Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Natural Law And Agonistic Pluralism, Daniel E. Young

Northwestern Review

John Rawls’ account of political liberalism posits the necessity of a metaphysically neutral “public reason” to avoid privileging any comprehensive doctrine in the public square. The natural law tradition has been claimed by some as meeting this standard. However, thinkers such as Tracey Rowland criticize the attempt to make natural law a secular, neutral ground; she believes it must be rooted in an overtly Trinitarian and Christological theology. However, such theological assumptions are not shared by those of other comprehensive doctrines. Chantal Mouffe has also challenged Rawls’ consensus conception, focusing rather on the inevitable ideological conflicts to be found in …

Christian Faith And The Scientific Explanation Of Religion, Donald H. Wacome

Northwestern Review

The cognitive theory of religion seems to threaten to debunk religion, including Christianity, as irrational. The cognitive theory explains human religiosity as an accident, a mere byproduct, of the interaction of mental mechanisms evolved for other purposes. The threat to religion can be neutralized by finding good reasons for religious beliefs which can be identified independent of the operation of the cognitive mechanisms the theory posits. Christian faith should be understood not as sub-rational belief, but as trust in the God who resurrected Jesus Christ. Our natural religiosity, like our natural morality, has no necessary connection to God, but God …

The Urban Prison: Socioeconomic Vortexes In Latino Neighborhoods, Armando Porras, Aaron Wyatt

Research on Capitol Hill

This research shows how metropolitan cities throughout the United States are continuously impacting the lives of ethnic minorities.

In the United States, Latina/o individuals have been born into socioeconomic vortexes. In other words, they have grown up in areas where secure jobs have disappeared and a variety of other factors force them to live in damaged communities that do not foster economic and social progression.

By analyzing several works of literature written by Latina/o authors who lived in barrios that faced these challenges, as well as research addressing crime and the lack of law enforcement in marginalized neighborhoods, we have …

Abstraction And Epistemic Economy, Marco Panza

MPP Published Research

Most of the arguments usually appealed to in order to support the view that some abstraction principles are analytic depend on ascribing to them some sort of existential parsimony or ontological neutrality, whereas the opposite arguments, aiming to deny this view, contend this ascription. As a result, other virtues that these principles might have are often overlooked. Among them, there is an epistemic virtue which I take these principles to have, when regarded in the appropriate settings, and which I suggest to call ‘epistemic economy’. My purpose is to isolate and clarify this notion by appealing to some examples concerning …

Review Of Slaves Of Our Affection: The Myth Of The Happy Pet, Katherine Allen

Between the Species

This article reviews Charles Danten’s Slaves of Our Affection: the Myth of the Happy Pet, outlining and evaluating Danten’s arguments for the abolition of the pet trade. The review delineates Danten’s main points; that the commodification of companion animals is antithetical to their welfare, that veterinarians, pet food manufacturers and breeders serve the dictates of the economic bottom line rather than the interests of animals, and that the majority of pet owners, while well-intentioned, are ill-equipped to meet the physiological and psychological needs of their animal companions.

The reviewer asserts that Danten’s arguments are generally successful, but suggests that …

The Republic Of Ignorance, Daniel R. Denicola

Philosophy Faculty Publications

“When did ignorance become a point of view?” the cartoon character Dilbert once asked. It’s a question that has become increasingly resonant these days—especially in our public life, and especially in our political campaigns in which elected officials and those who seek election seem to assume a startling level of public ignorance. Perhaps that’s smart. [excerpt]

Using Heider’S Epistemology Of Thing And Medium For Unpacking The Conception Of Documents: Gantt Charts And Boundary Objects, Sebastian K. Boell, Florian Hoof

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Documents play a central role for many organizational processes. Current conceptualizations of documents predominantly engage with documents in two different ways. One sees documents as things with specific properties, and a second sees documents as medium enabling communication across different groups of actors. What is currently not well understood is how documents are perceived either as thing or as medium. This chapter engages with this issue by drawing from Fritz Heider’s epistemology of thing and medium, a concept stemming from social and media theory. According to Heider things are uniform and medium are multiform. Applying this concept to documents we …

How Much A Quarter Cost: Allegory Of A Coin And Other Stories, Grant C. Gallo

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

The philosophical theories of Baruch Spinoza and George Berkley were described, compared, and contrasted. Various examples and metaphors were used to help fully illustrate their respective metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical positions. The relevance of their theories to current philosophical discourse was discussed; showing that even in today’s technologically advanced society, seemingly antiquated ideas may still provide useful knowledge. In the end, Spinoza and Berkley’s apparently conflicting paradigms are rectified through a multiplexual, relativistic lens.

Ancient Animal Ethics: The Earliest Arguments For The Ethical Consideration Of Nonhuman Animals, Joshua J. Sias

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

Primarily focused on the ancient Greek philosophers, this work offers a survey of the earliest arguments for and against the inclusion of nonhuman animals in human realms of ethical consideration. By following the trends of ancient western thought concerning animal ethics, the influencing factors behind the downfall of the subject in Medieval times, both in terms of discourse and practice, is discovered in the philosophical exchange that preceded medieval thought.

Feminist Futures And Campus Changes: Dismantling Ursinus College's Greek Life, Jordan Ostrum

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

No abstract provided.

Hobbes On Natural Philosophy As “True Physics” And Mixed Mathematics, Marcus P. Adams

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

In this paper, I offer an alternative account of the relationship of Hobbesian geometry to natural philosophy by arguing that mixed mathematics provided Hobbes with a model for thinking about it. In mixed mathematics, one may borrow causal principles from one science and use them in another science without there being a deductive relationship between those two sciences. Natural philosophy for Hobbes is mixed because an explanation may combine observations from experience (the ‘that’) with causal principles from geometry (the ‘why’). My argument shows that Hobbesian natural philosophy relies upon suppositions that bodies plausibly behave according to these borrowed causal …

[Review Of The Book Disagreement By Brian Frances], James Pearson

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Review of the book Disagreement by Bryan Frances. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014.

Anscombe, Thomson, And Double Effect, Thomas A. Cavanaugh

Philosophy

In “Modern Moral Philosophy” Anscombe argues that the distinction between intention of an end or means and foresight of a consequentially comparable outcome proves crucial in act-evaluation. The deontologist J. J. Thomson disagrees. She asserts that Anscombe mistakes the distinction’s moral import; it bears on agent-evaluation, not act-evaluation. I map out the contours of this dispute. I show that it implicates other disagreements, some to be expected and others not to be expected. Amongst the expected, one finds the ethicists’ accounts of action and understanding of how agent-assessment relates to act-assessment. Amongst the unexpected, one finds the moralists’ views about …

Dignity, Pet-Euthanasia And Person Euthanasia, Thomas A. Cavanaugh

Philosophy

Challenging the standard argument for euthanasia, G. E. M. Anscombe holds that euthanasia does not comport with human dignity interpreted in terms of self-determination. For, were self-determination to ground any killing it would justify self-killing, not being killed by another. I articulate reasons for thinking that she correctly identifies the dissonance of self-determination with euthanasia. Additionally, I argue that the same holds, less obviously, for physician-assisted suicide (PAS, which she does not explicitly consider).

Moreover, Anscombe suggests that what actually occurs in euthanasia in effect equates a person to a humanely euthanized dog and, thereby, trivializes and degrades human lives …

Evidence For Anti-Intellectualism About Know-How From A Sentence Recognition Task, Ian Harmon, Zachary Horne

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

An emerging trend in cognitive science is to explore central epistemological questions using psychological methods. Early work in this growing area of research has revealed that epistemologists' theories of knowledge diverge in various ways from the ways in which ordinary people think of knowledge. Reflecting the practices of epistemology as a whole, the vast majority of these studies have focused on the concept of propositional knowledge, or knowledge-that. Many philosophers, however, have argued that knowing how to do something is importantly different from knowing that something is the case. Hence, in this paper we turn our attention to people's concept …

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The Journal of Traditions & Beliefs

No abstract provided.

Gender And The Politics Of Exclusion In Pre-Colonial Ibadan: The Case Of Iyalode Efunsetan Aniwura, Olawale F. Idowu, Sunday A. Ogunode

The Journal of Traditions & Beliefs

No abstract provided.

Eliciting Acts As Cultural Reflectors In Wole Soyinka's Childe Internationale, Moji A. Olateju

The Journal of Traditions & Beliefs

No abstract provided.

Post Critical Again, Charlie Cannon

Articles

No abstract provided.

Reply To Melissa Moschella, E Brugger

Philosophy Conference Papers

Professor Moschella begins by discussing confusions in the brain death debate surrounding the use of the concepts of “integration” and “wholeness.” Some scholars, she says, such as Alan Shewmon, take the presence of biological integration as an indication of ontological wholeness. Others, such as the members of the President’s Council for Bioethics, think that some bodily integration can persist in the body of a brain-dead individual; but that the subject in which it persists in not a whole.

Ethics Beyond Sentience, Matthew Pianalto

The Chautauqua Journal

No abstract provided.

Natural Law, God, And Human Dignity, Robert George

The Chautauqua Journal

No abstract provided.

Evil And Evidence, Matthew A. Benton, John Hawthorne, Yoaav Isaacs

SPU Works

The problem of evil is the most prominent argument against the existence of God. Skeptical theists contend that it is not a good argument. Their reasons for this contention vary widely, involving such notions as CORNEA, epistemic appearances, 'gratuitous' evils, 'levering' evidence, and the representativeness of goods. We aim to dispel some confusions about these notions, in particular by clarifying their roles within a probabilistic epistemology. In addition, we develop new responses to the problem of evil from both the phenomenal conception of evidence and the 'knowledge-first' view of evidence.

Expert Opinion And Second-Hand Knowledge, Matthew A. Benton

SPU Works

Expert testimony figures in recent debates over how best to understand the norm of assertion and the domain-specific epistemic expectations placed on testifiers. Cases of experts asserting with only isolated second-hand knowledge Jennifer (Lackey 2011, 2013) have been used to shed light on whether knowledge is sufficient for epistemically permissible assertion. I argue that relying on such cases of expert testimony introduces several problems concerning how we understand expert knowledge, and the sharing of such knowledge through testimony. Refinements are needed to clarify exactly what principles are being tested by such cases; but once refined, such cases raise more questions …

Reason And Emotion, Not Reason Or Emotion In Moral Judgment, Leland F. Saunders

SPU Works

One of the central questions in both metaethics and empirical moral psychology is whether moral judgments are the products of reason or emotions. This way of putting the question relies on an overly simplified view of reason and emotion as two fully independent cognitive faculties whose causal contributions to moral judgment can be cleanly separated. However, there is a significant body of evidence in the cognitive sciences that seriously undercuts this conception of reason and emotion, and supports the view that moral judgments are caused by a complex interplay of psychological mechanisms that are both cognitive and affective, but in …

Reparations For Racism: Why The Persistence Of Institutional Racism In America Demands More Than Equal Opportunity For Black Citizens, Alexander Lowe

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

No abstract provided.

Ethics And Animals: Extending Ethics Beyond Our Own Species, Peter Singer

The Chautauqua Journal

It is commonly held that ethics is about how we ought to treat other human beings. On this view, how we ought to treat animals is not properly part of ethics, or at best, if the treatment of animals is included within ethics at all, then animals have a second-class moral status. We have the right to use them as we see fit, to satisfy our needs and desires without regard to their interests, as long as we do not engage in gratuitous cruelty.

In the pages that follow, I shall argue that this standard view of our moral responsibilities …

Lessons From Animal Sentience: Towards A New Humanity, Jonathan Balcombe

The Chautauqua Journal

No abstract provided.

Folk Ontology And The Moral Standing Of Animals, Justin E. H. Smith

The Chautauqua Journal

No abstract provided.

Bonobo Mirror Project, Laura L. Newhart Ph.D.

The Chautauqua Journal

I undertook “The Bonobo Mirror Project” within the context of a graduate level course entitled Primate Behavior and Conservation that was jointly sponsored by Miami University of Ohio, the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens, and Project Dragonfly. The goal of such “Zoo Expedition” courses is to promote inquiry-based learning, community involvement, and conservation. I found it both challenging and rewarding to combine my philosophical training with this very empirically based scientific method of inquiry. The empirical question that “The Bonobo Mirror Project” attempts to answer is: How does the ratio of positive to negative comments made by visitors to the …