Philosophy Commons^™

The Mechanization Of Philosophy Between 1300-1700, Henrik Lagerlund, Benjamin Hill, Helen Hattab, Dennis Des Chene, Calvin Normore

Research Day (Arts & Humanities, FIMS, and Education)

Standard histories of the development of modern science and philosophy has it that the mechanical philosophy was driven by changes in physics that then required a re-conceptualization of the metaphysics of substance. We contest that this view is backwards. The revisions of the metaphysics of substance occurred in the 14th century and it underlined the well-known changes in physics in the 15th and 16th centuries, which gave rise to mechanical philosophy in the 17th century.

A Sense Of Life In Language Love And Literature, Lawrence Kimmel

Philosophy Faculty Research

The fundamental human activity of telling stories, extended into the cultural tradition of literature, leads to the creation of alternative worlds in which we find resonance with the whole range of human thought and emotion from different and often conflicting perspectives. Fiction has no obligation to the ordinary strictures that bind our public lives, so the mind is free, engaging in literature, to become for the moment whatever imagination can conceive. So we become, in fictive reality, madman and poet, sinner and saint, embrace and embody sorrow and joy, hope and despair and all the rag tag feelings that flesh …

Contractualism And The Moral Status Of Animals, Jennifer Swanson

Between the Species

While contractualism seems to solve some of the more pressing concerns of other moral theories, it does not conclusively address the moral status of non-human animals. Peter Carruthers claims that contractualism excludes animals from having full moral status. I argue that Carruthers’ arguments are fatally flawed due to his reliance on contradictory claims, unlikely assumptions, and flagrant violations of the contractualist method. However, Carruthers also claims that we can treat animals wrongly and that it deserves moral criticism. This claim is based in indirect moral significance. However, this position makes it impossible for Carruthers to avoid endorsing two extremely counter-intuitive …

The Bee-Haviour Of Scientists: An Analogy Of Science From The World Of Bees, Ben Trubody

Between the Species

I am going to compare the strategies and communication bees use in order to locate and retrieve nectar to the world of science and the scientist. The analogy is intentionally anthropomorphic but I wish to argue that if successful bees made assumptions they would be similar to those of the scientist: flowers can be regarded as facts, nectar as knowledge, honey as technology and their ‘waggle-dance’ as communication of ideas. I would like to say that this is to be used as an analogy and should not be taken to be a statement of the scientific method as an emergent …

Collaboration Using Open Notebook Science In Academia, Andrew Lang, Jean-Claude Bradley, Steven Koch, Cameron Neylon

College of Science and Engineering Faculty Research and Scholarship

Technology has a profound effect on how scientists can communicate with each other. This affects how quickly science can progress and what kinds of collaboration are possible. Although the printing press and the subsequent establishment of scientifi c journals dramatically increased the ability of researchers to disseminate their results and ideas, close collaborations between geographically separated individuals had to await the availability of telecommunication technologies, particularly the development of the Internet. Today, the ubiquity of sophisticated and easy - to - use tools to exchange information is enabling the creation of a “ shared presence ” between people, regardless of …

A Puzzle About Responsibility A Problem And Its Contextualist Solution, Peter Baumann

Philosophy Faculty Works

This paper presents a puzzle about moral responsibility. The problem is based upon the indeterminacy of relevant reference classes as applied to action. After discussing and rejecting a very tempting response I propose moral contextualism instead, that is, the idea that the truth value of judgments of the form "S is morally responsible for x" depends on and varies with the context of the attributor who makes that judgment. Even if this reply should not do all the expected work it is a first step.

The Identity Of The Διψυχος In The Shepherd Of Hermas, Jeremiah Mutie

SOR Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Reginald Baylor, Milwaukee Artist, Curtis L. Carter

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Trust, Privacy, And Frame Problems In Social And Business E-Networks, Part 1, Jeff Buechner

Publications and Research

Privacy issues in social and business e-networks are daunting in complexity— private information about oneself might be routed through countless artificial agents. For each such agent, in that context, two questions about trust are raised: Where an agent must access (or store) personal information, can one trust that artificial agent with that information and, where an agent does not need to either access or store personal information, can one trust that agent not to either access or store that information? It would be an infeasible task for any human being to explicitly determine, for each artificial agent, whether it can …

Sagp Newsletter 2010/11.2 Central, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

How Can A Chinese Democracy Be Pragmatic?, Sor-Hoon Tan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Early in the last century, some of John Dewey's Chinese students had a chance to influence the fate of the first Chinese Republic. These individuals, Hu Shih being the most prominent example, were identified as Chinese liberals in the political spectrum of that time and advocated education reforms as the chief means of "saving China." Despite the hope for radical social change engendered by the New Culture Movement, education reforms failed, and cultural transformation did not lead in a democratic direction, at least not a Pragmatic democracy as conceived by Dewey. A century later, China is again going through a …

Interpretations Of Virtue (De) In Early China, Alan Kam Leung Chan

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

There is wide agreement that “virtue” finds its closest match inChinese philosophy in the concept of de . As a general concept, deconveys a sense of moral excellence, which finds expression in con-ceptually distinct virtues such as wisdom and courage. In the Confu-cian tradition it is often maintained that de pertains especially tomoral character or “moral charisma,” which defines the junzi or“gentleman” ideal.1 In this discussion, without rehearsing the manystudies on the meaning of de or retracing its usages in classical writ-ings,2 I explore how the concept is understood in three recently recov-ered early Chinese texts.

Taking It Off In The Mideast, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

The author explores the concept of democracy and the impact of financial, moral, and sexual corruption in the Middle East.

Pink Jacket 2011, Students Of Risd, Risd Archives

All Student Newspapers

Pink Jacket was a single issue student publication published in 2011 in both print and online formats. It features MFA student musings, artwork, and creative writing.

Reimagining Democratic Theory For Social Individuals, Steven L. Winter Walter S. Gibbs Distinguished Professor Of Constitutional Law

Law Faculty Research Publications

The Western conception of the individual as a rational, self-directing agent is a mythology that organizes and distorts religion, science, economics, and politics. It produces an abstracted and atomized form of engagement that is fatal to collective self-governance. And it turns democracy into the enemy of equality. Considering the meaning of democracy and autonomy from a perspective that takes the subject as truly social would refocus our attention on the constitutive contexts and practices necessary for the production of citizens who are capable of meaningful self-governance. Under modern conditions, it is in the development of sexual autonomy that we learn …

Review Of Shannon Winnubst, Queering Freedom (Bloomington, In.: Indiana University Press, 2006) Isbn: 978-0253218308, Cory Wimberly

Philosophy Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Pragmatic Picturesque: The Philosophy Of Central Park, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

New York's Central Park is one of the world's iconic works of landscape architecture. The park has achieved global recognition through its representations in film and photography, it is visited by millions every year and every sunny day sees a procession of engaged or newly married couples having their official photographs taken against the background of its picturesque scenery and monumental structures.

In the twenty-first century it may sound slightly odd to consider Central Park as a form of gardening, but the eighteenth-century founders of modern aesthetics and the philosophy of art would have called it a garden or park. …

On The Need For Embodied And Dis-Embodied Cognition, Guy Dove

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

This essay proposes and defends a pluralistic theory of conceptual embodiment. Our concepts are represented in at least two ways: (i) through sensorimotor simulations of our interactions with objects and events and (ii) through sensorimotor simulations of natural language processing. Linguistic representations are “dis-embodied” in the sense that they are dynamic and multimodal but, in contrast to other forms of embodied cognition, do not inherit semantic content from this embodiment. The capacity to store information in the associations and inferential relationships among linguistic representations extends our cognitive reach and provides an explanation of our ability to abstract and generalize. This …

The New Leviathan Part 2: Theological And Secular Repsonses, Philosophical Discussion Group, Armstrong State University

The Philosopher's Stone

No abstract provided.

What ‘Biological Racial Realism’ Should Mean, Quayshawn Spencer

Philosophy

A curious ambiguity has arisen in the race debate in recent years. That ambiguity is what is actually meant by ‘biological racial realism’. Some philosophers mean that ‘race is a natural kind in biology’, while others mean that ‘race is a real biological kind’. However, there is no agreement about what a natural kind or a real biological kind should be in the race debate. In this article, I will argue that the best interpretation of ‘biological racial realism’ is one that interprets ‘biological racial realism’ as ‘race is a genuine kind in biology’, where a genuine kind is a …

The Giffords Shooting: Who’S The Fall Guy?, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

The author explores the concept of ‘the fall guy’ from a political philosophical perspective.

Vol 2 No 1 Cover Page, Comparative Philosophy

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

Vol 2 No 1 Information Page, Comparative Philosophy

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

Vol 2 No 1 Contents Page, Comparative Philosophy

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

Atman, Identity, And Emanation: Arguments For A Hindu Environmental Ethic, Christopher G. Framarin

Comparative Philosophy

Many contemporary authors argue that since certain Hindu texts and traditions claim that all living beings are fundamentally the same as Brahman (God), these texts and traditions provide the basis for an environmental ethic. I outline three common versions of this argument, and argue that each fails to meet at least one criterion for an environmental ethic. This doesn’t mean, however, that certain Hindu texts and traditions do not provide the basis for an environmental ethic. In the last section of the paper I briefly outline and defend an alternative, according to which all plants and animals have intrinsic value …

Comparative Aspects Of Africana Philosophy And The Continental-Analytic Divide, Tommy L. Lott

Comparative Philosophy

Critical engagement involving philosophers trained in continental and analytic traditions often takes its purpose to be a reconciliation of tensions arising from differences in style, or method. Critical engagement in Africana philosophy, however, is rarely focused on method, style, or orientation because philosophic research in this field, regardless of orientation, has had to accommodate its empirical grounding in disciplines outside of philosophy. I focus primarily on the comparative dimensions of three important strands of this research: (1) a history of ideas, (2) a problem-orientation, and (3) a sub-area specialization, to indicate why a need to reconcile tensions between continental and …

Pluralism About Truth In Early Chinese Philosophy: A Reflection On Wang Chong’S Approach, Alexus Mcleod

Comparative Philosophy

The debate concerning truth in Classical Chinese philosophy has for the most part avoided the possibility that pluralist theories of truth were part of the classical philosophical framework. I argue that the Eastern Han philosopher Wang Chong (c. 25-100 CE) can be profitably read as endorsing a kind of pluralism about truth grounded in the concept of shi 實, or "actuality". In my exploration of this view, I explain how it offers a different account of the truth of moral and non-moral statements, while still retaining the univocality of the concept of truth (that is, that the concept amounts to …

Editor's Words, Bo Mou

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

Whole Set Of Volume 2 No 1 (2011) Of Comparative Philosophy, Comparative Philosophy

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

Shame And Conflict - Lysis's Philosophical Akrasia, L. Albert Joosse

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

We will see a conflict within Lysis between his newly stimulated love for wisdom and his habitual self-restraint. Born and raised an aristocrat, Lysis experiences conflict when his mind is enticed outside its wonted limits. What he experiences is, in fact, shame of himself: he notices that part of him falls short of the ideal he has been brought up with and to which part of him still adheres. His is a philosophical akrasia.