Philosophy Commons^™

Equipmentality As A Pharmakon, Sherif Khalil

Theses and Dissertations

One must lose the world to know himself, if in his attempt to know the world he lost himself.

In this thesis, I argue that equipment is a pharmakon in that its harm lies in the service it is supposed to provide. Through equipment one gets to have a practical sense of the world. But, the world in this sense is a world for everyone and for no one in particular, that is, it is made to the measure of the average person who has no aspirations to realize his authenticity. That is how equipment helps us practically make sense …

Sense Make Before Book, Bradley Sinanan

Theses and Dissertations

“Sense Make Before Book” is an Indo-Caribbean turn of phrase which refers to common sense being more important than book smarts. My sister sent me a post the other day on Instagram of an Trinidadian woman using this phrase, saying it was one of Indo-Caribbean origin. I was interested and asked my mom about it. My mom says that when she was younger my grandpa said it often around their house in Princes Town, Trinidad and Tobago. This adage feels charged thinking about the history of indenture and its effects on the Indo-Caribbean diaspora.

The written word of archival history …

The Fall And Rise Of Bengali Muslim Conciousness: Conceptualising The Identity Of The Bangla Universal, Habib Khan

Theses and Dissertations

The emergence of modern-nation states saw the end of the empirical era of exploitation and exercise of inherent racist tendencies towards the 'other'. However, the effect of that colonial system is still ever-present in the creation and governance of these newly independent states. While every new state aims to be 'modern', they adopt the international legal framework of the West as their own - a system they had initially wanted to escape. The concept of Muslim universality in the form of the ummah should have freed Pakistan from the shackles of its former colonial masters. Instead, this phenomenon was replaced …

Filling The Vacant Space: A Close Reading Of Kant’S Dialectic Of Pure Practical Reason, Mae Ashraf Ali Saafan

Theses and Dissertations

The main aim of this thesis is to explore Kant’s central notion of rational belief. Kant’s account of rational belief could be viewed as the ground on which rational moral agents assent to propositions that enable them to avoid any practical incoherence as they engage in their moral duty.

The paper will offer a close reading of the dialectic of pure practical reason, particularly the doctrine of the postulates of practical reason. In this doctrine, Kant argues that although there is no theoretical proof for or against freedom, God, and the immortality of the soul, rational moral agents ought to …

An Arbitrary Aesthetic: Cultural Reproduction And Hegemonic Canonical Formations In The Western Theatrical Academy, Sim C. Rivers

Theses and Dissertations

Theatre as an artistic practice has often been celebrated as an art of and for the people, being a modality that in theory the common person has access to learn, explore and experience. In recent years I have become preoccupied with the growing rarification and privileging of this art form, particularly in how it is cognized and taught in the academic world. As such, I set out to investigate the mechanisms at work at levels structural, artistic, and personal that determine how theatre is taught and understood within the western academy.

This thesis seeks to examine and unpack the perceived …

New Thinking About Models, Aaron Alexander Kruk

Theses and Dissertations

Contemporary philosophers of science have been wholly concerned with understand- ing models through their ability to represent their target systems. According to these ‘representationalists’ understanding how models represent will answer the foremost philosophical questions pertaining to scientific models. I propose a new way to think about models. I argue that two of the functions that models preform, explanation and exploration of their target systems, are codependent on one another. That is, a model is capable of explanation if, only if, and because it is capable of exploration (and vice versa). From this codependency, it follows that we need not (and …

From The Corner Of One's Soul: The Methods Of Negotiating Tension In Cormac Mccarthy's Blood Meridian Or The Evening Redness In The West, Julian Pena

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides a practical and meaningful reading of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West, one that is rooted in the claim that both Judge Holden and the Kid reflect two different methods for negotiating a tension impinged upon them by their external circumstances. Using a theoretical framework that is inspired by the social psychological Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, this thesis provides an extensive analysis of the novel’s fictional universe, Judge Holden, and the Kid. Such an analysis elucidates the violent nature of Blood Meridian’s universe and further reveals the character of Judge Holden …

Translation In And Of Philosophy, Hussein Barrada

Theses and Dissertations

Paul Ricoeur in his essay The Paradigm of Translation, presents an understanding of translation that is found between two positions that are irreconcilable. These two positions represent on the one hand, the difference that exists between languages and on the other hand, the common ground that languages must have for them to be translatable into one another. Following Ricoeur’s paradigm, the thesis will aim to unpack an understanding of translation as a tension that occurs between its theoretical impossibility and the reality of its everyday practice. The theoretical impossibility of translation lies in the fact that for one language …

A Puzzle About Information, Probability And Surprise, Selorm Ohene

Theses and Dissertations

Suppose 92 coins, flipped in succession, all come up heads. If we were previously confident that the process was fair, we would be surprised at this outcome. What, if anything, explains our surprise? And is it warranted? In what follows I do two things. First, I propose and defend an explanation of our surprise: we are surprised at the 92-head sequence, and various other sequences, because they are patterned. Second, Martin Smith (2017) has argued that, on an initial assumption that the coin-flipping process is fair, an observation of 92 heads does not warrant surprise. Against Smith, I argue that …

Language, Literacy, And Conscientização In American Public Schools, Julie Ward

Theses and Dissertations

Language, Literacy, and Conscientização in American Public Schools synthesizes poststructural language theory to critique literacy teaching and assessment norms in American public schools in order to theorize a pedagogy of racial and economic justice that embraces globalization and immigration. Chapter I creates a theoretical framework for language that rests firmly on both Lev Vygotsky’s and Jacques Lacan’s sociohistorical approach to language acquisition and language use. Mikhail Bakhtin’s work demonstrates the heteroglossic nature of discourse, while Antonio Gramsci politicizes this framework through an understanding of hegemony. Chapter II sketches ethnographic research on teaching practices of various American communities, focusing on ideology …

Reading Others Well And Being Well Read, Nathan Louis Engel-Hawbecker

Theses and Dissertations

The conceptual problem of other minds is over how we can so much as form thoughts or beliefs about (let alone know) mental lives other than our own. What I call the conceptual problem of other conscious minds restricts this question to others’ phenomenally conscious experiences. Past appeals to an individual’s inferential, imaginative, or perceptual faculties all more plausibly presuppose than provide a solution to this problem: such faculties allow us to form thoughts about others’ experiences only if we already have some prior means of doing so (§§2-5). This is not the case with testimony, which I introduce and …

D Is For The Most Cherished Sense (Whence It Comes And Wither It Goes), Hallie S. Mcneill

Theses and Dissertations

A transcript of the audio that constitutes the work by the same title, along with an introduction and relevant bibliography.

Locutionary Disablement And Epistemic Injustice, Dana Elizabeth Grabelsky

Theses and Dissertations

In this paper, I investigate how the notion of epistemic injustice relates to two distinct, though not incompatible, models of the phenomenon of silencing: epistemic and linguistic. I argue that a linguistic model of silencing can be used to elucidate the nature of hermeneutical injustice—a type of epistemic injustice identified by Miranda Fricker. I put forth my own reformulation of the linguistic model of silencing as locutionary (as opposed to illocutionary) disablement, when it occurs in cases of hermeneutical injustice, and I argue that this reformulation can respond to the criticism that Fricker’s construal of hermeneutical injustice falls prey to …

Gender As An 'Interplay Of Rules': Detecting Epistemic Interplay Of Medical And Legal Discourse With Sex And Gender Classification In Four Editions Of The Dewey Decimal Classification, Melodie J. Fox

Theses and Dissertations

When groups of people are represented in classification systems, potential exists for them to be structurally or linguistically subordinated, erased or otherwise misrepresented (Olson & Schlegl, 2001). As Bowker & Star (1999) have shown, the real-world application of classification to people can have legal, economic, medical, social, and educational consequences. The purpose of this research is to contribute to knowledge organization by showing how the epistemological stance underlying specific classificatory discourses interactively participates in the formation of concepts. The medical and legal discourses in three timeframes are examined using Foucauldian genealogical discourse analysis to investigate how their depictions of gender …

From Self-Trust To Other-Trust: The Role Of Reasons And The Theoretical Insignificance Of Behavioral Inconsistency, Alex Papulis

Theses and Dissertations

There is intuitive pull to the idea that if a subject knows or believes that others are just like her, and if she trusts herself as an epistemic agent, then she should also trust others as epistemic agents. It seems that she would be inconsistent to trust herself, and then when faced with an identical being in a situation or environment identical to her own, not extend trust to that other being as well. In this paper I argue that charges of inconsistency of the sort above can only apply if one's self-trust is on the basis of reasons. I …

Building Complexity, One Stability At A Time: Rethinking Stubbornness In Public Rhetorics And Writing Studies, Chris Mays

Theses and Dissertations

In deliberative argument, in political discourse, in teaching, and in casual conversation, as rhetors we often hope that our attempts at interaction will have some effect on the participants in these discursive environments. The phenomena of stubbornness, however, would seem to suggest that, despite our efforts, there are times when rhetoric just doesn't work. This dissertation complicates this premise, and in so doing complicates common understandings of both stubbornness and rhetorical effect. As I argue, rhetorical effects exist within a complex rhetoric system, within which they circulate and are interconnected with a diversity of other rhetorical and non-rhetorical elements. …

Simulation Design Characteristics: Perspectives Held By Nurse Educators And Nursing Students, Jane Brekke Paige

Theses and Dissertations

Simulation based learning (SBL) is pedagogical method poised to innovate nursing educational approaches. Yet, despite a growing body of research into SBL, limited investigation exists regarding assumptions and beliefs that underpin SBL pedagogy. Even though key simulation design characteristics exist, the particular methods nurse educators use to operationalize simulation design characteristics and how these choices are viewed from the perspective of nursing students is unknown. Without understanding what motivates educators to design simulations as they do, it is difficult to interpret the evidence that exists to support chosen methods. Through the exploration of perspectives (points-of-view), underlying beliefs can be uncovered. …