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A Brief Summary Of Albert Camus’S “The Myth Of Sisyphus”, Irma Mosqueda Perez

Philosophy - All Scholarship

In the first pages of The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus chooses to discuss beliefs and values, before diving deep into his theory on absurdism. His purpose is to set the groundwork for his future ideas on the meaning or rather, the lack of meaning of life. So he begins, piece by piece assembling the big puzzle that ends in his theory of philosophical absurdism and continues with an evaluation of the central question of this book: is suicide a justified approach when facing life? In this essay I plan on doing an exposition of the main points of Camus’s …

Not Two Selves But A Relational Field: A Relational Frame Theory Reading Of Gollum, Emilio R. López-Navarro

Journal of Tolkien Research

This article examines Gollum’s divided selfhood in The Lord of the Rings as a phenomenon constructed and enacted through language rather than as a simple moral or psychological split. Building on recent linguistic work on Gollum’s idiolect, it draws on Relational Frame Theory (RFT) as a descriptive framework for analyzing how speech organizes perspective, value, and action. The argument is literary rather than clinical: RFT is used not to diagnose Gollum, but to specify the verbal structures through which Tolkien renders inner conflict audible. Four relational processes are central to the analysis: deictic instability in shifts among “Sméagol,” “Gollum,” “we,” …

Interculturalidad: Enfoques Críticos Desde La Educación, El Arte Y Los Estudios Culturales., Edgar Ávila González Phd, Romano Ponce-Díaz Phd, Cristo León Phd, Emilce Beatriz Sánchez Castellón Phd, Ligia María Sánchez Castellón, Edgar Meritano Phd, Juan Carlos González-Vidal Phd, Diana Estefanía Martínez-Dagnino, Ivan Avila Gonzalez Phd, Rodrigo Pardo Fernández Phd, Arturo Morales Campos Phd, Ximena Diaz Santillan, Maribel Ramos Rodríguez, José Antonio Fraga Villicaña Phd, José Ricardo Chavez Mendoza Phd

STEM for Success Resources

• Cultura y producción de semiosis: Edgar Ávila González, Romano Ponce Díaz.
• LA ESCUELA ETNOEDUCATIVA Y LA ARMONIZACIÓN INTERCULTURAL : Emilce Beatriz Sánchez Castellón, Ligia María Sánchez Castellón
• El Mentor del Juego: Mediador Intercultural en las Mesas de Juegos de Rol: Cristo Leon, Edgar Meritano
• CONVERGENCIA DE CAMPOS SUPRARREGULADOS DE PRODUCCIÓN SEMIÓSICA EN LA CONSTRUCCIÓN Y PERMANENCIA DE MODELOS COGNITIVOS TRANSHISTÓRICOS: Juan Carlos González Vidal
• Escritura creativa y proyecto de existencia. La didáctica como una herramienta de generación de sentido para las personas privadas de su libertad: Diana Estefanía Martínez Dagnino, Iván Ávila González,Rodrigo Pardo Fernández.
• Metáfora, signo y modelo cognitivo. …

Judaism And Catholicism: Possibilities Of An Inter-Spiritual Dialogue, David Neuhaus

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article examines the possibilities of an inter-spiritual dialogue between Catholics and Jews. Describing the transformation of the Catholic attitude to Jews andJudaism in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, moving from a teaching of contempt to one of respect, it analyses the far-reaching reformulations of Catholic theology that promote an interreligious dialogue. After centuries of traumatic history, Jewish reactions have been hesitant. However, the past decades have led to a burgeoning relationship that can indeed flower into a mutual inter-spiritual dialogue that deepens the faith of both Catholics and Jews.

Jainism And Catholicism – Dialoguing Spiritually, Bryan Lobo

Journal of Global Catholicism

The inter-spiritual dialogue between Jainism and Catholicism lends itself towards discovering similarities and dissimilarities between the two spiritualities. Recognizing this discovery, this paper, without claiming to be exhaustive as regards the spiritual themes, discusses the chosen themes to facilitate greater reflection and potential to re-discover elements that can help the growth of understanding and practicing the preferred spirituality.

Islam And Catholicism: Theology And Practice Of Inter-Spiritual Dialogue, Felix Koerner

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article explores foundations, preconditions, aims, persons, groups, practices, methods, texts, and criteria of Muslim–Christian inter-spiritual dialogue. In-ter-spiritual dialogue thrives within the network of other dialogical forms: dialogue of life and collaboration, of theological and practical understanding. This article argues that the spiritual dimension of dialogical encounter may itself constitute a critical site of moral reflection, enabling participants to perceive injustice more clearly and to respond to it more responsibly. Nevertheless, the integrity of in-ter-spiritual dialogue depends upon the cultivation of trust, candor, and a shared orientation toward mutual enrichment and spiritual purification. Where dialogue is subordinated to extrinsic strategic …

The Dialogue Of Spiritual Experience In Buddhist-Christian Encounter, S Mark Heim

Journal of Global Catholicism

Can one learn more about one’s own religion through the practices of another? My positive answer to this question is illustrated in this paper by reflection on aspects of the Buddhist practice of emptiness, in specific connection with Christian under-standing of our lives as creatures. The Buddhist meditative practices I have in mind have several things in common. They are introspective (activated in one person’s inner consciousness) and premised on the Buddhist understanding of emptiness (specifically “no self ” teachings). Buddhist introspective practice takes at least three broad forms. One of these is a meditative analytical awareness of the contents …

Hindu Poetry And The Project Of An Inter-Spiritual Catholic Theology, Francis X. Clooney

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article engages the work of the Indian south Indian Tamil-language Vaiṣṇava poet saints known as the Alvārs. The article specifically focuses the First HundredHoly Linked verses of Poykai Ālvār to argue for inter-spiritual learning between Catholics and Hindus. The article concludes with personal reflections on this encounter within the context of the global Catholic Church

Overview And Acknowledgments, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

An overview and introduction to the present issue on Inter-Spiritual Dialogue.

Nietzsche’S Greek Soul: Traces Of Aristotle’S Psuchē In The Early Nietzsche, Laura G. Campos

Theses and Dissertations from DePaul University

This dissertation proposes an examination of the concept of the soul (Seele) as it appears in the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, in conversation with the concept of the soul in Aristotle. I propose bringing these two historically and theoretically disparate thinkers into dialogue insofar as they each represent a pivotal moment in the history of Western subjectivity, drawing on Martin Heidegger’s positioning of Aristotle and Nietzsche as the inaugural and final thinkers of Western metaphysics, respectively. Yet, following recent Continental interpretations of both thinkers, I read both Aristotle and Nietzsche as proto-phenomenologists concerned with the problem of how to thematize …

Replies To Gasdaglis, Tarver, Conway, And Fullarton, Mariana Alessandri

Philosophy Faculty Publications

I am grateful to the four commentators for taking time to read Night Vision with care, and for providing their insights in the form of thoughts, questions, and challenges. Themes in this response include shame, emotional work, compassion, scarcity, sharing pain as gift vs. burden, our nonideal world, ableism, love, and justification. There are countless other topics that merited a thorough response, such as distinguishing between types of light, eros, verticality vs. horizontality, the lessons of suffering, teaching and humility, and a deeper analysis of the cost of compassion.

Précis: Night Vision, Mariana Alessandri

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Night Vision is a book about pain in five chapters. It’s about T-shirts that say “No Bad Days” or “Be Like a Proton: Always Positive.” It's about how the attempt to shed light on our dark moods often backfires, and it suggests that learning to see in the dark would help us feel more human and less broken. Night Vision describes the metaphors we use to convey our faith in the light: “love and light,” “lighten up,” “look on the bright side,” have a “lightbulb moment,” strive to “see the light at the end of the tunnel,” and try to …

In The Shadow Of The Steeple: A Theory Of Religious Hypocrisy, Justin Arthur Rice

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I explore how Christian doctrine and practice respond to the pressures placed upon them by the troubling reality of religious hypocrisy (RH). Assuming a teleological notion of social institutions, I argue that RH is best understood in relation to the Church as an institution, and that RH occurs when religious agents undermine or subvert their appointed role within the Church. RH consists in the conscious or unconscious charade of spiritual or moral virtue undertaken in one’s capacity as a member of a religious institution, grounded in a fundamental disparity between one’s thoughts, words, desires, motivations, or deeds, …

A Dual Analysis Of Generic Stereotypes, Shaoneng Xu

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In my thesis, I provide a dual-analysis on generic stereotypes, including a semantic analysis that focuses on the truth conditions of generic sentences as well as a pragmatic analysis that focuses on the normative force of generic stereotypes. The thesis contains two parts: In the first chapter, I make a semantic analysis of generic stereotypes based on Lemeire’s (2020) paper. I unpack the general concept of generic sentences and their truth-conditions. I also discuss Lemeire’s rebuttal strategies to offensive generic stereotypes, and add to it by indicating that generics can also carry normative forces. In the second chapter, I make …

Walking The Tightrope: The Precautionary Dilemma Of Neutrality And Guidance, Farhan Lakhany

Animal Sentience

Jonathan Birch’s The Edge of Sentience promises a precautionary framework that guides ethical action without taking sides in the disputed metaphysics of consciousness. I argue that it cannot do both. Birch admits “biopsychism” (that all living organisms are conscious) into his "zone of reasonable disagreement," yet his operational criteria exclude plants and unicellular organisms by requiring evidence that biopsychism holds to be irrelevant. This leaves a dilemma. Keeping the “broad” standard preserves neutrality but extends candidacy to all life, guiding nothing; restricting to scientific evidence guides action but is itself the theoretical commitment the framework was meant to avoid.

Dimensional Welfare Beyond Pain: Extending The Precautionary Principle In Birch’S “The Edge Of Sentience”, Willa M. Lane, Nicola S. Clayton

Animal Sentience

Birch's (2024) The Edge of Sentience identifies sentience candidates primarily through the pain-focused LSE Criteria. Yet, as Birch himself notes in Proposal 17, sentience is not pain. We argue that statutory welfare protections must therefore reach beyond pain, and that the right tool for doing so is Birch et al.’s (2020) dimensionality framework, which characterises conscious experience across five domains. Used together, the LSE Criteria establish that welfare is at stake, while the dimensionality framework maps what is at stake beyond pain to provide a taxon-specific profile of where captivity impoverishes experience. We apply this approach to invertebrate welfare and …

Impure Evidentialism: Essays On The Sources & Structure Of Doxastic Normativity, Felipe Oliveira

Dissertations - ALL

The four papers of my dissertation provide a new defense of Impure Evidentialism. The combination of evidentialism about normative reasons for belief with pragmatic encroachment (i.e. impurism) about epistemic justification is a familiar and intuitive view. However, many of the combo view’s finer points, unique advantages, and objections have not been addressed. My dissertation fills this gap by offering a new defense and in-depth look of what I take to be the most plausible version of the combo view. My version of Impure Evidentialism offers an improved and comprehensive account of the norms that govern our beliefs, explains why these …

Animal Ethics And The Lowest Common Denominator, John O. Adenitire

Animal Sentience

This commentary assesses the pragmatic framework proposed in Jonathan Birch’s The Edge of Sentience (2024). Celebrating the book's exceptional clarity, scientific rigor, and profound real-world impact on UK legislation, I nevertheless have some questions about the method by which Birch arrives at his policy recommendations for animal protection. In seeking an overlapping consensus between deeply divergent ethical and credal viewpoints, the framework risks defaulting to a minimalist, lowest-common-denominator standard of protection for animals. Birch also risks drawing the standard even lower by including serious academic positions in animal ethics that deny moral status for animals altogether. A rights-based approach offers …

On The Edge Of Science?, Mark Briffa, Lynne U. Sneddon

Animal Sentience

In The Edge of Sentience, Jonathan Birch (2024) provides a thought-provoking synthesis of current perspectives on animal (and artificial) sentience. He addresses the question from conceptual, ethical, regulatory and empirical viewpoints. Here we focus on some of the scientific issues raised, including defining and operationalising the concept of sentience and the implications for policy and regulation. Despite unresolved conceptual challenges, the book makes a compelling case for the continued scientific investigation of animal sentience.

Reading Echoes Of Homer In Plato: Finding Philosophical Insights By Reading Plato's Dialogues As Poiēsis, Stephen R. Lasse

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Reading Echoes of Homer in Plato: Assessing the legitimacy of the macro-level thesis that approaching Plato from the poetic tradition starting with Homer generates philosophical insights not available when reading his dialogues as the first installments in the Western tradition of philosophy. It begins by identifying equivocal nuances in the dramatic content of Plato’s dialogues that are left unexplored by the current standard approach that attributes a progressive developmentalist approach to Plato’s authorial intent before suggesting an alternative unitarian approach to Plato as an author who maintains an unchanged point of view throughout his corpus of work. It then identifies …

From The Edge To The Grounds Of “Sentientism”, David Degrazia

Animal Sentience

Birch’s book is a remarkable exploration of the nature of sentience, its moral salience, evidence for its presence, and how to arrive at humane policies regarding our treatment of human beings, animals, brain organoids, and AI systems of uncertain sentience. Although Birch endorses the view that sentience is of fundamental moral importance, he endeavors to remain neutral among reasonable moral views and work out how to navigate through uncertainty—both ethical and epistemological—to arrive at defensible policies. While making common cause with Birch’s project, my own recent book advances a developed case in favor of the “sentientism” Birch endorses.

Natural Behavior Vs. Subjective Experience In Fish Welfare Assessments, Ronald G. Oldfield

Animal Sentience

Several commentaries on the Oldfield & Bonano (2024) target article proposed that natural behavior should play a larger role in assessing the welfare of fishes in zoos and aquariums. However, the natural-behavior concept of animal welfare has been widely criticized because natural behaviors do not necessarily improve welfare, and unnatural behaviors do not necessarily reduce it. I review the three major concepts of animal welfare — physical health, natural behavior, and affect/feelings — and argue that behavior patterns, whether natural or otherwise, should be evaluated according to their effects on health and subjective experience. Using the affect/feelings concept and the …

Don't Force Me To Explain: Rethinking Access Outside Of Compulsory Transparency, Rhea Ienni

Dissertations

My dissertation is concerned with better understanding the barriers disabled people encounter while attempting to procure access both at the institutional level, and in their everyday lives. Within disability and accessibility literature, there are many discourses on what disability is and what access means. However, there are few people who explore the harmful consequences of disabled people being forced to “prove” they are disabled to an ableist world to get their basic needs met, and my dissertation intervenes in this gap. Within current US policy, if a disabled person requires access support at the institutional level, they must provide medical …

Merleau-Ponty On The Crisis Of Natural Philosophy: A Critique Of The Metaphysical Foundations Of Natural Science And Investigations Into The Ontology Of Nature, Kevin Mager

Dissertations

In this dissertation, I show that Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of nature is also a radical critique of the metaphysical foundations of natural science. This critique leads us to a new ontology for science, grounded in the lifeworld. I focus on how his philosophy offers a detailed critique of both physicalism and mechanism. For Merleau-Ponty, mechanism is not just the strict adherence to classical causality, but any view that asserts that classical causality has any role to play in reality at all. To replace mechanistic causality, Merleau-Ponty argues that we must conceive of nature as grounded in meaningful possibility. Merleau-Ponty's emphasis on …

Provocation In Philosophical Practice, Kathryn Elizabeth Cook, Sara Dorrego Carreira, Anca-Cornelia Tiurean

Faculty and Staff Publications & Presentations

Challenging conventional notions of comfort and safety in philosophical practice, this article argues for the primacy of reason in the work to provoke and exercise thinking. Exercising thinking involves problematization and conceptualization of cherished ideas and attitudes. Consequently, philosophical consultations can be uncomfortable; rather than seeking to alleviate this discomfort, this article examines it directly. Assumptions that discomfort is harmful, consultation is dangerous, philosophers are therapists, or success is mandated are actively problematized. The authors appreciate the growth promoting role of discomfort, see the beauty of exercising the thinking capacity, and respect the thinking competence of all people. The authors …

Philosophia From Dialectic To Dying Before Death: Traces Of Plato’S Spirit In The Encounters Between The Falāsifa, Mutakallimūn, And Sūfiyya, Fadhil Yunus Alsagoff

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis offers a fresh approach to the question “What is philosophy?” by reconsidering Plato’s vision of philosophiaand seeking its traces in the encounters between the Falāsifa, the Mutakallimūn, and the Sūfiyya of the classical Muslim world. I argue that Plato’s true legacy lies in a vision of philosophia as dialectical inquiry that ultimately leads – due to the inextricable limitations of propositional language – to aporia and what he called “practicing for dying and death.” I then argue that this vision of philosophia finds resonance in the classical Muslim world in the embodied encounters between …

Scruples Before Religion: Muslim Waraʿ Of The Formative Period, Omar Laaroussi

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies the conceptual history of waraʿ and its role as a normative paradigm existing in the formative centuries of the Islamic world. To do so, I consider the Hellenic concepts that ground Near Eastern understandings of virtue and piety before the rise of Islam. This, I then use to contextualise a focused discussion on the textual history of waraʿ before moving on to discuss its properties in a ascetic social-world through the analysis of those very texts. I attempt to place those properties in conversation with modern philosophers’ work on disciplinary regimes and their impacts upon the self. …

"But Oh, What Harm Those Basics Would Cause": How Journalists Can Better Interview Vulnerable Sources Utilizing An Ethic Of Care, Noah Carandanis

University Honors Theses

Traditional journalistic ethics have emphasized detachment from sources and objectivity guiding journalists' practices. In this thesis, I explore the contribution of care ethics to the field of journalistic ethics, emphasizing care in relation to interviewing vulnerable sources. I claim that the traditional objective, detached ethical status quo in journalism is insufficient in the context of reporting on mass shootings. This thesis argues that caring journalistic practices should be utilized when interviewing traumatized, vulnerable sources. In the first part, I present the issue of traditional journalistic practices through my personal experiences. I also discuss the philosophical underpinnings to journalist's objectivity criterion. …

The Possibility Of Post Binary Reflexivity: A Genealogy Of Binary Logic In Western Philosophy, Vaughan A. Bidois

Critical Humanities

This article traces a genealogy of binary logic within Western philosophy, from its origins in Platonic metaphysics through to its deconstruction in poststructuralist theory. Drawing on the genealogical methods of Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault, it critiques how oppositional structures, such as mind/body, reason/emotion, and truth/error, have persisted through shifting intellectual paradigms while shaping knowledge, power, and subjectivity. Structuralist and linguistic theories are examined for their role in reinforcing binary meaning-making, while poststructural critiques (notably Derrida and Foucault) are explored for their attempts to subvert such hierarchies. However, the article argues that these critiques remain paradoxically ensnared within the same …

Human Wisdom And Artificial Intelligence: Role Of Liberal Arts Education In A Neoliberal World, Purna Chandra Bhusal

Critical Humanities

Neoliberalism is an economic and political ideology that originated in the 1930s and 40s, gained momentum in the late 70s and 80s, and peaked in the 90s and 2000s. Since its inception, neoliberalism has promoted a free-market economy with minimal state intervention, granting individuals the freedom to compete and succeed. Since the last quarter of the twentieth century, the neoliberal system has invested in, incorporated, and promoted Artificial Intelligence (AI), valuing an AI-enhanced corporate ethos. As a result, the success of higher education is generally measured by the quantity of technologically sound, market-ready, AI-trained human capital it produces for industry. …