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Articles 1 - 30 of 191
Full-Text Articles in Philosophy
The Existential Ambiguity Of Authentic Love In Alice Diop's Saint Omer, Kelli Fuery
The Existential Ambiguity Of Authentic Love In Alice Diop's Saint Omer, Kelli Fuery
CCI Articles and Research
Using Simone de Beauvoir's and Frantz Fanon's existentialist phenomenology, this article examines an existentialist ethics of recognition as an act of authentic love in Alice Diop's Saint Omer (2022). Loosely based on a true story, Saint Omer tells a story of filicide: Laurence Coly leaves her baby on a beach to die and we follow the subsequent courtroom drama as it unfolds. The film also follows Rama, a literature professor intending to write up the case as a contemporary version of the Medea myth. I suggest Saint Omer presents an ethics of recognition in its avoidance of the superficial question …
Confronting Founding Injustices: Reconstructive Constitutional Adjudication And Constitutional Legitimacy In Postcolonial States, Mutasim Abuzeid
Confronting Founding Injustices: Reconstructive Constitutional Adjudication And Constitutional Legitimacy In Postcolonial States, Mutasim Abuzeid
International Studies (MA) Theses
Why do some postcolonial constitutions achieve higher constitutional legitimacy than others? Across the Global South, constitutions have proliferated while legitimacy remains uneven and contested. Existing scholarship explains variation in constitutional legitimacy in postcolonial states through three dominant paradigms. Institutionalist theories equate legitimacy with procedural design and endurance, presuming that stable institutions generate compliance and, over time, diffuse support. Transformative constitutionalism locates legitimacy in social justice, emphasizing judicial doctrines such as proportionality and reasonableness to advance equality and material inclusion. Transitional justice approaches, by contrast, locate moral repair largely outside constitutional law—through truth commissions, reparations, and memory projects—often leaving the constitutional …
The Fiduciary Argument Against Conscientious Refusal In Healthcare, Michael Robinson
The Fiduciary Argument Against Conscientious Refusal In Healthcare, Michael Robinson
Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research
The question of when, if ever, healthcare professionals with conscientious objections should be accommodated by permitting them to refuse to provide medical interventions to which they morally object is a heated issue that has received significant attention in the medical ethics literature. While many professional medical associations have long held that such objections may be accommodated in a broad range of cases, a vocal and growing minority has been fervently arguing that the medical profession should cease accommodating conscientious objections and should rarely, if ever, permit clinicians to refrain from providing medical care merely because it conflicts with their conscience. …
Can An Ai System Be Creative? A Critical Perspective From Art And Engineering, Ivan Magrin-Chagnolleau
Can An Ai System Be Creative? A Critical Perspective From Art And Engineering, Ivan Magrin-Chagnolleau
Presidential Fellows Articles and Research
This paper examines the question of whether artificial intelligence (AI) systems can be creative, approached from the dual perspective of a researcher trained in electrical engineering, pattern recognition, machine learning, and neural networks, who has also spent most of his life engaged in the arts as actor, stage and film director, writer, composer, and visual artist, and in philosophy. Drawing on Margaret Boden’s foundational framework — both her three properties of creativity (novelty, surprise, and value) and her three types of creative processes (combinatorial, exploratory, and transformational) — the paper argues that AI systems are structurally incapable of creativity in …
Sexual Violence, Rape Culture, And The Ethics Of Care In Promising Young Woman (2020), Blink Twice (2024), And Women Talking (2022), Naomi H. Fredgant
Sexual Violence, Rape Culture, And The Ethics Of Care In Promising Young Woman (2020), Blink Twice (2024), And Women Talking (2022), Naomi H. Fredgant
Film and Media Studies (MA) Theses
Evolving public discourse on rape and rape culture is reflected in contemporary cinema. This thesis analyzes Promising Young Woman (2020), Blink Twice (2024), and Women Talking (2022)—all directed by women—through the theoretical framework of the ethics of care, highlighting how these films expose the persistence of rape culture and the systemic failure of institutions to support victims of sexual violence. Drawing on scholarship about rape culture, this analysis shows how the rape myths and institutional gaslighting depicted in these films function to dismiss victims’ testimonies, mirroring broader patterns of invalidation. The films explore both individual and collective responses to sexual …
Quantum Superpositions Of Conscious States In A Minimal Integrated Information Model, Kelvin J. Mcqueen, Ian T. Durham, Markus P. Müller
Quantum Superpositions Of Conscious States In A Minimal Integrated Information Model, Kelvin J. Mcqueen, Ian T. Durham, Markus P. Müller
Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research
Could there be quantum superpositions of conscious states, as suggested by the Wigner’s friend thought experiment? Mathematical theories of consciousness, notably integrated information theory (IIT), make this question more precise by associating physical systems with both quantitative amounts of consciousness and structural characterizations of conscious states. Motivated by a recent proposal that ties wave-function collapse to integrated information, we construct a simple quantum circuit that would, on that proposal, place a minimal system—a feedback dyad—into a superposition of states that differ in their associated conscious states. This “Schrödinger’s dyad” provides a controlled setting for evaluating a central desideratum of consciousness-based …
Markets, Agency, And Trust: Ai Agents And The Knowledge Problem, Brennan Mcdavid, Lynne Kiesling, David Chassin
Markets, Agency, And Trust: Ai Agents And The Knowledge Problem, Brennan Mcdavid, Lynne Kiesling, David Chassin
Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research
Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming market participation, raising key epistemological questions: Do AI agents enhance or diminish the aggregation of local, private, and tacit knowledge Hayek saw as essential to market processes? How does trust in both markets and AI shape willingness to engage in AI-mediated exchange? This paper examines these issues through market epistemology, agency relationships, and trust epistemology, analyzing how agentic AI reshapes the knowledge problem and principal-agent dynamics. Applying this framework to transactive energy markets, we show that AI shifts decision-making from human cognition to algorithmic processes that require user trust despite epistemic opacity, although it is …
Pursuing Social Progress: The Question Of Orientation, Keith Hankins, Ryan Muldoon, David Wiens
Pursuing Social Progress: The Question Of Orientation, Keith Hankins, Ryan Muldoon, David Wiens
Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research
We examine the “problem of social change”, focusing on whether efforts should be oriented toward long-term ideals or piecemeal improvements. We analyse the trade-off between these approaches: pursuing ideals may require short-term sacrifices, while incremental changes may hinder realizing an ideal. We introduce an analytical framework for structuring thought experiments that can provide traction on these issues, and present two implementations that provide baseline insights and motivate further research. We conclude with suggestions for extending our framework in ways that can yield insights that can guide our choice of orientation.
What Kind Of Relationality Does Quantum Mechanics Exhibit?, Emily Adlam
What Kind Of Relationality Does Quantum Mechanics Exhibit?, Emily Adlam
Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research
In this article I elaborate on the approach to relational quantum mechanics suggested by Adlam and Rovelli (2023). I suggest that this approach fills an important gap in the spectrum of relational approaches, because it posits that the relational aspects of quantum mechanics are both inherent and dynamical. I compare this approach to Orthodox RQM, arguing that it has a number of advantages, and I show how some possible objections can be resolved.
From Statistical Dependence To The Space Of Possible Superdeterministic Theories, Mordecai Waegell, Kelvin J. Mcqueen
From Statistical Dependence To The Space Of Possible Superdeterministic Theories, Mordecai Waegell, Kelvin J. Mcqueen
Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research
Bell’s theorem demonstrates that any physical theory that is consistent with the predictions of quantum mechanics, and which satisfies some apparently innocuous assumptions, must violate the principle of local causality. It may therefore be possible to maintain local causality by rejecting one of these other assumptions instead. One possibility that has recently received significant attention involves rejecting the principle of statistical independence (SI). In this paper, we consider the frequency interpretation of SI, which states that ρ(λ) ≈ ρ(λ|Z), where ρ(λ) is the relative frequency of an element of an ensemble being in the state λ, and Z is a …
Property Rights In The Face Of Historic Injustice, Bas Van Der Vossen, Fabian Wendt
Property Rights In The Face Of Historic Injustice, Bas Van Der Vossen, Fabian Wendt
Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research
It seems natural to adopt a historical approach when it comes to property titles: When property titles have a clean history, they are to be respected as a matter of justice; when they do not have a clean history, for example, in cases of prior theft, they must be returned to the original owners or their descendants. But the historical approach has serious drawbacks. This paper presents an alternative. Starting from the idea that property rights must be stable, we offer an account of why historic injustices sometimes do, but sometimes do not, undermine current titles. This account offers a …
Prison-Breaking From Plato's Cave, Brennan Mcdavid
Prison-Breaking From Plato's Cave, Brennan Mcdavid
Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research
This article examines the philosophical significance of nature (ϕύσις) in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. The word is used in the protasis of the conditional clause at 515bc where Socrates proposes to inquire into ‘what the manner of the release and healing from these bonds and this folly would be if in the course of nature (ϕύσϵι) something of this sort should happen to them’. This instance of ‘nature’ has been a matter of philological and philosophical debate, with attention paid principally to the narrow passage of the allegory for reconstructing Plato’s meaning. This article argues from the standpoint of …
Plato’S Moral Realism By Lloyd Gerson (Review), Brennan Mcdavid
Plato’S Moral Realism By Lloyd Gerson (Review), Brennan Mcdavid
Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research
A review of Plato’s Moral Realism by Lloyd Gerson.
Review Of Of Rule And Office: Plato’S Ideas Of The Political, By Melissa Lane., Brennan Mcdavid
Review Of Of Rule And Office: Plato’S Ideas Of The Political, By Melissa Lane., Brennan Mcdavid
Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research
A review of Of Rule and Office: Plato’s Ideas of the Political, by Melissa Lane.
Ethical Aspects Of Utilising Artificial Intelligence In Clinical Settings, Jeffrey Byrnes, Michael Robinson
Ethical Aspects Of Utilising Artificial Intelligence In Clinical Settings, Jeffrey Byrnes, Michael Robinson
Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research
In response to recent proposals to utilize artificial intelligence (AI) to automate ethics consultations in healthcare, we raise two main problems for the prospect of having healthcare professionals rely on AI-driven programs to provide ethical guidance in clinical matters. The first cause for concern is that, because these programs would effectively function like black boxes, this approach seems to preclude the kind of transparency that would allow clinical staff to explain and justify treatment decisions to patients, fellow caregivers, and those tasked with providing oversight. The other main problem is that the kind of authority that would need to be …
Transparency And Authority Concerns With Using Ai To Make Ethical Recommendations In Clinical Settings, Jeffrey Byrnes, Michael Robinson
Transparency And Authority Concerns With Using Ai To Make Ethical Recommendations In Clinical Settings, Jeffrey Byrnes, Michael Robinson
Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research
In response to recent proposals to utilize artificial intelligence (AI) to automate ethics consultations in healthcare, we raise two main problems for the prospect of having healthcare professionals rely on AI-driven programs to provide ethical guidance in clinical matters. The first cause for concern is that, because these programs would effectively function like black boxes, this approach seems to preclude the kind of transparency that would allow clinical staff to explain and justify treatment decisions to patients, fellow caregivers, and those tasked with providing oversight. The other main problem is that the kind of authority that would need to be …
Moderate Physical Perspectivalism, Emily Adlam
Moderate Physical Perspectivalism, Emily Adlam
Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research
Recent developments in the foundations of physics have given rise to a class of views suggesting that physically meaningful descriptions must always be relativized to a physical perspective. In this article, I distinguish between strong physical perspectivalism, which maintains that all facts must be relativized to a perspective, and moderate physical perspectivalism, which maintains that all empirically meaningful descriptions must be relativized to a perspective. I argue that scientific evidence and philosophical considerations support moderate physical perspectivalism over strong physical perspectivalism. In particular, motivations connected to epistemic humility and the social nature of science are more compatible with the moderate …
Strategic Justice, Conventions, And Game Theory: Introduction To A Synthese Topical Collection, Michael Moehler, John Thrasher
Strategic Justice, Conventions, And Game Theory: Introduction To A Synthese Topical Collection, Michael Moehler, John Thrasher
Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research
Evolutionary, game-theoretic approaches to justice and the social contract have become increasingly popular in contemporary moral and political philosophy. (Vanderschraaf, Strategic justice: convention and problems of balancing divergent interests, Oxford University Press, 2019) theory of strategic justice represents the most recent contribution to this tradition and, in many ways, can be viewed as a culmination of it. This article discusses some of the central features of Vanderschraaf’s theory and relates them to the contributions in this collection. Some of the contributions directly address Vanderschraaf’s work, while others explore related topics in game theory, bargaining theory, formal philosophy, rationality, equality, justice, …
How Are Entanglement Entropies Related To Entropy Bounds?, Emily Adlam
How Are Entanglement Entropies Related To Entropy Bounds?, Emily Adlam
Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research
In this paper we seek to understand what current knowledge of entanglement entropies suggests about the appropriate way to interpret the covariant entropy bound. We first begin by arguing that just as in the classical case, a universal bound on the von Neumann entropy could have either an epistemic or ontological origin. We then consider several possible ways of explaining the bound as a consequence of features of the entanglement entropy. We discuss consider area laws in condensed matter and quantum field theory, arguing that they suggest an epistemic reading of the bound. We also discuss the ‘spacetime from entanglement’ …
Towards An Interdisciplinary “Science Of The Mind”: A Call For Enhanced Collaboration Between Philosophy And Neuroscience, Alessandra Buccella, Uri Maoz, Liad Mudrik
Towards An Interdisciplinary “Science Of The Mind”: A Call For Enhanced Collaboration Between Philosophy And Neuroscience, Alessandra Buccella, Uri Maoz, Liad Mudrik
Psychology Faculty Articles and Research
In recent decades, the neuroscientific community has moved from describing the neural underpinnings of mental phenomena—as characterized by experimental psychology and philosophy of mind—to attempting to redefine those mental phenomena based on neural findings. Nowadays, many are intrigued by the idea that neuroscience might provide the “missing piece” that would allow philosophers (and, to an extent, psychologists, too) to make important advances, generating new means that these disciplines lack to close knowledge gaps and answer questions like “What is Free Will?” and “Do humans have it?.” In this paper, we argue that instead of striving for neuroscience to replace philosophy …
“Women And Lockean Theory: John Locke, Rachel Speght, And Egalitarian Personhood, Katherine Gillespie, Bas Van Der Vossen
“Women And Lockean Theory: John Locke, Rachel Speght, And Egalitarian Personhood, Katherine Gillespie, Bas Van Der Vossen
Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research
Liberal political thought affirms the moral equality of all persons. The Lockean tradition within liberalism captures this equality by endowing people with equal natural rights. However, a powerful line of criticism holds that the theory fails to live up to its egalitarian billing by treating men and women differently. This article offers a rational reconstruction of the Lockean position on gender equality, and the rights of women in particular. We propose a novel interpretative method which puts Locke into conversation with a contemporary female author, Rachel Speght. In Speght, we find an interesting argument supporting an egalitarian Lockean view, grounded …
Canonical Extensions Of Quantale Enriched Categories, Alexander Kurz
Canonical Extensions Of Quantale Enriched Categories, Alexander Kurz
MPP Research Seminar
No abstract provided.
Cinema's Poetic Function: Creating An Amorous Distance, William Yonts
Cinema's Poetic Function: Creating An Amorous Distance, William Yonts
Film and Media Studies (MA) Theses
The aim of this thesis is to examine how cinema can embrace its poetic function to avoid its assimilation into preexisting hermeneutic structures, which would leave it vulnerable to myth as defined by Roland Barthes, and instead be a generative force, encouraging its viewer to engage with the full potential of the text. This mode of spectatorship is termed the “amorous distance,” which Barthes describes as his simultaneous fascination with the film and that which exceeds it. The amorous distance finds further articulation through the work of Roman Jakobson and Julia Kristeva. Jakobson’s schema of six language functions describes the …
Embracing The Wound Of Contingency: Transcribing Reality In Supernatural Horror And Found Footage, Mason Dax Dickerson
Embracing The Wound Of Contingency: Transcribing Reality In Supernatural Horror And Found Footage, Mason Dax Dickerson
Film and Media Studies (MA) Theses
To counter both the form of critical thought first outlined by Kant that dispels absolute knowledge, as well as the dogmatic necessitarianism that asserts the universe must be one way for an absolute originary reason, Quentin Meillassoux argues for the “non-facticity of facticity” to implicate an absolute contingency or unreason structuring reality: in effect, anything could happen for no reason at all. Meillassoux suggests the trauma of the contingent event and the sudden impossibility of inductive science in its wake may be explored in an “Extro-Science Fiction” text (XSF) – but limits his examples to science fiction literature. Framing the …
Philosophy In Science: Can Philosophers Of Science Permeate Through Science And Produce Scientific Knowledge?, Thomas Pradeu, Maël Lemoine, Mahdi Khelfaoui, Yves Gingras
Philosophy In Science: Can Philosophers Of Science Permeate Through Science And Produce Scientific Knowledge?, Thomas Pradeu, Maël Lemoine, Mahdi Khelfaoui, Yves Gingras
Presidential Fellows Articles and Research
Most philosophers of science do philosophy ‘on’ science. By contrast, others do philosophy ‘in’ science (PinS), that is, they use philosophical tools to address scientific problems and to provide scientifically useful proposals. Here, we consider the evidence in favour of a trend of this nature. We proceed in two stages. First, we identify relevant authors and articles empirically with bibliometric tools, given that PinS would be likely to infiltrate science and thus to be published in scientific journals (‘intervention’), cited in scientific journals (‘visibility’), and sometimes recognized as a scientific result by scientists (‘contribution’). We show that many central figures …
Cultural Evolution: A Review Of Theoretical Challenges, Ryan Nichols, Mathieu Charbonneau, Azita Chellappoo, Taylor Davis, Miriam Haidle, Erik O. Kimbrough, Henrike Moll, Richard Moore, Thom Scott-Phillips, Benjamin Grant Purzycki, Jose Segovia-Martin
Cultural Evolution: A Review Of Theoretical Challenges, Ryan Nichols, Mathieu Charbonneau, Azita Chellappoo, Taylor Davis, Miriam Haidle, Erik O. Kimbrough, Henrike Moll, Richard Moore, Thom Scott-Phillips, Benjamin Grant Purzycki, Jose Segovia-Martin
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
The rapid growth of cultural evolutionary science, its expansion into numerous fields, its use of diverse methods, and several conceptual problems have outpaced corollary developments in theory and philosophy of science. This has led to concern, exemplified in results from a recent survey conducted with members of the Cultural Evolution Society, that the field lacks ‘knowledge synthesis’, is poorly supported by ‘theory’, has an ambiguous relation to biological evolution and uses key terms (e.g. ‘culture’, ‘social learning’, ‘cumulative culture’) in ways that hamper operationalization in models, experiments and field studies. Although numerous review papers in the field represent and categorize …
Capitalism, Democracy, And Adam Smith, John Thrasher
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 …
Mrs. Dalloway As A Window For Understanding Life, Kristen Venegas
Mrs. Dalloway As A Window For Understanding Life, Kristen Venegas
English (MA) Theses
Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway may be dismissed as fiction, and fiction consequently is dismissed as fantasy. However, the novel enables readers to practice an intellectual exercise of meta-awareness that extends beyond the pages and onto real world phenomena. Under a cognitive neuroscience perspective, Mrs. Dalloway is a literary masterpiece due to its hyper- realistic execution of the intimacies of life. Through the narrative style of free-indirect discourse, Woolf illustrates what occurs in the minds of characters as they develop their own perceptions of reality and identity, exposes the fear and inadequacies of mankind’s distress in times of chaos and disorder …
Self-Inflicted Frankfurt-Style Cases And Flickers Of Freedom, Michael Robinson
Self-Inflicted Frankfurt-Style Cases And Flickers Of Freedom, Michael Robinson
Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research
According to the most popular versions of the flicker defense, Frankfurt-style cases fail to undermine the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP) because agents in these cases are (directly) morally responsible not for making the decisions they make but for making these decisions on their own, which is something they could have avoided doing. Frankfurt defenders have primarily focused on trying to show that the alternative possibility of refraining from making the relevant decisions on their own is not a robust alternative, while generally granting that this alternative cannot easily be eliminated from successful cases of this sort. In a …
Flickering The W-Defense, Michael Robinson
Flickering The W-Defense, Michael Robinson
Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research
One way to defend the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP) against Frankfurt-style cases is to challenge the claim that agents in these scenarios are genuinely morally responsible for what they do. Alternatively, one can grant that agents are morally responsible for what they do in these cases but resist the idea that they could not have done otherwise. This latter strategy is known as the flicker defense of PAP. In an argument he calls the W-Defense, David Widerker adopts the former approach. I argue that, while Widerker's argument does a poor job showing that these agents are not morally responsible …