta Maynard

Research Papers

Engineering is a profession grounded in teamwork with the need for engineering students and professionals to possess the ability to integrate their work efforts seamlessly and effectively towards a common goal. This in turn necessitates the need for a comprehensive, tailored, and relevant overarching conceptual framework to be constructed to ensure that our subsequent generations of engineers are equipped to efficiently tackle existential societal problems including anthropogenic climate change and the multi-faceted nature of sustainable development. This paper motivates, details, and presents a conceptual framework for implementing successful engineering teams in tertiary engineering projects. The emergent conceptual framework presented is …

Civil And Architectural Engineering Students’ Conceptualization Of Good Engineering And Its Implications For Ethics Education, Madeline Polmear

Research Papers

The ways in which students conceptualise what it means to do good engineering illuminates their values and priorities and shapes their understanding of ethics in engineering. The present study is part of a larger project that is exploring civil and architectural engineering students’ understanding of ethical and societal responsibility and its development via formal and informal learning. Data collection and analysis are ongoing in the larger project, and the present study focuses on eight semi-structured interviews with civil and architectural engineering students at one university in Belgium. The analysis was designed to address how civil and architectural students conceptualise good …

A Multimodal Measurement Of The Impact Of Deepfakes On The Ethical Reasoning And Affective Reactions Of Students, Vivek Ramachandran, Cécile Hardebolle, Nihat Kotluk, Touradj Ebrahimi, Reinhard Riedl, Patrick Jermann, Roland Tormey

Research Papers

Deepfakes - synthetic videos generated by machine learning models - are becoming increasingly sophisticated. While they have several positive use cases, their potential for harm is also high. Deepfake production involves input from multiple engineers, making it challenging to assign individual responsibility for their creation. The separation between engineers and consumers may also contribute to a lack of empathy on the part of the former towards the latter. At present, engineering ethics education appears inadequate to address these issues. Indeed, the ethics of artificial intelligence is often taught as a stand-alone course or a separate module at the end of …

Interconnectedness Of Geometric, Linguistic, And Algebraic Thinking In Student Performance Measures: An Association Rules Approach, Bence Sipos, Brigitta Szilágyi

Research Papers

Assessing student performance is crucial in education for evaluating knowledge acquisition and competency development. Traditional grading systems often overlook the interconnectedness of learning domains, which can provide valuable insights into student understanding. This study investigates the associations between geometric, linguistic, and algebraic thinking and their impact on student performance measures and grading using association rules. We analyzed a dataset comprising student responses to geometric, linguistic, and algebraic questions by applying association rule mining techniques. The extracted rules were used to evaluate question similarity, revealing deeper insights into student performance and problem-solving strategies. Our findings demonstrate significant interconnectedness between geometric, linguistic, …

Exploring Racialized Ideologies About Latino/A/X Engineering Students In The United States Southwest Region, Joel Alejandro Mejia

Research Papers

Although efforts in the United States (U.S.) to improve the participation and representation of minoritized populations in engineering have increased, there is a stagnant representation of Latinos/as/xs in engineering spaces. Given that a historical context of engineering education for Latinos/as/xs in the U.S. is limited in the engineering education research literature, this paper provides a description of the historical educational landscape of Latinos/as/xs in the U.S. Southwest region and connects that sociohistorical context to the current realities of Latinos/as/xs in the region through their testimonios. The U.S. Southwest is home to the largest Latino population in the U.S., who also …

Unsaying Non-Knowledge: Georges Bataille And The Mysticism Of Writing, Ben Brewer

International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities

Georges Bataille’s writing seems to teethe with something utterly foreign to the discipline of philosophy. In this paper, I investigate what Jason Wirth calls’ Bataille’s “mad game of writing” in order to show that Bataille’s bizarre writing style is actually an extension of his ethical and philosophical commitments. Bataille’s writing attempts to produce a state within the reader rather than simply transmit information. I trace the justifications and roots for such a writing from his own system, as well as showing how such a style of writing has its roots in Kantian aesthetics and in Hegel’s Phenomenology.

Idealism And Pragmatism: “Transcendent” Validity Claims In Habermas’S Democratic Theory, Richard Van Barriger

International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities

In her recent article “Realism and Idealism: Was Habermas’s Communicative Turn a Move in the Wrong Direction?” Maeve Cooke examines the evolution of Jürgen Habermas’s thought over the past five decades. According to Cooke, Habermas’s so-called “communicative turn” was a necessary step in his philosophy’s systematic attempt to derive a universal norm from the immanent context of human practices and institutions. In her opinion, however, Habermas is unable to uphold his pragmatically-based claim to “transcendence from within” without encountering problems of epistemic justification when it comes to his theory’s treatment of normative validity claims. Cooke believes that despite Habermas’ exhaustive …

Possible Parthood And Modal-Mereological Composition, Jordan A. Ueberroth

International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities

I argue that, if we take the world-time parallel seriously, then those who support Sider’s (2001) argument for unrestricted diachronic composition (UDC), establishing the existence of temporal parts, should also hold that its modal analogue, my argument for unrestricted modal composition (UMC), establishes the existence of modal parts. I formulate the latter argument and develop it by testing it against objections.Editor's Note: Best Conference Paper, 17th Annual Pacific University Undergraduate Philosophy Conference (2013)

The Myth Of Broad Naturalism: The Case Of Owen Flanagan, Nicholas Ogle

International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities

In The Really Hard Problem, Owen Flanagan seeks to explain how we can live meaningfully in a material world despite naturalism’s supposed scientific reductionism, which more often engenders disenchantment with reality than the “joyful optimism” he believes ought to be produced by the naturalist position. In this paper I argue that Flanagan’s theory of subjective realism, as well as his faulty identification of consciousness with neurological states, fails to overcome the criticisms he and others have pinned against scientific reductionism, and thus he fails to ever go beyond it. While Flanagan’s intentions to make a case for ethical and political …

Like Water In Water: The Nihilism Of “Why,” The Immanence Of “Because”, Ben Brewer

International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities

The work of Georges Bataille occupies an appropriately paradoxical place in the history of philosophy. Though he was decades ahead of his time, Bataille’s main focus was in a tradition that long been out of favor—mysticism. Though he claimed to be an atheist, he talked often of God. In this paper, I examine the ways in which Bataille’s system of though intertwines and diverges from Meister Eckhart, exploring the possibility of the Nietzschean mysticism Bataille constructed in his Summa Atheologica. With this more nuanced understanding of Bataille’s thought in place, his massive importance for post-structuralism and French philosophy more broadly …

On The Sensitivity Of What Is Said (And Heard), Augie Faller

International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities

In this paper I present relativism (as found in John MacFarlane's work) using 2-dimensional propositional matrices and other tools from philosophical semantics. I also identify some of the key features of relativism and closely related theories, distinguishing relativism from contextualism and nonindexical contextualism (moderate relativism). Next, I discuss the problem of disagreement, and the problem facing the relativist who tries to capture genuine disagreement. Finally, I gesture at my preferred view, that the sentences under consideration are 'assessment indexical', and provide an insight into its possible mechanics.

The Theory Of Structured Propositions And The Resolution Of Problems With The Essential Indexical, Landon Elkind

International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities

John Perry laid out an argument that he believes falsified the structured theory of propositions. He claims that indexicals cannot be accounted for by this theory. I maintain that indexicals are unproblematic for structured proposition theory, and that Perry has mistakenly presupposed that knowledge is ‘black or white’ – one either knows or does not know – rather than adopting a more subtle definition of knowledge. I also argue that he further presupposed that humans will reason perfectly. Disputing this assumption and defining knowledge accurately resolve the issues posed by Perry. Some consequences of my notion of knowledge are discussed.

Epistemology For Naturalists And Non-Naturalists: What’S The Difference?, Jason Poettcker

International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities

The current debates between Naturalists and Non-Naturalists about epistemology are difficult to navigate because there are so many forms of naturalism and non-naturalism and many different issues debated over. This paper will first attempt to explain and define what I think are the basic naturalist and non-naturalist positions on epistemology. Then it will compare the epistemology of three naturalists Quine, Hilary Kornblith, Jeagwon Kim with a non-naturalist/theist, Alvin Plantinga, to see if my formulation of the debate stands. I am making two separate claims: First, that one’s methodology will affect or determine one’s ontology. Second, that the main issue between …

The Failing Of The Self Or The Self Of Failing? Gadamer, Derrida, Žižek, And The Phaedo, Ben Brewer

International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities

This paper begins with an examination of the notoriously shoddy proofs for the immortality of the soul that Socrates presents in the Phaedo. I first turn to Hans-Georg Gadamer’s account of the proofs (as historically situated between science and myth), and then, using evidence from the Phaedo itself and a wide sampling of the dialogues, reframe the proofs as a metaphor for the self. With the discussion thus redirected, I look at Jacques Derrida’s “Plato’s Pharmacy” in order to begin to the discussion about the implications of the failed proofs for a new understanding of the Platonic subject (as a …

Abductive Reasoning As An Aesthetic Of Interpretation And A Logic Of Creativity In Umberto Eco’S ‘The Name Of The Rose’, Jody Kolter

International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities

I begin my argument by questioning Peirce’s assumption that aesthetics exists only in the state of impulse and feeling (as opposed to method): if I can show how aesthetics necessitates reason, then abductive reasoning emerges as an aesthetic of creative logic useful for the interpretation of texts. Interpretation of the sign—Peirce defines the sign in terms of a triadic relation—to symbol (a word that stands for something that cannot be seen but is not meant to define or signify the object that it represents) evolution demands an aesthetic more than linguistic approach insofar as the symbol requires an interpretation that …

Co-Authoring Speech Genres: A Bakhtinian Approach To Mutually Recognitive Dialogue, William Cheatham

International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities

In his theory of communicative action, Habermas posits that language is a fundamentally intersubjective tool used for the activity of reaching mutual understanding. Interlocutors assume the freedom to question claims made in discourse and use reason to achieve communicative power together. Thus language in itself forms the drive mechanism of successful discourse—that is, only by presupposing the ability of other subjects to take language as an alterable, reason-based, and empowering tool is mutually recognitive dialogue possible. However, beyond these basic presuppositions, speakers maintain, I argue, an acute appreciation for the particular ways of speaking—what Bakhtin termed “speech genres”—at work in …

Categorization Through Sensory Codes, Noah Sharpsteen

International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities

The central premise of concept empiricism is the denial of unique cognitive mental representations. The negative thesis applies as well to classic empiricists as it does to current ones. John Locke’s (1690) refusal to accept ‘abstract ideas’ is one way of denying unique and distinct cognitive representations. Jesse J. Prinz’s (2002) multi-modality hypothesis, according to which cognition functions on a multi-sensory code instead of a central ‘amodal’ one, is another. Both empiricist models have a common foil in a theory that posits one unique kind of ‘intellectualist’ mental representation to account for human cognitive achievements. For Locke, it was Descartes’ …

Art Is In The Doing: Diderot, Jankélévitch, And Artistic Agency, Jake Whipple

International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities

[From the introduction]“Generally speaking, expression is the image of feeling.” The sentiment from Denis Diderot’s “Notes on Painting” sets up a discussion of just what ‘feeling’ is that it necessitates being set up as an image, as well as just how this ‘expression’ that relates to it works. Diderot follows his idea to a conclusion of good ‘expression’ concerned with painting, sculpture, and other visual arts in relation to the subjects within them and the necessity that they be shown as humans, not models. Expression as a word, however, has a multitude of possible applications merely within the realm of …

The Phylogenetic Spectrum: Why Paramecia Matter To Daniel Dennett And Jerry Fodor, Brian Ray

International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities

No abstract provided.

A Study Of Analytic Metaphysics: Meinong, Quine, And Williams On Conceptual Simplicity, Noah Sharpsteen

International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities

[From the introduction]Analytic metaphysics has come under fire from many directions under the rubric of naturalism. The irrelevance of analytic metaphysics for exploring the nature of ultimate reality is already at the level of household slogans: purportedly all it does is rest on armchair analysis consisting of linguistic intuitions. Yet analytic metaphysics even during its heyday was less uniform than the current slogans indicate. If analysis is or was the basis for its epistemology, then practice of analytic metaphysics leaves open not just how the process of analysis occurs, but also the objects of analysis themselves.In this paper, I will …

Powers And Properties: On Causal Relevance And The Metaphysics Of Mind, Joanna Klimaski

International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities

[From the introduction]Contemporary trends in philosophy of mind have galvanized non-reductive physicalism, the thesis that (1) the world and its components are essentially physical, and (2) entities cannot be reduced to their fundamental physical parts. Reality is comprised of layers, each one metaphysically affixed to its neighbors while still retaining its own unique ontological status. Higher-level phenomena are thought to be dependent on, but not reducible to, lower-level occurrences. A levels-ontology ostensibly solves the problems bequeathed by a Cartesian worldview as well as those that come with strict physicalism. But ultimately we face the same questions that plague these views. …

An Assessment Of The Metaontological Debate Concerning Composition, Davida Grimes

International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities

No abstract provided.