Philosophy Commons^™

The Fine-Tuning Of Nomic Behavior In Multiverse Scenarios, Max Lewis Edward Andrews

Masters Theses

The multiverse hypothesis (the view that there is not just one world or universe in existence, bur rather that there are many) is the leading alternative to the competing fine-tuning hypothesis (the laws of physics and constants are fine-tuned for the existence of life). The multiverse dispels many aspects of the fine-tuning argument by suggesting that there are different initial conditions in each universe, varying constants of physics, and the laws of nature lose their known arbitrary values; thus, making the previous single-universe argument from fine- tuning incredibly weak. The position that will be advocated will be that a form …

Defining Maximalism: Understanding Minimalism, Patrick Templeton

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

As little more than a buzz-word, maximalism has circulated around architectural discourses over the past decade. To illuminate the implications of the term and to explore its potential, this research explores minimalism in art and architecture to establish a foundation for a reciprocal definition for maximalism.

Transformational Effects Of Museum Exhibits Upon Their Patrons: The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, Cassandra Caruso-Woolard

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Intersections In Immanence: Spinoza, Deleuze, Negri, Abigail Lowe

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The connection between French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and Italian political theorist Antonio Negri has drawn attention in academic publications over the last decade. For both thinkers, the philosophical concept of immanence is central to how both respectively conceptualize the world. However, in order to consider their work with regard to a metaphysical grounding, one may benefit from turning to each thinker’s engagement with Jewish Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza whose immanent ontology, or monism, was indeed his Ethics. This essay concentrates on drawing out an ontological distinction between the philosophical projects of Deleuze and Negri by way of a close reading …

The Relationship Between Consciousness And Intentionality, Jordan Bell

HIM 1990-2015

Within the Philosophy of Mind two features of our mental life have been acknowledged as the most perplexing - consciousness, the phenomenal "what it is likeness" of our mental states, and intentionality, the aboutness or directedness of our mental states. As such, it has become commonplace to develop theories about these phenomena which seek to explain them naturalistically, that is, without resort to magic or miracles. Traditionally this has been done by analyzing consciousness and intentionality apart from one another. However, in more recent years the tide has turned. In contemporary theories these phenomena are typically analyzed in terms of …

Ethical Imperatives Of Teaching Stress Control To Promote Well-Being., Clayton Coleman

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

The overarching purpose of this thesis is to explain why the creation of a program that facilitates and maintains good mental health is ethically imperative. This paper will focus on the ethical primacy of mental health within a population as opposed to physical health. A key factor that this paper will take into account is the way that stress affects physical health and how stress is disproportionately spread through the population. It recognizes that an individual’s mental health status can be influenced by their particular life circumstances and/or socioeconomic status, which can be seen as constitutive luck. Those disadvantaged segments …

Injustice And The Industrial Food System : A Structural Reconstruction., Alexandra Bree Farrell

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Humans And Nature: Finding Meaning Through Metaphysics, Justin Stone

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

Before the 19th Century, natural philosophers explored the inner workings of nature and humanity using many different modes of thinking such as logic, mathematics, physics, and metaphysics. The incorporation of these varied concepts brought about a comprehensive understanding of nature and how humans relate to nature. Theories were devised from incorporeal ideas, data was gathered from the human senses, and concrete evidence was pursued to support philosophy. However, through the years from ancient times to modernity, natural philosophy slowly limited its use of revelation and metaphysics, restricting the quest for knowledge to the methodical gathering of empirical data. Science, as …

This Existential Life: It’S Not About Cigarettes And Black Berets, Emma E. Kilbane

Senior Honors Projects

Try not to cast existentialism aside prematurely. Although often misbranded as the philosophy of egocentric, chain-smoking melodramatics, when given the careful attention it deserves, existential philosophy proves to be more empowering and hopeful than anything else. Existential questions – questions of meaning and purpose – are central not only to the major questions in philosophy, but to the particular individual’s daily existence, as well. Confronting these questions and becoming a reflective, autonomous being proves to be an extraordinary task, but one that is essential in order to create a colorful, self-chosen narrative.

This project delves into some of these pressing …

Modern Libertarian: Philosophy An Uncertain Lineage, Ian Ludd

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

This study examines the true nature of libertarian political philosophy, avoiding reductive arguments and attempting to present these positions in a holistic manner that cuts to the core of what distinguishes this philosophy as being unique. The study then challenges the libertarian claim that many highly praised and well-respected historic political and economic philosophers are their philosophical antecedents.

The study examines the political philosphies of Classical Liberal thinkers and well-respected economists, presenting their positions in the same holistic manner and avoiding any selective quoting that serves only to oversimply the complexity of their arguments. The challenge of the study will …

The Effect Of External Ankle Support On Football Specific Performance Tests And The Perception Of The Athletes That Wear Them, Matthew Cutts

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Levels Of Selection In A Polymorphic Species, Marisa L. Korody

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Validity Of Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization For Detecting Myofascial Adhesions Through Secondary Diagnostic Ultrasound Analysis, Kaitlyn Silbaugh

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

K-12 System Reforms Across Studies: The Significance Of Change, Meta-Analysis, And Logistics Regression, Mashal Almutairi

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Causal Explanation Of Human Behavior In The Social Sciences, Maria R. Zavada

Department of Philosophy: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The social sciences have something to offer our understanding of human behavior. However, the social sciences have been subjected to a great deal of criticism, both internally and externally. Cultural anthropology provides a microcosm of the problems within the social sciences and serves as an apt case study. There are many problems with the social sciences, some as fundamental as whether or not the social sciences are indeed sciences, and others that address specific issues with goals, methods, and data collection.

Using anthropology as a case study, I articulate the connection between the methodological problems in anthropology and the philosophical …

All-Nighter 2013, Students Of Risd, Risd Archives

All Student Newspapers

All-Nighter was a digital student publication that began in 2011 as all-nighter.com. The Spring 2013 issue is the only known print issue. It contains writing previously published online as well as new content. Highlights include photographs from Senior Open Studios; articles on the Quad mosaics, community gathering spaces, the timing of Thanksgiving break, Saturday night dinner parties in Ewing House, dining employees around campus, how Mike Fink saved Carr House, and the trouble with summer subletting; as well as comics by Maddy Trower, Jackie Ferrentino, and Casey Roonan.

Extending Human Compassion By Implementing Legal Rights For Animals, Lindsey Childers

Senior Honors Theses

The purpose of this essay is to critically examine the current legal status of animals in the United States and offer possible alternatives to the current legal rights for animals. This essay examines the failures of the legal system in protecting animals that have abilities very similar to our own. With an examination of these types of animals, this essay will explain why some animals merit the status of legal personhood to protect them from being carelessly used by others. Ultimately, this essay is an attempt to open the field of legal protection for many animals starting with a few …

Just Because You're Offended Doesn't Mean You're In The Right: A Perspective On Language, Comedy, And Ethics, James H. Garrett

Student Publications

Some humor is offensive, but does this convey a moral constraint on what comedians can include in their jokes? Using stand up bits and reflections on comedy from George Carlin, Louis C.K., and Doug Stanhope, various philosophies of humor, and the linguistic philosophy of H.P. Grice, I explore the given question and attempt to settle the disputes about when it is prudent to be offended, in what ways comedians should be allowed to offend, and whether or not words can hurt just as much as sticks and stones.

Democracy And Scientific Expertise: Illusions Of Political And Epistemic Inclusion, J.D. Trout

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Realizing the ideal of democracy requires political inclusion for citizens. A legitimate democracy must give citizens the opportunity to express their attitudes about the relative attractions of different policies, and access to political mechanisms through which they can be counted and heard. Actual governance often aims not at accurate belief, but at nonepistemic factors like achieving and maintaining institutional stability, creating the feeling of government legitimacy among citizens, or managing access to influence on policy decision-making. I examine the traditional relationship between inclusiveness and accuracy, and illustrate this connection by discussing empirical work on how group decision-making can improve accuracy. …

Removing The Classical Landmark: Assessing An Epistemology Governed By Methodological Naturalism, Kegan Shaw

Masters Theses

This paper proposes to assess the naturalist project in epistemology with an eye towards exposing the project as deficient for serving as a robust epistemological project. Epistemologists treasure a certain family of questions and burden themselves with a number of specific concerns the most important of which, I think, cannot be answered by the epistemological naturalist. Ignoring these questions, I will argue, essentially amounts to a dismissal of the principle tension that primarily motivates and properly guides epistemological theorizing. This tension is the familiar appearance vs. reality distinction and characterizes what I am calling the classical landmark or boundary-stone for …

The Effect Of Laser Therapy On Baseball Pitchers, Connor Barnes

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Everything Is Flat: The Transcendence Of The One In Neoplatonic Ontology, Joshua Packwood

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation research addresses the relationship between the One and everything else in Neoplatonic metaphysics. Plato is vague in describing this distinction and thus much of late antiquity attempts to fill in the gaps, as it were. The potential difficulty, however, is that the hierarchy of existence in late antiquity is susceptible to being understood as postulating a being that is "beyond being." To avoid this difficulty, I propose an interpretation of Dionysius the Areopagite to show that being is, by definition, intelligible and thus finite and limited. Since the first principle is that which is infinite it therefore cannot …

Moral Disagreement And Moral Realism, Martin Turner

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

This dissertation provides a novel argument from disagreement against moral realism. Moral anti-realists have long suspected that something about the scope and/or nature of moral disagreement threatens moral realism, but existing arguments are either unsound, or rely upon premises which are too question-begging to anyone who does not already share anti-realist metaethical sympathies. This dissertation contends that moral anti-realism provides the best explanation of our view that we ought to hold onto our moral judgments in the face of disagreement about them. It contends that the most plausible view in the epistemology of disagreement tells us that, were our moral …

Digital Reading: A Question Of Prelectio?, Noel Fitzpatrick

Books/Book Chapters

Digital reading as superficial reading is examined by demonstrating that technologies act as placeholders for different types of memory, artificial memory and true memory. This chapter argues that the affordances of digital technologies enable certain types of reading activity, digital reading, but hinders others, such as deep reading. In particular, there is a tenuous relationship between digital reading and scanning for information in the printed text, a form of reading traditionally known as prelectio. This latter is a pre-reading of the text for salient information, not for deep understanding: it is, rather, a scanning or skimming of the text. …

Nonhuman Animals: Not Necessarily Saints Or Sinners, Cheryl E. Abbate

Between the Species

Higher-order thought theories maintain that consciousness involves the having of higher-order thoughts about mental states. In response to these theories of consciousness, an attempt is often made to illustrate that nonhuman animals possess said consciousness, overlooking an alarming consequence: attributing higher-order thought to nonhuman animals might entail that they should be held morally accountable for their actions. I argue that moral responsibility requires more than higher-order thought: moral agency requires a specific higher-order thought which concerns a belief about the rightness or wrongness of affecting another’s mental states. This “moral thought” about the rightness or wrongness is not yet demonstrated …

The Layton Collection: Mam Remembers Milwaukee's First Art Museum, Curtis Carter

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Poetry, Philosophy, And The Self, Joshua Carlton

Whittier Scholars Program

This project explores the foundational aspects of human identity and is a collection of poetry that investigates themes of human identity such as sexuality, love, faith, rebirth and death. This study’s goal is to bridge poetic writing and philosophy in a creative way that offers insight about human identity while including different traditions and perspectives. This project begins with an excerpt from Mila Kundera’s novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being and begins with philosophical commentary using Frederich Nietzsche’s philosophy. The rest of the project are poetry pieces that vary in subject matter and wording but relate back to themes such …

The Untenability Of A Priori Prior Probabilities In Objective Bayesian Conditionalization, C.S. Arledge

Senior Honors Theses

The problem of theory confirmation has been an issue in the philosophy of science for decades. Many valiant attempts have been made to formulate a generally accepted criterion for determining the validity of a scientific theory. Bayesian probability theory has been utilized in numerous attempts to examine the epistemic nature of theory confirmation and Jonathan Weisberg offers a formulation of Bayesian Conditionalization that he believes to be both objective and successful.

In this paper I intend to show the defects in Weisberg’s theory of objective Bayesian confirmation by utilizing the arguments of both W.V. Quine and Bas van Fraassen to …

Attitudes Toward Science (Ats): An Examination Of Scientists' And Native Americans' Cultural Values And Ats And Their Effect On Action Priorities, Adam T. Murry

Dissertations and Theses

Science has been identified as a crucial element in the competitiveness and sustainability of America in the global economy. American citizens, especially minority populations, however, are not pursuing science education or careers. Past research has implicated `attitudes toward science' as an important factor in the public's participation in science. I applied Ajzen's (1991) Theory of Planned Behavior to attitudes toward science to predict science-related sustainability-action intentions and evaluated whether scientists and Native Americans differed in their general attitudes toward science, cultural values, and specific beliefs about science. Analyses revealed that positive attitude toward science and the cultural value of individualism …

The State Of Nature X: Why Leave? A Preface On The State Of Nature Theory, Zachary S. Stirparo

Senior Honors Theses

Great minds have addressed the issue of forming a polity, dating back to Plato. Yet, most of these great minds, such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, argue for the need to escape the state of nature into a civil form of government. However, after taking the three essential elements of man that these philosophers all comment on, self-preservation, reason, and will, a new state of nature model is created that is stronger. It is stronger because of its definition of man and the analytic inferences that flow from that definition. Therefore, the state of nature theory does …