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Articles 8701 - 8730 of 22115

Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Full-On Stating, Robert Stainton Sep 2016

Full-On Stating, Robert Stainton

Philosophy Publications

What distinguishes full-on stating a proposition from merely communicating it? For instance, what distinguishes claiming/asserting/saying that one has never smoked crack cocaine from merely implying/conveying/hinting this? The enormous literature on ‘assertion’ provides many approaches to distinguishing stating from, say, asking and commanding: only the former aims at truth; only the former expresses one’s belief; etc. But this leaves my question unanswered, since in merely communicating a proposition one also aims at truth, expresses a belief, etc. My aim is not to criticize extant accounts of the state-vs.-merely-convey contrast, but rather to draw on clues from Dummett, functional linguistics and moral …

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The Research Skills Of Undergraduate Philosophy Majors: Teaching Information Literacy, Heidi Gauder, Fred W. Jenkins Sep 2016

The Research Skills Of Undergraduate Philosophy Majors: Teaching Information Literacy, Heidi Gauder, Fred W. Jenkins

Roesch Library Faculty Publications

This article presents a case study of how one school introduced a one-credit course for philosophy majors focused on effective searching for and critical evaluation of primary and secondary sources. The course curriculum is based on departmental learning outcomes and is also aligned with the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) standards.

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Toward A Thomistic Environmental Ethic: How Aquinas's Metaethic Provides The Groundwork For An Environmentally And Zoologically Responsible Moral System, William Merle Green Sep 2016

Toward A Thomistic Environmental Ethic: How Aquinas's Metaethic Provides The Groundwork For An Environmentally And Zoologically Responsible Moral System, William Merle Green

Masters Theses

While the trend in contemporary discussions of environmental ethics is often to dispense with traditional anthropocentric conceptions of morality in favor of more biologically and ecologically inclusive perspectives, I will argue that Natural Law Theory and Virtue Ethics, both integral components of the moral philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, provide the groundwork for an ecologically and zoologically responsible ethic. Thus, utilizing the core of Aquinas’s ethical system, I will attempt to construct a robust moral framework that is Thomistic in every important sense while at the same time satisfies the sufficiency conditions for a successful environmental code of conduct.

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"Part Of That Force That Always Wills The Evil And Always Produces The Good" On A Devilish Incoherence, Peter Baumann Sep 2016

"Part Of That Force That Always Wills The Evil And Always Produces The Good" On A Devilish Incoherence, Peter Baumann

Sophia and Philosophia

When Mephisto was asked by Faust, "Well now, who are you then?" (“Nun gut, wer bist Du denn?”), he gave the well-known answer, "Part of that force that always wills the evil and always produces the good" (“Ein Teil von jener Kraft, die stets das Böse will und stets das Gute schafft”: Goethe, Faust, 1334-1336). This answer raises some important questions which in turn lead to interesting answers. Let us start by looking at the content of Mephisto's utterance.

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The Subject Librarian Newsletter, Philosophy, Fall 2016, Richard Harrison Sep 2016

The Subject Librarian Newsletter, Philosophy, Fall 2016, Richard Harrison

Libraries' Newsletters

No abstract provided.

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There’S Nothing To Beat A Backward Clock: A Rejoinder To Adams, Barker And Clarke, John N. Williams Sep 2016

There’S Nothing To Beat A Backward Clock: A Rejoinder To Adams, Barker And Clarke, John N. Williams

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Neil Sinhababu and I presented Backward Clock, anoriginal counterexample to Robert Nozick’s truth-tracking analysis ofpropositional knowledge. Fred Adams, John Barker and Murray Clarke argue that Backward Clock is no such counterexample. Theirargument fails to nullify Backward Clock whichalso shows that other tracking analyses, such as Dretske’s and one that Adams et al may well have in mind, are inadequate.

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The Ecological Posthuman In Lee's Tarboy And Tan And Ruhemann's The Lost Thing, Başak Ağın Sep 2016

The Ecological Posthuman In Lee's Tarboy And Tan And Ruhemann's The Lost Thing, Başak Ağın

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The Ecological Posthuman in Lee's [BA1] Tarboy and Tan and Ruhemann's The Lost Thing" Başak Ağın analyzes the posthumanist and ecological elements in two animated short films, James Lee's Tarboy (2009) and Shaun Tan's and Andrew Ruhemann's The Lost Thing (2010). Ağın posits that the two animated short films display a disanthropocentric worldview through the enmeshed relations between humans, techno-sentient beings, and naturalcultural hybrid bodies. The intermingled fusions of these biotic and abiotic forms are inherently characterized by a sense of posthuman ecocriticism. Basing her arguments on the notions of agential realism and new materialisms, Ağın …

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Talks And Meetings With Charles Hartshorne, Donald W. Viney Sep 2016

Talks And Meetings With Charles Hartshorne, Donald W. Viney

Faculty Submissions

These are the annotated and illustrated notes that the author took down during and after his talks and meetings with Charles Hartshorne from April 1976 until October 1997. The manuscript includes a bibliography of the author's published writings on Hartshorne.

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Wisdom: Understanding And The Good Life, Shane Ryan Sep 2016

Wisdom: Understanding And The Good Life, Shane Ryan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

I argue that a necessary condition for being wise is: understanding how to live well. The condition, by requiring understanding rather than a wide variety of justified beliefs or knowledge, as Ryan and Whitcomb respectively require, yields the desirable result that being wise is compatible with having some false beliefs but not just any false beliefs about how to live well-regardless of whether those beliefs are justified or not. In arguing for understanding how to live well as a necessary condition for wisdom, I reject the view, proposed by both Ryan and Whitcomb, that subjects such as chemistry lies within …

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Pharaonic Occultism: The Relationship Of Esotericism And Egyptology, 1875–1930, Kevin Todd Mclaren Sep 2016

Pharaonic Occultism: The Relationship Of Esotericism And Egyptology, 1875–1930, Kevin Todd Mclaren

Master's Theses

The purpose of this work is to explore the interactions between occultism and scholarly Egyptology from 1875 to 1930. Within this timeframe, numerous esoteric groups formed that centered their ideologies on conceptions of ancient Egyptian knowledge. In order to legitimize their belief systems based on ancient Egyptian wisdom, esotericists attempted to become authoritative figures on Egypt. This process heavily impacted Western intellectualism not only because occult conceptions of Egypt became increasingly popular, but also because esotericists intruded into academia or attempted to overshadow it. In turn, esotericists and Egyptologists both utilized the influx of new information from Egyptological studies to …

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From Thinking Selves To Social Selves, Judith Benz-Schwarzburg Aug 2016

From Thinking Selves To Social Selves, Judith Benz-Schwarzburg

Animal Sentience

I argue that Rowlands’s concept of pre-reflective self-awareness offers a way to understand animals as Social Selves. It does so because it departs from the orthodox conception of self-awareness, which is both egocentric and logocentric. Instead, its focus is on the relation between consciousness and a person’s lived body, her actions and goals. Characterizing persons as pre-reflectively self-aware beings in Rowlands’s sense offers a much more useful conceptual tool to interpret social behaviour in animals.

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What Do We Owe Animals As Persons?, Judith Benz-Schwarzburg Aug 2016

What Do We Owe Animals As Persons?, Judith Benz-Schwarzburg

Animal Sentience

Rowlands (2016) concentrates strictly on the metaphysical concept of person, but his notion of animal personhood bears a moral dimension (Monsó, 2016). His definition of pre-reflective self-awareness has a focus on sentience and on the lived body of a person as well as on her implicit awareness of her own goals. Interestingly, these also play a key role in animal welfare science, as well as in animal rights theories that value the interests of animals. Thus, Rowlands’s concept shows connectivity with both major fields of animal ethics. His metaphysical arguments might indeed contain a strong answer to the question of …

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Heidegger's Way Of Being By Richard Capobianco, Brian Mccormack Aug 2016

Heidegger's Way Of Being By Richard Capobianco, Brian Mccormack

The Goose

A review of Richard Capobianco's Heidegger's Way of Being.

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A Morally Enlightened Positivism? Kelsen And Habermas On The Democratic Roots Of Validity In Municipal And International Law, David Ingram Aug 2016

A Morally Enlightened Positivism? Kelsen And Habermas On The Democratic Roots Of Validity In Municipal And International Law, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

A commonplace misconception identifies Kelsen as a one-dimensional legal positivist and Habermas as a one-dimensional legal moralist. I argue, on the contrary, that both theorists defend a complex normative conception of democratic proceduralism that straddles the positivism/naturalism divide. I then show how their extension of this conception to international law commits them to a monistic human rights regime. I conclude that their realistic acknowledgment of the fragmented nature of legal paradigms and regimes entails a complementary qualification of their monism. Section 10.1 situates Kelsen and Habermas’s proceduralism between natural law reasoning and formal positivism in opposition to Schmitt’s political-theological defense …

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If Insects Have Phenomenal Consciousness, Could They Suffer?, Elizabeth S. Paul, Michael T. Mendl Aug 2016

If Insects Have Phenomenal Consciousness, Could They Suffer?, Elizabeth S. Paul, Michael T. Mendl

Animal Sentience

Klein & Barron’s (K & B’s) suggestion that insects have the capacity for phenomenal consciousness is a refreshing and challenging departure from the cautious and agnostic stance that is taken by many researchers when considering this possibility. It is impossible to falsify the sceptic’s view that neural and behavioural parallels between humans and insects need not imply either similar conscious experience or even any phenomenal consciousness in insects at all. But if K & B are right, it is important to consider the possible contents of insect consciousness. Here we discuss whether affective consciousness, with its implications for potential suffering, …

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Finding The Self In Tension: The Importance Of Play For Embodied Consciousness In Post-Kantian Philosophical Anthropology And Psychology, Jaime Thomas Denison Aug 2016

Finding The Self In Tension: The Importance Of Play For Embodied Consciousness In Post-Kantian Philosophical Anthropology And Psychology, Jaime Thomas Denison

Philosophy ETDs

My dissertation looks at how four figures in the German philosophical tradition employ a similar concept of play in their models of the Ich', often translated as 'Self', as they explore the complexities of establishing a unity within embodied consciousness. These four figures are: Friedrich Schiller, F.W.J. Schelling, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud. I situate this concept of play within the contemporary debate of the interdisciplinary field of play studies, showing that what emerges is a theory of play that avoids marginalizing it to children and leisure, but rather recognizes it as a state of consciousness that provides a semblance …

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“What Does Philosophy Of Religion Offer To The Modern University?”, Michael Jones Aug 2016

“What Does Philosophy Of Religion Offer To The Modern University?”, Michael Jones

Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

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Subjective Experience In Insects: Definitions And Other Difficulties, Shelley Adamo Aug 2016

Subjective Experience In Insects: Definitions And Other Difficulties, Shelley Adamo

Animal Sentience

Whether insects have the potential for subjective experiences depends on the definition of subjective experience. The definition used by Klein & Barron (2016) is an unusually liberal one and could be used to argue that some modern robots have subjective experiences. From an evolutionary perspective, the additional neurons needed to produce subjective experiences will be proportionately more expensive for insects than for mammals because of the small size of the insect brain. This greater cost could weaken selection for such traits. Minimally, it may be premature to assume that small neuronal number is unimportant in determining the capacity for consciousness.

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We Must Learn To Tell Narratives That Make Us Better – Not Diminish Us, Bruce Janz Aug 2016

We Must Learn To Tell Narratives That Make Us Better – Not Diminish Us, Bruce Janz

UCF Forum

Every four years we turn to our TVs and online sites to cheer on competitors vying for supremacy in an arena where the rules are often unclear and scandal is rife. We hope for an uplifting narrative that shows the best of who we can be, which gives us all something to strive for, but more often than not the narrative degenerates into stories that divide us.

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Bacteria And The Cellular Basis Of Consciousness, Michael L. Woodruff Aug 2016

Bacteria And The Cellular Basis Of Consciousness, Michael L. Woodruff

Animal Sentience

According to Reber’s theory, the Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC), sentience originates as bio-sensitivity in unicellular organisms. For this reason, Reber regards sentience as evolutionarily foundational. Many bacteria show chemotaxis and, thus, according to CBC, they are sentient. Analysis of the genetic mechanisms underlying bacterial chemotaxis indicates that sentience has no explanatory power in this case. Genetic analysis also fails to show species continuity underlying bio-sensitivity in bacteria and bio-sensitivity in species with nervous systems, so it does not seem that sentience is evolutionary foundational. CBC is rejected on these grounds.

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Unity Of Consciousness In Animals, Bernard E. Rollin Aug 2016

Unity Of Consciousness In Animals, Bernard E. Rollin

Animal Sentience

Both Descartes the rationalist and Hume the empiricist, polar opposites philosophically, denied the unity and continuity of animal mind. Kant pointed out that the presence of retrievable memories entails unity of consciousness. Rowlands now argues that animals too have unity of consciousness.

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To Bee Or Not To Bee?, Shimon Edelman, Roy Moyal, Tomer Fekete Aug 2016

To Bee Or Not To Bee?, Shimon Edelman, Roy Moyal, Tomer Fekete

Animal Sentience

Klein & Barron’s (2016) (K & B’s) case for insect consciousness is a welcome development in an area that, in all of the science and philosophy of mind, is probably the most anthropocentric. In this commentary, we seek to strengthen K & B’s side of the argument by appealing not just to putative neural mechanisms but also to computational theory that supports it (section 1). We also offer some remarks on three distinctions that are relevant to K & B’s thesis and are central to phenomenal awareness: between the capacity for awareness and its contents (section 2); between …

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No Proof For Subjective Experience In Insects, Holk Cruse, Malte Schilling Aug 2016

No Proof For Subjective Experience In Insects, Holk Cruse, Malte Schilling

Animal Sentience

Klein & Barron (2016) provide an inspiring review collecting arguments that show quite related functions in humans and insects. Here we extend the comparison to robots, and formulate two critical objections. One concerns an epistemological question related to the phenomenon of subjective experience. The other questions whether insects need integrated spatiotemporal modeling for navigation.

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Consciousness As Integrated Perception, Motivation, Cognition, And Action, Murray Shanahan Aug 2016

Consciousness As Integrated Perception, Motivation, Cognition, And Action, Murray Shanahan

Animal Sentience

This commentary has two aims: first to clarify the behavioural grounds for the ascription of consciousness to non-human animals (including insects), and second to show how Klein & Barron’s views can be reconciled with the core claims of global workspace theory.

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The Moral Dimension Of Pre-Reflective Self-Awareness, Susana Monsó Aug 2016

The Moral Dimension Of Pre-Reflective Self-Awareness, Susana Monsó

Animal Sentience

Rowlands offers a de-intellectualised account of personhood that is meant to secure the unity of a mental life. I argue that his characterisation also singles out a morally relevant feature of individuals. Along the same lines that the orthodox understanding of personhood reflects a fundamental precondition for moral agency, Rowlands’s notion provides a fundamental precondition for moral patienthood.

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What Makes Us Conscious Is Not What Makes Us Human, Ezequiel Morsella, Erica B. Walker Aug 2016

What Makes Us Conscious Is Not What Makes Us Human, Ezequiel Morsella, Erica B. Walker

Animal Sentience

Consistent with the promising proposal of Klein & Barron (K & B), we discuss how what makes us conscious appears to be distinct from and more widespread in the animal kingdom than what distinguishes us from other species. Many of the abilities that do distinguish humans from other species (e.g., syntax and co-articulation in speech production) can be mediated unconsciously. The kind of functional architecture proposed by K & B may engender an “action selection bottleneck” in both humans and nonhuman species. As noted by K & B, this bottleneck is intimately related to conscious processing.

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Review Of The Moral Complexities Of Eating Meat, Andy Lamey Aug 2016

Review Of The Moral Complexities Of Eating Meat, Andy Lamey

Between the Species

No abstract provided.

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Insect Consciousness: Fine-Tuning The Hypothesis, Jon Mallatt, Todd E. Feinberg Aug 2016

Insect Consciousness: Fine-Tuning The Hypothesis, Jon Mallatt, Todd E. Feinberg

Animal Sentience

Although we are mostly supportive, we point out the strengths and weaknesses of Klein & Barron’s (2016) hypothesis that insects have the most basic form of consciousness. The strengths are in their application of Bjorn Merker’s vertebrate-derived ideas to arthropods, using their deep knowledge of insect brains. The weaknesses involve the controversial aspects of some of Merker’s ideas. We describe how the latter can be modified to strengthen the authors’ case for insect consciousness.

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Feel Or Perspective?, Mark Rowlands Aug 2016

Feel Or Perspective?, Mark Rowlands

Animal Sentience

The title of Klein & Barron’s well-argued and thought-provoking target article is, “Insects have the capacity for subjective experience.” However, they also frame their claim using the term “consciousness,” which they seem to take as equivalent to “subjective experience.” This assumed equivalence, I shall argue, is problematic in a way that might vitiate their central argument.

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How To Become A Post-Dog. Animals In Transhumanism, Michael Hauskeller Aug 2016

How To Become A Post-Dog. Animals In Transhumanism, Michael Hauskeller

Between the Species

This paper analyses and deconstructs the transhumanist commitment to animal rights and the well-being of all sentient beings. Some transhumanists have argued that such a commitment entails a moral imperative to help non-human animals overcome their biological limitations by enhancing their cognitive abilities and generally “uplifting” them to a more human-like existence. I argue that the transhumanist approach to animal welfare ultimately aims at the destruction of the animal as an animal. By seeking to make animals more like us the freedom to live their life as the kind of creature they are is being denied to them. It is …

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