Philosophy Commons^™

For Philosophers, Art Is Also In The Mind, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

Many college professors start with a broad range of interests, but often it’s the example of a gifted teacher that shows them the way. That was the case with Dr. Jonathan Gilmore. “I was a pre-med student taking hard science courses, but I had to take a philosophy course as well, and I had an extraordinarily dynamic art history professor. And then I thought, ‘This is what I want to do.’ So I shifted career plans, moved to New York right after college, enrolled at Columbia and did a PhD in Philosophy, but also studied for the PhD in art …

Teufel Thinks That We Need Philosophers More Than Ever., Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

Most people don’t know what a philosopher does, but philosophers take their profession seriously, no matter what first drew them into it. “I tried to decide what to do, and I figured one way to know how to become an artist would be to find out what philosophy is and also what philosophy is not in order to then be able to paint,” says Dr. Thomas Teufel, who initially wanted to become an artist.

“The word philosophy comes from the Greek ‘filo-sofía.’ Sofía means ‘wisdom,’ filo means ‘lover of.’ Thus, a philosopher is a lover of wisdom—as the Greeks would …

What Is Philosophy?, Howard S. Ruttenberg

Publications and Research

The speaker relates philosophy to and distinguishes it from all the arts and sciences in terms of its breadth and depth. Philosophy thinks about things, and thoughts, and words and actions (“words and deeds”, in Cicero’s phrase). There are examples of philosophers who have reduced all three of them to one and of philosophers who have kept them distinct. There have been revolutions in philosophy, responsive to great changes in cultural life, in science and politics, and in reaction against established traditions within philosophy. In modern times, there has been a metaphysical revolution against the Aristotelian schoolmen, an epistemological revolution …

Impartiality, Close Friendship And The Confucian Tradition, Andrew Lambert

Publications and Research

This paper explores the relationship between friendship and morality. Two ideas have been influential in the history of moral philosophy: the impartial standpoint and close friendship. These two perspectives on thought and action can conflict, however, and such a case is presented.

In an attempt to resolve this tension, and understand the assumptions that give rise to it, I explore an alternative conception of moral conduct and friendship suggested by early Confucian thought. Within this account, moral conduct is that which aims at harmony, understood as the appropriate blending of different elements. This suggests a conception of friendship, ‘event friendship’, …

The Noble Art Of Lying, James E. Mahon

Publications and Research

In this chapter I examine the writings of Mark Twain on lying, especially his essays "On the decay of the Art of Lying" and "My First Lie, and How I Got Out of It." I show that Twain held that there were two kinds of lies: the spoken lie and the silent lie. The silent lie is the lie of not saying what one is thinking, and is far more common than the spoken lie. The greatest silent lies, according to Twain, were the national silent lies that there was nothing wrong with slavery (the U.S.), that there was nothing …

Towards Buen Vivir: Brian Massumi’S "The Power At The End Of The Economy”, Robert Leston

Publications and Research

In this review of The Power at the End of the Economy, Lestón delineates the theoretical apparatus of Massumi's book and its possible implications.

Justified True Belief: Plato, Gettier, And Turing, Rohit Parikh, Adriana Renero

Publications and Research

We examine the relationship between the justified true belief (JTB) account of knowledge and Plato’s theory about it as expounded in the Theaetetus. Considering Socrates’ remarks in the Theaetetus brings us to some concerns raised by Turing and to Wittgenstein’s famous comment explanations come to an end somewhere. We present two simple technical results which bear on the question. Finally, we look at the pragmatic aspects of knowledge attributions. In an Appendix we say a few words about Indian epistemology and Gettier problems.

The Anti-Imperialism Of Ottobah Cugoano: Slavery, Abolition, And Colonialism In Thoughts And Sentiments On The Evil Of Slavery, Tacuma Peters

Publications and Research

This article argues that the work of Ottobah Cugoano provides readers with a robust anti-imperial analysis of European modernity. For Cugoano, slavery and colonialism are coeval and mutually constitutive processes. I argue that Cugoano’s Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery which has been accepted as a tract of radical abolitionism should also be interpreted as an anti-imperial text. I contend that we must attend to the global scope of Cugoano’s anti-imperialism which includes critiques of European colonialism in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, as well as provides recommendations for radical changes in the relationship between Europe and …

Neutrality, Autonomy, And Power, Eldar Sarajlic

Publications and Research

This paper critically examines Alan Patten’s theory of neutrality of treatment. It argues that the theory assumes an inadequate conception of personal autonomy, which undermines its plausibility. However, I suggest that the theory can resolve the problem by developing and reinterpreting its conception of autonomy and introducing an additional strategy for addressing the power imbalances that result from the market-based interactions between individuals and their conceptions of the good.

Mind-Dependent Kinds, Muhammad Ali Khalidi

Publications and Research

Many philosophers take mind-independence to be criterial for realism about kinds. This is problematic when it comes to psychological and social kinds, which are unavoidably mind-dependent. But reflection on the case of artificial or synthetic kinds (e.g. synthetic chemicals, genetically modified organisms) shows that the criterion of mind-independence needs to be qualified in certain ways. However, I argue that none of the usual variants on the criterion of mind-dependence is capable of distinguishing real or natural kinds from non-real kinds. Although there is a way of modifying the criterion of mind-independence in such a way as to rule in artificial …

A Study Of Integration: The Role Of Sensus Communis In Integrating Disciplinary Knowledge, Laureen Park

Publications and Research

Integration is an important notion for interdisciplinary studies. Achieving this shows that the interdisciplinary learner has successfully understood the commonalities among disciplines, as well as exercised crucial cognitive skills. This chapter attempts to elucidate how students integrated various disciplinary perspectives in the interdisciplinary course, Weird Science: Interpreting and Redefining Humanity. The study uses Hans-Georg Gadamer’s notion of the sensus communis to clarify how it was that students were processing and accomplishing the goal of integrating different disciplinary perspectives as evidenced in class observation, discussion, and especially student papers. The study demonstrates the ways in which common sense knowledge conditions and …

The Challenge Of Teaching Chinese Philosophy: Some Thoughts On Method, Andrew Lambert

Publications and Research

In this essay I offer an alternative perspective on how to organize class material for courses in Chinese philosophy for predominately American students. Instead of selecting topics taken from common themes in Western discourses, I suggest a variety of organizational strategies based on themes from the Chinese texts themselves, such as tradition, ritual, family, and guanxi (關係), which are rooted in the Chinese tradition but flexible enough to organize a broad range of philosophical material.

Feral And Isolated Children From Herodotus To Akbar To Hesse: Heroes, Thinkers, And Friends Of Wolves, Karl Steel

Publications and Research

"In 1304, a small child of Hesse was taken by wolves, and lived with them for a while, eating well, learning to run on all fours, perhaps joining them in their raids on sheep and humans, until he was taken by hunters and forced to live, unhappily, in human society, compelled to learn to walk upright, and exhibited as a spectacle. This account, almost certainly legendary, belongs to a small set of similar stories of feral children from roughly the same time, which, unlike so many modern accounts of wild children, are not about isolation, deprivation, or a catastrophic separation …

Shakespeare's Blush, Or "The Animal" In Othello, Steven Swarbrick

Publications and Research

This essay examines how the rhetoric of animalization in Shakespeare’s Othello compels us to think early modern categories of race in connection with early modern discourses of “human” versus “animal.” Beginning with Shakespeare’s representation of Iago, I suggest that it is the potential for sameness conditioned by Iago’s counterfactual statement (“Were I the Moor, I would not by Iago”) that is most significant about his relation to Othello. From there I consider the overlap between the play’s representations of animality and black skin. Read in the context of Jacques Derrida’s reflections on animals, I consider the deconstructive value of linking …

Confucian Thought And Care Ethics: An Amicable Split?, Andrew Lambert

Publications and Research

Since Chenyang Li’s (1994) groundbreaking article there has been interest in reading early Confucian ethics through the lens of care ethics. In this paper, I examine the prospects for dialogue between the two in light of recent work in both fields.

I argue that, despite some similarities, early Confucian ethics is not best understood as a form of care ethics, of the kind articulated by Nel Noddings (1984, 2002) and others. Reasons include incongruence deriving from the absence in the Chinese texts of a developed account of need, and doubts about whether the parent-child relationship in Confucian thought is best …

The Ethics And Politics Of Child Naming, Eldar Sarajlic

Publications and Research

This article examines the issue of justification of government’s intervention in the parental acts of child naming, a neglected topic in the recent philosophical literature. It questions the ability of some of the current theories in family ethics to respond to this problem and argues that both permissive and restrictive theories fail to provide a plausible argument about the proper limits of government regulation of child naming practices. The article outlines an alternative solution that focuses on the child’s right to authenticity and suggests that only those names that infringe upon this right invite justified state intervention.

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 …

Abortion And The Right To Not Be Pregnant, James E. Mahon

Publications and Research

In this paper I defend Judith Jarvis Thomson's 'Good Samaritan Argument' (otherwise known as the 'feminist argument') for the permissibility of abortion, first advanced in her important, ground-breaking article 'A Defense of Abortion' (1971), against objections from Joseph Mahon (1979, 1984). I also highlight two problems with Thomson's argument as presented, and offer remedies for both of these problems. The article begins with a short history of the importance of the article to the development of practical ethics. Not alone did this article put the topic of the abortion on the philosophical map, but it made 'practical ethics' in the …

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 …

If God Didn’T Satisfice, We Could Still Exist, Rick Repetti

Publications and Research

Theodicies of satisficing – defenses of God’s goodness that justify creating minimally satisfactory beings/worlds – originate with Robert Merrihew Adams (1972, 1979). Adams (1972) argued that in creating imperfect beings God was graceful in giving the undeserved gift of life. There have been many objections to Adams’s argument; e.g., Jerome A. Weinstock (1975) objected that God still would have been graceful in granting undeserved life to superior beings, and, among others, E. Wielenberg (2004) objected that grace doesn’t erase the imperfection of creating imperfection. However, Adams’s theodicy arguably maintains two points: (a) non-existing superior beings cannot be harmed by not …

Do Predictive Brain Implants Threaten Patient Autonomy Or Authenticity?, Eldar Sarajlic

Publications and Research

In this commentary, I discuss this Frederic Gilbert's claim that predictive brain implants (PBIs) threaten persons’ autonomy by diminishing their postoperative experience of self-control. Contrary to Gilbert, I suggest that PBIs do not pose a significant threat to patient’s autonomy, as self-control, but rather to his or her sense of authenticity. My claim is that the language of authenticity, already introduced in the recent bioethical literature, may offer a better way to voice some of the concerns with PBIs that Gilbert recognized.

Deleuze, Haraway, And The Radical Democracy Of Desire, Robert Leston

Publications and Research

In response to suggestions that Deleuze and Guattari are the “enemy” of companion species, this essay explores the tension between Donna Haraway’s attacks against Deleuze and Guattari and their philosophy of becoming animal. The essay goes on to contextualize Deleuze and Guattari’s statements against pet owners through a discussion of the psychoanalytical refiguration of desire and shows how their ostensible attack against pet owners fits into their larger critique against capitalism. The essay illustrates why Deleuze and Guattari and Haraway are more in agreement than first meets the eye, finding commensurability through Haraway’s early work on embryology. Becoming animal does …

Are Liberal Perfectionism And Neutrality Mutually Exclusive?, Eldar Sarajlic

Publications and Research

In this paper, I question the view that liberal perfectionism and neutrality are mutually exclusive doctrines. I do so by criticizing two claims made by Jonathan Quong. First, I object to his claim that comprehensive anti-perfectionism is incoherent. Second, I criticize his claim that liberal perfectionism cannot avoid a paternalist stance. I argue that Quong’s substantive assumptions about personal autonomy undermine both of his arguments. I use the discussion of Quong to argue that the standard assumption in liberal theory about mutual exclusivity of liberal perfectionism and neutrality needs to be reconsidered, and I show why the argument about the …

Transdisciplinarity: A Review Of Its Origins, Development, And Current Issues, Jay H. Bernstein

Publications and Research

Transdisciplinarity originated in a critique of the standard configuration of knowledge in disciplines in the curriculum, including moral and ethical concerns. Pronouncements about it were first voiced between the climax of government-supported science and higher education and the long retrenchment that began in the 1970s. Early work focused on questions of epistemology and the planning of future universities and educational programs. After a lull, transdisciplinarity re-emerged in the 1990s as an urgent issue relating to the solution of new, highly complex, global concerns, beginning with climate change and sustainability and extending into many areas concerning science, technology, social problems and …

Buddhist Meditation And The Possibility Of Free Will, Rick Repetti

Publications and Research

I argue that an analysis of Buddhist meditation theory and practice may be used to ground a model of the possibility of free agency that stands up against four powerful arguments for free will skepticism in contemporary analytic philosophy: Peter van Inwagen’s consequence argument, which asserts that if choices are lawfully necessary consequences of prior events, then they are unfree; Derk Pereboom’s two arguments for hard incompatibilism: the manipulation argument, which asserts that manipulated choices are unfree, determinism is functionally equivalent to manipulation, and thus determined choices are unfree; and the randomness argument, which asserts that we cannot claim authorship …

Butterfly Redreaming: Rethinking Free, With Zhuangzi Flying Westerly With Descartes, Lacan, Waldman…, Kyoo Lee

Publications and Research

Usually, Zhuangzi’s parable of “the butterfly dream/dreaming butterfly” is read as an enigmatic version, from “the East”, of the Cartesian skeptical challenges to “objective reality” or else the Lacanian psycho-drama of the “pure gaze” in which “he”, Zhuangzi, “is a butterfly for nobody”, who stands for “the Real”. Retooling some of the critical insights from these standard dialectical or anxiogenic approaches to this allegorical puzzle of self-identity, both of which, however, tend to leave unquestioned or else structurally overrate the binarized inner-exclusivity of typical pairs such as in/out, subject/object, illusion/reality, and all/nothing, this article proposes a relatively novel, fluid model …

Las Casas Remembered:The 500th Anniversary Of The Struggle For The Human Rights Of The Native Peoples Of America, David M. Traboulay

Publications and Research

At first a part of the colonial system as an encomendero, he later dedicated his life to the struggle for justice and human rights of the indigenous peoples of America. At the grand debate of 1551 between Dr. Sepulveda and Las Casas, Las Casas presented a very modern view of human rights that is one of the useful models of human rights for the contemporary world.

The Life Aquatic: Liquid Poetics And The Discourse Of Friendship In The Faerie Queene, Steven Swarbrick

Publications and Research

From Michel de Montainge’s essay “Of Friendship” to Jacques Derrida’s rearticulation of the former in The Politics of Friendship, scholars both early modern and modern have sought ways to address the fluid co-mixture of bodies from which the discourse of friendship can and does emerge. More recently still, new materialist thinkers of ontology have begun to shift our attention to the ways both human and nonhuman bodies inter-animate in the making of political, interpersonal, and artistic life worlds. Together with these investigations, I argue that an aquacentric account of relation is necessary to think the subject of friendship …

Philosophy's Rarified Air: On Peden's Spinoza Contra Phenomenology, Steven Swarbrick

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

I, Stereotype: Detained In The Uncanny Valley, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

In "I, Stereotype," Seo-Young Chu applies Mori's theory of the uncanny valley not to robots but to a different species of humanoid artifact: stereotypes of the "yellow peril." Through analyses of stories by Sax Rohmer, World War Two propaganda, and films from the Bond franchise, Chu investigates ways in which the logic of the uncanny valley has interacted with and shaped Orientalist and techno-Orientalist stereotypes (as well as the stereotype-as-a-perceived-type-of-person more generally). In the process, Chu explores what it means to find one's ethnic group detained in the uncanny valley, what it means to use stereotyping as a time-saving technology …