Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Perceptions Of Shifting Time: Life Crossing The Edges Of Conflict ; A Phenomenological Study Of The Changing Nature Of Worldview Schema And Temporal Constructs When Experiencing Cultural Conflict, Ian D. Edgerly

Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations

The conflict process has numerous facets and characteristics, but one of the least discussed within conflict or peace studies literature is the effect that time has upon, or within the conflict continuum. This project’s focus was the identification of changes within certain temporally sensitive worldview schema by members of the Charlotte, North Carolina area refugee community when entering cultural conflict. This exploration specifically focused on the shifts that occur between moving from their transient locations prior to coming to the United States, whether that be a refugee camp or living in another country under refugee status, and their final relocation …

Posthuman Ethics In The Science Fiction Of Rosa Montero And Rita Indiana, Brittany Frodge

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

In this dissertation I put Posthumanist theory in tension with the ‘lived’ experiences of the posthuman protagonists of two recent Science Fiction trilogies. My aim in doing so is to uncover the shortcomings of Posthumanist accounts of ethics and discover alternative paths forward.

The first chapter of my dissertation is an overview of Posthumanist theory and Science Fiction, with a particular emphasis on the contributions Hispanic authors and women have made to the genre. In the second chapter, I develop a critique of Posthumanist ethics that place the onus of ethical-political intervention on marginalized subjects through a close reading of …

Friendship In The Confucian Tradition, Andrew Lambert

Publications and Research

An overview of how friendship has been represented and assessed in the Confucian tradition, and particularly in classical Confucian texts such as the Analects and the Mencius. Themes covered include the relationship between the family and friendship, the ambivalence towards friendship in imperial China, and the connection between friendship and the Confucian ideal of personal cultivation. The chapter finishes by exploring novel conceptions of friendship and human relatedness suggested by the Confucian tradition.

Feminist Ethics And Research With Women In Prison, Christina Quinlan, Lucy Baldwin, Natalie Booth

Articles

In this article, a new model, An Ethic of Empathy, is proposed as a guide for researchers, particularly new scholars to the discipline. This model emerged from the authors’ concerns regarding the application of ethics to studies that focus on the experience of female offenders in criminal justice systems. The key issue is the vulnerability of incarcerated and post-release women in relationship to the powerful status of social scientist researchers. The complexity of ethics in such research settings necessitates a particular ethical preparation, involving formation, reflection, understanding, commitment, care, and empathy. Three cases are outlined which document the authors’ ethical …

Abortion And The Personhood Assumption: A New Defense Of Abortion On The Basis Of Self-Defense, Timothy Kirschenheiter

Wayne State University Dissertations

In this essay, I offer a new defense of abortion. I argue that even if we assume that the fetus is a person with full moral rights abortion is still generally morally permissible. For this argument, I rely on the concept of self-defense, arguing that abortion is morally permissible as a self-defensive action.

In Chapter II, I motivate the personhood assumption by finding and defending the strongest version of Don Marquis’s Future-Like-Ours Argument.

In Chapter III, I argue for the rejection of responsibility arguments in favor of the moral permissibility of abortion – the sort of arguments offered by Judith …

Why Do Rich People Not Retire?, Xiya Li

Scripps Senior Theses

Work and leisure are central to the human condition. Scholars from many fields have tried to understand why Americans work so much. Many people believe that when they have enough money, they will retire. However, many people are not willing to retire even if they have enough money to do so. Most people who do not have enough money to retire do not even get any amount of leisure from their jobs. If the view that enough money directly leads to retirement is wrong, then it is time to reconsider using this logic to think of the possibility of retiring. …

Invisible Things: An Inquiry Into The Laws Of Nature, Abigail Tulenko

Scripps Senior Theses

What are the laws of nature? Are they abstract entities that govern physical processes? Or are they merely useful summaries that describe patterns in nature? In this thesis, I explore offer arguments for the former view– what is known as inflationism regarding laws of nature. It is my hope that by excavating and evaluating the role epistemological concerns have played in this debate, we may find new avenues to break this long-standing metaphysical stalemate

Dismantling The Master's House: Epistemological Tensions And Revelatory Interventions For Reimagining A Transformational Family Science, Janine Jones, Andrea G. Hunter, Shuntay Z. Tarver

Counseling & Human Services Faculty Publications

Using Audre Lorde's The Master's Tools as an epistemic guide, we propose two practice interventions for family science (FS) transformative praxes. The first, inspired by the thought of philosopher Charles Mills, challenges FS practitioners (research, practice, and policy) to explore differences in peripheral and positivist & post‐positivist (P&PP) ideologies responsible for differences in beliefs regarding the salience or non‐salience of power differentials within FS. The second, inspired by the thought of philosopher Rudolph Carnap, encourages FS practitioners to consider differences in peripheral and P&PP practitioners' understandings of what FS is at its core, and the beliefs and actions guided by …

Being-In-Love: Kierkegaard And Existential Love, John Milkovich

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

In this essay, I argue for an adaptation of Plato and Kierkegaard’s conceptions of love based on a style of analysis I call “existential analysis.” The existential analysis requires our conceptions of things to exclude any reference to view-from-nowhere concepts. Plato and Kierkegaard both make use of view-from-nowhere concepts in their theories of love. I argue that specific features of each of these theories–namely the pursuit for infinite beauty, the Absolute Paradox, and the other-self–can be removed from their respective view-from-nowhere concepts and reinterpreted to serve as a possible foundation for a future conception of love generally understood. Although Plato …

The Concept Of Grief: A Phenomenological Account With Continual Reference To Kierkegaard, Nathan Sweetman

Honors Undergraduate Theses

My thesis argues that Søren Kierkegaard provides a perspective on grief that validates emotional experience while offering the opportunity for transcendence beyond the immediacy of grief through the work of love in recollecting one who is dead. Conventional philosophical approaches offer an incomplete picture by focusing on grief either as exclusively emotional or exclusively moral. The alternative methodology of phenomenology serves to draw out common threads from the intensely subjective, inward experience of grief. Kierkegaard’s writings on the topics of grief, sorrow, and love for the dead reflect the complexity uncovered in the phenomenological analysis. Traditional interpretations of Kierkegaard’s call …

Regenerating Agroecosystems By Overcoming Human Exceptionalism In Designing For Increased Equity Of Benefits From Ecoservices, Ali Loker, Charles A. Francis

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Our commentary explores three critical issues related to ecosystem services. First is how ecoservices are currently designed and implemented primarily for human benefit without concern for how these impact other species. We conclude that awareness of this imbalance is the first step toward meaningful change. Second we observe that human exceptionalism guides most decisions, and ask whether we can overcome this mind-set to embrace ecoregeneration and design of resilient and mutually beneficial agroecosystems. Our attitude toward the challenge and moving toward greater humility about human roles that guide management decisions in the ecosystem is a requisite for change. Third we …

An Exploration Of Secular And Christian Political Thought, Elizabeth Bradley

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Through the evaluation and comparison of Machiavellian, Nietzschean, and Christian political thought, this thesis argues that Christian thinkers effectively meet the challenges posed to them by Modern philosophers. Modern philosophers reject the teaching that ethical principles have a transcendent origin in God and instead believe that morality is merely a matter of human convention. Christian philosophy was once dominant in influencing political thought. Modern thinkers such as Machiavelli and Nietzsche wrote with the express purpose of challenging and replacing Christian thought. The Christian political tradition promotes more noble qualities in leaders than the modern philosophies which proposed to challenge it. …

Life Before Birth: A Thematic Analysis Of Memories Of Coming Into Life Part 1: Recollections Of Another Realm, Jenny Wade

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Autobiographic memories prior to birth remain controversial in psychology because such memories are traditionally believed to begin much later when some sense of self is formed. Prenatal sentience, including fetal learning, occurs in species from arthropods to humans, and evidence for autobiographic memories from pre- and neo-natal humans has typically come from clinical case histories of altered-state regression techniques eliciting records from adults or clinical case histories of children in normal states. This thematic analysis examined 68 “earliest memory” narratives submitted to an independent website to explore the question: what do people who claim to remember how they came into …

Anne Frank: The Diary Of A Young Girl (1947/1991) By Anne Frank, Alona Kharina

Young Adult Books

We can take Anne Frank’s book as an example of the accumulation and release of the trauma caused by adverse events, through conversation with ourselves, our shadow side. We can also take it as an example of forgiveness. It is possible for us, as readers, to witness life in a meager room during the war, without any external contacts. We observe Anne’s mental maturation and hear testimonies of unfriendly love for her mother and painful love for her father. Her memoir is an opportunity to explore issues of morality, faith, hope, and freedom, through the prism of the tragic experiences …

Data Science: A Study From The Scientometric, Curricular, And Altmetric Perspectives, Michael Joseph King

Selected Full Text Dissertations, 2011-

This research explores the emerging field of data science from the scientometric, curricular, and altmetric perspectives and addresses the following six research questions: 1. What are the scientometric features of the data science field? 2. What are the contributing fields to the establishment of data science? 3. What are the major research areas of the data science discipline? 4. What are the salient topics taught in the data science curriculum? 5. What topics appear in the Twitter-sphere regarding data science? 6. What can be learned about data science from the scientometric, curricular, and altmetric analyses of the data collected? Using …

Classification Accuracy Of The Quick Interactive Language Screener For Preschool Children With And Without Developmental Language Disorder, Amy Pace, Maura Curran, Amanda Owen Van Horne, Jill De Villiers, Aquiles Iglesias, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Mary S. Wilson, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek

Philosophy: Faculty Publications

This research examined the classification accuracy of the Quick Interactive Language Screener (QUILS) for identifying preschool-aged children (3;0 to 6;9) with developmental language disorder (DLD). We present data from two independent samples that varied in prevalence and diagnostic reference standard.

A Horor Theory For Introspective Consciousness, Adriana Renero, Richard Brown

Publications and Research

Higher-order theories of consciousness typically account for introspection in terms of one’s higher-order thoughts being conscious, which would require a third-order thought—i.e., a thought about a thought about a mental state. In this work, we offer an alternative account of introspection that builds on the recent Higher-Order Representation of a Representation (HOROR) theory of phenomenal consciousness. According to HOROR theory, phenomenal consciousness consists in having the right kind of higher-order representation. We claim that this theory can be extended to introspection by recognizing that there is a distinctive kind of consciousness—i.e., introspective consciousness—which can be accounted for as the theory …

Kelsen In American Political Theory, Stephen Park Turner

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Hans Kelsen’s lack of impact on political theory in the United States has been a puzzle. Kelsen arrived at a time in which several influential political ideas competed, none of which were congenial to Kelsen’s approach, and some actively opposed to it. The narrative that relativism led to Nazism; the pragmatist rejection of the fact-value distinction; the return of natural law thinking at the University of Chicago; and a very specific conflict of perspectives at Harvard, are identified as key obstacles to the acceptance of Kelsen’s view of democracy. The most important of these was associated with Carl J. Friedrich, …

Nauseated, Anguished And Ashamed: Where Did Sartre Go Wrong?, Douglas Contri

West Chester University Master’s Theses

This thesis examines Jean-Paul Sartre’s ontology and argues that his conception of consciousness as individuated nothingness is responsible for the discontented human condition he describes. It further argues that this ontology is at variance with our experience, and as such the human condition is not inevitably unhappy. Instead, a phenomenological description of consciousness as transpersonal and full is advanced. A transpersonal ontology of consciousness asserts that consciousnesses are not entirely individuated from one another, but constitutively constructed by “other” consciousnesses, which renders them full. Consciousness as transpersonal leads to a reconceptualization of the subject-other relationship as an I-as-other-other- …

A Criticism Of Retributivism: Identifying The Unavoidable And Undesirable Consequences Of Accepting Of Not Accepting “Ought Implies Can”, Samantha Bloomfield

Scripps Senior Theses

Retributivism makes two claims: the guilty deserve to be punished in proportion to their culpability, and the innocent deserve not to be punished. Through a discussion of our ineliminable susceptibility to luck, our inability to avoid epistemic fallibility, and the implications of either accepting or not accepting Ought Implies Can, I aim to identify retributivism as an inept moral theory.

The Philosophical Unconscious, John Shannon Hendrix

Architecture, Art, and Historic Preservation Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Goethe’S Faust And The Philosophy Of Money, Thimo Heisenberg

Philosophy Faculty Research and Scholarship

Philosophers today do not think of Goethe’s Faust as an important contribution to the philosophy of money. But to discount the work in this way is a mistake, I argue. Underneath Faust’s lyrical form, Goethe develops a comprehensive view of money that came to be an important influence on left-wing (Karl Marx) and right-wing (Oswald Spengler) discussions of money. Centrally, Goethe argues that modern economic practices have transformed money obsession (long conceived of primarily as an individual vice) into a structural problem: social structures are now set up to systematically require individuals to engage in quasi-obsessive behaviors towards …

Fichte And Hegel On Free Time, Thimo Heisenberg

Philosophy Faculty Research and Scholarship

To us today, it seems intuitive that an ideal society would secure for its citizens some time for leisure that is, some time to do “whatever they want” after having attended to their various responsibilities and natural needs. But, in this essay, I argue that—in 19th century social philosophy—the status of leisure (Muße) in an ideal society was actually surprisingly controversial: whereas J.G. Fichte makes a strong case for leisure as part of an ideal society (going even so far as considering it its central good), G.W.F. Hegel implicitly argues against this idea. For him, leisure is …

The Liberatory Potential Of Fashion, David Billie Suoth

Honors Theses and Capstones

Fashion has the potential to be liberatory and this can be seen in the ways fashion has been targeted by systems of oppression. Fashion is the use of clothes as a vessel to create a greater social meaning. According to Edward Sapir, the meaning of fashion “while it is primarily applied to dress and the exhibition of the human body is not essentially concerned with the fact of dress or ornament, but with its symbolism” (Barnard, 2007, p. 65). Fashion with the symbolism behind it is able to show the sentiments and attitudes of civilization at different points in history …

Le Secret D’Une Pyramide : Diderot, La Double Doctrine Et L’Encyclopédie, Rudy Le Menthéour

French and Francophone Studies Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Puzzle Of Fictional Resemblance, Jeffrey C. Goodman

Faculty Scholarship

This paper discusses a puzzle, the heart of which is this question: How is it that real individuals can resemble fictional individuals?  It seems that any answer given by one who has taken a stand on the ontology of fictional individuals will come with significant drawbacks.  An Anti-Realist will have to explain, or explain away, the apparent truth of our positive assertions of resemblance, while a Realist will have to explain how we are to understand resemblance in light of either the further claim that fictional characters are not associated with properties in the same way real individuals are, or …

Fictional Universal Realism, Jeffrey C. Goodman

Faculty Scholarship

Certain realists about properties and relations identify them with universals.  Furthermore, some hold that for a wide range of meaningful predicates, the semantic contribution to the propositions expressed by the sentences in which those predicates figure is the universal expressed by the predicate.  I here address ontological issues raised by predicates first introduced to us via works of fiction and whether the universal realist should accept that any such predicates express universals.  After discussing the lines of reasoning given by Braun (2015) and Sawyer (2015) for fictional universal anti-realism, I propose a novel, Kripke-inspired argument for the same.  I ultimately …

A Qualitative Examination Of Single-Parent Matriarchal Homes’ Influence On Gang Membership, Darryl Edwards

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

There is a problem in the city of Chicago. Gangs are responsible for a substantial percentage of violent crimes in most jurisdictions. This study examined how and to what extent single-parent matriarchal households influenced African American men between 18 and 25 to join gangs in Chicago. This study’s theoretical foundations were matriarchal theory and critical race theory. This qualitative study’s research design is heuristic phenomenology design. An in-depth interview method was employed using purposeful and snowball sampling of 20 participants; in-depth interviews were conducted using telephone technology. This study, which investigated the connection between being raised in a single-parent matriarchal …

Candles, Stoners, Emotions, Oh My!, Ashley Gruca

Emerging Writers

This paper focuses on the topic of our language constantly changing while using the word “lit” to show this. Analysis of examples from personal experience like yearbook signings as well as lyrics from Travis Scott songs demonstrate how a word's meaning can shift depending on its generational context.

A Bad Time To Name Your Pet: Pet Names In The Age Of Witches, Evan Velez

Emerging Writers

In early America, there were many strange superstitions about witches. Colonists looked for all sorts of forms of witchcraft “evidence”. According to The Penguin Book of Witches, the nature of pet names may have served as an unconscious form of evidence (Howe 239). While the author thought of this suggestion as a form of social logic, this essay investigates it as a phenomenon of language. Pet names had a key role in influencing negative feelings towards animals labeled as “familiars.” This affected colonists’ perceptions of an animal, and resulted in the familiar eventually becoming a hated “pet.”