Philosophy Commons^™

I Am Becoming., Dai Asano

Masters Theses

This is a collection of essays documenting my grappling with the idea that time is always in motion. When you say now, it is not now anymore, but we are still in now, a new now. How can I stay in the now without being swept away by the current of time? Describing a film by Ozu Yasujiro, Deleuze writes, “The vase in Late Spring is interposed between the daughter’s half smile and the beginning of her tears. There is becoming, change, passage. But the form of what changes does not itself change does not pass on. This is time, …

Embodied Abstractions: Identity And Representation In The Digital Era, Srikar Hari

Masters Theses

The digital image is a copy in motion. As it accelerates, it deteriorates.

It is a ghost of an image, a preview, a thumbnail, squeezed through

digital connections, resized, uploaded, downloaded, reformatted

and re-edited.

- Adapted from “In defense of the Poor Image” by Hito Steryel

With today’s digital technology, the image is no longer a stable

representation of the world, but a programmable database that

is updated in real time. It is not only part of a program, but it

contains its own operating code: the image is a program in itself.

Consequently, the image’s rhetoric has taken on …

Studies Of Identity In Modernity: Literary, Phenomenological, And Psychoanalytic Approaches, Roarke K. Mcdonald, Angelo Castagnino

DU Undergraduate Research Journal Archive

This paper analyzes challenges to conventional notions of identity in Pirandello’s novel One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand, towards understanding new conceptions of meaning and identity in the early 20th century. The aim is to provide a multi-plural study in the Italian modernist tradition (1890-1945),with the goal of understanding how technological, industrial, and socio-geographical changes of the period were felt across a range of fields, and centered on new ideas of the self in society. A study of how Pirandello’s literary style addresses the complex socio-geographical climate of Italy and Europe in the early 20th century is put …

An Existentialist Love, Garrett T. Harrison

The Corinthian

This paper seeks to establish an existentialist concept of virtuous Love by discussing the works of famous modern Existentialist thinkers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus within the realm of Love as discussed by Bell Hooks and Skye Cleary. It also seeks to express the significance of this Love within modern society. Our notion of Existentialist Love is built upon Sartre’s concept of authenticity, and branches into the inter-personal through Beauvoir’s notion of reciprocal, virtuous love. It is then expounded into the greater collective through a discussion of fear as the breeder of inauthenticity and is …

Understanding Ethical Leadership In Intelligence: Themes In Accountability, Self-Development, And Communication Among Cia Leaders, Caroline Walsh

Dissertations

This dissertation elucidates the concept of ethical leadership within the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Based on interviews with ten former senior-level officers from across different departments, the study analyzes how these leaders understand issues of accountability, self-development, and communication. The research also provides insights into their processes of sense-making and their methodologies for fostering ethical conduct amidst the complexities of intelligence operations.

Against the backdrop of the CIA's mission, structure, and norms, the study sheds light on the challenges and tensions inherent in the organization's operations. Through a thematic analysis of participant narratives, themes of moral cognition, personal values, and …

Queerform/Ing, Matthew Solon-Lee Weimer

Art Theses and Dissertations

My artwork is situated within and around vessels and the Queer Homoerotic World and explores sexuality as a Demisexual within them. This is accomplished through the two processes of my creation, Minivague and Queerform/ing: balancing sexual tension and explicit expression, while subverting traditional norms and stereotypes with queerness to distance oneself from stereotypical Gay Art. Altering/emphasizing makes the artwork more romantic, lighter, whimsical, softer, and tender than the figure/s and the situations actually are. The process is also emphasizing what one sees or wants to be seen. The Pink Boy becomes a celebration of intimacy of any form. I discuss …

The Environmental Craftsfolk: Making Things In A World Full Of Stuff, Zoey Ballard

Graduate Student Portfolios, Professional Papers, and Capstone Projects

This Civic Engagement Project (CEP) proposes a transformative approach to addressing the complex challenges of environmental degradation and disconnection from nature through the establishment of the Eco-Craft Cabal in Missoula, Montana. The project seeks to reframe environmental consciousness through the lens of craft, fostering improved connections with the local environment and promoting community resilience. By repurposing both natural and artificial materials in inclusive, accessible crafting activities, the Eco-Craft Cabal aims to empower participants to confront feelings of despair and hopelessness with tangible, meaningful actions.

Civil Disobedience Of Social Workers In Hospice, Jamie Leigh Roper

Poster Presentations

What is civil disobedience? Civil disobedience is often thought of as peaceful protesting or non-violent law breaking. However, the textbook definition is “the refusal to obey the demands or commands of a government or occupying power, without resorting to violence or active measures of opposition” (Britannica). Peaceful protesting has been an integral part of American history. Henry David Thoreau, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King Jr. were all civilly disobedient citizens who altered the course of history. Any and all protests, however, cannot be considered civil disobedience, since there are some requirements of this category.

The Components Necessary In A Clinical Day Program For A Successful Transition To Traditional School, Erica Parker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to determine what components of academic and therapeutic clinical day programs ensure success for students with mental health diagnoses as they transition back to conventional educational settings. This study focused on the importance of developing students' capabilities to fulfill their own needs within Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs through coping skills, academic skills, and ensuring those skills transition to their traditional home school setting. The research questions guiding this study were: 1. How is “successful reintegration” defined for students with mental health concerns by the students, families, teachers, and other school staff? 2. What program …

Desire, Motivation, And Reasons: A Defense Of Humean Theory, Benton Anderson

Philosophy Undergraduate Honors Theses

The issue of motivation is vital to contemporary debates in metaethics. In this paper, I defend the Humean theory of motivation and one version of the Humean theory of reasons. First, I defend Michael Smith's direction of fit argument for the necessity of desire and Neil Sinhababu's inference that the Humean theory of motivation is the best explanation against objections. Then, I defend a telic desire theory of reasons by arguing against belief-based theories and noting problems with various desire-based, or Humean, theories of reasons. I conclude with optimism for the compatibility of moral reasons and the telic desire theory.

“This Is Not A Game:” Exploring Qanon Conspiracy As An Arg Through The Lens Of Theodor Adorno, Corbin Poyer

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

Since 2017, an insidious conspiracy theory has spawned and spread across various internet forums and social media platforms. Named QAnon (often shortened to simply "Q"), this conspiracy exists as a "catch-all" conspiracy with an inherently ambiguous set of core beliefs and ever-changing end goal surrounding a mythical event named "The Storm," a period of civil unrest that ends with the purported cabals prevalent in the American government being brought to justice and the heroic Q-adherents being placed in positions of power. However, this "Storm" has yet to occur, highlighting the myriad of non-occurring events and claims that, logically, should have …

Incorporating Institutions And Ideology: Why Covid Didn't Change Anything, Cullen Kendrick

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

In this paper, I investigate the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic through an economic and philosophical lens to try and understand why government aid was removed. Looking at the problem as solely a structural issue, with Jurgen Habermas’ Between Facts and Norms and Douglas North’s Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance guiding my understanding, provides useful insights. Namely, how the informal and formal structures of society interact, and their cyclical nature. However, that perspective does not provide a complete picture. And so, I developed an understanding of ideology to investigate the origins of informal societal structures. To do this I …

The Dependent Nature Of Enlightenment And Capitalism: Discourse On How Civilization Needs Capitalism To Curb The Effects Of Enlightenment, Katriel Lee

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

This paper examines the interplay between the intellectual movements of enlightenment, the economic system of capitalism, and the manifestation of violent racist ideologies like antisemitism and anti-black racism. The core argument is that while the enlightenment ideals of reason, universality, and human dominance over nature inherently set the stage for categorizing and objectifying groups seen as deviating from the desired uniformity, the emergence of extreme racist violence like the Holocaust requires the additional factors of a failing capitalist economy and the rise of totalitarian governments. In the modern American context, racist thought persists in the more covert form of color-blindness. …

Charge The Cockpit Or Die: An Anatomy Of Fear-Driven Political Rhetoric In American Conservatism, Daniel Hostetter

Senior Honors Theses

Subthreshold negative emotions have superseded conscious reason as the initial and strongest motivators of political behavior. Political neuroscience uses the concepts of negativity bias and terror management theory to explore why fear-driven rhetoric plays such an outsized role in determining human political actions. These mechanisms of human anthropology are explored by competing explanations from biblical and evolutionary scholars who attempt to understand their contribution to human vulnerabilities to fear. When these mechanisms are observed in fear-driven political rhetoric, three common characteristics emerge: exaggerated threat, tribal combat, and religious apocalypse, which provide a new framework for explaining how modern populist leaders …

The Normativity Of Social Role Concepts, Robert Laurent Iii

Theses

This paper argues that social role concepts are both descriptive and normative. A "social role concept" is any concept that describes a person’s station in life from the point of view of society as a whole. Social roles are usually positions into which one is born and which are difficult if not impossible to renounce from within the conceptual system. Social roles are therefore not mere jobs or descriptions. They place certain obligations upon a person that are meant to apply absolutely. This paper first discusses the normativity of rule-governed practices and the rules involved in concept use. The paper …

An Egalitarian Approach To Explanations In Mental Disorders, Eli Driskill

Theses

Explanations of mental disorders come from a wide array of disciplines and epistemologies. How we conceive of and order these explanations has great importance for agency. Yet, psychiatry as a discipline has long suffered from the assumption that these explanations are multi-level. That is, some lower-level mechanism (i.e. neurobiology) constrains the information produced at a higher-level behavior. I argue that this approach is unsatisfying, and offer a new perspective: the egalitarian approach to mental disorders. The egalitarian model of mental disorders is non-hierarchical, dynamic, and cross-cultural. The paper begins by highlighting an inherent feature of psychiatry which I coin the …

An Ecofeminist Ontological Turn: Preparing The Field For A New Ecofeminist Project, M. Laurel-Leigh Meierdiercks

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ecofeminists have predominantly refuted oppressive conceptual frameworks by rejecting dualistic logic and value hierarchies, despite the foundational view of ontology that underlies our logic and value systems. I argue that ecofeminists must engage in the creative process of articulating an ecofeminist ontology. I demonstrate that the omission of ontological discourse in ecofeminist scholarships is primarily due to the time period during which ecofeminism gained peak traction and their concerns with essentialism. I also show that feminists experienced an ontological turn in the 2000s that produced a new model for ontological theories that would be beneficial for ecofeminists to embrace. In …

Everyone And No One In The Detroit Techno Experience, Angela R. Whitlock

Publications

This project employs phenomenological and poststructuralist modes of inquiry to examine the relationship between techno’s utilization of abject experiences and the cultivation of a synergetic community embracing hope and inclusiveness. Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Julia Kristeva, and Rosalind Krauss, I emphasize parallels between community and track structure, investigating interconnectedness between participants (including the DJ) within techno experiences and the interplay of samples within techno tracks. This analysis reveals tensions and dualities that shape both. This approach fills an underexplored gap within current scholarship, which commonly approaches the subject through the lenses of deviance, drug abuse, or …

A Madhyamaka Critique Of Jaegwon Kim's Supervenience Argument, Tyler J. Jungbauer

Comparative Philosophy

Jaegwon Kim’s supervenience argument objects to the possibility of emergent causation (both downward and same-level) based on both (1) the causal overdetermination of both (a) higher-level emergent events and (b) lower-level basal events, and (2) the causal closure principle of the physical domain. Kim argues that emergent causation entails epiphenomenalism. Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophy skeptically critiques the primary (ultimate) existence of causal phenomena and instead suggests that all such phenomena may only be secondarily (conventionally) existent. Mādhyamikas acknowledge that, conventionally, emergent phenomena appear to cause both basal phenomena and other emergent phenomena. However, contra Kim, Mādhyamikas doubt that causal relations ultimately …

An Appeal To Mystery Without "Punting": Revisiting Molinism’S Biblical Problem In Light Of Ephesians 1:4–11 And Romans 11:33–36, Jeffrey S. Kennedy

Liberty Theological Review

Molinists maintain that middle knowledge is the best candidate for settling the historical debate on God’s sovereignty and man’s free will. The philosophical sophistication of the view can be alluring, and the efforts of Molinists to rationally defend it against criticisms have been impressive. But does Molinism still have a biblical problem? Proponents argue that the doctrine is compatible with the Bible's teaching on God's knowledge of counterfactuals, though admittedly, it is not explicitly taught in Scripture. But this claim is more problematic than advocates for the theory have alleged. The present study maintains that in the absence of a …

Capitalism, Democracy, And Adam Smith, John Thrasher

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

How can we better understand the relationship between capitalism and democracy today? This article challenges the prevailing “independence thesis” that views capitalism and democracy as separate and often antagonistic systems. By revisiting Adam Smith’s integrationist approach to political economy, I argue for a more nuanced understanding of the symbiotic relationship between political and economic orders. The article critically examines common responses to the independence thesis – insulation and implementation strategies – and proposes an alternative framework based on Smith’s integrated political economy. This Smithian perspective not only offers a more accurate description of the interdependence between capitalism and democracy but …

Does Art Pluralism Lead To Eliminativism?, P.D. Magnus, Christy Mag Uidhir

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

Art pluralism is the view that there is no single, correct account of what art is. Instead, art is understood through a plurality of art concepts and with considerations that are different for particular arts. Although avowed pluralists have retained the word “art” in their discussions, it is natural to ask whether the considerations that motivate pluralism should lead us to abandon art talk altogether; that is, should pluralism lead to eliminativism? This paper addresses arguments both for and against this move. We ultimately argue that pluralism allows one to retain the word “art”, if one wants it, but only …

The Evolution Of Stoicism: An Overview Of Prominent Features And Discussions In Modern Stoicism, Christopher Sanchez

West Chester University Master’s Theses

This thesis project is an overview of the philosophy of Stoicism and its history, including research on prominent features and discussions in contemporary Stoicism. Stoicism today, known as “Modern Stoicism” or “contemporary Stoicism,” has undergone a recent revival in interest, leading to a new wave of academic and popular study. One purpose of this project is to investigate why and how this resurgence of Stoicism took place; I argue that one primary cause of the resurgence and manifestation of Modern Stoicism is a characteristic of accessibility in Stoic philosophy. This accessibility allows for an exponential growth of interaction with Stoic …

Reconceiving Tort Law And The Role Of Insurance: Achieving Mutual Accountability, Grace Hong

CMC Senior Theses

Despite insurance being a deciding factor in whether liability is found in tort cases, it is not always reflected in tort theories and court opinions. In this paper, I offer a framework for reconceiving the role of insurance in tort law. To achieve this, I outline where insurance falls into instrumental and non-instrumental theories and why non-instrumental theories are more persuasive. After establishing this, I move to Goldberg and Zipursky’s civil recourse theory and delineate how similarities between the right to vote and right of action indicate parallel problems with failures to comprehend lack of access to the political process …

Nazism And Eric Voegelin’S Politische Religionen: An Approach To Exploring Nazism’S Roots In Modern Thought, Cody R. Babcock

CMC Senior Theses

The Holocaust shook the core assumptions many held regarding human progress and human nature. This paper seeks to track how the ideas of modernist philosophers may have laid the fundamental political and moral assumptions that allowed the Holocaust to occur. I will offer an analysis of 20th century German-American political scientist and philosopher Eric Voegelin’s theory of Political Religions to assess whether philosophy emerging from the Modern era led Germany to eschew Christianity, a world-transcendent religion as the source of the West’s “first principles,” and adopt the world-imminent religion of Nazism in its place. If this proves to be the …

Recognition And Domination: A Hegelian Approach To Evolving Gender And Technology Paradigms, Zachary Davis

CMC Senior Theses

This paper aims to develop a strong account of recognition. It begins with a Hegel-inspired account of recognition as a fundamental desire that drives humanity. This account establishes recognition as fundamental to the initial subject formation of independent self-consciousnesses as agents. I offer the lord-bondsman dualism to provide a critique of domination as oppositional to securing the means for recognition. This entails that, as history progresses the world ought to move towards universally adopting mutual recognition relationships without domination. I adopt this goal as an ideal form of recognition. In Chapter 2, I apply this recognitional framework to gender. Through …

Relationality In Rousseau's Philosophy Of Education, Thayne Cameron

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s assertion of Emile that “Our true study is that of the human condition” serves as the foundation for this dissertation, which examines the significance of certain kinds of basic experiential relationships in Rousseau’s philosophy of education. By analyzing the relationships between the self and objects, the self and others, and the educator and the learner, this work elucidates how these interactions underpin Rousseau’s pedagogical views and their implications for fostering personal and social virtue.

The dissertation explores the self-object relationship through affectivity, embodiment, and purposeful activity, demonstrating how direct engagement with objects shapes perceptions and behaviors. It then …

Recognition, Subject Formation, And Agency: Marginalization And Agency In Feminist Dystopian Narratives, Samantha J. Quade

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Though more frequently discussed in regard to freedom and intersubjectivity, subject formation and recognition have significant potential in helping us understand the structures of power, domination, and resistance in our lived experiences. Through the portrayal of recognition within literature - particularly within feminist dystopian literature - we can see significant examples of not only recognition experiences between characters, but also the acknowledgement of or resistance against unjust and oppressive power structures through recognition. To explore this phenomena, I begin by assessing the experience of empathy – or moral imagination, according to Martha Nussbaum – in reading and in writing, along …

Comedy Is Manipulative And I Can Prove It: Laugh, Now!, Eleanor Henderson

Scripps Senior Theses

This paper examines whether comedy is a manipulative form of interaction. Through defining manipulation and establishing a practical definition of how jokes function, it applies the definition of manipulation to the performance and experience of comedy by assessing a joke's deliberate and powerful verbal structure. It closes with a brief discussion of the ethics of comedy, within context of it being a manipulative influence.

The Ethics Of Involuntary Intervention, Landyn Tipton

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This is a deep ethical analysis of the act of non-consensual intervention that discusses the distinction between voluntary and involuntary intervention and explains when it would be considered appropriate and inappropriate to intervene in someone else's life. This paper presents an argument for the right to autonomy, including specific scenarios like consensual types of intervention (psychological therapy), religious intervention (specifically involving LGBTQ conversion therapy), and situations where the person is potentially harming themselves or others. There will also be an interpretation of autonomy and the claim to authority through the lens of Utilitarianism and Kantian ethics.