Philosophy Commons^™

David Hume On Miracles, Kyle G. Sessions

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Albert Einstein once said, "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is." A quick study of David Hume's Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding reveals that he believed strongly in the first way. Why is this? First of all, it is in his definition of miracle. Hume defines a miracle as a violation of the laws of nature. This is a problematic definition to begin with, as it appears to preclude the possibility of there ever being a miracle. If a miracle is something that violates …

Plato's Equivocal Wisdom, Mary Lenzi

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

A new interplay between sophia and phronesis emerges in Plato’s conception of wisdom in later dialogues that is quite different from his views in early and middle dialogues. First {Part I), the present inquiry shows that sophia no longer represents primarily theoretical, philosophic wisdom as it does in the Republic (and as Aristotle defines it). Rather, according to the reading and interpretation of the texts presented here, sophia becomes closely akin to Plato’s earlier conception of wisdom in relation to temperance (sophrosyne) in his Socratic dialogues, in that the highest inner harmony and virtue necessarily require sophia qua self- knowledge. …

The Split Gaze Of The Soul: Parts And Wholes In Aristotle's Model Of Epagoge, Mark Faller

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

In this paper I will try to clarify Aristotle’s conception of induction or epagoge. I will begin by critiquing a variety of contemporary accounts of Aristotelian induction with reference to how they evaluate its adequacy as a grounding for science. I will then try to establish a set of conditions that must ultimately be met for this grounding to succeed.

It will be my contention that by appreciating how the critical faculty {to krinon) can act with the common sense {koine dunamis) to hold multiple dimensions of consciousness in front of the attention in a unitary “gaze,” we can begin …

The Meno, Recollection, And The Role Of Hypothesis, Joseph A. Novak

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

The aim of this paper is to present Plato's doctrine within a perspective that will both explain why Plato found himself prompted to formulate it, as well as explore some enduring insights exhibited in its applications. First, the paper will argue that Plato was prompted to adopt the doctrine given the difficulties that had arisen from the employment of the Socratic elenchus. Second, it will argue that hypothesis, already implicit in the elenchic method, will begin to be developed into a more complex and refined method that Plato sees necessary for the whole learning process. The retention of a hypothesis …

We Need To Talk....About Institutional Integrity, Daniel E. Wueste

Publications

It seems a reasonable hypothesis that institutional health depends upon institutional integrity and institutional integrity depends upon individual integrity. If that’s right, “disease” may be manifest at two levels—at the level of institutional or individual integrity.

I begin with the first part of the hypothesis above, that institutional integrity is a condition of institutional health. The legal theorist Lon Fuller articulated this idea in a less generalized form when he spoke of a morality internal to law that makes law possible. I will explain and illustrate this idea and indicate how it applies to institutions of various sorts, including professions …

Climbing Down The Ladder: Inwardness And Abstraction In Wittgenstein's Philosophy With Reference To Kierkegaard, Lisa Hoelle '05

Honors Projects

Both Soren Kierkegaard and Ludwig Wittgenstein argued that there are some truths, located beyond the boundaries of rational understanding, which cannot be communicated directly to others. Wittgenstein was influenced by his reading of Kierkegaard's texts on these matters, and accordingly he, like Kierkegaard, has a place in his philosophy for the importance of inwardness in knowing paradoxical truths. A move of 'inwardness,' for Kierkegaard, is an action that requires a personal and absolute belief that can't be explained directly to others, while 'paradoxical truths', as Kierkegaard uses the phrase, refers to propositions that we regard as incomprehensible but true (one …

Hume's Objection To The Thomistic Doctrine On Suicide, Emily M. Kelahan '05

Honors Projects

In "Of Suicide," David Hume argues against the dominant Thomistic doctrine on suicide. Thomas Aquinas, in Summa Theologica, I-IL Q64, Art 5, argues that suicide is morally impermissible because it violates three kinds of duties: one's duty to God, to others, and to oneself. Arguing from within the Thomistic framework, Hume exposes the inconsistencies of Aquinas's theory and refutes Aquinas's arguments against suicide. In this paper I look at only the arguments concerning the ways in which suicide violates a duty to God. My strategy is as follows. First, I argue that G.R. McLean's interpretation of Hume in his paper …

Habitar El Límite: Una Aproximación A La Ética De Eugenio Trías [Reseña Del Libro], Adriana Renero

Publications and Research

Reseña del libro: Trías, Eugenio, Ética y condición humana, Barcelona, Ediciones Península, 2000, 154 pp.

The Philosopher's Stone, Philosophical Discussion Group, Armstrong State University

The Philosopher's Stone

No abstract provided.

Freeing Freedom From Illusion, B. Kamran Swanson

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

Nihilism And Defiant Grass, Philosophical Discussion Group, Armstrong State University

The Philosopher's Stone

No abstract provided.

Reasonable Partiality And Animal Ethics, Bernard E. Rollin

Attitudes Towards Animals Collection

Moral psychology is often ignored in ethical theory, making applied ethics difficult to achieve in practice. This is particularly true in the new field of animal ethics. One key feature of moral psychology is recognition of the moral primacy of those with whom we enjoy relationships of love and friendship -philia in Aristotle's term. Although a radically new ethic for animal treatment is emerging in society, its full expression is severely limited by our exploitative uses of animals. At this historical moment, only the animals with whom we enjoy philia - companion animals - can be treated with unrestricted moral …

Sagp Newsletter 2005.3 (April), Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Program of the Society with the Central Division, April 2005

Purposive Action: The Centrality Of Teleology In Kant’S Formula Of Universal Law Of Nature, Franklin D. Worrell

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Notes On Wittgenstein’S Method, The Practice Of Cultural History, And Early Film Theory, Markus Rheindorf

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Markus Rheindorf's contribution offers some reflections on the critical potential of Ludwig Wittgenstein's uebersichtliche Darstellungor concise presentation, his self-consciously employed method of philosophical writing in the 1930s, and explores its theoretical and methodological potential for the practice of cultural history. In so doing, it articulates a substantial critique of conventional disciplinary historiography, taking as its case in point the history of (early) film theory. Rheindorf then takes up the suggestions gained from juxtaposing Wittengstein's method with conventional accounts of the history of early film theory and suggests concrete ways in which these might be put to practical use in the …

Cassirer’S Philosophy Of Symbolic Forms: Between Reason And Relativism; A Critical Appraisal, Sebastian Luft

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

This paper pursues the double task of (a) presenting Cassirer’s Philosophy of Symbolic Forms as a systematic critique of culture and (b) assessing this systematic approach with regards to the question of reason vs. relativism. First, it reconstructs the development of his theory to its mature presentation in his Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Cassirer here presents a critique of culture as fulfilling Kant’s critical work by insisting on the plurality of reason as spirit, manifesting itself in symbolic forms. In the second part, the consequences of this approach will be drawn by considering the systematics Cassirer intended with this theory. …

Normative Failure In Blackburn's Ruling Passions, William R. Porter '05

Honors Projects

In Ruling Passions, Simon Blackburn advances an ethical theory that welds his quasi-realism to a Humean-Smithean theory of moral sentiments. This paper concerns the latter Humean side of Blackburn's theory, specifically Blackburn's attempt to provide a normative ethical theory. This attempt largely involves getting over the tallest obstacle to any defender of Hume: the famous sensible knave problem.

Brown Meets Green: The Political Fecology Of Poopreport.Com, Marisol Cortez

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

In engaging with the culture of filth, Marisol Cortez's Brown Meets Green: The Political Fecology of PoopReport.com questions contemporary cultural criticism's emphasis on shit's textual ambivalence. In order to avoid relapsing into either the Bakhtinian celebration of the grotesque or the too narrowly conceived Kristevan category of the abject, Cortez argues, and to find a way out of this theoretical dualism, one must rethink the very categories of filth and waste through an ecocritical reading of the scatological -- the meeting of brown and green -- performed at the confluence of ecology, cultural studies, and Marxist political economy. This perspective …

Seeing Beyond The Illusion: Dispelling The Grand Illusion Hypothesis, Melissa A. Ebbers

Masters Theses

The Grand Illusion hypothesis is a new form of skepticism about the nature of our visual experience: it seems to us as though our vision is everywhere detailed, distinct, continuous, in color, even “photograph-like,” but it is not. This position is motivated by developments in perceptual research, which have revealed new information about the functional structure of the visual system as well as the attention-dependent nature of perception.

My project is primarily deconstructive. I argue that the Grand Illusion hypothesis rests on problematic assumptions (motivated by the results from the relevant perceptual research), which ultimately leads to an incoherent formulation …

Dong Zhongshu's Transformation Of "Yin-Yang" Theory And Contesting Of Gender Identity, Robin R. Wang

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Review Of David Boonin, A Defense Of Abortion, Christopher Kaczor

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Critical Theory At A Crossroad: Adorno, Marcuse, And The Radical Sixties, Jacob Skinner

Inquiry Journal 2005

No abstract provided.

Mixed Media March 30, 2005, Students Of Risd, Risd Archives

All Student Newspapers

Mixed Media began as the student publication Your Name Here. The March 30, 2005 issue includes articles on a dispute between South Korea and Japan over the island Dokdo/Takeshima, a faculty member's steamer trunk and experience traveling, RISD's approach to solar energy, the Korean War, all-nighters at RISD, a Mixed Media tour of the RISD President's house, The Silk Road Project residency at RISD, film reviews, and senior shows, along with the comic "Scorpio" by Andrew Kaiko, student creative work, event notices, and other announcements.

Aristotle, Epistemic Exemplars, And Virtue Epistemology, Scott Rubarth

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Is contemporary virtue epistemology in fact a revival of Aristotle’s theory of intellectual virtues and an appeal to Aristotelian epistemology? In this paper I will examine Linda Zagzebski's theory of virtue epistemology, the most explicitly Aristotelian version of the agent-based epistemologies. The objective of this analysis is threefold: (1) To examine to what extent Zagzebski's virtue epistemology is genuinely Aristotelian, particularly in the use of moral and epistemic exemplars. (2) To draw attention to some significant concerns regarding the use of exemplars, such as the famous phronimos, in both moral and epistemic evaluation. And finally, (3) to offer a critique …

Plato On Episteme And Propositional Knowledge, Denis Vlahovic

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Epistêmê cannot just be a matter of knowing a logos. Knowledge, it appears, is demonstrated not in the knowledge of any particular logos, but in the ability to defend a logos against refutation. It is precisely the latter ability that is characteristic of epistêmê. This ability, furthermore, cannot be imparted by means of a logos. For, no logos suffices to endow its possessor with the ability to defend it (i.e., the logos) against refutation.

Given that Plato appears to have believed that no knowledge of a logos—no matter how elaborate the logos—is sufficient for epistêmê, one can see why he …

Some Sober Conceptions Of Mathematical Truth, Marco Panza

MPP Published Research

It is not sufficient to supply an instance of Tarski’s schema, ⌈“p” is true if and only if p⌉ for a certain statement in order to get a definition of truth for this statement and thus fix a truth-condition for it. A definition of the truth of a statement x of a language L is a bi-conditional whose two members are two statements of a meta-language L’. Tarski’s schema simply suggests that a definition of truth for a certain segment x of a language L consists in a statement of the form: ⌈v(x) is true if and only if τ(x)⌉, …

Reports Relating To The Fifty-Sixth Annual Meeting Of The Society, James A. Borland

SOR Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Sagp Newsletter 2005.2 (Pacific), Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

The Conservation Of Authenticity: Political Commitment And Racial Reality, Michael Monahan

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

Discusses issues related to the conservation of racial authenticity, political commitment and racial reality in the U.S. Growing interest in racial ontology in philosophical circles; Analysis of the concept of social constructivism.

Psychological And Sociopolitical Factors Contributing To The Creation Of The Iraqi Torturers: A Human Rights Issue, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article was written by Dr. Mika Haritos-Fatouros, Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessalonica, Greece.

She discusses the human rights context of torture in Abu Ghraib from a political psychological perspective.