Philosophy Commons^™

Schaffer And Monism: Validating The Priority Of The Whole, Phillip Av Pennell

CMC Senior Theses

Philosophy Thesis

Impartialist Ethics And Psychic Disintegration: A Talking Cure, Roman Nakia Briggs

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation deals with integrity understood as a state of the psyche. Its primary interlocutor is Professor Bernard Williams, and its point of departure is my interpretation of his Objection from Integrity to impartialist moral theories. Against Williams, I hope to show that the active adherent of impartialist ethical systems (e.g., act utilitarianism) may retain both moral integrity and integrity. In demonstrating this, I make use of a variant of Roy Schafer’s action language approach to psychoanalysis, and what I call practical aestheticism.

Disentangling Embodied Cognition: An Examination Of The State, Problems, And Possibilities Of Embodied Cognition, Cody Cash

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Embodied cognition has received a fair amount of attention in philosophical, neuroscientific, and robotic research during the past several decades, yet the precise nature of its goals, methods, and claims are unclear. This dissertation will ascertain and examine the primary themes in the field of embodied cognition as well as why, and if, they offer significant challenges to traditional cognitive science models. Though many theories believe they are providing accounts that should replace traditional models, to do so they will have to overcome the very difficult challenge of arguing that mental content and capabilities derived from sensorimotor activity can continue …

Berkeley And The Mind Of God, Craig Berchet Knepley

Theses and Dissertations

I tackle a troubling question of interpretation: Does Berkeley's God feel pain? Berkeley's anti-skepticism seems to bar him from saying that God does not feel pain, for this would mean there is something to reality 'beyond' the perceptible. Yet Berkeley's concerns for common sense and orthodoxy bar him from saying that God does have an idea of pain. For Berkeley to have an idea of pain just is to suffer it, and an immutable God cannot suffer. Thus solving the pain problem requires answers to further questions: What are God's perceptions, for Berkeley? What are God's acts of will? How …

A Biopsychological Foundation For Linguistics, Jonathan J. Life

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this dissertation, I defend the view that natural languages are concrete biopsychological phenomena to be studied empirically. In Section One, I begin with an historical explanation. Some analytic philosophers, I argue, misapply formal logic as an analysis of natural language, when it was in fact originally developed as an alternative to natural language, employed for scientific purposes. Abstract, quasi-mathematical philosophies of language, I argue, are partially a result of this misunderstanding. I respond to Jerrold Katz’ argument that a proper understanding of analytic truth requires this quasi-mathematical philosophy of language through a model-theoretical analysis of analytic truth in modal …

The Problem Of Epistemically Irrelevant Causal Factors, Derek L. Mcallister

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The problem of epistemically irrelevant causal factors is an epistemological phenomenon that occurs when a person becomes aware of some non-epistemic, causal factor that threatens to adversely influence her present belief, yet this factor is irrelevant to her deliberation concerning that belief. While the problem itself is apparently relatively widespread, very few have given it a detailed analysis. This thesis is one attempt to improve that. The first part, and the bulk, of this thesis is an analysis and explanation of what exactly the problem is and how it differs from nearby, related epistemological phenomena. The second part is my …

The Technological Singularity: An Ideological Critique, Phillip Stephens

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Technological Singularity represents a confluence of techno-cultural narratives of progress in which the projected exponential growth of artificial intelligence and nanotechnology will usher in a moment of irrevocable change for the human race – a change that many claim is scant decades away. Although the concept saw its modern clarification by science fiction author Vernor Vinge, the Singularity sits astride both fictional and nonfictional narratives of the future. It is the aim of this study to explore the ideological discourses that emerge from texts on the Singularity and the unfathomable posthuman future it ushers in. Doing so reveals how …

What The Fuck Is This?: Aesthetic Nature Of Being Or Ontology In The Poetry Of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Alexis Stephenson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

“What the Fuck is This?” examines the intersection of phenomenology and poetry arguing for an aesthetic nature of Being and focuses on how we know or experience the world instead of Cartesian absolutes. This subjective knowledge does not compete against objective knowledge but simply recognizes the use that poetic language has for communicating the subjective knowledge from experience of being as it unfolds for us. The major movements of the thesis focus on aesthetic objects, aesthetic intersubjectivity, and the aesthetic self. These are labeled “aesthetic” because a phenomenological methodology reveals a dialectic between that which is unfolding and that which …

Explaining Consciousness: An Argument Against Physicalism And An Argument For Theism, Benjamin Dobler

Honors Projects

Consciousness, the mental phenomenon of our subjective experience of the world, has long been the subject of philosophical debate. The world we experience is full of sights, sounds, taste, smells, and feelings--phenomenal experiences. As the vehicle of phenomenal experience, consciousness is one of the most familiar and readily accessible features of our world, and perhaps the hardest to deny. Yet science tells us that our world is entirely composed of matter and energy, and physical phenomena can be explained as just that. In Part I, I argue that consciousness stands wholly at odds with this scientistic worldview, providing evidence against …

Les Entretiens De Fontenelle: The Rhetorical Strategies Of A Cosmological Dialogue, Mark R. Komanecky Jr.

Senior Theses and Projects

Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle’s Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds is one of the first major works of the French Enlightenment. First published in 1686, the work is organized as a series of dialogues between a philosopher and a marquise who discuss scientific topics such as heliocentrism and the possibility of extra-terrestrial life. Treating these subjects was a risky affair; less than a century earlier Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake, and fifty years before Fontenelle, Galileo was arrested for “holding, teaching, and defending” heliocentrism. Fontenelle employed several rhetorical and stylistic strategies in the work: he wrote in …

Illusory Democracy: A Platonic Examination Of Perception, Opinion, And Neoliberalism, Gregory A. Palmer

Senior Theses and Projects

This thesis sets out to define and investigate the problem of "Illusory Democracy" as well as, how it relates to the modern American political system. This thesis uses Plato, through a Straussian lens, to interpret and analyze the nature, causes, and possible solutions to this modern problem facing the American democratic system.

Violent Sex Versus Sexual Violence: Constructing A Consensual Moral Framework, Katherine A. Barnekow

Honors Program Theses

This project aims to, through an analysis of existing frameworks and their resulting harms, justify the need for a new sexual ethical framework. Such a framework is then constructed, employing three discrete philosophical tools, and justified by existing theory and answers to potential objections.

Philosophy Of Mathematics: Theories And Defense, Amy E. Maffit

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

In this paper I discuss six philosophical theories of mathematics including logicism, intuitionism, formalism, platonism, structuralism, and moderate realism. I also discuss problems that arise within these theories and attempts to solve them. Finally, I attempt to harmonize the best features of moderate realism and structuralism, presenting a theory that I take to best describe current mathematical practice.

The Lens Of Language, Eli Ridley Segal

Senior Projects Fall 2015

This project seeks to contextualize the iconic philosophical questions regarding skepticism, object existence, perception, and emotion, within the discourse of ordinary language philosophy. Aided by Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell, I argue for the non existence of objects-in-themselves. This provides the scaffolding for an examination of perception and emotion unhindered by a reliance on, or appeal to, the so-called 'objective world.' Recognizing the influence exerted by language over our conscious experience, I argue for an ordinary-language formulation of embodied cognition. With this in mind, I demonstrate the philosophical implications of such a picture through the canonical problem of 'other minds.' Ultimately …

Critical Programming: Toward A Philosophy Of Computing, John Bork

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Beliefs about the relationship between human beings and computing machines and their destinies have alternated from heroic counterparts to conspirators of automated genocide, from apocalyptic extinction events to evolutionary cyborg convergences. Many fear that people are losing key intellectual and social abilities as tasks are offloaded to the everywhere of the built environment, which is developing a mind of its own. If digital technologies have contributed to forming a dumbest generation and ushering in a robotic moment, we all have a stake in addressing this collective intelligence problem. While digital humanities continue to flourish and introduce new uses for computer …

Dispersal: A Multidisciplinary Investigation Of Plant Life, Alexandra E. Arzt

Theses and Dissertations

Using plants as a basis for exploring the interstices between the human and nonhuman, this thesis investigates ideas of awareness, intelligence, deep time, animism, and the fluctuating human perception of the agency of Nature. It outlines environmental art practices since the 1950s involving vegetal life. In addition, the paper provides a critical analysis of plant perception of Jakob von Uexküll’s work and theories of vital materialism and “critical plant studies” while noting recent studies in plant neurobiology. In my work, plants become active participants via their movement, seeding, and smell. This study takes the form of imitation, purposeful symbiosis, anthropomorphism, …

Armed With An Easel: Understanding Artistic Political Praxis Through The Works Of Theodor Adorno And Chantal Mouffe, Evelyn Yu Yu Swe

Senior Independent Study Theses

This Independent Study is divided into four chapters. The first chapter examines the role of capitalism in the formation of our culture. The argument presented here is that culture plays an important role in reinforcing modern neoliberal capitalism and that neoliberal capitalism has massive control over the dissemination of culture and the arts. The chapter concludes that it is necessary to utilize socio-cultural means in combating the influence of capitalism, and there does indeed exist emancipatory potential in artistic political praxis.

The second chapter focuses on Theodor Adorno’s aesthetic theory in articulating his conception of the emancipatory potential of art. …