Philosophy Commons^™

From Despot To Steward: The Greening Of Catholic Social Teaching, Brian G. Henning

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Introduction, Monique Roelofs

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Sensation As Civilization: Reading/Riding The Taxicab, Monique Roelofs

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Aesthetics, race, and nation are densely imbricated with one another. This essay examines their interactions in a newspaper column that describes an aesthetic confrontation between a presumably Arab taxi driver and his passenger, a white European-Dutch columnist. In this column, taste engenders acts of identification and abjection, transmits projections of fear, and underwrites a division of labor and virtue. It thereby serves as a racial border patrolling technology and institutes racial boundaries. To clarify the racial power of aesthetic constellations in the taxicab case, the paper turns to the dualities and integrations that theorists such as Addison, Baumgarten, Schiller, and …

The Problem Of Time In Quantum Mechanics, Crisol J. Escobedo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of my Thesis is to gain a better understanding of the nature of time and the problems associated with time. For example, I aim to explore the problem associated with the energy-time uncertainty relation due to the lack of a universal operator for time. Using Jan Hilgevoord's work, I will explore the idea that if a measure of time is to be obtained in quantum mechanics, then time has to be a property of physical systems that can only be measured in relation to other systems. As such, time cannot be independent of physical systems. This implies that …

Mixed-Method Analyses Of Federal Court Decisions During 1980-2007 Involving Race And Sex Discrimination Under Title Vii Of The Civil Rights Act Of 1964 And Faculty Tenure Denial Decisions In Higher Education, Jannifer Crittendon

Dissertations

Purpose

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 has become the foundation of modem federal equal employment opportunity law. The application of this law to adverse tenure decisions, however, may differ from other adverse employment decisions because of judicial deference toward institutions of higher education. This present study analyzed published federal court cases decided during the period 1980-2007 involving Title VII, tenure denial, and higher education. This will contribute to understandings of the relationship between federal courts, faculty, and higher education by analyzing the extent of a statistical association between case and/or plaintiff characteristics and case outcomes; and isolating those institutional …

Early Heidegger's Transition From Life To Being, Gilbert Vasile Lepadatu

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

Heidegger was not always preoccupied, as he himself would later come to believe, with the question regarding the sense of being. Eight years before he published his magnum opus, Sein und Zeit, in 1927 he was totally devoted to finding a systematic way to bringing “life” as the ultimate source of meaning to explicate itself. In the years between 1919-1923, “life”, and not “being”, is the matter of philosophy par excellence, only to be disregarded, even refuted as a “proper” matter of philosophy in the subsequent years. In this paper I examine the philosophical motives that led Heidegger …

Reasons: Practical And Adaptive, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

I will consider some of the differences between epistemic reasons and reasons for action, and use these differences to illuminate a major division between types of normative reasons, which I will call ‘adaptive’ and ‘practical’ reasons. A few clarifications of some aspects of the concept of epistemic reasons will lead to a distinction between standard and non-standard reasons (section 1). Some differences between epistemic and practical reasons will be described and explained in section 2, paving the way to generalising the contrast and explaining the difference between adaptive and practical reasons (section 3). sections 4 and 5 further explain and …

Machiavellian Heroes Through The Prism Of Aristotle, Robert Acosta

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Thesis examines the relationship between the political philosophies of Machiavelli and Aristotle. It hypothesizes that Machiavelli incorporates three fundamental premises of Aristotle's political philosophy: 1. Politics is the master science 2. Man is a political animal 3. Aristotle's conception of human nature. In order to test the hypoThesis the Thesis utilizes case studies in the form of Machiavelli's four excellent men (Theseus, Romulus, Cyrus, and Moses) that are named explicitly in Chapter VI of The Prince . It is concluded that there is an element of Aristotle's fundamental political philosophy that is incorporated by Machiavelli. This relationship is often …

Identity, Oppression, And Group Rights, Andrew Jared Pierce

Dissertations

The dissertation argues for a conception of group rights based on Habermasian discourse theory, as an alternative to the dominant multicultural liberal approach to group rights, which treats group rights as instrumental to individual rights.

Is There A Value Problem?, Jason Baehr

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Evidentialism, Vice, And Virtue, Jason Baehr

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Xavier Zubiri: An Introduction, Brad E. Stone

Philosophy Faculty Works

In this essay, I seek to present Zubiri the man, the teacher, and the writer. Zubiri's influence as a philosopher is quite apparent given the large body of translations and secondary literature on him in many different languages and cultures.

Zubiri And The Very Problem Of The Problem Of Evil, Brad E. Stone

Philosophy Faculty Works

This essay continues the line of thought started in a previous article of mine, "The Very Problem of the Problem of God in Zubiri and Unamuno,"in The Xavier Zubiri Review 6 (2004), pp. 73-88. There I argued that true atheism is impossible if Xavier Zubiri and Miguel de Unamuno are correct about the re&son human beings talk about "God" at all.

Philosophy And Theology: Notes On Organ Donation After Cardiac Death, Christopher Kaczor

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

The Good Of The Intellect, Eric Perl

Philosophy Faculty Works

Recent continental philosophy often seeks to retrieve Neoplatonic transcendence, or the Good, while ignoring the place of intellect in classical and medieval Neoplatonism. Instead, it attempts to articulate an encounter with radical transcendence in the immediacy of temporality, individuality, and affectivity. On the assumption that there is no intellectual intuition (Kant), intellectual consciousness is reduced to ratiocination and is taken to be “poor in intuition” (Marion). In this context, the present paper expounds Plotinus’ phenomenology of intellectual experience to show how intellect, for Plotinus, is rather the richest mode of intuition, coinciding with the intelligible content of reality. This content, …

Units Of Selection, Timothy Shanahan

Philosophy Faculty Works

Understanding what kind of variation is possible and at what level selection occurs over those variations is what has driven the conversation about evolutionary biology at least since Darwin.

Tempoperformance Und Expressivität: Eine Studie Zwischen Musikpsychologie Und Musiktherapie, Jeffrey L. Wilson

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

The Ethics Of The Other, Luis Ruben Diaz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

I consider that our society is going through a globalization process where different vantages are being forced to face other cultures. This process revealed the weakness of our traditional moral systems where conflicts could be solved through a belief system that was accepted by the majority of the individuals of a given society. Since a global society needs to incorporate different beliefs systems in its moral considerations, and this implies that there will undoubtedly be a clash between the different moral codes, we need to find a way where individuals relate to the other in an ethical way. In my …

Moral Enquiry In A Pluralist Society: From Contention To Conversation, Philip Matthews

Theses

Over the last five hundred years, several conceptually incommensurable theories of ethics have been promulgated. For some moral philosophers, this incommensurability is a matter of deep concern because, in complex cases, there is no tradition-independent method for resolving moral conflict. More recently, a new discipline of applied or practical ethics has emerged. Practical ethics attempts to fill the void between rival moral theories by appealing, first, to the role of reason from an impartial observer perspective and, second, to decision making protocols based on moral principles. This ―first generation‖ attempt at codifying practical ethics failed to bridge the incommensurability gap …

What Is A “Real” Argument?, G. C. Goddu

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Numerous informal logicians and argumentation theorists restrict their theorizing to what they call “real” arguments. But is there a clear distinction to be made between “real” and “non-real” arguments? Here I explore four possible accounts of the alleged distinction and argue that none can serve the theoretical uses to which the distinction is most often put.

Governmentality, Biopower, And The Debate Over Genetic Enhancement, Ladelle Mcwhorter

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Although Foucault adamantly refused to make moral pronouncements or dictate moral principles or political programs to his readers, his work offers a number of tools and concepts that can help us develop our own ethical views and practices. One of these tools is genealogical analysis, and one of these concepts is “biopower.” Specifically, this essay seeks to demonstrate that Foucault’s concept of biopower and his genealogical method are valuable as we consider moral questions raised by genetic enhancement technologies. First, it examines contemporary debate over the development, marketing, and application of such technologies, suggesting that what passes for ethical deliberation …

Erde, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

E bezeichnet alles, was diesseitig ist, sich auf den Körper und das Natürliche bezieht, in Abgrenzung zu den Vorstellungen von einer anderen, höheren Welt, die die Religion und Philosophie des Westens beherrscht haben. Daher ermahnt Zarathustra seine Zuhörer, nicht den Kopf in den Sand der himmlischen Dinge zu stecken, sondern einen ,,einen Erden-Kopf, der der E Sinn schafft" (Za I, Von den Hinterweltlern) zu haben. Zuweilen bezeichnet E die konkrete Umgebung der Menscheit auf diesem Planeten und das zukünftige Heim → des Übermenschen genauer.

Sustaining Faith- Informed Mission At Religiously-Affiliated Colleges And Universities: A Qualitative Case Study Of Three Institutions, Paul J. Witek

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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Contemporary Ink Paintings, Curtis L. Carter

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Beyond Stewardship: Toward An Agapeic Environmental Ethic, Christopher J. Vena

Dissertations (1934 -)

This dissertation is a work in theological anthropology and environmental philosophy. It seeks to provide a conceptual framework for a Christian environmental ethic rooted in love.

The heart of the crisis of ecological degradation is found in human attitudes and behaviors. In the late 1960's it was suggested that Christianity was a key source of the problem because it promoted the idea of human "dominion" over creation. This spurred a variety of responses designed to show that Christian faith was compatible with environmental care. A key theme emerging from this debate was the image of humans as Stewards of God's …

Ethical Problems In Connection With World Poverty, Wing Fan

Lingnan Theses

World economy has been doing well in recent decades even taking into account the current financial crisis. However, there are even more people suffering from poverty and related issues than earlier. I am going to discuss the issue of helping poor people in the context of ethics.

In my thesis, I will firstly state the standard of absolute poverty, which will be the main focus in the remainder of the text. Then, I will present the argument given by a contemporary philosopher, Peter Singer, that urges us to give money to the poor people. I will go through his argument …

康德的道德情感理論及牟宗三先生的批評與闡釋, Wing Yu, Esther Wong

Lingnan Theses

本論文的題目為「康德的道德情感理論與牟宗三先生的批評與闡釋」。自當代新儒家牟宗三先生援引康德哲學來重新詮釋儒家哲學，中西比較哲學的討論頓時 變得活躍起來，筆者亦因讀到牟先生的著作，而對康德的哲學產生興趣。筆者以“道德情感”為比較康德與牟先生的儒學之開展，是因為注意到道德情感在 兩者哲學中的獨特位置，希望通過探討牟先生對康德的批評與闡釋，能夠指出道德情感所具有的形上意涵。通過比較康德與牟先生的道德哲學，筆者希望能 揭示兩者所採用哲學的方法以至其哲學的系統架構，從而能對兩者作恰如其分的定位。

Explaining Depiction : Recent Debates In The Philosophy Of Pictorial Representation, Chi Kei, Solly Leung

Lingnan Theses

This thesis begins with a succinct survey of theories of depiction and then turns to two highly influential contemporary philosophical accounts, namely, the aspect-recognition theory proposed by Dominic McIver Lopes, and Robert Hopkins’s experienced resemblance theory. The latter two theories of pictorial representation are presented in detail before objections to both accounts are presented and assessed.

One of the central contentions of the thesis is that the aspect-recognition theory succumbs to a number of serious objections. First of all, this account rests upon a philosophically problematic notion of semantic information and consequently fails to account adequately for the possibility of …

Two Constructions Of Libertarianism, Chandran Kukathas

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The libertarian first principle—a belief in individual freedom—can lead to two different and not necessarily acceptable societies from the standpoint of liberty. One is the “Union of Liberty,” in which communities, associations, and intermediate bodies are held to rigorous standards of voluntariness (and thus face sharp limits on their internal associational freedom because of the knowledge that children will be born into them). In the other, the “Federation of Liberty,” they are not (thereby allowing children to be born into locally unfree environments).While in any free society individuals may voluntarily join together and waive some of their rights (in institutions …

Artists And Social Change, Curtis Carter

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.