Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Cognition And Sensation: A Reconstruction Of Herder’S Quasi-Empiricism, Philip Yaure

Episteme

No abstract provided.

Losing And Regaining The Self Through Language: Individuation In Nietzsche’S Creative Use Of Metaphor, Maximilian Chaoulideer

Episteme

No abstract provided.

Kantian Realism, Jake Quilty-Dunn

Episteme

No abstract provided.

Against Fodor, Rafael Ventura

Episteme

No abstract provided.

Problems Of Kierkegaard’S Poetics, Thomas Gilbert

Episteme

No abstract provided.

Three Criticisms Of Schopenhauer And A Response From The Advaita Vedantins, Brian York

Episteme

No abstract provided.

Spurious Soul: A Modern Critique Of The Thomistic Soul, Eric Chase

Episteme

No abstract provided.

Editor's Note, Sean Walt

Episteme

No abstract provided.

The Kantian And Hegelian Sublime, Yena Lee

Episteme

No abstract provided.

Choice And Practical Identity In Korsgaard’S Ethics, Joseph Carlsmith

Episteme

No abstract provided.

Belief, Statements And Testimony, Richard Garzon

Episteme

No abstract provided.

Time And Consciousness: A Phenomenological View, Robert Osborne

Episteme

Apart from our uses of time, in what way does time really exist? Given two possible assumptions—time is objective and time is subjective—the author argues that time is not objective and empirical but rather phenomenologically ideal. The negative argument critiques Sydney Shoemaker’s thought-experiment about changeless time intervals, finding it too radically imagined and containing conceptual conflation. The positive argument invokes Kant’s thoughts on the Transcendental Illusion and Robert K. C. Forman’s knowledge-by-identity theory. Furthermore, the author describes a thought experiment meant to counter Shoemaker’s. In conclusion, Occam’s razor and the author’s logic prefer time as subjective over time as objective: …

Surpassing Estrangement: The Reconciliation Between Species Being And Subjective Architectonics In Benjamin, Michael Nail

Episteme

The author shows how Walter Benjamin modified Marx’s core concepts of a capitalist political economy given the 20th century reality of double estrangement. Benjamin takes Marx’s dehumanized being as also the creation of opportunities for the laborer’s capital to work for (not just against) him—they create the architechtonics of his life. Benjamin adjusts the notion of species being by introducing the distinction between individual and mass consciousness, and he argues that the commodity mediates between the two realms, of which the subject is the object of the world of commodities directly determined by a subconscious collective that can be more …

Telesemantics And The Believer, Taylor Hamrick

Episteme

The paper concerns itself with Low-Level teleosemantics, a naturalized theory of intentionality designed to indicate which biological devices and which description are most immediate (and least sophisticated) to how an organism’s (such as a frog) representational system properly functions. The author argues for how Karen Neander’s approach solves Fodor’s indeterminacy problem. The author thoroughly responds to the objection that the Low-Level theory cannot generalize up to more sophisticated mental contents, such as belief-desire human psychology. He introduces a few tools, strategies, and considerations that extend the Low-Level theory, making it possible to increase mental state complexity by moving from action-oriented …

Prostitution And Casual Sex: An Examination Of Kantian Ethics And The Moral Acceptability Of Prostitution, John Mcdaniel

Episteme

This paper concerns the ethics of prostitution. It begins with David Benatar’s distinction between “significant” and “casual” sex. Kant’s understanding of sex—fraught with worries about ends, autonomy, and objectification—falls under the significance view of sex, even more “special” because it seems to hold that sex is only morally acceptable within marriage. But this untenable position exposes an inconsistency in Kant’s thoughts on personhood and possession. Singer offers a preferable view of sex as sustenance. The author next argues that the service of prostitution is ethical so long as the prostitute’s job and her or his personal life remain distinct, the …

What Kind Of Is-Ought Gap Is There And What Kind Ought There Be?, P.D. Magnus, Jon Mandle

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

Some philosophers think that there is a gap between is and ought which necessarily makes normative enquiry a different kind of thing than empirical science. This position gains support from our ability to explicate our inferential practices in a way that makes it impermissible to move from descriptive premises to a normative conclusion. But we can also explicate them in a way that allows such moves. So there is no categorical answer as to whether there is or is not a gap. The question of an is-ought gap is a practical and strategic matter rather than a logical one, and …

The New Mechanical Philosophy, Stuart Glennan

Philosophy, Religion, and Classics

The New Mechanical Philosophy argues for a new image of nature and of science--one that understands both natural and social phenomena to be the product of mechanisms, and that casts the work of science as an effort to discover and understand those mechanisms. Drawing on an expanding literature on mechanisms in physical, life, and social sciences, Stuart Glennan offers an account of the nature of mechanisms and of the models used to represent them. A key quality of mechanisms is that they are particulars - located at different places and times, with no one just like another. The crux of …

Tools For Subversion: Illich And Žižek On Changing The World, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

Reviewing the work of Ivan Illich, Robert Kurz and Stanley Aronowitz together with Slavoj Žižek, this essay includes a discussion of Heidegger’s technically economic articulation of standing reserve correspondent to challenging forth (the world, ourselves, animals, plants, whatever), this essay takes up “the thought of the weak in search of alternatives” as Vattimo and Zabala argue for the possibility of interpretive transformation. In addition to Slavoj Žižek’s analysis of the resistance to revolution that functions as corollary to the existential stress of the dislocated mind, this reflection includes a discussion of media and illusion via Adorno.

Nietzsche’S Posthuman Imperative: On The Human, All Too Human Dream Of Transhumanism, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

No abstract provided.

Which Infamous Nineteenth-Century Murderer Are You?, Peyton Smith

The Case of Charity Lamb (2017)

This short piece, written in the style of a Buzzfeed quiz, asks a most important question: “Which infamous nineteenth-century murderer are you?”

Phenomenology Of Visual Arts In William Faulkner's The Sound And The Fury And As I Lay Dying, Zeinab Zamani

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

The early decades of the 20th century marked drastic changes in philosophy, science, visual arts, literature, and music. In philosophy, this change occurred in the work of Edmund Husserl whose Phenomenology introduced a new “way of knowing” or epistemology. In art, the exhibition of Pablo Picasso’s Cubist Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), given its rebellious nature, began an innovative artistic tradition which called for a new “way of seeing.” Phenomenology as theory and Cubism as practice shared a common aim: to re-vision the world—an aim of many Modernist movements. Modernism is an umbrella term for a mélange of artistic schools and …

From Feminist Activist To Abortion Barbie: A Rhetorical History Of Abortion Discourse From 2013-2016, Skye De Saint Felix

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides a rhetorical history of abortion discourse with an emphasis on the rhetorical moment from 2013-2016. To uncover the rhetorical strategies used to shape consensus on abortion, I highlight three major events—Senator Wendy Davis’s (D-Fort Worth) notorious 13-hour filibuster against Texas’s HB2, the conservative capture of Davis as Abortion Barbie, and the Supreme Court case, Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt (2016). Because of these key rhetorical moments, pro-choice and anti-choice publics cultivated a period of heightened tension that reinvigorated abortion debates. While pro-choice groups employed narrative to centralize women as rhetorical agents and open spaces to discuss abortion, …

Civic Tenderness: Love's Role In Achieving Justice, Justin Leonard Clardy

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Martha Nussbaum’s work Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice identifies the role that compassion plays in motivating citizens in a just society. I expand on this discussion by considering how attitudes of indifference pose a challenge to the extension of compassion in our society. If we are indifferent to others who are in situations of need, we are not equipped to experience compassion for them. Building on Nussbaum’s account, I develop an analytic framework for the public emotion of Civic Tenderness to combat indifference.

Civic tenderness is an orientation of concern that is generated for people and groups that …

On National Identity, Owen Goldin, Wolfgang Streeck

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

In response to “Trump and the Trumpists” (Vol. 3, No. 1).

Norm-Expressivism And The Frege-Geach Problem, Megan Blomfield

Episteme

How successful is Allan Gibbard’s attempt to solve the Frege-Geach problem for moral non-cognitivism? This author argues that Gibbard is on the right track with his formalism, but is missing an argument about inconsistency that matches the strength of truth-functional logic. The paper includes discussions of non-cognitivism, the Frege-Geach problem, a summary of Gibbard’s argumentation, and summaries of various strong criticisms of Gibbard’s efforts. The author emphasizes the weakness of relying on practical considerations when it comes to consistency between all possible normative moral judgments, yet supports Schroeder’s insight that might help to improve Gibbard’s reasoning.

Rawls On Abortion: Adapting His Theory Of Justice To The Controversy, Douglas Dreier

Episteme

Rawls does not have to be explicit about gender or sex issues to be on the pro-choice side of the abortion debate. If we examine Rawls’ principles of justice and his veil of ignorance, we recognize that his logic rips through much of the usual justification for pro-life legality, even in the famous Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade. Since a person behind the veil might be a pregnant woman, cannot rely on specific moral beliefs, and must be able to have self-respect when the veil is lifted; Rawls is unmistakably pro-choice. Furthermore, in terms of other in vogue political …

A Gap In Kim's Eliminative Argument For Reductionism, Benjamin D. Mooneyham

Episteme

This paper traces the logical movements in Jaegwon Kim’s philosophy of mind addressed to physicalists. To start, a brief background to the contemporary debate between substance dualists, property dualists, and reductionists is provided. The author then argues that Kim uses inconsistent logic in his argument against non-reductive physicalism, compared with his argument against substance dualism: the pairing problem. It turns out that Kim fails to eliminate substance dualism as a possible theory of mind, in particular as an explanation of mental causation. The author offers a separate argument that would improve Kim’s case.

The Place Of Book X In Plato's Republic, Willie Costello

Episteme

Here is a new interpretation of Book X of the Republic, which understands this book in relation to the Republic’s central defense of justice and the virtuous life. A metaphysical argument uses the allegory of the cave to understand the problem of poetry as imitation. Appearances can be deceiving; truth need not look like popular wisdom. An ethical argument explains that poetry encourages us to act on the urging of the non-rational part of our soul, thereby diminishing the rational part. Furthermore, since the way our souls react to poetry is as real and as genuine as actual experience, we …

The Natural Philosophies Of Descartes And Newton: A Kuhnian Reflection, Stephen Trochimchuk

Episteme

Kuhn can be used to describe shifts in science other than just the Copernican Revolution. This paper argues that Newton’s theory of mechanics, especially the notion of gravitational force, only appears to be responding to “deficiencies” in Descartes’ corpuscularism. In reality, Newton’s theory represents a paradigm shift. To make his case, the author first supplies useful summaries of Descartes’ and Newton’s sciences, as well as Kuhn’s meta-scientific project. The author then emphasizes that on issues like gravity and mass, the Cartesian and Newtonian systems of science hold each other’s theoretical concepts to be senseless when judged from within their own. …

Possible Worlds And Counterfactuals: Critique And Commentary On Complicating Causation, Roman Feiman

Episteme

This article focuses on David Lewis’s theory of causation. The author provides helpful clarity regarding the difference between material and counterfactual conditions, the distinction between causal dependence and causation, and the nature of possible world theories in general. Although it is found that Lewis does not fall victim to the problems of metaphysical impossibility or preemption, his theory still relies too much on mere intuition. Lewis’ solution is not very convincing when it comes to the slippery issue of causation.