Philosophy Commons^™

The Entrepreneurial University: Rewards & Risks, Samuel M. Hines Jr.

Center for the Study of Ethics in Society Papers

Published by the Center of the Study of Ethics in Society Western Michigan University.

From Reproduction To Reproducibility: Creativity And Technics In Benjamin And Arendt, Graham Macphee

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Phenomenology Of Nonidentity And Theatrical Presence In M. Butterfly, William S. Haney Ii

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

David Henry Hwang’s postmodernist play M. Butterfly, abounds with alienation devices for deconstructing the notion of a unified subject. This essay, however, seeks to challenge the assumed poststructuralist vantage-point that the self and the metaphysics of presence are illusory by exploring what holds the play's identities together as dynamic matrices that function coherently within their discursive contexts. How tenable is the constructivist claim that our shifting subject positions designated by power relations are self-sustaining, that the self does not in fact extend beyond the material tokens of narrative conventions and discursive fields? Even if performers and audience can shift …

Concerned Philosophers For Peace, Vol. 26, No. 1, Concerned Philosophers For Peace

Concerned Philosophers for Peace

No abstract provided.

The Conventional Status Of Reflexive Awareness: What's At Stake In A Tibetan Debate?, Jay L. Garfield

Philosophy: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Component Based Formal Ontology Model, A Method For Evaluating Such A Model, And The Results Of An Application Of That Method, Charles Tumitsa

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Theses & Dissertations

For systems to truly communicate effectively, more than just data interchange is necessary. The systems must achieve conceptual interoperability, which implies communicating with understanding.

The LCIM (Levels of Conceptual Interoperability Model) describes a number of levels of interoperability, each of which shows systems with an increased amount of conceptual understanding of the other systems they are communicating with. The lowest levels of this model, technical and syntactic interoperability, are achieved (and there are many existing examples) via data exchange in a number of different ways. Research has shown, however, that to attain higher levels of conceptual understanding, that there must …

On Moral Arguments Against A Legal Right To Unilateral Humanitarian Intervention, David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

As the international response to recent events in Darfur demonstrates, the restriction of authority to intervene to the United Nations poses the greater legal barrier to intervention. From a practical perspective, then, the more pressing question may be whether international law ought to be modified to permit states, or multi-state organizations, to carry out unilateral humanitarian interventions; that is, interventions that are not authorized by the United Nations. The issue here is essentially a moral one: would the incorporation of a right to unilateral humanitarian intervention entail a moral improvement to international law – for example, a decrease in the …

Derrida’S Deconstruction Of Logocentrism: Implications For Trauma Studies, Julie Elaine Goodspeed-Chadwick

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This article examines Derrida’s conception of logocentrism as it is discussed throughout the entirety of his seminal work Of Grammatology, as well as in his collected interviews, Points...: 1974-1994. Systematically refuting logocentrism, Derrida’s deconstruction enables exposure of the mechanisms, such as binary constructions, that exert a dominant—and domineering—influence over marginalized people, places, and concepts. Specifically, presence and the (falsehood of the) totality of the sign define logocentrism, and these terms cannot productively contribute to trauma studies because it is precisely in texts and textuality that embodied states can be studied. Texts are themselves material embodiments that display …

In Defence Of An Argument For Evans's Principle: A Rejoinder To Vahid, John N. Williams

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

Nanoethics And Human Enhancement: A Critical Evaluation Of Recent Arguments, Patrick Lin, Fritz Allhoff

Philosophy

Human enhancement – our ability to use technology to enhance our bodies and minds, as opposed to its application for therapeutic purposes – is a critical issue facing nanotechnology. It will be involved in some of the near-term applications of nanotechnology, with such research labs as MIT’s Institute for Soldier Technologies working on exoskeletons and other innovations that increase human strength and capabilities. It is also a core issue related to far-term predictions in nanotechnology, such as longevity, nanomedicine, artificial intelligence and other issues.

Antisthenes' Theory Of Unique Enunciation: Similarities, Differences, And Possible Influences, Fouad Kalouche

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

In this paper I will focus on Antisthenes’ theory of unique enunciation, and will then discuss its similarities and differences with, and/or possible influences on, other theories on language that flourished around the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE. I showed elsewhere that Antisthenes’ theory of language is a practical application or a strategy that has direct implication for his ethical project. My aim here is merely to highlight the originality and relevance of Antisthenes’ theory by presenting it and contextualizing it, before assessing relevant similarities and differences between certain positions of Antisthenes and those of some Skeptics, Sophists, Cyrenaics, and …

The Concept Of Abstraction, Allan Bäck

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

Philosophers deal with abstractions. Being reflective, they also have come up with theories about what these abstractions are. Aristotle is no exception, and indeed gave what came to be a canonical account of abstraction. Here I shall investigate what Aristotle thinks abstraction is. I shall conclude that Aristotle views abstraction as selective attention.

As its very name suggests, abstracting (ἀφαιρέω) consists in taking away something from an object. The root verb, αἱρέω, suggests additionally a sense of grasping or of choosing, of taking for oneself something of what lies ready to hand.

These lexical meanings leave open a wide range …

Bleeding The Vat, Philosophical Discussion Group, Armstrong State University

The Philosopher's Stone

No abstract provided.

Is It All A Question Of Openness?, Seow Hon Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

No abstract provided.

Memorials 2006, James A. Borland

SOR Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Sagp Newsletter 2005/6 March Pacific, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Rethinking The Iraq War, Brian Stiltner

Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

The reasonable possibility of the situation getting worse [in Iraq] rather than better should have given humanitarian advocates for war, like myself, greater pause. For me at that time, this humanitarian motive bolstered what was weak in the weapons argument, and vice versa. But now I realize that a partial case for war because of the weapons risk and a partial case for war under humanitarian reasons don't add up to an air-tight case for just war. Each of the causes proffered has to be reasonable with little doubt-something like 90 to 95 percent certain-and they can't be undermined by …

Affinities In The Socio-Political Thought Of Rorty And Levinas, Eduard Jordaan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article considers the affinities in the socio-political thought of Emmanuel Levinas and Richard Rorty. The writings of both display considerable concern for the suffering of others. Both authors note the importance of a self-critical subject becoming more aware of its own injustice as very important for recognizing our responsibilities to others. Furthermore, both stress the importance of recognizing the other outside of the usual, objectifying categories, since it is the uniqueness of the other that reminds us of our responsibility for the other. Both writers view the liberal state as the best political forum in which to realize a …

Interiority And Authenticity: A Glossed Medieval History About Music And The Taste For Apples, Eyolf Østrem

UNIversitas: Journal of Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

The article is an attempt at balancing between historical relativism and a fact-based historiography, with a point of departure in a theoretical discussion of the relationship between history and experience, and the author's personal experience of the Middle Ages, in search of an answer to the question: "Does it matter what the music of the Middle Ages sounded like when it was made?"

Exteriority And Authenticity: A Trope On Østrem’S “Interiority And Authenticity”: Author As Scholar & Artist, Nils Holger Petersen

UNIversitas: Journal of Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

Østrem establishes an intimate connection between personal, individual experience - and memory - and the wider scope of a historical narrative basing his account among other things on Hayden White's thought. I will take my point of departure in the two following well-known statements from White's Tropics of Discourse:

• Many historians continue to treat their "facts" as though they were "given" and refuse to recognize, unlike most scientists, that they are not so much found as constructed by the kinds of questions which the investigator asks of the phenomena before him. It is the same notion of objectivity that …

Wittgenstein, Moorean Absurdity And Its Disappearance From Speech, John N. Williams

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

G. E. Moore famously observed that to say, I went to the pictures last Tuesday but I don't believe that I did would be absurd. Why should it be absurd of me to say something about myself that might be true of me? Moore suggested an answer to this, but as I will show, one that fails. Wittgenstein was greatly impressed by Moore's discovery of a class of absurd but possibly true assertions because he saw that it illuminates the logic of assertion. Wittgenstein suggests a promising relation of assertion to belief in terms of the idea that one expresses …

Is It All A Question Of Openness?, Seow Hon Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

No abstract provided.

Are Your Beliefs Meaningful Or Arbitrary?, Philosophical Discussion Group, Armstrong State University

The Philosopher's Stone

No abstract provided.

On The Importance Of History For Responsible Agency, Manuel R. Vargas

Philosophy

In this article I propose a resolution to the history issue for responsible agency, given a moderate revisionist approach to responsibility. Roughly, moderate revisionism is the view that a plausible and normatively adequate theory of responsibility will require principled departures from commonsense thinking. The history issue is whether morally responsible agency – that is, whether an agent is an apt target of our responsibility characteristic practices and attitudes – is an essentially historical notion. Some have maintained that responsible agents must have particular sorts of histories, others have argued that no such history is required. Resolution of this contentious issue …

On February 2006, Students Of Risd, Risd Archives

All Student Newspapers

On was an interdisciplinary graduate periodical established by RISD graduate students in 2006. The February 2006 issue is the publication's first issue and features essays on the theme of space. Essays are on a variety of topics within this theme, including commentaries on RISD and explorations of student work.

Moore's Paradoxes And Conscious Belief, John N. Williams

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

For Moore, it is a paradox that although I would be absurd in asserting that (it is raining but I don’t believe it is) or that (it is raining but I believe it isn’t), such assertions might be true. But I would be also absurd in judging that the contents of such assertions are true. I argue for the strategy of explaining the absurdity of Moorean assertion in terms of conscious Moorean belief. Only in this way may the pathology of Moorean absurdity be adequately explained in terms of self-contradiction. David Rosenthal disagrees with this strategy. Ironically, his higher-order thought …

The Condition Of Possibility Of Transcendental Philosophy, Sebastian Luft

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Muffin January 2006, Students Of Risd, Risd Archives

All Student Newspapers

Muffin was a newsletter produced in the early aughts by RISD’s Queer Student Union as a student guide to queer culture. The January 2006 issue is the first since the February-March issue from 2004. It was revived by the Straight and Gay Alliance and features a "gay timeline," articles on freshman lesbians, female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary "Mark" Read, lesbians who look straight, why straight people are needed in RISD's Straight and Gay Alliance, a Jewish student's struggle to reconcile his homosexuality with his faith, and cheap and corny date ideas, along with a book review of "Women's Barracks" …

Occupational Safety And Paternalism: Machan Revisited, Earl W. Spurgin

Philosophy

In 1987, Machan provided a libertarian case against the right to occupational safety. Since before Machan’s essay appeared, many business ethicists and legal scholars have given considerable attention to the overall position Machan endorses: the acceptance of employment at will and the rejection of employee rights. No one yet has given adequate attention, however, to the fact that Machan’s argument against the right to occupational safety actually stands or falls independently of his overall position on employee rights. His argument ultimately rests on two values: the promotion of employee interests and anti-paternalism. Insofar as those who support the right to …

Των Λογων Ο Πρωτος Τε Και Σμικροτατος, Sph. 262c6-7: The First And Littlest Of Sentences, John J. Mulhern

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

In this paper I show that the orthodox syntax suggested in Sophistes 262C6-7 and the surrounding text is not adhered to in the dialogues. Within the limited universe of monadic atomic sentence syntax extended with constants for existence and unity, in fact, all but three of the 14 possible irregular forms are used in one or other of the three dialogues instanced here. Self-predication, which, in the mid-twentieth-century, fascinated so many scholars, turns out to be just one among the many varieties of irregular syntax in the dialogues.

The nonadherence of other interlocutors to the Eleatic Stranger’s description of monadic …