Arts and Humanities Commons^™

A Defense Of Creationism In Fiction, Jeffrey C. Goodman

Faculty Scholarship

Creationism is the conjunction of the following theses: (i) fictional individuals (e.g. Sherlock Holmes) actually exist; (ii) fictional names (e.g., ‘Holmes’) are at least sometimes genuinely referential; (iii) fictional individuals are the creations of the authors who first wrote (or spoke, etc.) about them.  CA Creationism is the conjunction of (i) – (iii) and the following thesis: (iv) fictional individuals are contingently existing abstracta; they are non-concrete artifacts of our world and various other possible worlds.  Takashi Yagisawa has recently provided a number of arguments designed to show that Creationism is unjustified.  I here critically examine three of his challenges …

Guarding Moral Boundaries: Shame In Early Confucianism, Jane Geaney

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Claims that China is a ‘‘shame culture’’ tend to presume that guilt is the superior moral motivation. Such claims characterize guilt as internally motivated and operative even if no outsider is aware of any wrongdoing. By contrast, they assume that shame occurs only when someone is observed. The observer represents the moral opinion of an outsider, and, as a result, shame is said to be externally motivated. In this view, genuinely moral motivation is internal. Internality is seen as a requirement for moral autonomy (the ability to make decisions independent of particular social norms), and only guilt cultures are thought …

Offering A Frame To Put Experience In: Margaret Wise Brown Presents Ideas As Opportunities To Very Young Children, Peter Shea

Collected Papers of Peter Shea

In this essay I discuss Margaret Wise Brown’s picture books as tools for provoking philosophic reflection in young children and as meditations on the situation of the very young child and on the reflective work of the young child at a time when language is still new and fresh. Some of her work concerns the most fundamental negotiation in personal philosophy—the negotiation of an attitude to the outside world, to those realities beyond one's control, beyond one's zone of comfort.

Die Archivierung Des Husserlschen Nachlasses 1933—1935, Sebastian Luft

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

The Song Sparrow And The Child: Claims Of Science And Humanity, Joseph Vining

Books

For centuries public claims on behalf of science have been made about our nature and the nature of the world as a whole. Over the twentieth century such claims on behalf of science have grown deeper and stronger. More and more they are total claims, cosmological in the largest sense, and they have evoked opposition equally deep and strong.

There is the scientist in all of us. There is, too, the lawyer and law in all of us, which we realize the moment we serve as a witness or citizen juror. This book explores what the legal mind and ear …

Avantgarda In Medijske Umetnosti, Curtis Carter

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Resentment And Assurance, Margaret Urban Walker

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

“Real-Idealism”: An Unorthodox Husserlian Response To The Question Of Transcendental Idealism, Sebastian Luft

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Ways Of World Making: J.R.R. Tolkien, Curtis Carter

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Husserl's Phenomenological Reduction Revisited: An Attempt Of A Renewed Account, Sebastian Luft

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

This essay attempts a renewed, critical exposition of Husserl’s theory of the phenomenological reduction, incorporating manuscript material that has been published since the defining essays of the first generation of Husserl research. The discussion focuses on points that remain especially crucial, i. e. the concept of the natural attitude, the ways into the reduction, and the question of the “meaning of the reduction”. The reading attempted here leads to two, not necessarily related, focal points: a Cartesian and a Life-world tendency. In following these two paths, Husserl was consistent in pursuing two evident leads in his philosophical enterprise; however, he …

Conceptual Art: A Base For Global Art Or The End Of Art?, Curtis Carter

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Husserl’S Theory Of The Phenomenological Reduction: Between Life-World And Cartesianism, Sebastian Luft

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

This essay attempts a renewed, critical exposition of Husserl's theory of the phenomenological reduction, incorporating manuscript material that has been published since the defining essays of the first generation of Husserl research. The discussion focuses on points that remain especially crucial, i.e., the concept of the natural attitude, the ways into the reduction (and their systematics), and finally the question of the "meaning of the reduction." Indeed, in the reading attempted here, this final question leads to two, not necessarily related, focal points: a Cartesian and a Life-world tendency. It is my claim that in following these two paths, Husserl …

Socratic Pedagogy, Critical Thinking, Moral Reasoning And Inmate Education: An Exploratory Study, Peter Boghossian

Dissertations and Theses

This exploratory study examines the hypothesis that Socratic pedagogy is a useful tool for imparting critical thinking and moral reasoning skills to inmates. The study explores the effectiveness of a new curriculum, Introducing Socrates, which relies on Socratic pedagogy to achieve its objectives. The curriculum draws from the effective criminal justice research on cognitive education to determine its objectives, and then looks to the Platonic dialogues to find broad philosophical questions that tie into those objectives. The program also evaluates salient criticisms of Socratic pedagogy that are found in the educational and philosophical literature, and then isolates and evaluates constructs …

The Status Of Ethics In Technology Education, Philip A. Reed, Susan Presley, Angela Hughes, Diane Irwin Stephens, Roger B. Hill (Ed.)

STEMPS Faculty Publications

Ethics is not a new concept within technology education. The inclusion of ethics evolved naturally from the progression of technological activity in the latter part of the twentieth century. During this shift to a postindustrial society, people started to look at technology from a more humanistic view than they previously had. To keep pace with these changes, a "new ethic" was suggested to help advance technological literacy by highlighting the relationship between humans, the environment, and technology (DeVore, 1980, 1991).

How far have we come? This chapter reviews the current state of ethics within technology education. In the first two …

Posthumous Harm, Steven Luper

Philosophy Faculty Research

According to Epicurus (1966a,b), neither death, nor anything that occurs later, can harm those who die, because people who die are not made to suffer as a result of either. In response, many philosophers (e.g., Nagel 1970, Feinberg 1984, and Pitcher 1984) have argued that Epicurus is wrong on both counts. They have defended the mortem thesis: death may harm those who die. They have also defended the post-mortem thesis: posthumous events may harm people who die. Their arguments for this joint view are by now quite familiar, and there is no need to rehearse them here (for …

Hegel's Defense Of The Ontological Argument For The Existence Of God, Kevin Joseph Harrelson

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

The following dissertation is a study of the "ontological proof' for God's existence, specifically of the controversy concerning this proof from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. As the title indicates, the primary theme is Hegel's defense and reformulation of the proof. I argue for a metaphysical interpretation of Hegel's Science of Logic, by showing that one of Hegel's chief goals in the Logic is to provide a demonstration for the thesis that "necessary existence belongs to God's nature." I conclude that while Hegel offers a coherent and informative account of this thesis, his analysis does not overcome one of …

Confronting Pornography: Some Conceptual Basics, Rebecca Whisnant

Philosophy Faculty Publications

There can be no doubt, at this moment in history, that pornography is a truly massive industry saturating the human community. According to one set of numbers, the US porn industry's revenue went from $7 million in 1972 to $8 billion in 1996 ... and then to $12 billion in 2000.

Now I'm no economist, and I understand about inflation, but even so, it seems to me that a thousand-fold increase in a particular industry's revenue within 25 years is something that any thinking person has to come to grips with. Something is happening in this culture, and no person's …

Woman Centered: A Feminist Ethic Of Responsibility, Rebecca Whisnant

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Feminists have been especially concerned, of course, with the particular personal and moral perils that may be associated with the sociopolitical situation( s) of women. In particular, as many have observed, the cultural assignment of women to various forms of "caring labor" can be harmful to women, both individually and collectively, by rendering them dangerously vulnerable to exploitation. Women who fail to rein in their "caring" for others may maintain relationships at all costs (including to themselves), avoid legitimate self-assertion in order to keep the peace, devote their energies to others at the expense of seIf-development, and protect even those …

Not For Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution And Pornography, Christine Stark, Rebecca Whisnant

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Including the latest research on prostitution and pornography, this essay anthology shows how the sex industries harm those within them while undermining the possibilities for gender justice, human equality, and stable sexual relationships. From sex industry survivors to social activists and theorists such as Taylor Lee, Adriene Sere, and Kristen Anderberg, this volume addresses from a feminist perspective the racism, poverty, militarism, and corporate capitalism of selling sex through strip clubs, brothels, mail-order brides, and child pornography.

Africa's Quest For A Philosophy Of Decolonization, Messay Kebede

Philosophy Faculty Publications

This book discovers freedom in the colonial idea of African primitiveness. As human transcendence, freedom escapes the drawbacks of otherness, as defended by ethnophilosophy, while exposing the idiosyncratic inspiration of Eurocentric universalism. Decolonization calls for the reconnection with freedom, that is, with myth-making understood as the inaugural act of cultural pluralism. The cultural condition of modernization emerges when the return to the past deploys the future.

Moral Psychology: Feminist Ethics And Social Theory, Peggy Desautels, Margaret Urban Walker

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Book abstract: Moral psychology studies the features of cognition, judgement, perception, and emotion that make human beings capable of moral action. Perspectives from feminist and race theory immensely enrich moral psychology. Writers who take these perspectives ask questions about mind, feeling, and action in contexts of social difference and unequal power and opportunity. These essays by a distinguished international cast of philosophers explore moral psychology as it connects to social life, scientific studies, and literature.

Chapter abstract: Most of us view ourselves as having moral commitments and expect that when given the opportunity, we will follow through on these commitments. …

Kant And The Logic Of Aristotle, Kurt Mosser

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In the Preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant offers his best-known—indeed, notorious—remark about Aristotle's logic:

• Since Aristotle . . . logic has not been able to advance a single step, and is thus to all appearance a closed and completed doctrine (Bviii).1

I wish to explore here the following question: is Kant in fact saying that since Aristotle, there need be no more concern about logic as a discipline or a field of study, that Aristotle (with some minor embellishments, in terms of presentation) is the last word in logic? Certainly that is how …

Jefferson's Wall And The Question Of Religion, Lois M. Eveleth

Faculty and Staff - Articles & Papers

Defining religion as morality, Thomas Jefferson considered religion essential for the unity of the United States. His casual wall metaphor is not representative of his thinking and, therefore, should not be a basis for constitutional interpretation.

Rotating The Axis Of Our Investigation: Wittgenstein's Investigations And Hölderlin's Poetology, Richard Thomas Eldridge

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Julius Rosenberg And The Ethics Of The Old Left, Richard Schuldenfrei

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Reading Lolita In Tehran By Azar Nafisi, Rory J. Conces

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Azar Nafisi, now the Director of the Dialogue Project at John Hopkins University, does a fine job in this book of piecing together her life as an academic, especially the last two years of her residence in Tehran when she embarked on an adventure to supplement the education of a select group of university students. Reading Lolita in Tehran is a multilayered memoir about teaching Western literature in revolutionary Iran in the late 1990s.

Faith-Science Issues: An Epistomological Perspective, E. Edward Zinke

Journal of the Adventist Theological Society

No abstract provided.

Discussing The Allegedly Democratic Nature Of Judicial Review, Eddie Sarnowski

All Volumes (2001-2008)

Defined as the function of the court to interpret and apply the constitution to particular circumstances and legal issues, judicial review has become a noteworthy expression of the power of the judiciary. Nearly 200 years old, this seemingly simple doctrine has instigated a substantial amount of political controversy and debate from which three individuals should be recognized for their contributions. Ronald Dworkin, a proponent of judicial activism, believes in “leaving issues to the court’s judgment” and investing our faith in their decisions (Dworkin 526). Supporting Dworkin, John Arthur asserts that judicial review promotes democracy, and more importantly, imposes safeguards against …

Berkeley’S Idealist Theory Of Knowledge And Whether Or Not Empiricism Can Lead To Idealism, Stacey Macpherson

All Volumes (2001-2008)

George Berkeley is perhaps one of the most unique and intriguing figures in the history of modern philosophy. Dissatisfied with and angered by the materialist philosophies of his contemporaries, especially the ideas of John Locke,
Berkeley called for a return to "common sense." But "common sense," for Berkeley, involved not just a skeptical view of materialism, but the assertion that the material world does not exist at all! Berkeley utilizes persuasive logical arguments and empiricist principles in order to refute the existence of matter. However, when he attempts to account for what does exist, he makes a startling claim which …

Environmentalism And Zen Buddhism, Shari Jaymes

All Volumes (2001-2008)

It seems as though Buddhism, and further Zen Buddhism, may offer ecology or environmentalism or conservationism (or any other “ism” in relation to the preservation of the natural world) a new perspective upon the problem of implementing a “land ethic.” There are many reasons to believe this, as the following work will show. I hope to determine whether or not Zen can be considered an ecological discipline.
Does it make a contribution (negative or positive) to a land ethic? And further, what does Zen think of the conservation movement? What does environmentalism think of Zen?