Philosophy Commons^™

Inflationary Truth-Theoretic Semantics, Michael Brady Horton

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

I argue that satisfaction and reference—and therefore, truth—are multiply realizable properties. I advocate a novel approach motivated by a commitment to the robustness and fruitfulness of truth-theoretic approaches to natural language semantics.

DEFLATIONISM: Philosophers keen on deflating the metaphysical pretensions of truth theories claim that we need not appeal to a substantive truth-property. Recently, however, some philosophers have sought to combine deflationism about truth with the view that our concept of truth or the truth-predicate can play an important role in natural language semantics.

TRUTH-THEORETIC SEMANTICS: The goal of a formal semantic theory of a natural language is to provide …

Conceptions Of Mechanisms And Insensitivity Of Causation, Viorel Pâslaru

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Conceptions of mechanisms due to Glennan (1996; 2002), Machamer, Darden, and Craver (2000), Bechtel and Abrahamsen (2005) have developed in opposition to the nomological approach to explanation. It is less emphasized, however, that these conceptions have also developed as alternatives to the causal perspective on explanation. In this paper, I argue that despite their distancing from the topic of causation, the mechanistic conceptions need to incorporate in their definitions of mechanisms the notion of insensitivity of causal relations that was examined by Woodward (2006).

Voting Rights And Wrongs: Philosophical Justification For Universal Suffrage, Michelle Brody

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis analyzes Jason Brennan's paper "The Right to a Competent Electorate," then critiques his argument in favor of restricting voting rights to those deemed competent. I consider the practical and ethical implications of testing for competence, then conclude, contrary to Brennan, that granting all citizens voting rights is more just than restricting the voting population.

Is There A Right To Healthcare? An Analysis From The Perspective Of Liberty And Libertarianism, Sarah R. Robinson

CMC Senior Theses

Despite already having the most expensive healthcare system in the world, the U.S. is facing rapidly rising costs, a growing population not covered by health insurance, and outcomes that are no better, and frequently worse, than those seen in the majority of developed nations with universal healthcare. Popular justifications of keeping the state out of healthcare appeal to protecting individual liberty; those who assert that there is a universal right to healthcare usually fail to address this claim. This paper describes the kinds of obligations in healthcare that are consistent with, if not demanded by, theories of justice that emphasize …

Mary’S Dilemma: A Novel Take On Jackson’S Famous Thought Experiment, Noah O. Abolafia-Rosenzweig

CMC Senior Theses

This paper explores and evaluates the famous Mary case put forward by Frank Jackson in support of what he calls the knowledge argument against physicalism. After laying out Jackson’s position, I set out to determine whether certain previous physicalist attempts at undermining it have been successful. Finding that they have not, I use their shortcomings to inform the construction of a new position, one which I argue renders the Mary case at odds with itself and frees physicalism from the knowledge argument’s grasp.

The Metaphysics Of Improvisation, Tobyn C. Demarco

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In "The Metaphysics of Improvisation," I criticize wrongheaded metaphysical views of, and theories about, improvisation, and put forward a cogent metaphysical theory of improvisation, which includes action theory, an analysis of the relevant genetic and aesthetic properties, and ontology (work-hood).

The dissertation has two Parts. Part I is a survey of the history of many improvisational practices, and of the concept of improvisation. Here I delineate, sketch, and sort out the often vague boundaries between improvising and non-improvising within many art forms and genres, including music, dance, theatre, motion pictures, painting, and literature. In addition, I discuss the concept of …

Do You Have A Conscience?, Jeremy Bendik-Keymer

Faculty Scholarship

“Do you have a conscience?” There was a time when this would have been a question that was immediately intelligible to people, like asking whether a person holding a ball can throw it. For much of the history of philosophy—that ancient Greek invention—the name for what allows one to stay in touch with moral principles in the midst of particular decisions was “conscience” (Langston 2001). To ask whether I have a conscience was tantamount to asking whether I can keep my decisions moral, whether I was capable of being a mature human being. Since morality is the domain of duties …

Sustainability Trajectory And Possibility, Roger Saillant, Jeremy Bendik-Keymer

Faculty Scholarship

There was a time in our prehistorical past when we as a species were subject to the forces of nature in much the same ways as all other living beings of the time. Our technology was only moderately protective. We human beings were a blend of instincts and common sense. Although communities among us could overshoot our resources, we managed to live within the biosphere relatively well. We were no noble savages—consider our genocide of the Neanderthals and our contribution to the North American mega fauna extinctions—but neither were we capable of affecting the entire global system of life as …

Following The Trail Of Ants: An Examination Of The Work Of E.O. Wilson, Samantha Kee

Writing Across the Curriculum

No abstract provided.

Introduction To The Intellectual Standard, Jaret Kanarek

The Intellectual Standard

It is with great pleasure that I introduce The Intellectual Standard to Illinois Wesleyan University. The Intellectual Standard is an interdisci­plinary' student-run academic journal. With philosophy as its fundamen­tal base, it covers a myriad of topics, including the social sciences, the natu­ral sciences, current events, culture, and art. Its goal is to bring intellectual thought into the mainstream environment of Illinois Wesleyan University, and thereby set an intellectual standard for students, professors, and publi­cations alike.

Philosophy And Nascar, Jake K. Bates

The Intellectual Standard

Philosophy is typically considered a thought-provoking science appropriately reserved for discussion between "intellectuals;' and NAS­CAR contrarily carries a stigma of uneducated masses of fans supporting a racer of their choice with a frequently drunken passion. Thus, the mar­riage of these two topics may seem entirely inappropriate. Despite their conflicting stereotypes, philosophy and NASCAR must not necessarily be separated. Philosophy-at least the right philosophy-exalts the use of the mind in furthering man's capabilities and simultaneously seeks to under­stand the limitations imposed by nature. It is the science presented and, ideally, answering questions such as "Where am I?;' "How can I discover …

The Learning Process: Inspiration For Computer Scientists, Nick A. Nichols

The Intellectual Standard

The human brain is capable of tasks with which the most com­plex computers have trouble. Comprehending language, a task that chil­dren can begin to develop by their second or third birthday, has only just reached a consistently usable level. Even with years of research, IBM's Wat­son, which competed against two all-time Jeopardy! contestants, was un­able to detect many of the nuances of human communication. Puns, con­text clues, and more are critical parts of communication, but given several of Watson's "confused" answers, they were clearly misinterpreted.1 From this, an important question becomes apparent, "What makes a human able to understand this …

Faulty Phrases: "Good Things Come To Those Who Wait", Jake K. Bates

The Intellectual Standard

"Good things come to those who wait" has become such a staple of English -speaking culture that it has been used in Guinness and Heinz ad campaigns. Just as Heinz encouraged ketchup consumers to endure the bottle's slow trickle, people use the words in a variety of contexts to encour­age patience. A friend or parent may console a student anxious to receive essay results by declaring "good things come to those who waif' In hon­estly analyzing each of the words and the possible meanings interpreted from their interaction, without endowing any white-washed meaning, it should be easily observed that "good …

Making Human Rights Really Real, Jake K. Bates

The Intellectual Standard

In lieu of Illinois Wesleyan's "Making Human Rights Real" endeav­ors this school year, questions arise concerning the meaning of human rights and how we can effectively apply such a concept in the world around us. The discussion of human rights has long been one of the most contested among political philosophers and ordinary citizens alike. And rightfully so, because its conclusions hold drastic implications for individuals every­where at all times. In order to avoid a muddled debate on the subject, it is critical to concretely define human rights. Thus, the concept of a "human;' the concept of a "right:' and …

Judgment, Justice, And Art Criticism, Jolanta Nowak

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The purpose of this article is to expose a gap in the current academic discussion of visual art criticism: the lack of serious attention to the role of ethical judgment. Critics tend either to avoid discussing the judgment of art or they dismiss it as a contemporary impossibility. However, ethical criticism is nonetheless practiced, albeit only occasionally and in an under-theorized manner. This paper calls for a reconceptualization of ethical judgment in art criticism, a reconceptualization that brings art into explicit relation with ethics.

Flesh As Communication -- Body Art And Body Theory, Falk Heinrich

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

On the last pages of The Visible and the Invisible, Merleau-Ponty investigates “the bond between flesh and idea, and the internal armature which [it] manifests and which it conceals.” Flesh and idea are intertwined in that the body reflects on itself in the act of perception and, one could add, action. A correlative bond lies in communication theory as the operational difference between ego and alter-ego. This article investigates the non-semiotic intertwinement of ‘flesh’ in art perception and theory based on communication theory in performance art (body art). The thesis is that ‘flesh’ in performance art is presented as absolute …

G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831), Richard Thomas Eldridge

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Review Of "Assuming A Body: Transgender And Rhetorics Of Materiality" By G. Salamon, Tamsin E. Lorraine

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

(2012) Economic Crises And Education: Some Philosophical Reflections, Laurance J. Splitter

Collected Papers of Laurance J. Splitter

The ongoing series of global financial crises offers some important philosophical lessons and insights for educators. The epistemological lesson is stark: we should beware of certainty and all claims to it. Were the disposition of generic skepticism in place at all levels of schooling, then the intellectual rigidity that has characterized economics as a “discipline” would be balanced by demands to consider possible alternatives. The ethical lessons to be learned include ensuring that ethics, as a form of rigorous but openended inquiry into key questions about the kind of world in which we want to live, be included in every …

(2012) "I Must Change My Life": A Review Of Mathew Lipman’S A Life Teaching Thinking, David K. Kennedy

Collected Papers of David Kennedy

Born in 1923 and recently deceased after a long struggle with Parkinson’s Disease, Matthew Lipman wrote this brief but detailed autobiography just before his illness made it impossible to write any more. It begins with memories of earliest childhood and his preoccupation with the possibility of being able to fly, moves through the years in which his family struggled with the effects of the Great Depression, through his service in the military during World War II, his discovery of the joy and beauty of philosophy, his quick academic rise at Columbia University, his sojourn in Paris, and his early and …

(2012) My Name Is Myshkin: A Philosophical Novel For Children, David K. Kennedy

Collected Papers of David Kennedy

My Name is Myshkin is a philosophical novel written with children ages approximately 10-14 in mind. The book offers a fantasy adventure plot line interweaving narrative themes of ecology, mythology, psychology, spirituality and social justice, which interplay with its more purely philosophical material. Myshkin, the ten-year old narrator of the story, engages in numerous conversations with three school friends. A few of the many questions they take up are: whether one “is” one’s body, how we can tell what is real, animals and humans, youth and age, what is alive, the origins of evil, superstition and belief, whether there is …

Reforming Public Theology: Two Kingdoms, Or Two Cities?, James K.A. Smith

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

No abstract provided.

A Commentary On Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's Discourse On Metaphysics #19, Richard Lamborn Samuel Lamborn

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This commentary on article #19 of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's Discourse on Metaphysics is for the purpose of promoting the understanding of Leibniz on the role of teleology in physics. Understanding Leibniz on final causes is crucial to understanding his overall natural philosophy. If one approaches Leibniz with a bias regarding either final causes or protestant Christian theology, such that they ignore these aspects of Leibniz, such a person is in danger of completly misunderstanding this philosopher. Leibniz is a mix of natural philosophy, mechanical physics, and protestant Christian theology. The rationale behind this study is to cause the student of …

Sellars In Context: An Analysis Of Wilfrid Sellars's Early Works, Peter Jackson Olen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Although Wilfrid Sellars's work holds a prominent place in recent analytic philosophy, little work has been done to situate his early approaches to normativity and the philosophy of language in their proper context. What little work has been done tends to emphasize Sellars's connection to a then dominant logical empiricism at the expense of marginalizing other American philosophical schools. On top of this historical issue, most scholars attempting to explain Sellars's systematic philosophy tend to ignore a developmental picture of Sellars's positions and focus on explicating the systematic character of his thought. My dissertation attempts to correct both of these …

The New Materialism: Althusser, Badiou, And Zizek, Geoffrey Dennis Pfeifer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation traces the post-Marxist and materialist positions of two leading contemporary European thinkers: Slavoj Zizek and Alain Badiou. These thinkers, I argue, collectively offer a way between the traditional Hegelian Marxist's overarching meta-narrative of a necessary evolution from worse to better, and the post-modern pessimism of a lack of possibility for such a social evolution. It is this middle path, offered by these two thinkers, that this dissertation seeks to explore and further explain. The focal point of this dissertation is the type of philosophical materialism that is collectively offered by Badiou and Zizek, what I call the "New …

Moral Friction, Moral Phenomenology, And The Improviser, Benjamin Scott Young

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation offers a phenomenology of that mode of self-interpretation in which it becomes possible for an interpreter to intentionally participate in the production of moral norms to which the interpreter himself or herself feels bound. Part One draws on Richard Rorty's notion of the "ironist" in order to thematize the phenomenon I call "moral friction"; a condition in which an interpreter becomes explicitly aware of the historical and cultural contingencies of their own moral vocabularies, practices, and concerns and as a result find themselves incapable of feeling the normative weight implicit in these. Part Two draws on Heidegger's existential …

The Implications Of Migration Theory For Distributive Justice, Alexander Sager

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper explores the implications of empirical theories of migration for normative accounts of migration and distributive justice. It examines neo-classical economics, world-systems theory, dual labor market theory, and feminist approaches to migration and contends that neo-classical economic theory in isolation provides an inadequate understanding of migration. Other theories provide a fuller account of how national and global economic, political, and social institutions cause and shape migration flows by actively affecting people's opportunity sets in source countries and by admitting people according to social categories such as class and gender. These empirical theories reveal the causal impact of institutions regulating …

Freshest Advices On What To Do With The Historical Method In Philosophy When Using It To Study A Little Bit Of Philosophy That Has Been Lost To History, Bennett Gilbert

University Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

The paper explores the question of the relationship between the practice of original philosophical inquiry and the study of the history of philosophy. It is written from my point of view as someone starting a research project in the history of philosophy that calls this issue into question, in order to review my starting positions. I argue: first, that any philosopher is sufficiently embedded in culture that her practice is necessarily historical; second, that original work is in fact in part a reconstruction by reinterpretation of the past and that therefore it bears some relation to historiographic techniques for the …

Pearson Studies Philosophies, Ethics Of Science, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Motion(Less) Pictures: The Cinema Of Stasis, Justin Remeselnik

Wayne State University Dissertations

Since cinema's inception, there has been much disagreement among film theorists about the role of movement in cinema's ontology. For example, while Rudolf Arnheim has argued that motion is a sine qua non of cinema, Roland Barthes has insisted that motion is not as central to cinema's ontology as duration, an experiential "unfolding." In this dissertation, I argue--following Barthes--that movement is merely a contingent, not a necessary, condition of cinema. I further suggest that the very enterprise of prescribing necessary conditions of cinema is myopic, reductive, and reactionary.

In supporting these claims, I interrogate the cinema of stasis, a modality …