Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Using The Internet Platform Second Life To Teach Social Justice, Sharon Kaye, Earl Spurgin

Earl W. Spurgin

Second Life, an on-line, interactive environment in which users create avatars through which they have virtual experiences, is a contemporary experiment in utopia. While most often it is used for social networking, it also is used for commercial and educational purposes, as well as for political activism. Here, we share the results from a course that uses Second Life as a tool for examining social justice. We examine the notion of utopia, present the results of a pre- and post-survey designed to measure the effectiveness of our Second Life course, and relate insights gleaned from the centerpiece assignment of the …

Gauging Gender: A Metaphysics, Stephen Asma

Stephen T Asma

In this article the author discusses sex and gender in human beings and examines how the study of science, particularly biology, has influenced the study of these subjects in higher education. It traces the evolution of sex and gender studies in academe, comments on the failure of many humanities scholars to dismiss biology in studying human behavior, and explores ways in which psychoanalysis, social constructionism, and metaphysics have informed the debate over the differences between sex and gender. Other topics include research conducted by Anne Fausto-Sterling regarding intersexed people, scientific tests focusing on sexual preference in rats, and thoughts by …

Moral Conviction, Matthew Pianalto

Matthew Pianalto

We often praise people who stand by their convictions in the face of adversity and practice what they preach. However, strong moral convictions can also motivate atrocious acts. Two significant questions here are (1) whether conviction itself — taken as a mode of belief — has any distinctive value, or whether all the value of conviction derives from its substantive content, and (2) how conviction can be made responsible in a way that mitigates the risks of falling into dogmatism, fanaticism, and other vices. In response to the first question, I suggest that conviction has instrumental value that derives from …

Gaining Ground: Towards A Discourse Of Posthuman Animality: A Geophilosophical Journey (Presentation), Anne Louise Schillmoller

Anne Schillmoller

A Powerpoint slide presentation which, through the use of images and geospatial metaphors, explores the human-animal binary.

Nature And Convention: Defining A Spoken Language In Aristotle’S De Interpretatione, Charlene Elsby

Charlene Elsby

No abstract provided.

Philip Marlowe: Knight-Errant In Plato’S Cave, Jim Stockton

Jim Stockton

No abstract provided.

Edith Stein’S Philosophy Of Community In Her Early Work And In Her Later Finite And Eternal Being: Martin Heidegger’S Impact, Antonio Calcagno

Antonio Calcagno

Edith Stein’s early phenomenological texts describe community as a special unity that is fully lived through in consciousness. In her later works, unity is described in more theological terms as participation in the communal fullness and wholeness of God or Being. Can these two accounts of community or human belonging be reconciled? I argue that consciousness can bring to the fore the meaning of community, thereby conditioning our lived-experience of community, but it can also, through Heideggerian questioning, uncover that which remains somewhat hidden from consciousness itself: its own ground or condition of possibility, namely, being—a being that is both …

Bugs For Sale: Legal And Ethical Proprieties Of The Market In Software Vulnerabilities, Taiwo Oriola

Taiwo Oriola

Software vulnerabilities are inherent errors or mistakes in software programming and designs, and arguably the weakest link in digital information architecture with high propensity for rendering information systems infrastructure susceptible to compromise and hacking. Given the increasing reliance of the global economy on digital platforms with concomitant imperatives for securing sensitive intelligence, business and personal data, the need for continual corrective patch of perennially recurring critical software bugs is at once urgent and sacrosanct. This has precipitated research and a thriving market in software vulnerabilities, an integral element of the burgeoning multi-million dollars information security industry that epitomizes the externalization …

C.S. Lewis And The Oxford Philosophers: A Philosophical Review Of The Oxford Socratic Club (1941-72), Jim Stockton

Jim Stockton

No abstract provided.

Aristotle On The Incidental Sense, Charlene Elsby

Charlene Elsby

No abstract provided.

Risen Apes And Fallen Angels: The New Museology Of Human Origins, Stephen Asma

Stephen T Asma

There has been a little explosion of "origin" exhibitions in the past few years. The recent bicentennial of Darwin's birth, in 2009, ushered in a bevy of traveling exhibitions and events. Grandscale permanent exhibitions have recently opened at the American Museum of Natural History (the Spitzer Hall of Human Origins) in New York, and the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History (the David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins) in Washington, D.C. A new museology is afoot, and some of the recent changes are worth tracking. And let's not forget the recently opened Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. Even in …

Narnia As Bestiary And The Rational Necessity Of The Magician’S Nephew, Jim Stockton

Jim Stockton

No abstract provided.

Adaptation As Process: The Future Of Darwinism And The Legacy Of Theodosius Dobzhansky, David Depew

David J Depew

Conceptions of adaptation have varied in the history of genetic Darwinism depending on whether what is taken to be focal is the process of adaptation, adapted states of populations, or discrete adaptations in individual organisms. I argue that Theodosius Dobzhansky’s view of adaptation as a dynamical process contrasts with so-called “adaptationist” views of natural selection figured as “design-without-a-designer” of relatively discrete, enumerable adaptations. Correlated with these respectively process and product oriented approaches to adaptive natural selection are divergent pictures of organisms themselves as developmental wholes or as “bundles” of adaptations. While even process versions of genetical Darwinism are insufficiently sensitive …

Questioning The Epistemic Virtue Of Strategy: The Emperor Has No Clothes!, Steven French, Alexander Kouzmin, Stephen Kelly

Adjunct Professor Stephen J Kelly

No abstract provided.

The Birth Of Philosophy Of Mathematics: Out Of The Spirit Of (Neo-)Kantianism, Bernd Buldt

Bernd Buldt

No abstract provided.

Logic, Bernd Buldt

Bernd Buldt

No abstract provided.

Towards A New Epistemology Of Mathematics, Bernd Buldt, Benedikt Löwe, Thomas Müller

Bernd Buldt

No abstract provided.

Mathematical Practice And Platonism: A Phenomenological Perspective, Bernd Buldt

Bernd Buldt

No abstract provided.

What Does Time Tell In (Intuitionistic) Mathematics?, Bernd Buldt

Bernd Buldt

No abstract provided.

Loss Of Vision: How Mathematics Turned Blind While It Learned To See More Clearly, Bernd Buldt, Dirk Schlimm

Bernd Buldt

To discuss the developments of mathematics that have to do with the introduction of new objects, we distinguish between ‘Aristotelian’ and ‘non-Aristotelian’ accounts of abstraction and mathematical ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ approaches. The development of mathematics from the 19th to the 20th century is then characterized as a move from a ‘bottom-up’ to a ‘top-down’ approach. Since the latter also leads to more abstract objects for which the Aristotelian account of abstraction is not well-suited, this development has also lead to a decrease of visualizations in mathematical practice.

Why Mathematical Concepts Are Special (According To Husserl), Bernd Buldt

Bernd Buldt

No abstract provided.

Rudolf Carnap, Bernd Buldt

Bernd Buldt

No abstract provided.

Tinkering With Tenure, Scott Abbott

Scott Abbott

No abstract provided.

The New Atheists' Narrow World-View, Stephen Asma

Stephen T Asma

The article discusses atheism, Buddhism, and the practice of animism in southeast Asia. Atheists such as Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris are discussed as is the argument regarding the "provincialism" of religion. It is noted that some atheists echo the statement by philosopher Karl Marx that religion is an opiate that should be done away with because it has little moral value. The use of spirit houses as a part of religious practice in southeast Asia is described. The opinion held by theists on animism is explored. Other topics include living conditions in Cambodia and the role of religion in …

Gerda Walther Sulla Possibilità Di Un Senso Passivo Della Comunità E Della Coscienza Interno Del Tempo Della Comunità, Antonio Calcagno

Antonio Calcagno

No abstract provided.

“Solidarity Versus Love: Husserl And Stein On What Most Intensely And Phenomenologically Constitutes A Community”, Antonio Calcagno

Antonio Calcagno

No abstract provided.

Comparing Lives: Rush Rhees On Human Animals, Matthew Pianalto

Matthew Pianalto

In several posthumously published writings about the differences between humans and animals, Rush Rhees criticises the view that human lives are more important than (or superior to) animal lives. Rhees' views may seem to be in sympathy with more recent critiques of “speciesism.” However, the most commonly discussed anti-speciesist moral frameworks – which take the capacity of sentience as the criterion of moral considerability – are inadequate. Rhees' remark that both humans and animals can be loved points towards a different way of accounting for the moral considerability of humans and animals that avoid the problems of the capacity-based approaches. …

Thomas Reid On 'The Seeds Of Morality', Michael Pritchard

Michael Pritchard

Ethical Naturalism And The Challenge Of Biology, Richard Hamilton

Richard Hamilton

Dangerous Psychopaths: Criminally Responsible But Not Morally Responsible, Subject To Criminal Punishment And To Preventive Detention, Ken Levy

Ken Levy

How should we judge psychopaths, both morally and in the criminal justice system? This Article will argue that psychopaths are generally not morally responsible for their bad acts simply because they cannot understand, and therefore be guided by, moral reasons.

Scholars and lawyers who endorse the same conclusion automatically tend to infer from this premise that psychopaths should not be held criminally punishable for their criminal acts. These scholars and lawyers are making this assumption (that just criminal punishment requires moral responsibility) on the basis of one of two deeper assumptions: that either criminal punishment directly requires moral responsibility or …