Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Cognitive Implications Of Aristotelian Habituation And Intrinsic Valuation, David F. Mccaslin

CMC Senior Theses

Habituation in the Aristotelian tradition claims that we develop our moral virtues through repeated and guided practice in moral actions. His theory provides important insights for moral education and as a result many contemporary philosophers have debated how to properly interpret his writing. This thesis will explore Aristotelian habituation and the competing interpretations surrounding it, namely the cognitivist and mechanical views. It will then criticize the mechanical view and argue that the intrinsic valuation of virtuous actions evidences a cognitivist interpretation of habituation in the Aristotelian tradition.

Pleasure In Atrocity, Ladelle Mcwhorter

Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications

As Foucault says, genealogical work can be tedious and gray, but it is also pleasurable, even when the archives one delves into are filled with hatred, violence, and injustice. This article explores that pleasure, both in dangers and its possibilities, and in the process offers a partial genealogy of corporate personhood in U.S. legal history.

Why Life Now?, Ladelle Mcwhorter

Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications

As we struggle to understand and prepare ourselves for climate change, the effects of globalized neoliberal capitalism, and violence (both govenmental and extra-governmental) on a planetary scale, we also struggle to name what it is that we cherish and hope to foster and protect as well as what it is that, of itself opposes the forces that may well destroy us. One of the words that has emerged in this context is life.

Philosophers do well to pay close attention to any concept that attains such centrality and exercises such power in our thinking, which is one reason to be …

John Rawls’ Theory Of Justice And Mixed Conception With A Social Minimum Principle, Kevin Wu

CMC Senior Theses

John Rawls was a political philosopher concerned with social justice, specifically the best way that society could be structured so that individual rights and duties were fairly distributed amongst everyone and division of advantages from social cooperation were optimally determined. He believed that this conception of justice rested in principles that would be agreed upon by free, self-interested and rational persons in a starting position of equality and fairness. The principles of the theory of justice are ones that are meant to enable this group of people to cooperate with each other while recognizing that individuals in the group both …

The Public Vs. The Private, Elise "Alice" G. Roberson

Audre Lorde Prize

No abstract provided.

Nigerian Banking Governance, Leadership Style, And Performance During The 2008-2009 Financial Crisis, Adeola Oluwayemi Agbato

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The 2008-2009 global financial crisis of financial systems negatively affected about 30% of Nigerian banks, leading to profitability issues. The profitability issues led to operational challenges, downsizing, and liquidation of some banks. The purpose of this correlational study was to examine the relationship between corporate governance structure, perception of leadership style, and bank performance. This study was grounded in agency theory and used survey and archival data. Survey data were collected from 11 participants employed by commercial banks located in Nigeria, using the Multifaceted Leadership Questionnaire. Corporate governance and bank performance data were collected from annual bank reports. The model …

Effects Of Gender And Spirituality On Adults' Resilience To Daily Non-Traumatic Stressors, Lois S. Harris

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Researchers have conducted several studies of spirituality as it relates to individuals' coping strategies and resilience when facing life trauma. There is less research, however, on spirituality as it relates to adults' resiliency to daily non-traumatic stressors. The purposes of the current study were to examine the relationship between spirituality and adults' resilience to daily, non-traumatic stressors and assess whether gender has a moderating effect on this relationship. A quantitative correlational study based on Lazarus's transactional model of stress and coping using convenience sampling, an online survey (N= 94) was administered. Of the 94 participants ages 19 to 68, 66 …

Animal Groups And Social Ontology: An Argument From The Phenomenology Of Behavior, Alejandro Arango

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

Through a critical engagement with Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of the concepts of nature, life, and behavior, and with contemporary accounts of animal groups, this article argues that animal groups exhibit sociality and that sociality is a fundamental ontological condition. I situate my account in relation to the superorganism and selfish individual accounts of animal groups in recent biology and zoology. I argue that both accounts are inadequate. I propose an alternative account of animal groups and animal sociality through a Merleau-Pontian inspired definition of behavior. I criticize Merleau-Ponty’s individualistic prejudice, but show that his philosophy contains the resources necessary to overcome …

Unworking Milton: Steps To A Georgics Of The Mind, Steven Swarbrick

Publications and Research

Traditionally read as a poem about laboring subjects who gain power through abstract and abstracting forms of bodily discipline, John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667, 1674) more compellingly foregrounds the erotics of the Garden as a space where humans and nonhumans intra-act materially and sexually. Following Christopher Hill, who long ago pointed to not one but two revolutions in the history of seventeenth-century English radicalism—the first, ‘the one which succeeded[,] . . . the protestant ethic’; and the second, ‘the revolution which never happened,’ which sought ‘communal property, a far wider democracy[,] and rejected the protestant ethic’—I show how Milton’s Paradise …

Understanding The Health In Healthcare: A Closer Look At Perspectives, Treatments, And Their Effectiveness, Carlo Chiana

Whittier Scholars Program

This project is interested in defining health as more than just Western medicine, it also encompasses the social implications that can have an impact on one’s health such as environment and psychological state. This study includes both Holistic Philosophy and philosophy of reductionism. This study includes descriptions of the philosophies and their methods, explains defensive medicine, comparing the models and their methods,

The Non-Identity Problem: Finding A Narrow-Person-Affecting Solution To A Narrow-Person-Affecting Problem, Maura Duffey

Scripps Senior Theses

The non-identity problem attempts to explain the moral permissibility of certain procreative acts that determine a future individual’s existence. If we accept that this individual’s life is worth living, than we must also accept that these procreative acts are permissible. However, this is not the case. In this paper, I will argue against the permissibility of these acts and explain why our intuition, that these acts are morally wrong, is in fact correct. Because the non-identity problem affects particular persons, those whose existence is brought about, I argue in favor of a solution that explains that moral impermissibility in terms …

The Tension Between Traditional Consent And Affirmative Consent: A Kantian Solution, Marissa N. Deshon

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

In this paper I analyze the issues present in the standard form of consent in contrast to the new form of affirmative consent being implemented across college campuses. I then offer a Kantian solution to the rape myths and beliefs present in our current rape culture. This view of sexual morality can then help the new affirmative consent laws function as they aim to.

“But Who, We?”: Derrida On Non-Human Others, Thomas Helmut Bretz

Dissertations

In this dissertation I establish the possibility of social and ethical relationships with non-human natural (and in particular inanimate) beings. I do so based on the work of 20th century French philosopher Jacques Derrida. In chapter 1 I discuss the relatively sparse secondary literature that addresses the intersection between Derrida's work and environmental philosophy. I also go over some textual indications that show that Derrida has been concerned with non-human beings throughout his career.

In chapters 2 and 3 I establish the impossibility of conclusively excluding any kind of being from the purview of ethical responsibility. While chapter 2 develops …

What Must There Be To Account For Being?, Dillon T. Mccrea

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The purpose of this essay is to identify what I consider to be core philosophical arguments supporting the thesis that being subsists. The design of the thesis is as follows: First, I will attempt to identify arguments supporting the claim that we posit the universe and all of its content in relation to the question of being. Second, I will identify arguments supporting the claim that it is incoherent to claim that being is merely a function of the existence of individual entities, and that all entities share being in common. Third, I will identify arguments supporting the claim that …

Politics And Pedagogy: Recuperating Rhetoric And Composition's Native Ethical Tradition, Derek Risse

Wayne State University Dissertations

Over the past decade, scholars in Rhetoric and Composition have shown renewed interest in the topic of ethics, prompting what some have described as an ethical turn in the discipline. Spurred by a deep-seated concern for the legacies of humanism, scholars have turned increasingly to extra-disciplinary referents in continental philosophy. This dissertation works to recuperate the discipline’s native ethical tradition via a critical rereading of the often-implicit treatment of ethics in Composition scholarship of the 1980s and 1990s. Returning to this “critical” moment and emphasizing the rich thinking around the question of ethics provides fuller and more disciplinary-specific resources for …

Daoism And Disability, Andrew Lambert

Publications and Research

Ideas found in the early Daoist texts can inform current debates about disability, since the latter often involve assumptions about personhood and agency that Daoist texts do not share. The two canonical texts of classical Daoism, the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi, do not explicitly discuss disability as an object of theory or offer a model of it. They do, however, provide conceptual resources that can enrich contemporary discussions of disability. Two particular ideas are discussed here. Classical Daoist thinking about the body undermines normative assumptions about it that attributions of ‘disabled’ often depend upon; and Daoism vividly problematises the …

From Existentialism To Ecology: A Phlosophical Analysis Of Crisis In Samuel Beckett, Sean P. Collins

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Toward An Ontology Of Exhaustion: On The Affective Structures Of Masculinity In The American Oilfield, John W. Jepsen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

What is the significance of the oil encounter in the lives of men living and working in the modern oilfields of the United States? Engaging with both literary examples of the lives of men in the Interior West and the personal experiences and reflections of the author, this essay seeks to examine the connections between ideology and place as it works to shape the identity and affect of men in America's oilfields, ultimately ending in them identifying with the very resources their activities seek to exploit and exhaust. Utilizing Theodore Adorno's Minima Moralia as its moral touchstone, this essay works …

Life Projects: Passion Versus Rationality, Robert J. Williams

Tredway Library Prize for First-Year Research

Philosophers of all ages and locales have ruminated on what it means to live a meaningful life. This particular essay seeks to tackle the same question but with more particularity. Is a meaningful life ethically good, rational, or even successful? Susan Wolf’s work The Meanings of Lives gives a nuanced but affirmative answer. This essay counters Wolf’s answer to that question. Although Wolf’s notion of having a project does make for a meaningful life, this paper argues that her objective and subjective criteria are too restricting. What makes life meaningful is not the outcome or nature of the project, but …

The Four Dimensions Of An Intellectual Virtue, Jason Baehr

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Is Intellectual Character Growth A Realistic Educational Aim?, Jason Baehr

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Responsibilist Virtues And The ‘Charmed Inner Circle’ Of Traditional Epistemology, Jason Baehr

Philosophy Faculty Works

In Judgment and Agency, Ernest Sosa takes “reliabilist” virtue epistemology deep into “responsibilist” territory, arguing that “a true epistemology” will assign “responsibilist-cum-reliabilist intellectual virtue the main role in addressing concerns at the center of the tradition.” However, Sosa stops short of granting this status to familiar responsibilist virtues like open-mindedness, intellectual courage, and intellectual humility. He cites three reasons for doing so: responsibilist virtues involve excessive motivational demands; they are quasi-ethical; and they are best understood, not as constituting knowledge, but rather as putting one “in a position” to know. I elaborate on and respond to each of these …

Philosophy And Theology: Reflections On Debating Dignity, Christopher Kaczor

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of Chance In Evolution, Timothy Shanahan

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Elements Of Deconstruction: Differance, Dissemination, Destinerrance, And Geocatastrophe, Marie Chris B. Ramoya

Philosophy Department Faculty Publications

This paper attempts to elucidate on Jacques Derrida’s concept of deconstruction and its difficult elements, viz., differance, dissemination, destinerrance, and geocatasthrophe. These basic ideas need elaboration for their proper understanding. Once successfully achieved, then here lies the significance of this paper.

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

Libraries' Newsletters

No abstract provided.

A Correlative Study Of The Virtue Of Prudence In The Book Of Proverbs And Thomistic Moral Thought, Joseph Tedesco

Theses

The virtues are central to our understanding of character-based morality and in the Aristotelian and Thomistic tradition at least, prudence is considered the first of all cardinal virtues – vital and necessary to the virtuous life. Similarly, the claim of this study is that prudence is a central feature of Proverbial wisdom and, as such, the book of Proverbs is a useful biblical source to allow Scripture to enrich our understanding of the virtuous life and of prudence in particular. In this vein, this thesis engages in a correlative study between an understanding of prudence informed by Thomistic thought and …

Editorial, Editorial Office

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Macabre Fascination And Moral Propriety: The Attraction Of Horror, Marius A. Pascale

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Why does the horror genre serve as a source of pleasure, given its aim to induce fear in the audience? I examine two general solutions to this phenomenon, referred to as the paradox of horror, which differ based upon their position regarding the possibility of deriving pleasure from fear. Each of the possible solutions contains significant flaws. I argue that, by adjusting a meta-theory originally proposed by Susan Feagin, it is possible to craft a solution that addresses the paradox while preserving the idea that, at times, fear can be enjoyed. The article concludes by considering the moral status of …

Absolute Pitch And Tone Identification, Gilead Bar-Elli

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Absolute pitch (AP), besides the psychological and neurological interests it has, raises some conceptual difficulties that can teach us about the richness of our notion of musical tone and various aspects of its identification. It is argued that when AP is conceived under a slim notion of identifying the pitch of a crude sound, it is hardly meaningful and has no significance in music comprehension. The rich notion, which is the meaningful and important one, involves knowing the position of a tone in a tone-space and its relations. This is presented as experiential: hearing and identifying tones under concepts and …