Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Thomas Reid On Language And Mind, Alastair L.V. Crosby

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The dissertation concerns Thomas Reid’s philosophy of language. In the first three chapters, I discuss his philosophy of language in relation to his developmental psychology. More specifically, I discuss his answers to two questions: (i) what does the ability to understand artificial linguistic signs make possible? and (ii) what makes the ability to understand artificial linguistic signs possible? The focus is on Reid’s claim that the mind’s ability to understand artificial linguistic signs makes it possible for it to acquire a number of distinct mental abilities, such as to conceive universals, to judge, and to reason. I argue this claim …

Does The Cogito Have (A) Sex?, Emily Laurent-Monaghan

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis begins with a critique of Quentin Meillassoux’s Après la finitude. Chapter One argues against Meillassoux’s injunction to abandon the “transcendental,” while putting forth a Lacanian solution to the “correlationist” problem. Chapter Two expounds the meaning of the Cartesian subject, with a Lacanian twist. Under this view, the subject is split, and this split carries the name “sexual difference.” The cogito is “split” qua sexual difference, whereby sexual difference names the structural antagonism/impossibility that exists in language and bears on all speaking subjects. The second chapter focuses primarily on explaining how sexual difference marks the cogito, by …

Neoliberalism, Institutionalism, And Art, Declan Hoy

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

As contemporary art has expanded to encompass further disparate activities under its umbrella, the various institutions of art can be looked to as the only constant and defining characteristic of art. These institutions are often seen in sharp contrast to spontaneous collectivism, the real, and radical creativity—attributes deeply valued within contemporary art. This creates a troubling situation in which institutions are seen as limiting the possibility of what art could be, and artworks are perceived as needing to escape the very institutions which define them in order to be deemed worthy. In this structure, contemporary art follows and validates the …

Mozart And Genius: Music And Philosophy, Aidan Witvoet

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

This output poster serves as an overview to my efforts and responsibilities throughout the duration of the internship. Here I also showcase a brief sample of the concepts and areas of exploration within which I have been immersed, both in regards to the the content of the book I am helping to prepare for publishing as well as accompanying readings and discussions.

Is Another World Possible?: Herbert Marcuse And Possibilities For 'Real' Change, Robert Halperin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

It has been difficult to effect concrete changes in our society that might adequately approach confronting the intersecting crises of capitalism, inequality, and ecology that we face in our era. Herbert Marcuse’s critical theory, and his notion of quantitative development leading to qualitative change, in combination with Hannah Arendt’s theories of action, natality, and the will, provide us with an appropriate lens through which to view these crises and diagnose the problems at hand. Additionally, Thomas Kuhn’s concepts of paradigms and ‘normal science,’ as well as Richard Rorty’s distinction between movements and campaigns provide us with more concrete ideas of …

The Moral And Political Status Of Microaggressions, Heather Stewart

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation offers a robust philosophical examination of a phenomenon that is morally, socially, and politically significant – microaggressions. Microaggressions are understood to be brief and routine verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities that, whether intentional or unintentional, convey hostility toward or bias against members of marginalized groups. Microaggressions are rooted in stereotypes and/or bias (whether implicit or explicit) and are connected to broader systems of oppression.

Microaggressions are philosophically interesting, since they involve significant ambiguity, questions about speech and communication, and the ability for our speech to encode and transmit bits of meaning. Microaggressions prompt reflection about the nature of …

Are Near-Death Experiences Veridical? A Philosophical Inquiry, Monika J. Mandoki

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This project is a philosophical investigation into near-death experiences (NDEs). It attempts to answer the central question: Are near-death experiences veridical? The aim of my work is to defend the veridicality of near-death experiences within the framework of idealism. However, this aim is not achieved simply by adopting an idealist standpoint. Instead, I present arguments for the reason this idealist standpoint is necessary. First, I argue that the traditional way of assessing near-death experiences is often oversimplified and carries an unnecessary bias in favour of a materialist interpretation, which eventually sets it up for a failure to demonstrate that an …

Theories: Reconsidering Ramsey In The Philosophy Of Science, John D. Lehmann

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This work is an analysis of F. P. Ramsey's philosophy of science. Twentieth-century philosophy of science was marked by attempts to consider the relation between scientific theories and our knowledge of the empirical world through considerations of abstract mathematical structure. Such considerations led Bertrand Russell to an account of the relation between our theoretical picture of the world and its real nature as a relation of structural similarity. Subsequently, Max Newman gave what has become a well-known logico-mathematical objection to this account. William Demopoulos recently showed that Newman's problem applied not only to Russell's realist account, but also to a …

Back To The Beginning: An Empiricist Defense Of Scientific Stories About The Past, Craig William Fox

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The Earth has not always been accompanied by its celestial partner, the Moon. In fact, the Moon was acquired by the Earth about 100 million years after the start of the solar system. It was acquired in the aftermath of a massive collision between the Earth and another planet, dubbed “Theia,” the mythological mother of the Greek goddess of the Moon. Most of the iron-rich cores of Earth and Theia merged almost immediately, while the rest of the two planets vaporized. Some of the impact ejecta was lost, but enough remained in gravitationally bound orbit around what was then $ …

Addictive Potential: Regimes, Transformations, Circulations, Kayleigh E. Shield

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis employs a poststructuralist framework to consider the possibilities for agency and resistance in consumer capitalism. The argument begins with an examination of figures who emerged in nineteenth century psychiatric discourses, and the roles that those figures play in poststructural and postmodern critiques of psychoanalysis and psychiatry, specifically in the work of Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. I then argue that David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest presents us with a new figure—the addict. My reading of Wallace is informed by poststructuralist critiques of psychiatric power and by Wallace’s own affinity for the fiction of Franz Kafka. I …

Vindicating Evans: A Defence Of Evans' Theory Of Singular Thought, Dylan A. Hurry

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

A singular thought can intuitively be understood as a thought that is directly about a particular thing, e.g., a non-conceptual thought about B.B. King, Mont Blanc, or your most beloved pet. The consensus within the singular thought literature has been that Gareth Evans (1982) develops a theory of singular thought throughout his posthumously published work The Varieties of Reference. However, Evans never claims to be developing a theory of singular thought, nor does the locution ‘singular thought’ appear more than a handful of times throughout the work. The singular thought literature lacks any substantial exegetical engagement with the theory …

Autonomy, Paternalism, And The Moral Foundations Of The Fiduciary Relationship, Austin Horn

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The fiduciary relationship is a legal relationship that describes those interactions in which one party is entrusted to exercise discretionary power on behalf of another’s interests. In recent years, the fiduciary relationship proven to be a powerful tool for providing clarity to complex bioethical issues. But the exciting promise of the fiduciary relationship for bioethical analysis is threatened by at least two conceptual problems: moral-legal equivocation and paternalism. Legal-moral equivocation refers to the problem of assuming that the normative demands of a legal relationship are also morally normative. The cogent use of the fiduciary relationship in bioethical analysis requires …

Depicting Absence: Thematic And Stylistic Paradoxes Of Representation In Visual And Literary Imagery, Alexandra Irimia

Languages and Cultures Publications

The article draws up an inventory of, and compares strategies for, the theoretical and critical treatment of the absence–presence interplay at stake in the literary and visual representations of absence. This brings to our attention a multiplicity of heterogeneous and, to a greater or lesser degree, marginal signify-ing phenomena that have in common patterns of disrupting and deviating from the standard conventions of creating and conveying meaning through figures of absence. Lacking a name for these disparate yet similar instances where meaning is created from empty signifiers, we have chosen to call them figural voids. This attempt to produce a …

What Moves You?: Georges Didi-Huberman’S Arts Of Passage And Pittsburgh Stories Of Migration, Alexandra Irimia

Languages and Cultures Publications

Contemporary art historian, critic, and theorist Georges Didi-Huberman thinks of images not as static objects, but as movements, passages, and gestures of memory and/or desire. For the French “historian of passing images,” as he has been called, “all images are migrants. Images are migrations. They are never simply local” (D2017). His book, Passer, quoi qu'il en coûte ("To Pass at Any Price"), co-written with the Greek poet and director Niki Giannari, takes on precisely the visual dynamics of passages, passengers, and passageways in the context of contemporary migration flows. In April 2018, only several months after the launching of the …