Philosophy Commons^™

Survival Of The Selfish:Natural Selection And The Myth Of Altruism, Kyle O'Shea

The Intellectual Standard

Altruism, in its purest sense, can be defined as an unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others. An altruistic act is one in which the person or animal benefiting from the act is the only one benefiting from it, and the person or animal performing the act gains nothing or is even harmed by the act. Truly altruistic acts are completely void of selfishness. One would like to believe that altruism could exist in its purest form; however, this devotion to the welfare of others cannot and does not exist in nature over time.

Generalization And Induction: More Misconceptions And Clarifications, Eric W. K. Tsang, John N. Williams

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In ‘Generalization and Induction: Misconceptions, Clarifications, and a Classification of Induction’, we comment on Lee and Baskerville’s (2003) paper ‘Generalizing Generalizability in Information Systems Research’, which attempts to clarify the concept of generalization and classify it into four types. Our commentary discusses the misconceptions in their paper and proposes an alternative classification of induction. Their response ‘Conceptualizing Generalizability: New Contributions and a Reply’ perpetuates their misconceptions and create new ones. The purpose of this rejoinder is to highlight the major problems both in their original paper and in their reply and to provide further clarifications. Lee and Baskerville’s so-called ‘new …

Philosophy And Theology: Disability, Christopher Kaczor

Philosophy Faculty Works

The article focuses on various definitions of disability in human beings given by researcher. It mentions that disability is not universally accepted for normal function of a species. It informs that physical and psychological condition informs about the health of people. It further highlights that species norm defines disability in terms of disease.

Philosophy & World Religions Department Newsletter, V5, Fall 2012, University Of Northern Iowa. Department Of Philosophy And World Religions.

Philosophy & World Religions Department Newsletter

Inside this issue: -

The Scales of Justice: Liberty or Equality

Notes from the Head: Art on Campus

Faculty Spotlight: Francis Degnin, Professor of Philosophy

Faculty Spotlight: John Burnight, Professor of Religion

Harry Brod: Superman is Jewish?

Francis Degnin on Ethics in a Hospital Setting

Philosophy & World Religion Picnic

Student Interview: Jordan Bancroft-Smithe, Philosophy

Student Interview: Wynne Johnson, Study of Religion

Impact of Scholarships...making serious study possible

Explorers of Religion

Philosophy Club, Explorers of Religion Book Sale

Alumni Updates

Alumni Spotlight: John Fordyce, Philosophy

Grant Rozeboom: "If you are my End, then what are my Means?"

Alumni Response Form

On Why I Keep Getting [Socially] Interrupted By White People, Grant J. Silva

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Civil Society, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

An introductory encyclopedia article covering all aspects of the topic of Civil Society.

Dynamic Change Of Awareness During Meditation Techniques: Neural And Physiological Correlates, David Dillard-Wright

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Introduction To Special Issue, Vol. 15, Issue 1, Jane Johnson

Between the Species

No abstract provided.

What The Wild Things Are: A Critique On Clare Palmer’S “What (If Anything) Do We Owe Wild Animals?”, Joel P. Macclellan

Between the Species

In this critique of “Clare Palmer’s “What (if anything) do we owe wild animals?”, I develop three points. First, I consider the case study which opens her essay and argue that that there are good empirical reasons to think that we should assist domesticated horses and not wild deer. Then, I critique Palmer’s claim that “wildness is not a capacity”, arguing that wildness connotes certain capacities which wild animals generally have and which domesticated animals generally lack. Lastly, I develop what I call the “supererogation problem” against Palmer’s preferred contextualist view, claiming that while the contextualist view doesn’t obligate us …

Review - "Motive And Rightness" By Steven Sverdlik, Nancy J. Matchett

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Review - "Motive and Rightness" by Steven Sverdlik

Self-Love And Self-Respect In The Meaningful Life, Erica Stonestreet

Forum, 2012 Fall

Most people have the sense that there's something wrong with living a meaningless life. Since most meaningless lives seem morally blameless, however, it's not obvious exactly what is wrong with it. Starting with a plausible conception of a meaningful life as a life engaged with values beyond oneself, I suggest that the problem is that someone living outside of this conception is not according herself a kind of recognition she deserves as a human being. Comparing self-respect and self-love as candidates for this recognition, I argue that lacking self-love is actually the more fitting explanation for what goes wrong in …

Causal Modeling, Reversibility, And Logics Of Counterfactuals, Wai Yin Lam

Lingnan Theses

This thesis studies Judea Pearl’s logic of counterfactuals derived from the causal modeling framework, in comparison to the influential Stanlnaker-Lewis counterfactual logics.

My study focuses on a characteristic principle in Pearl’s logic, named reversibility. The principle, as Pearl pointed out, goes beyond Lewis’s logic. Indeed, it also goes beyond the stronger logic of Stanlnaker, which is more analogous to Pearl’s logic. The first result of this thesis is an extension of Stanlnaker’s logic incorporating reversibility. It will be observed that the translation of reversibility from Pearl’s language to the standard language for conditional logic deserves some attention. In particular, a …

Self-Love And Self-Respect In The Meaningful Life, Erica Stonestreet

Forum Lectures

Most people have the sense that there's something wrong with living a meaningless life. Since most meaningless lives seem morally blameless, however, it's not obvious exactly what is wrong with it. Starting with a plausible conception of a meaningful life as a life engaged with values beyond oneself, I suggest that the problem is that someone living outside of this conception is not according herself a kind of recognition she deserves as a human being. Comparing self-respect and self-love as candidates for this recognition, I argue that lacking self-love is actually the more fitting explanation for what goes wrong in …

On The Respectful Use Of Animals, Jon Garthoff

Between the Species

In his essay “The Integration of the Ethic of the Respectful Use of Animals into the Law”, David Favre begins to articulate a new framework for understanding the legal status of nonhuman animals. The present essay supports the broad contours of Favre’s framework, but raises challenges for some of the framework’s elements. The first half questions Favre’s claim that possession of DNA and the capacity for life underlie the need for a more robust conception of animal legal standing. The second half questions Favre’s prior proposal that animals be deemed persons under law and questions his pragmatic suggestion that judges …

False Negatives, Steven Luper

Philosophy Faculty Research

In Philosophical Explanations, Robert Nozick suggested that knowing that some proposition, p, is true is a matter of being “sensitive” to p’s truth-value. It requires that one’s belief state concerning p vary appropriately with the truth-value of p as the latter shifts in relevant possible worlds. Nozick fleshed out this sketchy view with a specific analysis of what sensitivity entails. Famously, he drew upon this analysis in order to explain how common-sense knowledge claims, such as my claim to know I have hands, are true, even though we do not know that skeptical hypotheses are false. His …

What Galileo's Telescope Can't See, James K.A. Smith

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Generalization And Induction: Misconceptions, Clarifications And A Classification Of Induction, Eric W. K. Tsang, John N. Williams

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In “Generalizing Generalizability in Information Systems Research,” Lee and Baskerville (2003) try to clarify generalization and classify it into four types. Unfortunately, their account is problematic. We propose repairs. Central among these is our balance-of-evidence argument that we should adopt the view that Hume’s problem of induction has a solution, even if we do not know what it is. We build upon this by proposing an alternative classification of induction. There are five types of generalization: (1) theoretical, (2) within-population, (3) cross-population, (4) contextual, and (5) temporal, with theoretical generalization being across the empirical and theoretical levels and the rest …

A Comparative Study: Traditional Evangelical Friends Pastors With Contemporar Evangelical Pastors For Twenty-First Century Application, Thomas Crawford

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This is a study of the dominant views of traditional evangelical Friends pastors and contemporary evangelical pastors. A comparative study of lifestyle, methods of ministry, and primary doctrinal beliefs is used to discover areas of agreement, differences, and points critical to successful leadership for Evangelical Friends pastors. Being a pastor and denominational leader in the Evangelical Friends Church-Eastern Region for the past 32 years gives the author a critical interest in this study. Every church and denomination wants to effectively reach people for Christ. The author and Evangelical Friends are no different. Academic research is combined with interviews of evangelical …

Humility, Civility, And Vitality: Papal Leadership At The Turn Of The Seventh Century, Peter Iver Kaufman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

In 416, Bishop Innocent I of Rome sent a colleague in Gubbio what was to become one of the most important set of liturgical instructions in early Christendom. Innocent composed his remarks on, inter alia, penitential discipline and prescribed gestures during the administration of the Sacraments to deter other bishops and their priests from improvising. He claimed that bishops of Rome, as successors of St. Peter, had the responsibility to authenticate ritual observances and achieve uniformity in Italy and elsewhere. Churches could not be left to alter or surrender valued practices because presiding priests or bishops thought them superfluous or …

Ethics, Law, And The Science Of Fish Welfare, Colin Allen

Between the Species

Fish farming is one of the fastest growing sectors of agriculture, attracting considerable attention to the question of whether existing farming regulations and animal welfare laws are adequate to deal with the expanding role of fish in feeding humans. The role of fish as model organisms in scientific research is also expanding -- a majority of research biology departments now keep zebrafish for the purposes of genome biology, and they are used widely used for basic neuroscience research. However, due to their diversity and distance from mammalian biology, fish pose difficult questions for the application of legal and ethical principles …

Sara Krajewski, Inova's New Director, Curtis L. Carter

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Review Of "The Basic Minimum: A Welfarist Approach" By D. Dorsey, Krista Karbowski Thomason

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Ideology, Truthmaking And Fundamentality, Anthony Robert James Fisher

Philosophy - Dissertations

In chapter 1 I outline two conceptions of ideology: ideological pessimism and ideological realism. Ideological pessimism is the view that ideological inquiry has dim prospects insofar as ideology is tied to meaning. Ideological realism is the view that there is a fact of the matter about which ideology is taken as primitive when attempting to describe reality correctly. I respond to an argument on behalf of ideological pessimism, develop ideological realism, and then defend it against an objection that attempts to derive the unpalatable consequence that a main dispute in the metaphysics of properties is verbal.

In chapter 2 I …

Rhyme Or Reason:That Is The Question?, Jim Roche

Articles

Noting that “the aesthetic should not be limited merely to the way things look” the organisers of this conference sought “in part to address the discursive limitation in architecture and related subjects by broadening the aesthetic discourse beyond questions relating to purely visual phenomena in order to include those derived from all facets of human experience”.

So where does etchics come in? Well, the introductory brochure noted that most philosophical trained aestheticians will say that “the aesthetic is everything” hinting perhaps of the necessity for a more haptic experience of architecture. It also drew on Wittgenstein’s quote that “ethics and …

An Apologetic To Sun Hwan Pyun's Dialogue Theology As A Liberation Theology Of Religions, Youngchan Kim

Masters Theses

Sun Hwan Pyun was a professor at Methodist Theological University. As a theologian, he grappled with two important theological questions: "Is Christianity an exclusive religion?" and "Is Christianity only a religion for the upper class?" Regarding the exclusivism of Christianity, Pyun searched for an answer in ecumenical-religious pluralism. As an answer for "is Christianity for the poor", he accepts Minjung liberation theology. Pyun wanted to combine these two theologies and, subsequently, referred to his dialogue theology as a liberation theology of religions. The purpose of this thesis is to search for the theological and biblical answers to these theological questions …

Defending The Multiple Realization Argument Against The Identity Theory, David Barrett

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A classic argument in the philosophy of mind is that the identity theory is false because mental state types are multiply realized in brain state types. In this dissertation I provide a detailed elaboration of the argument and a defense of it against a few of its prominent contemporary critics. Finally I offer empirical evidence from inter-species differences in humans and monkeys, and also from a case of extensive neural plasticity, which shows that mental state types are multiply realized in brain state types.

The Mathematical Cultures Network Project, Brendan P. Larvor

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

The UK Arts and Humanities Research Council has agreed to fund a series of three meetings with associated publications on mathematical cultures. This note describes the project.

Shenshi 紳士 Atau Gentry Cina: Sekilas Sejarah Dan Profil Kaum Aristokrat Cina Pada Zaman Kekaisaran, Adrianus L.G Waworuntu

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

In order to comprehend the many aspects of social and cultural historiography of traditional China, it is imperative to recognize who are the main actors. In traditional Chinese society, there is a significant category known as the Chinese gentry, or the shenshi 紳士 in Mandarin. They were known as the Chinese scholar-official class who administered the traditional Chinese dynastic government system since more than two-thousand years ago until the abolishment of the system in 1911. The Chinese gentry emerged from the intellectuals who became officials by going through a special, open-recruited, educational system; a system that enabled every person from …

Beyond Suffering - Commentary On Clare Palmer, Gordon M. Burghardt

Between the Species

None needed?

Check One And The Accountability Is Done: The Harmful Impact Of Straight-Ticket Voting On Judicial Elections, Meryl Chertoff, Dustin F. Robinson

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

States that elect judges are heir to a populist tradition dating back to the Jacksonian era. In the spectrum between independence and accountability, these states emphasize accountability. Systems vary from state to state, and even within states there may be geographic diversity or different selection systems for different levels of courts. Elections can be partisan or non-partisan, contested, or, as in merit-selection states, retention. Some states have dabbled in public financing of judicial elections. Reformers are most critical of contested partisan elections. Those are the elections where the most money is spent, the nastiest ads aired, and the dignity of …