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Issue Introduction By Icll Director Glen Phillips, Glen Phillips

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

General Introduction by ICLL Director Glen Phillips

Complete Issue 1, Volume 9

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

The complete issue 1 of volume 9, Landscapes Journal.

The Profoundest Problem Of Ethics: About The Possibility Of A Profound Solution, Pol Pardini Gispert

LSU Master's Theses

My thesis is concerned with the prospects for finding a solution to what Henry Sidgwick called the Profoundest Problem of Ethics. I begin by analysing Sidgwick’s The Methods of Ethics to reveal the assumptions about rationality that led Sidgwick to claim that Ethics is plagued with a profoundest problem. I then evaluate the capacity of seven accounts – those of Derek Parfit, Roger Crisp, David Brink, David Phillips, William Frankena, Owen McLeod, and Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer – to solve the Profoundest Problem of Ethics; arguing that not one is able to solve it. In the conclusion, I …

Hegelian Political Theater, Cade M. Olmstead

Research in the Capitol

What could politics, theater, and the project of German idealism all hold in common?This research seeks to explore the usage of comedy in modern political discourse through the perspectives of theater and German idealist philosophy.

It begins with an analysis of ancient Greek theater by the philosopher G.W.F. Hegel, applies this reading to the 2013 Turkish Gezi Park protests, and ultimately makes a normative claim about comedy’s use in public discourse and proper democratic politics.

Reoccupy Earth [Table Of Contents], David Wood

Philosophy & Theory

Habit rules our lives. And yet climate change and the catastrophic future it portends, makes it clear that we cannot go on like this.

Our habits are integral to narratives of the good life, to social norms and expectations, as well as to economic reality. Such shared shapes are vital. Yet while many of our individual habits seem perfectly reasonable, when aggregated together they spell disaster. Beyond consumerism, other forms of life and patterns of dwelling are clearly possible. But how can we get there from here?

Philosophy is about emancipation—from illusions, myths, and oppression. In Reoccupy Earth, the noted …

Fys: Ethics And Technology (Phil 07/Cpsc 15) Syllabus, Ameet Soni, Krista Karbowski Thomason

Digital Humanities Curricular Development

There has been an accelerated shift in the influence of computing technology and the use of algorithms in our daily lives. With this technology comes serious ethical questions. Philosophers are often well-equipped to wrestle with ethical questions, but less well-equipped to wrestle with questions of technology itself. Computer scientists are well-equipped to deal with the problems and challenges of technology, but less well-equipped to deal with the ethical problems and challenges that technology can pose. In this co-taught course, we bring together the two fields to address ethical questions involving social media, data mining, self-driving cars, artificial intelligence, and other …

Volume 1: Eudaimonia, Dana Chen, Shailee Shah, Aleksandr Smirnov, Maryellen Stohlman-Vanderveen

Sátya

PSYCHE Eudaimonia at Smith College seeks to encourage human flourishing among undergraduate students by opening them to the pursuit of wisdom that is strongly encouraged by Smith’s liberal art curriculum. Moreover, since today’s various disciplines originated from the study of “philosophy”, Smith’s philosophy department seeks to bring together the different disciplines into unique synergies.

Fishy Reasoning And The Ethics Of Eating, Mylan Engel Jr.

Between the Species

Ethical vegetarians believe that it is morally wrong to eat meat. Yet, many self-ascribed “ethical vegetarians” continue to eat fish. The question I explore here is this: Can one coherently maintain that it is morally wrong to eat meat, but morally permissible to eat fish? I argue that it is morally inconsistent for ethical vegetarians to eat fish, not on the obvious yet superficial ground that fish flesh is meat, but on the morally substantive ground that fish are sentient intelligent beings capable of experiencing morally significant pain and thus deserve moral consideration equal to that owed birds and mammals.

Lab Practicum For Bias In Algorithms, Ameet Soni, Krista Karbowski Thomason

Digital Humanities Curricular Development

This is a course assignment to demonstrate potential biases encoded in algorithms (this can be linked more specifically to natural language processing, machine learning, or artificial intelligence) using the Word Embedding Association Test. In lab, students will work with programs that demonstrate the usefulness of word embedding algorithms in finding relationships between words. Then, students will use an implementation of the algorithm in "Semantics derived automatically from language corpora contain human-like biases" by Caliskan et al. to detect gender and racial bias encoded in word embeddings. The assignment has students design and run an experiment using the WEAT algorithm to …

Empathy: What Is It, What Is It Good For?, Colleen Dougherty

Senior Honors Projects

Many people believe that empathy is necessary for being morally “good”, such that empathy is fundamental to our moral sense. Yet, there is much debate about what empathy is and whether or not it is, in fact, a good thing. My goal is to explore and evaluate this debate. In the first part of the paper, I discuss common misconceptions of empathy and provide a taxonomy of different sorts of empathy. I will then address whether empathy is good by evaluating the arguments for and against empathy from David Hume, Michael Slote, Jesse Prinz, Paul Bloom, Peter Goldie, and Denise …

Perception: Exploring Cognition And Consciousness Through Visual Art, Summer Shepherd

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

The concept of consciousness has perplexed humankind for thousands of years. Countless scientists, philosophers, and artists have devoted their lifetimes to solving humanity’s questions about our relationship with the world we live within. The creative arts, such as music, theater, and visual art, can facilitate critical thinking and meaningful interpersonal communication. This paper explores the visual artwork of the author, Sunny Shepherd, through examination of historical and contemporary artistic influences on the work, as well as the psychological and philosophical concepts that fuel it. Months of research, planning, and creating went into the manifestation of the final exhibition, Metamorphosis , …

Science, Values, Traditional/Indigenous Knowledge And Dialogue Of Saberes, Hugh Lacey

Philosophy Faculty Works

This article discusses the possibility of a constructive dialogue between modern science and traditional/indigenous saberes, including the saberes of the Traditional peoples of Latin America. The argument developed here depends on interpreting science in terms of multi-strategic research [P-MS]: it makes use of the distinction between decontextualizing strategies (SDs) and contest-sensitive strategies (SCs) and the theses: the methodological strategies adopted in research projects can vary with the characteristics of the objects being investigated; there are relations of mutual reinforcement between the adoption of a strategy and adherence to particular ethical and social values; there are limits on the types of …

Humor, Power And Culture: A New Theory On The Experience And Ethics Of Humor, Jennifer Marra

Dissertations (1934 -)

The aim of this dissertation is to offer a new theory of humor that takes seriously both the universality and power of humor in culture. In the first chapter, I summarize historical and contemporary theories, and show how each either 1) fails to give any definition of humor, 2) fails as a theory of humor, and/or 3) underappreciates, dismisses, or does not consider the power of humor in experience. The second chapter explains the failures of prior theories by understanding the problem in terms of Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms. These forms of culture are perspectives through which we …

Noncombatant Immunity And The Ethics Of Blockade, Robert Mayer

Political Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This paper counters Michael Walzer’s argument against tight blockades. It shows that the interdiction of food shipments need not violate the principle of noncombatant immunity. Whether it is morally permissible to impose a strict blockade depends on the circumstances of the target state. The more self-sufficient a country is, the more acceptable it should be for a belligerent to cut the enemy’s external lines of supply. The Allied blockade of Germany during the First World War illustrates the argument. Fault in this case should be assigned to the German government for the loss of civilian lives.

La Situación Actual Del Lenguaje Inclusivo De Género En Valparaíso, Chile, Madison Liistro

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

In the last three or so years, the concept of a gender inclusive language has begun to take form in Chile for the first time. The juxtaposition of the prevalence of gender in the Spanish language with a society that is slowly learning to accept the existence of gender in more than two forms and the equal recognition and treatment of people of all genders is striking. This phenomenon has led to proposals for an inclusive language in various government institutions and activist groups. These proposals vary from using the letter x or e to replace the gendered a/o in …

Endangered Danger: Christianity, Affect, And Harmless Snakes In Samoa, Ariel Abonizio G. S.

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The Candoia bibroni (Pacific Boa), is a non-venomous Samoan snake that recently become an endangered species, possibly due to human killing on sight. This interdisciplinary research investigates how Pacific Boa came to be perceived as dangerous animals that need to be killed. Following snake tracks through the history of Samoa and into the present, this research suggests that the relationship between Samoans and the Pacific Boa questions the simple binaries of real/imagined, material/semiotic, subjective/objective, and material/immaterial. Particularly with the introduction of Christianity by missionaries in the early-1800s, the Pacific Boa snake came to inhabit the liminal space between these apparent …

Reconsidering What Nietzsche Meant By The Same In The Doctrine Of The Eternal Recurrence, Wilhelm Patrick Joseph S. Strebel

Philosophy Department Faculty Publications

Hermeneutical considerations involving the nuances of words in translation have a bearing in interpreting philosophical concepts. Stambaugh highlighted the eternal in Nietzsche as well as the meaning of the Same in the doctrine of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same. As translation of the German word das Gleiche, she provided important considerations regarding the nuances of das Gleiche and the sense of how the English word “the same” could capture as well as leave out some meanings in the original. This paper builds on Stambaugh’s observations by providing a linguistic analysis of das Gleiche to open up to how it …

Wittgenstein And Embodied Cognition: A Critique Of The Language Of Thought, Amber Sheldon

Keck Undergraduate Humanities Research Fellows

The assertions of this paper will be concerned with language acquisition as it is presented in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations in contrast with Jerry Fodor’s theory of tacit language described in The Language of Thought. This symbolic mental language is often analogized with the symbolic “language” of a computer. Fodor theorizes that the mind has an innate symbolic (and physically real) system of representation that comes prior to any natural language. Famously, with the private language argument, Wittgenstein contends that language is performed and produced by activity. One learns a language through practice and participation. In this paper, …

Reworking The White-Masculine Ideal, Steven H. Gonzalez

Art Theses and Dissertations

This text functions as an exploration of self through artistic practice, a designated space for reflection on contemporary Queer experience. In looking specifically at the permeation of the idealized-white-masculine figure as found within Western visual culture, social media and gay pornography become isolated as sites where these figures are commonly found. This line of inquiry defines how the ideal is reified through these differing digital platforms and the social implications the homogenized male form has on raced individuals. In addition to determining the image of the perfect masculine physique through research, this text expands on how its' imaged representation becomes …

Thesis/Thesis Document 2, Jessamyn Plotts

Art Theses and Dissertations

Thesis/thesis document 2 explores the subversive power of the painted image, made by a physical performative act. Such acts are not confined to the production of the art object, but expand across the landscape, involving the minds, bodies, and things of culture adjacent to the making process. Following the thinking of Maurice-Merleau Ponty, Thesis/thesis document 2 understands painting not as the container of a finite, legible message, but as a physical platform for the conveyance of perceptual, personal, and experiential ambiguity. Made in this way, painted images offer a powerful alternative to the proliferation of propaganda and advertisement …

Faith And Disbelief, Robert K. Whitaker

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

Is faith that p compatible with disbelief that p? I argue that it is. After surveying some recent literature on the compatibility of propositional (so-called faith-that) and non-propositional (faith-in) forms of faith with the lack of belief, I take the next step and offer several arguments for the thesis that both these forms of faith are also compatible, in certain cases, with outright disbelief. This is contrary to the views of some significant recent commentators on propositional faith, including Robert Audi and Daniel Howard-Snyder. The primary argument revolves around the possibility of maintaining a single faith through drastic changes in …

What Does It Mean To Move For Black Lives?, Kimberly Ann Harris

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

I argue that the key ideas of the movement for Black lives have resonances with Frantz Fanon's ideas particularly in Black Skin, White Masks. I first demonstrate how the mission to repudiate Black demise and affirm Black humanity captures Fanon's critique of universal humanism. The fear of the Black body was central to the testimonies of Darren Wilson, Jeronimo Yanez, and George Zimmerman (the individuals that shot and killed Mike Brown, Philando Castile, and Trayvon Martin respectively). Fanon prioritized the role of the body in his account of racism. It is difficult to not see the relevance of Fanon's analysis …

Epistemic Dimensions Of Gaslighting: Peer-Disagreement, Self-Trust, And Epistemic Injustice, Andrew D. Spear

Open Access Publishing Support Funded Articles

Miranda Fricker has characterized epistemic injustice as “a kind of injustice in which someone is wronged specifically in her capacity as a knower” (2007, Epistemic injustice: Power & the ethics of knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 20). Gaslighting, where one agent seeks to gain control over another by undermining the other’s conception of herself as an independent locus of judgment and deliberation, would thus seem to be a paradigm example. Yet, in the most thorough analysis of gaslighting to date (Abramson, K. 2014. “Turning up the lights on gaslighting.” Philosophical Perspectives 28, Ethics: 1–30), the idea that …

Wolves Are Wild: A Collection Of Narratives About Rescued Wolves And Wolfdogs, Molly G. Vorhaus

Student Publications

Breeders across the country are creating wolfdogs by breeding dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) with wolves (Canis lupus) for a large profit. This project is a response to the growing exotic pet trade of wolves and wolfdogs. Through this project, I hope to bring awareness to the issues associated with these animals being raised in captivity. Recent research has shown that raising a wolf or wolfdog in captivity can lead to various negative psychological and physical effects on the animal, and can cause potential problems for humans as well. This practice is embedded in the concept of humans wanting to own …

Towards A New Paradigm In Psychiatry, Jennifer Lin

Senior Honors Theses

The reductionist tenets of the biomedical model of mental illness generate research methods and clinical practices that neglect significant cultural elements of mental illness. The biomedical model is reductionist because it assumes a view of the mind that lends itself to biological reductionism. Developing a more holistic model of mental illness requires replacing the accepted view of mind with a new one. In this paper, research demonstrating the significance of culture to mental illness will be reviewed in order to illuminate the flaws of the biomedical model. The extended mind theory will be analyzed and discussed as a potential basis …

Course Syllabus (Sp19) Coli 214b--Literature & Society: "A.I. And Other Radical Humanisms In Cyberpunk And Science Fiction", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Course Description:

As that which we call “technology” continues to evolve as both concept and practice, we discover ever more inventive ways to answer its call, and science fiction seems to serve as a universal standpoint from which global societies manage to confront, question, and reimagine the nature of our shared humanity as a radically technical relation. While the growing social pervasiveness of artificial intelligence and the attendant encoded transformations of “the human” appear, together, to form a relatively absolute horizon of political thinking, social agency, and aesthetic experience, it seems certain that our current crisis also offers us …

On The Lived Experience Of Truth In An Era Of Educational Reform: Co-Responding To Anti-Intellectualism, Matthew J. Kruger-Ross

Educational Foundations & Policy Studies Faculty Publications

The severity of the challenges made to traditionally and historically accepted understandings of truth, what is true, what is false and “fake,” and even what is real, continues unabated in American public discourse. Nevertheless, the primary argument in this paper does not aim to identify the causes of the breakdown of representation (i.e. in the Trump administration, within the education reform movement) and the correspondence-based conceptions of truth. Instead, the focus is on discussing the hermeneutic phenomenology of Martin Heidegger and offering a conceptualization of truth as lived and experienced. Challenges to truth are to be understood not as an …

Critical Embodied Praxis For Social Justice And Peace Educators: A Story Of Personal Transformation Through Analysis Of My Jewish And Settler Identities, Cara Michelle Silverberg

Capstone Collection

In this paper, I examine definitions of and relationships between violence, oppression, peace, liberation, and embodiment in the context of critical pedagogy in order to construct a theory of critical embodied praxis for social justice and peace educators. Considering the body to be a tangible vessel through which narratives and mechanisms of violence are expressed and maintained, I explore the potential of the body to be a vessel through which liberatory narratives may be generated and shared. After constructing a theory of critical embodied praxis, I illustrate this framework in action through a personal narrative that explores the intersections …

Integrity And Its Relationship To Morality, Hyun Jeong Kang

Theses and Dissertations

Some scholars take it for granted that one’s possession of integrity has nothing to do with one’s moral quality whereas others believe that they are no doubt intertwined. Hume, for instance, holds that a person who ambitiously tries to gain a great achievement can still be a person of integrity even if he is dishonest with others. Plato’s concept of integrity can be formulated in the way that a person with morally vicious commitments has disunity in his soul and fails to possess integrity. In order to decide which side is right, I suggest that we examine the most promising …

Disclosing Virtue, Michael Zahorec

Honors Theses

This project is about the shape of our moral understanding and discourse. Herein, I describe the moral discourse and understanding afforded through narrative. I understand narrative as both a medium of discourse (i.e. storytelling) and a mode of understanding (i.e. a way to understand oneself, others, and the world(s) in which we find ourselves). In order to describe the ethical understanding and discourse constructed through narrative, I use the meta-ethical framework of Aristotelian virtue theory. The language of virtue theory constitutes the framework upon which I construct my argument regarding the irreplaceable and efficacious nature of narrative. The preface tells …