Philosophy Commons^™

In Defense Of Non-Sentential Assertion, Robert Stainton

Philosophy Publications

A defense of non-sentential assertion against Jason Stanley and Peter Ludlow

Metaphysics, Substitution Salva Veritate And The Slingshot Argument, Robert Stainton

Philosophy Publications

An introduction to the "slingshot" argument in philosophy of language and metaphysics

Null Complements: Licensed By Syntax Or By Semantics-Pragmatics?, Corinne Iten, M.-O. Junker, Aryn Pyke, Robert Stainton, Catherine Wearking

Philosophy Publications

No abstract provided.

The Irreducibility Of Consciousness, Amy Kind

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

In this paper, by analyzing the Chalmers-Searle debate about Chalmers’ zombie thought experiment, I attempt to determine the implications that the irreducibility of consciousness has for the truth of materialism. While Chalmers claims that the irreducibility of consciousness forces us to embrace dualism, Searle claims that it has no deep metaphysical im- port and, in particular, that it is fully consistent with his materialist the- ory of mind. I argue that this disagreement hinges on the notion of physi- cal identity in play in the discussion. Clarifying this notion in turn helps to clarify what it means to claim that …

Do Ceos Get Paid Too Much?, Jeffrey Moriarty

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In 2003, CEOs of the 365 largest U.S. corporations were paid on average $8 million, 301 times as much as factory workers. This paper asks whether CEOs get paid too much. Appealing to widely recognized moral values, I distinguish three views of justice in wages: the agreement view, the desert view, and the utility view. I argue that, no matter which view is correct, CEOs get paid too much. I conclude by offering two ways CEO pay might be reduced.

Introduction To Ellipsis And Non-Sentential Speech, Ray Elugardo, Robert Stainton

Philosophy Publications

No abstract provided.

Grice, Herbert Paul (1913-88), Robert Stainton

Philosophy Publications

No abstract provided.

Delno C. West Award Winner (2005)

Quidditas

Susan Stakel

The Delno C. West Award recognizes the most distinguished paper given by a senior scholar at the annual conference.

Fame And The Making Of Marriage In Northwest England, 1560-1640, Jennifer Mcnabb

Quidditas

Because England did not enact a comprehensive reform of its medieval marital law until Lord Hardwicke’s Act in 1753, it was possible to construct a binding marriage outside the authority of the Church of England during the Tudor and Stuart periods. Marriages created by the exchange of present-tense consent, even if they failed to follow the church’s suggested rules concerning time and place, its emphasis on clerical presence, and its stress on publicity (through three readings of the banns or the procurement of a marriage license), were considered spiritually legitimate throughout the eight decades prior to the civil wars. An …

Monasteries As Financial Patrons And Promoters Of Local Performance In Late Medieval And Early Tudor England, Christine Sustek Williams

Quidditas

The elaborate cycle plays produced in the larger, wealthy municipalities of York, Chester, Wakefield and Coventry receive the lion’s share of attention among scholars of medieval theatre. Until recently, performance activities in smaller communities have received little or no attention, except perhaps as something of antiquarian interest. And one area of theatre history that has been largely overlooked is the involvement of monasteries in local performance activities. Yet the precious few, fragmentary, monastic records that survived the dissolutions of the monasteries under Henry VIII and Edward VI, suggest that several monasteries gave active financial support to local theatre in England …

Tenth-Century Drama In The Twenty-First Century A Staging Of Three Plays By Hrotsvit Of Gandersheim At Stetson University (2005), Julia Schmitt

Quidditas

During the fall semester of 2005, the Department of Communication Studies and Theatre Arts at Stetson University undertook a unique, but highly rewarding production challenge. Professor Ken McCoy and I were asked by The English Department of Stetson University to stage a medieval play in conjunction with the Southeast Medieval Association Conference to be held at Stetson during the month of September. The English Department was eager to offer conference attendees an opportunity to experience a live production of a medieval play.

Everyman In Production: A Dance Of Death A Staging At California State University, Chico (2004), Jan Hawkley

Quidditas

Medieval dramatic works, while historically significant and intellectually interesting, may seem irrelevant and even incomprehensible in our day. The language is problematic in pronunciation, phrasing and word meaning. Allegory today often is considered didactic and overly simplistic, yielding only one- dimensional characters. Medieval society appears obtuse to modern students, functioning with a totally different worldview and social hierarchy; medieval concepts of comedy and religion are difficult for us to grasp today. Additionally, we obviously have no recordings of actual performances, so we do not know how a given play was staged; we must surmise medieval staging from descriptions of performances …

Entertaining Yet Erudite Social History, Ginger L. Guardiola

Quidditas

Barbara A. Hanawalt. Growing Up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood in History. New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1993. 300 pages. $18.95.

Foucault And Habermas, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

The article is a comprehensive comparison of Foucault and Habermas which focuses on their distinctive styles of critical theory. The article maintains that Foucault's virtue ethical understanding of aesthetic self-realization as a form of resistance to normalizing practices provides counterpoint to Habermas's more juridical approach to institutional justice and the critique of ideology. The article contains an extensive discussion of their respective treatments of speech action, both strategic and communicative, and concludes by addressing Foucault's understanding of parrhesia as a non-discursive form of truth-telling.

Kant On Duties To Animals, Nelson T. Potter Jr.

Department of Philosophy: Faculty Publications

According to Kant we human beings are finite rational beings, who also have an animal nature. Kant occasionally speculates that perhaps on other planets there may be quite different sorts of finite rational animals. But of course we have no specific knowledge of any such. Given that fact, all of our duties are duties to other human beings. We can have no duties to God because he is not an object of possible experience. There are no human beings such that they have only duties and no rights--they would be slaves or serfs. And the apparent duties that we have …

Becoming A Better Me : An Examination Of Character Education At The Elementary Level, Lori D. Dobbin

Graduate Research Papers

The first day of school can be a difficult adjustment for many students. Some . students struggle with new settings and new rules. Each student enters the classroom with personal morals and values. These morals and character traits greatly influence the student's academic and social progress. This paper reviews character building and its unique ability to alter the perception of the student's world. The paper looks at the deficits of character and introduces possible solutions to restoring character in elementary-aged children. A closer look at the history of character education lays the foundation for a better understanding of character.

Allen D. Breck Award Winner (2005)

Quidditas

Bradley Greenburg

The Allen D. Breck Award recognizes the most distinguished paper given by a junior scholar at the annual conference.

School Counselors And Character Education, Jacob M. Mueller

Graduate Research Papers

Character Education can be an essential aspect of creating a respectful climate in the school setting. Tragic incidents in schools across the country have heightened the awareness of how to create positive situations for all students who attend public schools. Too often, this awareness is not followed up with action. Character Education is an opportunity for educators to step up and put actions behind their lip service. Legislation surrounding education in America today sometimes creates difficult obstacles in implementing programs to foster a positive school environment. It can be done however, and is being done.

Against Realist Instruction: Superficial Success Masking Catastrophic Failure And An Alternative, Dewey I. Dykstra

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Purpose: Often radical constructivists are confronted with arguments why radical constructivism is wrong. The present work presents a radical constructivist alternative to such arguments: a comparison of the results of two instructional practices, the standard, realistbased instruction and a radical constructivist-based instruction, both in physics courses. Design: Evidence from many studies of student conceptions in standard instruction (Duit 2004) is taken into account. In addition, diagnostic data, pre and post instruction, were collected from over 1,000 students in multiple institutions across the U. S. over a period of about 15 years via an established diagnostic of conceptual understanding of motion …

Stateless National Groups, International Justice And Asymmetrical Warfare, Anna Moltchanova

Philosophy Faculty Work

No abstract provided.

"I Knew There Was Something Wrong With That Paper": Scientific Rhetorical Styles And Scientific Misunderstandings, Carol Reeves

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

This selection unpacks scientific prose and claim substantiation for Nobel Prize winner, Stan Prusiner, in the transmissible spongiform encephlopathies field (i.e., mad cow disease). Applying linguistic strategies such as M. A. K. Halliday's "favorite clause type," the author examines argumentative strategies in dense scientific prose both in bold and cautious rhetorical styles and invented lexical changes in new scientific development.

Modeling Mechanisms, Stuart Glennan

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Philosophers of science increasingly believe that much of science is concerned with understanding the mechanisms responsible for the production of natural phenomena. An adequate understanding of scientific research requires an account of how scientists develop and test models of mechanisms. This paper offers a general account of the nature of mechanical models, discussing the representational relationship that holds between mechanisms and their models as well as the techniques that can be used to test and refine such models. The analysis is supported by study of two competing models of a mechanism of speech perception.

Economic Migration And Justice, Harry Van Der Linden

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Our main thesis is that the U.S. has a duty of justice to adopt an open border policy with regard to economic migrants because it is significantly responsible for the unjust social and economic conditions that bring such migrants to its borders. From this perspective, President Bush’s recent “guest worker” proposal is morally objectionable because it is designed more to serve U.S. business interests than the interests of the migrants. We address three objections to opening borders: it will worsen the economic condition especially of low-skilled native workers; it will harm developing countries by increasing the so-called “brain drain”; and …

Questioning Just War Theory, Harry Van Der Linden

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Review of: "Michael Walzer, Arguing About War. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Pp. 208. Cloth, $25.00. ISBN: 0-300-10365-4."

Values And Objectivity In Science: The Current Controversy About Transgenic Crops, Hugh Lacey

Philosophy Faculty Works

Values and Objectivity in Science illustrates many of the ethical issues that arise concerning scientific practices and applications, offering an account of how social and ethical values play important roles in science. Hugh Lacey develops and clarifies his previous analysis by arguing for the importance of research being conducted under a plurality of strategies, contrasting materialist strategies with agro-ecological strategies. By displaying the structure of current ethical controversies about the legitimacy of planting transgenic crops, this book illustrates that sound thinking on such issues must be grounded on an adequate philosophy of science, one that can clearly distinguish between the …

Are Video Games Art?, Aaron Smuts

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In this paper I argue that by any major definition of art many modern video games should be considered art. Rather than defining art and defending video games based on a single contentious definition, I offer reasons for thinking that video games can be art according to historical, aesthetic, institutional, representational and expressive theories of art. Overall, I argue that while many video games probably should not be considered art, there are good reasons to think that some video games should be classified as art, and that the debates concerning the artistic status of chess and sports offer some insights …

Avant-Garde Or Pré-Jugé?, Sinead Murphy

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This paper receives its impetus from Gadamer's account of effective history (Wirkungsgeschichte) and his corresponding challenge to the 'problem of purity' that he locates in Kant's critique of aesthetic judgment and that derives from the attempt to establish universal founding principles for thought and action. This is a deep and wide-ranging issue, and so I focus on a very specific aspect of it: the division between intuition and understanding, between history as a given flux and enlightenment as a unifying synthesis, that motivates Kant's search for pure reflective grounds to reconcile them, and on the challenge posed to this division …

Does Sad Music Make One Sad? An Ethnographic Perspective, Peter Manuel

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The question of the presence and role of negative emotions in the experience of music - Does sad music make one sad? - has been recognized as a key to understanding much musical experience, especially in terms of the apprehension and expressive power of specifically formal features of music. One set of scholars, sometimes loosely labeled "emotivists," has argued that negative emotional responses do play a central role in the apprehension of much music, that is, that actual sadness is a natural, intentional and essential response to sad music. Advocates of this view base their arguments in large part on …

Anchorage To The World, Ken-Ichi Sasaki

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

We are anchored to the world because we are bodies. For us, the world means human society based upon nature. Nature is an essential constituent. For human being is bodily existence: social relationships are basically formed through the contact between these bodily existences, one with another, and the cultural space, that is, the city, is based on matter and surrounded by nature. Hence the possibility and the necessity of anchorage. An inanimate object is simply thrown into the sea of matter. Human bodies, on the contrary, do not only belong to this material texture in a passive way but can …

'Man Has Always Danced': Forays Into The Origins Of An Art Largely Forgotten By Philosophers, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Philosophers have had comparatively little to say of the art of dance, a surprising fact given the range of people both inside and outside of dance who have claimed that 'man has always danced.' This essay attempts to substantiate this claim by an inquiry into the origins of dance, its focal attention being on the word always and any linkage to males deriving from that focal point of attention. It begins with evolutionary considerations in the form of courtship displays, behaviors finely and extensively described by Darwin, and goes on to consider displays by chimpanzees in particular. These considerations point …