Arts and Humanities Commons^™

A Privatization Of Politics: Anthony Elliot's Concepts Of The Self (2001), Paula Murphy

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

It would be difficult to find a more appropriate image of selfhood in the modern world than that found in Ezra Pound's poem In a Station of the Metro. It is a selfhood which is at once unique and conglomerative, fleetingly visible then tantalizingly out of focus. It is this slippery, indefinable entity that is the subject of Anthony Elliot's book. The title bears witness to the enormous breadth of its subject matter: Concepts of the Self is an attempt to engage with the various contemporary theoretical frameworks through which selfhood is explicated. Elliot's approach is admirably inter-disciplinary, …

Moore's Paradoxes, Evans's Principle And Self-Knowledge, John N. Williams

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

I supply an argument for Evans’s principle that whatever justifies me in believing that p also justifies me in believing that I believe that p. I show how this principle helps explain how I come to know my own beliefs in a way that normally makes me the best authority on them. Then I show how the principle helps to solve Moore’s paradoxes.

To See More Clearly And Broadly: Science And The Postmodern Sentiment, C. Jason Smith, Robert Froemke

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

What we call postmodernism, whether we refer to the sciences or the humanities, is a certain preoccupation with the role of the human observer in the composition and perception -- perhaps even construction -- of reality. The postmodern condition, so to speak, is the moment in history when the hard sciences and the sciences of man seem to be suffering from the same anxieties about the relevance of the self-reflexive interaction between the observer and the subject to the fabric of existence and the web of knowledge. In simplest terms, we would define the postmodern question as this: …

Of Parts And Wholes: Self-Similarity And Synecdoche In Science, Culture And Literature, Dirk Vanderbeke

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Editors' Introduction]

The discussion here centers on how self-similarity, or parts resembling a whole, has been a recurring aspect in the most diverse fields of human thinking from antiquity to the present. Primary examples are drawn from physics, biology, cybernetics, alchemy, philosophy, myth and, of course, language and literature. The author argues that self-similar patterns are one of the persistent ways in which the human mind structures its experience and knowledge of the world, and then examines some of the questions that arise when an almost ubiquitous concept, structure or linguistic and literary phenomenon resurfaces in a new guise in …

Paradigm Shifts And New Worldviews: Kuhn, Laudan And Discovery In Molecular Biology, Priya Venkatesan

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Editors' Introduction]

The author poses an alternate set of ideas concerning paradigms, normal science, research traditions and scientific revolution on the basis of the unique and inherently distinctive development of molecular biology and genetics; for, a new set of conceptual tools concerning scientific progress are required for an adequate understanding of how biological processes were elucidated under the scientific auspices of the central dogma of the genetic code. This essay concentrates on a limited study of three aspects in genetics: the study of chromosome structure, dynamics and function, reverse transcriptases, and the discovery of RNA catalysts. In attempting to analyze …

Capital Punishment And The Catholic Tradition: Contradiction, Change In Circumstance, Or Development Of Doctrine, Christopher Kaczor

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Solving Problems Vs. Claiming Rights: The Pragmatist Challenge To Legal Liberalism, William H. Simon

William & Mary Law Review

Recent developments in both theory and practice have inspired a new understanding of public interest lawyering. The theoretical development is an intensified interest in Pragmatism. The practical development is the emergence of a style of social reform that seeks to institutionalize the Pragmatist vision of democratic governance as learning and experimentation. This style is reflected in a variety of innovative responses to social problems, including drug courts, ecosystem management, and "new accountability" educational reform. The new understanding represents a significant challenge to an influential view of law among politically liberal lawyers over the past fifty years. That view, Legal Liberalism, …

On Skepticism About Case-Specific Intuitions, James Mcbain

Faculty Submissions

Moral theorizing is often characterized as beginning from our intuitions about ethical cases. Yet, while many applaud, and even demand, this methodology, there are those who reject such a methodology on the grounds that we cannot treat people’s intuitions about ethical cases as evidence for or against moral theories. Recently, Shelly Kagan has argued that the reliance upon case-specific intuitions in moral theorizing is problematic. Specifically, he maintains that the practice of using intuitions about cases lacks justification and, hence, we ought to be skeptical about the evidential weight of moral intuitions. This leads Kagan to conclude that we ought …

Nietzsche, The Kantian Self, And Eternal Recurrence, Philip J. Kain

Philosophy

Nietzsche’s concept of the self grows out of Kant—and then attempts to subvert Kant. Nietzsche agrees that a unified subject is a necessary presupposition for ordered experience to be possible. But instead of a Kantian unified self, Nietzsche develops a conception of the self of the sort that we have come to call postmodern. He posits a composite bundle of drives that become unified only through organization. This subject is unified, it is just that its unity is forged, constructed, brought about by domination. But if the self is a bundle of struggling and shifting drives, how could it remain …

Frunzã'S "Filosofie Õi Religie: O Abordare Multidisciplinarã (Philosophy And Religion: An Interdisciplinary Approach)" - Book Review, Michael S. Jones

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

No abstract provided.

Natural Theology, Methodological Naturalism, And "Turtles All The Way Down", Del Ratzsch

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

Natural theology has not been held in particularly high regard during the past century and one half. However, recent developments both within science and within philosophy of science offer some new possibilities and resources. In what follows I explore some areas and structures within which natural theological potential might (in principle) emerge. I further argue that the current weapon of choice against substantive science/religion mtertwining - methodological naturalism - not only fails as an inviolable norm, thus leaving the possibility of a genuine natural theology intact, but that it may even have unhappy theological consequences.

Philosopher And Poet Deborah Slicer To Come To Iwu, Leslie Boelter

News and Events (Discontinued Series)

No abstract provided.

Learning To Live A Life That's Full, Seow Hon Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

No abstract provided.

Meaning, Philosophical Discussion Group, Armstrong State University

The Philosopher's Stone

No abstract provided.

Epistemic Relativism, Steven Luper

Philosophy Faculty Research

Epistemic relativism rejects the idea that claims can be assessed from a universally applicable, objective standpoint. It is greatly disdained because it suggests that the real 'basis' for our views is something fleeting, such as "the techniques of mass persuasion" (Thomas Kuhn 1970) or the determination of intellectuals to achieve "solidarity" (Rorty 1984) or "keep the conversation going" (Rorty 1979). But epistemic relativism, like skepticism, is far easier to despise than to convincingly refute, for two main reasons. First, its definition is unclear, so we cannot always tell where relativism leaves off and other views, such as skepticism or subjectivism, …

Payment For Egg Donation And Surrogacy, Bonnie Steinbock

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the ethics of egg donation. It begins by looking at objections to noncommercial gamete donation, and then takes up criticism of commercial egg donation. After discussing arguments based on concern for offspring, inequality, commodification, exploitation of donors, and threats to the family, I conclude that some payment to donors is ethically acceptable. Donors should not be paid for their eggs, but rather they should be compensated for the burdens of egg retrieval. Making the distinction between compensation for burdens and payment for a product has the advantages of limiting payment, not distinguishing between donors on the basis …

Why Aristotle Says There Is No Time Without Change, Tony Roark

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

The title of this paper is intended as a provocative (but friendly) reference to Ursula Coope's recent article 'Why Does Aristotle Say That There Is No Time Without Change?', which provides much of the impetus for the present paper.¹ For although Coope's strategy in answering this question is admirable, and although I think that her criticisms of the standard interpretation of the argument that opens Physics IV 11 hit their mark, I believe that her own interpretation fails and that something rather like the standard interpretation is correct. In the first section, I rehearse Coope's treatment of the standard …

Learning To Live A Life That's Full, Seow Hon Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

No abstract provided.

[Book Review Of] Living The Good Life: What Every Catholic Needs To Know About Moral Issues, By Mark Lowery, William E. May

The Linacre Quarterly

No abstract provided.

My Life As A Dog, Kent Baldner

Between the Species

No abstract provided.

Minds That Matter: Seven Degrees Of Moral Standing, Julian Friedland

Between the Species

No abstract provided.

Killing Animals That Don't Fit In: Moral Dimensions Of Habitat Restoration, Jo-Anne Shelton

Between the Species

No abstract provided.

Killing For Pleasure, Tzachi Zamir

Between the Species

This paper formulates and defends a version of moral vegetarianism. Since eating animals is not causally connected to their death, I begin with analyzing the moral status of consumer actions that do not, taken on their own, harm animals (I). I then formulate a version of moral vegetarianism (II). Three different opponents of moral vegetarianism are then distinguished and criticized (III-VI). I then take up the argument according to which eating animals benefits them (VII). I close with the question of the desirability of collective vegetarianism from the point of view of animals.

Bonhoeffer And The End Of Christian Ethics, Thomas D. Pearson

Philosophy Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Simple Solution To The Surprise Exam Paradoxes, John N. Williams

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

Consumer Subjectivity In The Age Of Internet: The Radical Concept Of Marketing Control Through Customer Relationship Management, Detlev Zwick, Nikhilesh Dholakia

College of Business Faculty Publications

In this paper, we present a poststructuralist analysis of customer database technology. This approach allows us to regard customer databases as configurations of language that produce new and significant discursive effects. In particular, we focus on the role of databases and related technologies such as customer relationship management (CRM) in the discursive construction of both customers and customer relationships. First, we argue that organizations become the authors of customer identities, using the language of the database to configure customer representation. From this perspective, we can see the radical innovation that the customer database brings to the organizational construction of its …

Realist Ennui And The Base Rate Fallacy, P.D. Magnus, Craig Callender

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

The no‐miracles argument and the pessimistic induction are arguably the main considerations for and against scientific realism. Recently these arguments have been accused of embodying a familiar, seductive fallacy. In each case, we are tricked by a base rate fallacy, one much‐discussed in the psychological literature. In this paper we consider this accusation and use it as an explanation for why the two most prominent ‘wholesale’ arguments in the literature seem irresolvable. Framed probabilistically, we can see very clearly why realists and anti‐realists have been talking past one another. We then formulate a dilemma for advocates of either argument, answer …

The Latecoming Of The Posthuman, Or, Why 'We' Do The Apocalypse Differently, 'Now', Ivan Callus, Stefan Herbrechter

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Editors' Introduction]

The paper takes its cue from a brief but pointed passage in Specters of Marx, in which Jacques Derrida describes as latecomers those who discuss the apocalypse in a manner that disregards previous discussions of the theme within philosophy and theory. Especially concerned with tracing Derrida's wariness of the beguilements of narratives of the end, Callus and Herbrecther analyze the implications of that wariness for any study of the vexed relation between the apocalyptic and the posthuman, doing so on the basis of reference to a number of the relevant essays by Derrida, but in particular to …

Toward A Posthuman Ethics, Dongshin Yi

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Editor's Introduction]

Setting a posthuman ethics as a goal toward which the collaboration of posthumanism and ethics must move, Yi in his essay, Toward a Posthuman Ethics, points out that the collaboration is detained because current debates on the cyborg harbor on the question of representations and consider how political, social and cultural problems of the human are reconfigured, and possibly resolved, by the cyborg. Thus, the debates are bound to be retrospective in approach and circular in direction, as they fail to recognize new possibilities that the cyborg may present. Arguing that the failure indicates the cyborg is being …

Stenmark, Planting A, And Scientific Neutrality, Del Ratzsch

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

In the preceding article Mikael Stenmark rejects both (a) Alvin Plantinga's specific arguments aimed at legitimating 'Augustinian' science (or more generally 'worldview-partisan' science) and (b) the legitimacy of such 'sciences' After contending further that the Augustinian-science strategy is in any case not the most appropriate response by believers to the matters motivating Plantinga's attempt, Stenmark then offers an alternative strategic proposal of his own. In the following response, I briefly raise some issues concerning Stenmark's exegesis of Plantinga, then take issue with Stenmark's philosophy of science and with the case he advances in support of his alternative proposal.