Philosophy Commons^™

Allyship And Affect: Qualitative Investigations Into Social Transformation, Michael Lucinda Jane Greer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Allies have faced several critiques in feminist philosophy. Some have argued that they lack the requisite political interests to be motivated to dismantle the social structures from which they stand to benefit. Others have argued that the epistemic limitations resulting from their social privilege are insurmountable. Yet others have argued that allyship is too individualistic a concept, preferring a more collectivist concept like solidarity. However, there remain privileged individuals who understand themselves as complicit in perpetuating oppressive forms of life, and who wish to transform themselves and work in coalition across difference to dismantle structural oppression. How ought these individuals …

Model-Theoretic Arguments In Philosophy, Peter Susanszky

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is on model-theoretic arguments in philosophy, especially those of Quine, Davidson, and Putnam. In the first part, to ground the debate, I give a rigorous introduction to the salient parts of first-order model theory. I start the second part by giving an introduction to Quine's philosophy, and how the model-theoretic arguments fit into it. After considering how Donald Davidson adopted the Quinean lesson, I move on to Putnam's model-theoretic arguments. Putnam's spin on these model-theoretic considerations significantly departs from Quine and Davidson, while retaining many of the core ideas. Most importantly, I argue that the target of Putnam's …

The Thousand Mysteries That Bind Us: The Multiverse As Spiritualverse And The Holism Of Mystery, Giovanni Rossini

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

While we exist historically within evolving worldviews, we live amid the paradoxical necessity of mystery; one shared by scientists and non-scientists, theologians and atheists, and artists and philosophers alike. A thousand mysteries bind us with their imperative presence. While pre modern astronomers pondered the mysterious randomness of the night sky, today our sense of cosmological awe is fuelled not only by its randomness, but by a new scientific theory that says multiple skies inhabit the creation. The multiverse — a thesis emerging from cosmological science, wherein parallel worlds are posited to coexist — augments mystery. In this paper, I explore …

Winnie's Feminism: A Tribute To Mama Dr. Winnie Madikizela-Mandela As A Radical Feminist From 1986-2018, Anna Lefatshe Moagi

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

Growing up in South Africa and having read several “tell-all” biographies by influential women have made this researcher aware of the struggles of women to be recognised and valued within their social environments. The many names that come to mind, when speaking of women’s voices that challenged their position in our society, belong to those of struggle veterans such as Adelaide Tambo, Ruth First, Lilian Ngoyi, Albertina Sisulu, Thandi Modise, Baleka Mbethe, Leymah Gbowee, Ruth Mompati, Charlotte Maxeke, Joice Majuru, Thuli Madontsela and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Their as women leaders roles remain undervalued (Shekhawat 2015). These phenomenal influential women and many …

Can Skepticism Be Politically Progressive? An Approach From Zhuang Zi, Tammo Lossau

Comparative Philosophy

Ancient skeptics, both in the West and East, suggest their philosophy as a form of life. One reservation about living as a skeptic is that it turns us into political conformists—this is also Jonathan Ichikawa’s (2024) objection to philosophical skepticism. Skeptics take their own perspective on the world to be limited, and in this sense they will be hesitant to fully embrace a conservative ideology. But the Pyrrhonian skeptic Sextus Empiricus recommends that in their actions, skeptics will follow existing laws and common moral beliefs. In this paper, I want to develop a different conception of skepticism based on the …

Can Machines Testify? Llms And The Boundaries Of Testimonial Epistemology, Michael J. Cummins

Philosophy Summer Fellows

As Large Language Models and AI chatbots become increasingly prevalent, pressing questions are raised about whether beliefs formed through LLM interactions carry the same epistemic weight as beliefs formed through human testimony. How we answer this question depends on whether LLMs can function as testifiers, a role which is typically assumed to require a human or human-like agent. This assumption has gone largely unexamined, yet its consequences are significant: if LLM outputs cannot constitute testimony, then the justificatory tools of testimonial epistemology are unavailable to any beliefs formed through LLM interaction. This paper challenges that assumption. It first argues that …

Interculturalidad: Enfoques Críticos Desde La Educación, El Arte Y Los Estudios Culturales., Edgar Ávila González Phd, Romano Ponce-Díaz Phd, Cristo León Phd, Emilce Beatriz Sánchez Castellón Phd, Ligia María Sánchez Castellón, Edgar Meritano Phd, Juan Carlos González-Vidal Phd, Diana Estefanía Martínez-Dagnino, Ivan Avila Gonzalez Phd, Rodrigo Pardo Fernández Phd, Arturo Morales Campos Phd, Ximena Diaz Santillan, Maribel Ramos Rodríguez, José Antonio Fraga Villicaña Phd, José Ricardo Chavez Mendoza Phd

STEM for Success Resources

• Cultura y producción de semiosis: Edgar Ávila González, Romano Ponce Díaz.
• LA ESCUELA ETNOEDUCATIVA Y LA ARMONIZACIÓN INTERCULTURAL : Emilce Beatriz Sánchez Castellón, Ligia María Sánchez Castellón
• El Mentor del Juego: Mediador Intercultural en las Mesas de Juegos de Rol: Cristo Leon, Edgar Meritano
• CONVERGENCIA DE CAMPOS SUPRARREGULADOS DE PRODUCCIÓN SEMIÓSICA EN LA CONSTRUCCIÓN Y PERMANENCIA DE MODELOS COGNITIVOS TRANSHISTÓRICOS: Juan Carlos González Vidal
• Escritura creativa y proyecto de existencia. La didáctica como una herramienta de generación de sentido para las personas privadas de su libertad: Diana Estefanía Martínez Dagnino, Iván Ávila González,Rodrigo Pardo Fernández.
• Metáfora, signo y modelo cognitivo. …

The Possibility Of Post Binary Reflexivity: A Genealogy Of Binary Logic In Western Philosophy, Vaughan A. Bidois

Critical Humanities

This article traces a genealogy of binary logic within Western philosophy, from its origins in Platonic metaphysics through to its deconstruction in poststructuralist theory. Drawing on the genealogical methods of Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault, it critiques how oppositional structures, such as mind/body, reason/emotion, and truth/error, have persisted through shifting intellectual paradigms while shaping knowledge, power, and subjectivity. Structuralist and linguistic theories are examined for their role in reinforcing binary meaning-making, while poststructural critiques (notably Derrida and Foucault) are explored for their attempts to subvert such hierarchies. However, the article argues that these critiques remain paradoxically ensnared within the same …

Drawing As Continuance: What Insists On Being Heard, Darlene St. Georges

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This article extends She-Hero through an inquiry into drawing as a creation-centred practice of continuance. Five drawings are engaged as aesthetic encounters through which relational and perceptual shifts become perceptible, allowing inner authority to emerge as a cultivated capacity to remain responsive to what is unfolding. Drawing is approached as a site of metramorphic reconfiguration where imagination, memory, and embodied sensing participate in the decolonizing of perceptual habits and the restoration of relational ways of knowing.

Showing It! Art Matters. But Why? How?, Holly Edwards

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This article addresses the agency of art with reference to an exhibition entitled “The Nature of Spirit”.  That show appeared in the local public library, resonating strongly with notions of “heartwork”.  My first Artizein publication was written in response to 9/11, and this one maintains comparable urgency, seeking solace in art precisely when the world seems to be sliding into lunacy. The prose explores the powers of art in traumatizing times with words, while the images offer the reader insight and support energetically.

Text/Ures, Kathy Mantas

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

By entwining the voices of other co-creators, text and images, I share a brief site-specific photo-reverie of my life-long allure to trees—in this instance, by attending to the trees near my home. This offering is rooted in peripatetic aesthetic practices that embrace a slower creative approach and more spellbinding ways of living, learning and knowing. In essence, this is an invitation to have an artful encounter with text/ures of trees.

Attending The Way Of The Crane: Centring Our Lives Through Creative-Centred Work, Alexandra Fidyk

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

A dreamscape using pastiche is used for reflecting upon the value of creative-centred practice and research. Attending to the image through reflection and circumambulation offers entry to a centring practice. In holding both, a new image emerged. The dreamscape—an unexpected scene of cranes in joyous dance—unfolds as actual dream and offers a metaphor for understanding an arc within the dreamer’s life. In this condensed yet nuanced rumination, personal and professional, poetic and haptic, participating and witnessing blur. This practice, the way of the Crane, is timely because it introduces relational pedagogy and testimonial teaching for our times—while touching the pulse …

The Verge, Reconsidered: Love, Salt, Seed, Time, Origin, Interweave––Triptychs In Conversation Across Time, Marna Hauk

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Sparked particularly by the poetic and the emergent data conversation analysis from an earlier Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal article (Hauk & Kippen, 2020) piece, which discussed data from 2016, the author creates a contemporary “conversation” from visual and poetic material, in 2026, and imagines forward a further 10 years to 2036. The three-plated visual-poetic artworkings speak also back and forth across the verges of spacetimemattering, riding the dip and wave, tide and weave, of deeper time and meaning sensing, with visual and poetic material. The original article proposed collaborative workings with other researchers. This work imagines the artworkings and …

Mapping The Legacy Of Cinnabar Mining In California's Santa Ynez River, Lorrie Blair

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This essay is a reflection of an artist residency focused on the environmental legacy of California’s cinnabar mining. The mineral cinnabar is a primary source of mercury that was used to mine gold in California in the 1800s, and is still used globally. For this residency, I asked, “How can I creatively map the emotional and sensory landscapes of Cinnabar mining sites?” “How can art making serve to expose elements of an ecological crisis?” To answer these questions, I created cyanotypes made in and with the Santa Ynez River, which flowed through two abandoned cinnabar mines. Cyanotypes are made by …

Teaching The Eye To Slow Down: Attentive Noticing As Ecological Practice, Sara Ko

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This visual essay unfolds through acts of careful noticing. Drawing from materials encountered through repeated walks across forested landscapes on Vancouver Island, it translates moss, soil, plant matter, and animal traces into immersive digital environments. Working through atmosphere, texture, and shifting forms rather than fixed representation, the project explores how perception is shaped by time spent with what is often overlooked. Digital processes are used not to stabilize or explain, but to hold uncertainty, fragility, and partial presence. The work invites readers to slow their looking and consider how learning, relation, and meaning can emerge through sustained attention.

Red Thread Projects For Placentary Peace, Nané Jordan

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Red Thread Projects are aesthetic expressions of my placental, eco-birthing philosophies as an artisteducator- scholar with lifelong roots reclaiming midwifery, and compassionate mother-centred birth care. Uplifting “birth” within embodied, feminist epistemologies, I aim to re-vision with the Mother, writ large and small. Since 1997, I have been creating textile artworks with red thread, activating these through performances in nature, where artwork, body, and place become interwoven texts, gifting gratitude to and with Mother Earth. My arts-centred research contributes to community education that empowers birth-givers, while advocating for the embodied, love-infused potentials of birth for human thriving.

Moving Forward: The Pulse Of Arts-Centred Research [Editorial], Darlene St. Georges

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Editorial

Artizein Editorial Team: Movements And Transitions, Barbara Bickel

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Editorial overview of movements and transitions taking place with the Artizein editorial team.

About The Cover Art: Pulsing Renewal, Darlene St. Georges

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

“Pulsing Renewal,” featured on the cover of this issue, is part of River’s Invocations, a creation-centred inquiry exploring River's ecologies, relationality, and creation. The painting was chosen for its close affinity with the issue theme, The Pulse of Arts-Centred Research. The visual language of Pulsing Renewal—its movement, rhythm, and emergence—echoes the vitality, responsiveness, and ongoing renewal evident across the articles, artworks, and conversations assembled in this volume. The work is presented here as a thematic point of entry into the diverse inquiries that follow.

Full Issue_Artizein Arts And Teaching Journal, Darlene St. Georges, Barbara Bickel

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Full Issue

Theatrical Agency In The Constitution Of Logical Space, Esther Marveta Neff

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation takes advantage of our current moment of collapse and shifting episteme to move from resistance and critique into modes of position, prefiguration, and praxiocentricism, giving not only a critique of the colonial-modern logical space of Theatrum Mundi, but also aiming to configure the thetic consciousness that grounds “theatrical agency” in the logic of cognitive and social epistemological modelling.  In what ways do we “build our own worlds”? What does “theatricality” tell us about human agency, especially in the domain of “theoretical attitudes,” and “consciousness”? In what ways, and to what extent, are we responsible for constituting …

Somatic Prosthetics For Planetary Resonance, Disha Dharesh Kumar R

Masters Theses

This thesis investigates how industrial design can transcend extractive technological paradigms in favor of relational interfaces that foster planetary attunement. Framing the climate crisis as a 'crisis of imagination', the research challenges the Western bifurcation of nature and culture by drawing on Indic cosmologies- which recognize stones, plants, and ecosystems as conscious at different levels and participants in a shared cosmic field. By synthesizing research in Biosemiotics, Quantum Information Pansycishm, and Neuroscience, the project redefines intelligence as a distributed, more-than-human phenomenon.

The research materializes as a speculative design artifact: a device that functions as a somatic prosthetic for planetary resonance. …

Receptivity And The Thing In Itself: Allison, Allais, And The Problem Of Outer Affection In Kant’S Transcendental Idealism, Amr Elmargoushy

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Kant’s distinction between appearances and things in themselves within the framework of transcendental idealism, focusing on how this distinction is meant to secure objective validity while respecting the limits of possible experience. It critically evaluates two influential contemporary interpretations: Henry Allison’s epistemological reading, which understands the distinction as marking different ways of considering the same object, and Lucy Allais’s metaphysical reading, which attributes a grounding role to things in themselves. The thesis argues that while Allison’s reinterpretation successfully avoids noumenal causation by construing affection epistemically, it generates a structural epistemic circularity concerning the role of receptivity and …

Weaving Eigengrau, Olivia Claire Luke

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Weaving Eigengrau explores weaving as both a material ritual and an inquiry about how reality is constructed and can be pulled apart. In this project, weaving becomes a method for redirecting forces into woven patterns and examining the relationship of contradiction by treating the contrasts between light and shadow, stillness and motion, and the fixed and the ephemeral as sculptural aspects. I’m driven by theories of reality: science, myth, and philosophy, and the common threads among them. Across systems of knowledge, reality is depicted in contradiction, and I seek to blur the lines between them. Within this convergence, weaving becomes …

Shimmer Methodology: May 2026 Cultural Studies Association Of Australasia, Lola Montgomery

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

This webinar presents an overview of the contemporary state of creative-practice research and autotheory before introducing Shimmer, an emerging methodological framework developed through creative practice, postgraduate supervision, and reflective inquiry. The presentation argues that while creative-practice research has successfully established creative work as a legitimate form of knowledge production, and autotheory has legitimised lived experience as theoretical material, both traditions leave relatively under-theorised the embodied moment through which insight first emerges.

The significance of the work lies in its contribution to ongoing debates around embodiment, affect, intuition, and knowledge production within creative-practice research. Shimmer proposes a language for understanding …

Values-Based Clinical Ethics: A New Model Of Health And Ethics Consultation For Patients Suffering In Extremis, Adam Trainer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation argues that contemporary clinical ethics is inadequately equipped to support patients suffering in extremis because it relies on an insufficiently discriminating account of health and a constrained model of moral reasoning. Drawing on Bernard Lonergan, it reconceives health as an emergent, multi-layered, heuristic notion shaped by biological, psychological, social, and existential goods. On that basis, it critiques principlism’s global applicability thesis and the undergirding claim that its principles form part of the common morality, arguing that this justificatory structure is philosophically insufficient and practically limited for clinical ethics in cases marked by profound suffering, moral plurality, and normative …

Soma: Exploring Touch As Performance And Performance As Therapy, Erica Pamson

Expressive Therapies Theses

This project investigated the role of touch within a performative context and its potential as a creative intervention within Expressive Arts Therapy. Grounded in phenomenology and intersubjectivity, the study draws on Expressive Arts Therapy (EXAT) and Performance Art frameworks that position meaning as emerging through embodied, co-created experience. Existing literature identifies touch as a primary mode of perception and communication, essential to both physical and emotional well-being, while also noting its increasing absence and regulation within contemporary Western culture. Performance art literature further highlights the body as both medium and site of relational exchange, often dissolving boundaries between performer and …

Believe It Or Not: An Examination Of The Nature And Implications Of Evidence-Resistant Beliefs, Jack Geruc

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

The aim of this thesis is to contribute to a growing body of academic research regarding the nature and origin of evidence-resistant belief systems and examine the influence that they have upon our lives. This examination of the origin of these beliefs draws on two intellectual disciplines: psychology and epistemology. A psychological approach examines the cognitive mechanisms that allow for the formation and persistence of these beliefs. The psychological approach focuses on the biological drives of belief formation and resilience. Furthermore, an examination of the psychology of identity shows an entanglement of one’s identity with belief systems that allows for …

Wind In A Dry Glass, Khia Hong

Theses and Dissertations

Khia Hong’s paper unfolds in five sections, tracing the ontological and epistemological inquiries behind her sculptures. When the sculptures stepped down from the pedestal and entered the plane of lived reality, the question “What is sculpture?” expanded into “What is sculpture, the self, and the world?” Through reflections on the self, Hong details how these questions emerge and are addressed in her material encounters.

We Are Not What We Think: Solipsism & The Concept Of Mind, Michael Marcoux

Student Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I argue that the persuasiveness of solipsism—understood as skepticism of the existence of anything or anyone outside of one’s own private mental life—rests not on its intrinsic argumentative force, but on the degree of commitment to a certain philosophical dogma. I use the problem of solipsism to tease out this dogma, which I dub the Primacy of Privacy. It is characterized by the conviction that in dealing with what there is and what we know, the mental, be it construed in terms of perceptions or thoughts, is the only certain datum from which most if not all …