Philosophy Commons^™

The Justice Of Tom Jones A Reevaluation Of Henry Fielding's Moral Theory, Matthew Binney

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Orlando The Marriage Of Literary History And Humanities Computing, Isobel Grundy, Susan Brown, Patricia Clements

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Some Further Thoughts On "Organic Georgics," Or, The Politics And Poetics Of Johnson's Manure, Michael Rotenbetg-Schwartz

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Book Reviews

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Diderot's Uncle, Hegel Or, Rameau's Nephew As A Branch Of The Phenomenology Of Spirit, Isabelle C. Demarte, J. M. Fritzman

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

Jacobites And Freemasons In Sweden Esoteric Intelligence And Exoteric Politics, Maisha K. Schuchard

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

"A Polish Lady" The Art Of The Jacobite Print, Neil Guthrie

1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era

No abstract provided.

The Descriptive Problem Of Evil, Brad Kallenberg

Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Language is like the cane in the hand of the blind person. The better one becomes at getting around with the cane, the more he or she is apt to forget the cane but through the cane perceive the objects scraped and tapped by the other end. A defective cane may distort the world perceived by the blind person. So too, defective use of language threatens to muddy our understanding of the things we talk about. When discussing something as difficult as natural evils, a frequently undetected defect in our language use is “overly attenuated description.” In this piece, I …

Review Of The Paradoxes Of Art: A Phenomenological Investigation, By Alan Paskow, Robert J. Dostal

Philosophy Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Aristotelian Privacy: Perfectionism, Pornography, And The Virtues Of The Polis, G. Scott Davis

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

In the United States privacy is a hot topic, not least because of the current administration's desire to have unbridled access to its citizens' overseas conversations. But in what follows I do not plan to deal directly with any legal or policy concerns. Instead, I am interested in the philosophical foundations,- if any there be, of privacy as something to which individuals and other groups may be entitled. Because much of the discussion of "privacy rights" has revolved around matters sexual, I shall key the discussion to individual access to sexually explicit publications and what limits, if any, moral reflection …

Locke And The Problem Of Toleration, Lois M. Eveleth

Faculty and Staff - Articles & Papers

More than ever before, being able to draw a distinction between the tolerable and the intolerable is necessary. Unfortunately the traditional understanding, as identified with the Enlightenment view first articulated by John Locke, presents merely formalistic criteria. Lacking substantive criteria, our contemporary understanding of toleration is inadequate to our needs.

Nationhood And Political Culture, Anna Moltchanova

Philosophy Faculty Work

No abstract provided.

A Novel Category Of Vague Abstracta, Jeffrey C. Goodman

Faculty Scholarship

Much attention has been given to the question of ontic vagueness, and the issues usually center around whether certain paradigmatically concrete entities – cats, clouds, mountains, etc. – are vague in the sense of having indeterminate spatial boundaries.  In this paper, however, I wish to focus on a way in which some abstracta seem to be locationally vague.  To begin, I will briefly cover some territory already covered regarding certain types of “traditional” abstracta and the ways they are currently alleged to be vague.  I then wish to discuss two types of “nontraditional” abstracta and the sense in which I …

A Critical Discussion Of Talking Past One Another, Jeffrey C. Goodman

Faculty Scholarship

One sort of usage of the phrase ‘talking past one another’ that is quite prevalent in the philosophical literature suggests the following account of a particular phenomenon of miscommunication: Agent A and agent B talk past one another during a philosophical discussion if and only if A has in mind one meaning or conception of a crucial expression P that is distinct from some meaning or conception of P had in mind by B.  In this paper, however, I argue that this account – given the sort of phenomenon it is intended to be an account of – misses the …

Ennobling Direct Democracy, Sherman J. Clark

Articles

In this essay, Professor Clark argues that we should be attentive to the effect that direct democracy might have on our public character. Building upon earlier work, Clark suggests that the initiative in particular threatens to debase us by undercutting a crucial character trait which might best be called "responsibility-taking." The bulk of this essay is devoted to explaining what this means, and why it matters. Why should we care about the effect of political processes on public character? Why is this particular trait important and worth preserving? How is it threatened by direct democracy? In conclusion, and by way …

Madame De Staël, The Protestant Reformation And The History Of ‘Private Judgement’, Helena Rosenblatt

Publications and Research

It is a well-known fact that Madame de Staël held the Protestant Reformation in high regard and preferred Protestantism to all other religions. To her, Protestantism was the most moral and the most enlightened religion available; it was the the religion most compatible with, and even conductive to, progress.

But why was this so, and what exactly did Madame de Staël mean by Protestantism? It is an important question, because answering it will shed light on the nature of her liberalism and, more particularly, on the interconnectedness of her religious and her political views.

Editors’ Introduction, Harris Friedman, Glenn Hartelius

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

NA

Reports Of Transpersonal Experiences By Non-Native Practitioners Of The Native American Sweat Lodge Ceremony: A Critical Appraisal, Whit Hibbard

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Interviews with 30 experienced non-native practitioners of the Native American sweat lodge

ceremony revealed 184 reports of transpersonal experiences. Interview questions sought to (a)

disclose how practitioners discern or critique their own experiences, (b) consider alternative

explanations for practitioners’ experiences, and (c) critically reflect on the sweat lodge

ceremony per se as a spiritual practice. It was found that practitioners generally (a) interpreted

their experiences as trustworthy interactions with a spiritual reality, (b) did not seriously

consider alternative explanations for their experiences, and (c) neglected to reflect critically

on the sweat lodge ceremony per se as a spiritual practice.

Applying Quantitative Research Methods In Transpersonal Psychology: Introduction To Special Topic Section, Harris L. Friedman, Glenn Hartelius

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

NA

The Challenges, Prospects, And Promise Of Transpersonal Psychology, Paul F. Cunningham

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Several substantial critiques remain a source of fractionalizing debate within transpersonal

psychology, including the weakness of its definition, whether it is redundant with Wilber’s

integral psychology, whether it is a scientific field, whether it is too metaphysical, whether it

neglects the problem of evil, and what contribution can it make to mainstream psychology.

This article explicates these and related areas of critique and provides a response that identifies

the essential challenges and future prospects of transpersonal psychology. The article also

emphasizes the field’s unique role as a potential bridge connecting psychological science with

the transpersonal psyche in a way that …

Does The Concept Of “Altered States Of Consciousness” Rest On A Mistake?, Adam J. Rock, Stanley Krippner

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Block (2002) has argued that the multiplicity of meanings ascribed to consciousness is due

to the erroneous treatment of very different concepts as a single concept. Block distinguished

four notions of consciousness intended to encapsulate the various meanings attributed to

the term: phenomenal, access, self, and monitoring consciousness. We argue that what is

common to all of these definitions is the implicit distinction between consciousness and the

content of consciousness. We critically examine the term “altered state of consciousness”

and argue that affixing the qualifier “altered state” to consciousness results in a theoretical

confusion of consciousness and its content, that …

Book Review The Fall: Evidence For A Golden Age, 6,000 Years Of Insanity And The Dawning Of A New Era, By Steve Taylor, Elias Capriles

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

NA

Ketamine-Enhanced Psychotherapy: Preliminary Clinical Observations On Its Effects In Treating Death Anxiety, Eli Kolp, Scott M. Young, Harris Freidman, Evgeny Krupirsky, Karl Jansen, Laurie-Ann O’Connor

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic commonly used by US physicians, has recently been

shown to be a powerful anti-depressant and is also capable of eliciting transpersonal experiences

that can be transformative. Although currently approved in the US only for use as an

anesthetic, physicians there can legally prescribe it off-label to treat various psychological/

psychiatric problems and it has been used for these non-anesthetic purposes in Argentina,

Iran, Mexico, Russia, and the UK, as well as in the US. The literature on using ketamine

psychotherapeutically is reviewed and two case studies using ketamine-enhanced psychotherapy

(KEP) for treating death anxiety in terminally-ill …

Mindfulness In Measurement: Reconsidering The Measurable In Mindfulness Practice, Sharon G. Solloway, William P. Fisher Jr.

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Can an organic partnership of qualitative and quantitative data confirm the value of mindfulness practice as an assignment in undergraduate education? Working from qualitative evidence suggesting the existence of potentially measurable mindfulness effects expressed in ruler measures, a previous study calibrated a mathematically invariant scale of mindfulness practice effects with substantively and statistically significant differences in the measures before and after the assignment. Current efforts replicated these results. The quantitative model is described in measurement terms defined at an introductory level. Detailed figures and appendices are provided, and a program of future research is proposed.

Book Review: The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself, By Michael A. Singer, Gene Thursby

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

NA

A Third Model Of Self-Construal: The Metapersonal Self, Teresa L. Decicco, Mirella L. Stroink

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

This research adds a third model and measure of self-construal to the current psychological literature: the metapersonal self-construal. This model extends previous theory and research, which has established two self-construal orientations to date: the independent and interdependent self-construal. The research presents a series of studies investigating the theoretical and psychometric properties of the third model and measure. Study 1 produced a valid and reliable 10-item self-report scale of the metapersonal self. Study 2 determined the scale to be low in social desirability bias. Studies 3 and 4 examined the convergent and discriminant validity of the three self-construal scales. Investigations among …

Letter From A War Zone: Some Thoughts On Setting An Activist Agenda, Rebecca Whisnant

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Essay is from a conference sponsored by Captive Daughters and DePaul University in Chicago.

Global Feminist Ethics: Feminist Ethics And Social Theory, Rebecca Whisnant, Peggy Desautels

Philosophy Faculty Publications

This volume contains four sections, the first of which examines some of the special moral concerns that arise from assigning distinct activities and responsibilities to women and men respectively. It is difficult to argue against the view that women and not men are the birth-givers. But it is also true that death rates tied to pregnancy and birth-giving are unacceptably high in developing countries. Are women better off giving birth in hospitals with attending physicians (often male) or in homes with attending midwives (usually female)? Which approach should be "exported" to the developing world?

In the first chapter, "Exporting Childbirth," …

Moral Responsibility -- What Is All The Fuss About?, Kenton Machina

Faculty Publications - Philosophy

Examination of several accounts regarding the nature of moral responsibility allows the extraction of a conceptual core common to all of them. Relying on that core conception of moral responsibility, the paper explores what human life without moral responsibility would be like. That exploration establishes that many robust forms of human relationship and nonmoral normativity could continue, absent moral responsibility, even if moral responsibility were abandoned on incompatibilist grounds. Much more importantly, it also establishes, contra Waller and Pereboom, that only some forms of morality – so-called “behavioral” forms – remain possible without moral responsibility. The paper argues that normative …

Towards A Diagnostic Framework For Understanding Complex Situations, José J. Padilla, Andres Sousa-Poza, Arturo Tejada, Samuel Kovacic

VMASC Publications

This paper presents a theoretical framework for the concept of understanding and how it can be used for assessing complex situations. Understanding is presented as a cognitive process on how an individual perceives and represents a complex domain based on his/her own predispositions, and how he/she selects knowledge or what may not be knowledge based on the same predispositions towards finding a set of solutions for the situation. Predispositions, in this case, are based on his/her epistemological, ontological and teleological biases while the domain is represented by irreducible and transient conditions. The final outcome is the match or mismatch of …