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Indivisibility And Linkage Arguments: A Reply To Gilabert, James W. Nickel

Articles

This reply discusses Pablo Gilabert's response to my article, "Rethinking Indivisibility." It welcomes his distinction between conceptual, normative, epistemic, and causal forms of support from one right to another. It denies, however, that "Rethinking Indivisibility" downplayed linkage arguments for human rights (although it did call for careful evaluation of such arguments), and rejects Gilabert's suggestion that we understand the indivisibility of two rights as two rights being highly useful to each other (interdependence) rather than as mutual indispensability. In the final section, I offer two new worries about the system-wide indivisibility of human rights.

Media Effects: Cultural Appropriation And Attitudes Towards Cosmetic Surgery, Darlene Shauntanese Lee

Wayne State University Dissertations

The current study investigates media's influence on Caucasian women to culturally appropriate the physical features generally ascribed to African American women through non-surgical and or surgical cosmetic procedures and vice versa. Participants were 26 African American women and 54 Caucasian women who had previously undergone either non-surgical or surgical cosmetic procedures. Results indicate that African American women were more likely to culturally appropriate than Caucasian women. For African American women high media exposure to cosmetic surgery media messages played a significant role in the cultural appropriation process. Results also indicated that Caucasian women culturally appropriate at the same level, whether …

Editorial

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Another One Bites The Dust!, Gabriela Salazar

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The contemporary landscape is rife with ruins, from circumscribed tourist attractions to urban decay and demolition sites. When examined, our aesthetic experience of these sites ranges from historical distancing to the sublime and, when found in our local communities (e.g., Providence, RI), to discomfort, displacement, and horror. In particular, this paper is interested in how certain forms of demolition, from slow and messy to explosively dramatic, can be understood as compressed and heightened experiences of the traditional sublime ruin. Additionally, as contemporary artists often use the vernacular of the ruin in their work, this paper considers how three artists, Gordon …

Laurent Stern's Interpretive Reasoning, Mary Wiseman

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Sailing The Seas Of Cheese, Erik Anderson

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Memphis Elvis is cool; Vegas Elvis is cheesy. How come? To call something cheesy is, ostensibly, to disparage it, and yet cheesy acts are some of the most popular in popular culture today. How is this possible? The concepts of cheese, cheesy, and cheesiness play an important and increasingly ubiquitous role in popular culture today. I offer an analysis of these concepts, distinguishing them from nearby concepts like kitchy and campy. Along the way I draw attention to the important roles of cultural/historical context, background knowledge, and especially artist’s intentions as they are relevant to aesthetic assessments involving cheese and …

The Third Tear In Everyday Aesthetics, Katya Mandoki

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Although totally overlooked by mainstream aesthetic theory, various paths were nevertheless left open for addressing everyday aesthetics, a natural yet surprisingly controversial topic. Why they were never taken until recently, when the theme of everyday aesthetics is now becoming fashionable, can be explained not only by the obvious fact of philosophical aesthetics’ restrictive focal point on art but, among other reasons, by a kind of fetishism that demands an object of recognized value for legitimating an aesthetic inquiry. This new popularity entails, however, certain theoretical risks such as clinging to traditional art-centric and beauty-centric categories to explain the everyday and …

The Value Of Fictional Worlds (Or Why 'The Lord Of The Rings' Is Worth Reading), James Harold

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Some works of fiction are widely held by critics to have little value, yet these works are not only popular but also widely admired in ways that are not always appreciated. In this paper I make use of Kendall Walton’s account of fictional worlds to argue that fictional worlds can and often do have value, including aesthetic value, that is independent of the works that create them. In the process, I critique Walton’s notion of fictional worlds and offer a defense of the study and appreciation of fictional worlds, as distinguished from the works of fiction with which they are …

The Effect Of Initial Entry Training On The Moral And Character Development Of Military Police Soldiers, Kenneth R. Williams

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The U.S. Army conducts extensive training on its core values beginning with initial entry training (IET), commonly referred to as basic training, in order to shape soldiers' behavior and decision making in combat and noncombat situations. This mixed methods study addressed the problem of limited empirical research on the effects of U.S. Army IET on soldiers' moral and character development. The purpose was to explore the effects of Military Police (MP) IET on soldiers in training through a mixed methods quantitative and qualitative model. The theoretical framework for this study was based on Rest's four component model (FCM) of moral …

Humanity In The Balance: The Relationship Between The Moral Law And The Promotion Of The Moral World In Kant's Ethics, John J. Garcia

Dissertations

This dissertation deals with the tension between two seemingly divergent approaches to morality. On the one hand, there are those who take the view that morality concerns itself with the promotion of certain ends. This is a teleological or consequentialist view of ethics. On the other hand, we see thinkers who take the view that rationality or some other criteria provide us certain moral imperatives that may not be violated, regardless of our desire to bring about a particular end. Kant is usually depicted not only as a member of the latter camp, but indeed as the father of this …

Epistemic Malevolence, Jason Baehr

Philosophy Faculty Works

Against the background of a great deal of structural symmetry between intellectual and moral virtue and vice, it is a surprising fact that what is arguably the central or paradigm moral vice—that is, moral malevolence or malevolence proper—has no obvious or well-known counterpart among the intellectual vices. The notion of “epistemic malevolence” makes no appearance on any standard list of intellectual vices; nor is it central to our ordinary ways of thinking about intellectual vice. In this essay, I argue that there is such a thing as epistemic malevolence and offer an account of its basic character and structure. Doing …

Review: Back To Darwin, Timothy Shanahan

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Philosophy And Theology: Notes On Speciesism, Christopher Kaczor

Philosophy Faculty Works

The article discusses the rights of the human fetus involving a prejudice on a preference for one's own kind. It explains the important features, different theological justifications, and arguments for and against speciesism or birthism, which is like sexism and racism. It also cites the views of philosopher Immanuel Kant on human superiority over animals and the rights of handicapped newborns that does not justify giving similar rights to great apes.

Neither One Nor Many: God And The Gods In Plotinus, Proclus, And Aquinas, Eric Perl

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

A Clever Ruse, Timothy Shanahan

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

The Sources Of Knowledge In Islam : A Study On The Philosophical Ideas Of Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas., Akhmad Rofii Damyati

Student Works (2010-2019)

The Sources of Knowledge in Islam: A Study on the Philosophical Ideas of Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas explores and investigates the sources of knowledge in Islam as one of the important issues in knowledge or epistemology according to the perspective of Professor Syed Mohammad Naquib al-Attas. It is based on library research that involves two main processes, collecting data and analysing data. In analysing data it deals with three methods: deductive, inductive and comparative methods. It presents an analysis on many related issues, such as the possibility of knowledge, the definition of knowledge, the classification of knowledge, the tradition of …

Killing, Letting Die, And The Case For Mildly Punishing Bad Samaritanism, Ken M. Levy

Journal Articles

For over a century now, American scholars (among others) have been debating the merits of “bad-samaritan” laws – laws punishing people for failing to attempt “easy rescues.” Unfortunately, the opponents of bad-samaritan laws have mostly prevailed. In the United States, the “no-duty-to-rescue” rule dominates. Only four states even have bad-samaritan laws, and these laws impose only the most minimal punishment – either sub-$500 fines or short-term imprisonment.

This Article argues that this situation needs to be remedied. Every state should criminalize bad samaritanism. For, first, criminalization is required by the supreme value that we place on protecting human life, a …

Manifestations As Effects, Jennifer Mckitrick

Department of Philosophy: Faculty Publications

According to a standard characterization of dispositions, when a disposition is activated by a stimulus, a manifestation of that disposition typically occurs. For example, when flammable gasoline encounters a spark in an oxygen-rich environment, the manifestation of flammability—combustion—occurs. In the dispositions/powers literature, it is common to assume that a manifestation is an effect of a disposition being activated. (I use “disposition” and “power” interchangeably). I address two questions in this chapter: Could all manifestations be effects that involve things acquiring only dispositional properties? And, is thinking of manifestations as contributions to effects preferable to thinking of them as effects? I …

Self-Knowledge And Rationality, Stephen Blackwood

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Several basic asymmetries are normally thought to exist between first- and third-person present-tense ascriptions of mental states. First of all, when a speaker ascribes, for instance, a belief that p to another, she must do so on the evidence provided by the utterances and actions of the other. However, it at least appears that typically she need not do so when ascribing a belief to herself. In other words, there is an immediacy to a self-ascription of a belief (that is, an utterance of the form ‘I believe that p’) that thirdperson ascriptions (‘He believes that p’) lack. …

Other-Centred Love: Diotima’S Lesson To Socrates, Colin A. Redmond

Theses

In this thesis I set out to determine the possible motivations in response to which Diotima agreed to teach Socrates the arts of love. In the process I develop a broader understanding of Diotima and her natural, feminine complexity. This understanding of Diotima suggests an interpretation of her teaching to show that, for all that can be said of love it is, importantly a re-orientation from self-centred interest to other-centred interest and it is this re-orientation which impacted on Socrates and by which he was persuaded.

Such an impact and its explanation offers a clear rationale for the changes which …

Racism And Biopower, Ladelle Mcwhorter

Philosophy Faculty Publications

While ignorance, or at least a lack of clear and distinct experience, does not seem to have stopped our predecessors from philosophizing about all manner of things from matter to immortal souls, in the latter half of the twentieth century North American philosophers became increasingly timid about advancing propositions based primarily not on logic informed by material evidence but on intuition, creative imagination, and passionate desire. By the 1960s our generation's teachers and mentors, perhaps battered by the McCarthy years or humbled by the dazzling successes of their colleagues in the "hard" sciences, had redrawn the disciplinary boundaries tightly enough …

The Sources Of International Law: Some Philosophical Reflections, David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

It seems only natural to begin the study of international law with a description of its sources. After all, whether as practitioner or scholar a person cannot begin to ask or answer questions about international law until he or she has some sense of what the law is. This requires in turn a basic grasp of the processes whereby international legal norms and regimes come to exist. Thus students of international law must engage immediately with some of the most basic questions in the philosophy of law: what is law, and what is a legal order or system.

These questions …

Aesthetics And The Philosophy Of Art, 1840-1900, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The question can be raised whether the category or discipline of philosophical aesthetics existed before the eighteenth century. Unlike "logic:' "ethics:' and "physics:' a traditional Stoic division of philosophy with great staying power, "aesthetics" is clearly a product of modernity. As Paul O. Kristeller demonstrated in "The Modern System of the Arts:' it was in the eighteenth century that the idea of the aesthetic as a distinctive human capacity and the parallel consolidation of the notion of the fine arts crystallized in the writings of (mostly) French, German, and English philosophers and critics. The modern concepts of art and aesthetics …

The Impact Of Perceived Importance Of An Ethical Situation (Pie) On Ethical Judgment And Intention: Beyond Moral Intensity, Monica Marie Johnston

Honors Program Theses

The importance of ethics to the accounting profession is well established (Turpen and Witmer, 1997; Abdolmohammadi, Read, and Scarbrough, 2003; Guffey and McCartney, 2008). In accounting, a commitment to ethical behavior is regarded as the basis for all other performance standards, (Turpen et al., 1997), and historically most agree that accountants practice honest principles (Leitsch, 2006). However, business headlines such as those related to the collapse of Enron and its auditor, Arthur Andersen, raise concerns about ethical actions of accountants (Abdolmohammadi et al., 2003). Additionally, accountants and auditors have more recently come under fire due to issues related to the …

Logic, Doxastic, John Nicholas Williams

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Doxastic logic, beginning with Hintikka’s Knowledge and Belief. An Introduction to the Logic of the Two Notions (1962. Cornell University Press), studies relations between propositions about what we believe. Using ‘a’ as a proper name like ‘Ann’, ‘→’ for ‘if’ as opposed to material implication, propositional variables such as ‘p’, ‘q’ and ‘B’ to represent the two-place relation, ‘ . . . believes that . . . ’.

Understanding Hayek, Chandran Kukathas

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Although some of this will be familiar to a number of you all,I will talk a bit about Friedrich A. Hayek since I am goingfirst. I’ll say a little bit about his life, how he came to theideas that he became so famous for espousing, and then a little bitabout his liberalism and the contribution he has made to liberaltheory and to intellectual life.

The Right Stuff: Habitus And Embodied Virtue In Sir Gawain And The Green Knight, Alice F. Blackwell

Quidditas

One of the themes weaving in and out of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is that of virtue: Gawain’s shield proclaims his virtue, yet at the end of the Green Chapel scene, he exclaims vice has destroyed his virtue, leaving him “faulty and false.” This scene has troubled critics and students, however, for many consider his reaction excessive for his default on the rules of a courtly game. The present paper contends that the notion of virtue written for Gawain naturalizes embodied virtue. While both religious and lay writers tended to argue that one possessed predisposition to moral or …

Review Article: Quidditas And Medieval Studies Today, Erin Felicia Labbie

Quidditas

Medieval studies today may be precisely characterized by quidditas. The Aristotelian term quidditas became central to the development of medieval scholastic inquiry in the West when, in 1066 Anselm of Canterbury wrote the Monologion. This eleventh-century foray into the revival of Aristotelian thought is also seen in Porphyry’s third-century translations of Aristotle and in Boethius’ sixth-century concern with universals elaborated in his commentaries on universals and categories. For Anselm and the developing model of medieval scholastic thought, the Monologion and its immediate successor, the Proslogian, assert a double discourse of the difference between quidditas and haeccitas, …

Saints And The Social Order: Alexander Barclay’S The Life Of St. George, Maggie Gallup Kopp

Quidditas

This paper examines The Life of St. George, Alexander Barclay’s 1515 translation of a humanist Latin prose poem. Barclay, who styled himself a laureate in the tradition of Lydgate, adapts laureate poetic practice in order to address a noble audience in a bid to gain court patronage. Barclay’s emendations and additions transform the hagiography of England’s patron saint into a commentary on traditional English ideals of citizenship and good governance, aimed at an audience comprised of both common citizens and noble elites, including, as this paper argues, the young king Henry VIII.

Allen D. Breck Award Winner (2010)

Quidditas

Kristin M.S. Bezio

The Allen D. Breck Award recognizes the most distinguished paper given by a junior scholar at the annual conference of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association