Philosophy Commons^™

Panpsychism And Mind-Dust, John Heath Hamilton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

It is only recently that panpsychism has emerged as a viable position in philosophy of mind and metaphysics. As such, the exploration and defense of it is not yet on par with some competing views. The current project is a step towards a remedy to this unfortunate state of affairs. It concerns one of the most important objections to the view, which I label the 'mind-dust' objection in homage to William James. It is essentially the conceptual difficulty of how proto-experiential being at the micro-level is supposed to 'sum' in a way that forms the consciousness with which we are …

Must Knowledge Be Virtuously Motivated?, Jason Baehr

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

The Cognitive Demands Of Intellectual Virtue, Jason Baehr

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Virtue Epistemology, Jason Baehr

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Educating For Intellectual Virtues: From Theory To Practice, Jason Baehr

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Philosophy And Theology: The Time-Relative Interest Account, Christopher Kaczor

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Educating For Intellectual Character, Jason Baehr

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Teaching With Ignatius: Justice In Pedagogical Practice, Jeffrey Wilson

Philosophy Faculty Works

The document Justice in the World, released in 1971 by the World Synod of Bishops, is an excellent basis for thinking about pedagogical practice in Ignatian higher education as a constellation of acts of justice. I describe here my personal experience (as an ambiguously Catholic faculty member) of teaching an upper division ethics course in the core curriculum and contextualize it in terms both of Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises and the 1971 Synod document.

Foreword For Virtuous Minds: Intellectual Character Development , Jason Baehr

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

The Parts Of Prudence And Scientific Solutions For Weakness Of Will, Christopher Kaczor

Philosophy Faculty Works

This essay outlines a view of practical wisdom drawing on the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. In it, I discuss the presuppositions of practical wisdom, namely the ordering to the end of true human happiness. Next, the focus shifts to the “parts” or elements of practical wisdom in order to highlight the intellectual aspects of practical wisdom as a cognitive perfection. Finally, the essay addresses prudence as practical, the actual carrying out of the right deed, at the right time and in the right way. Here, the conclusion of the essay considers the findings of contemporary science in the search …

Philosophy And Theology: Reductio Arguments, Christopher Kaczor

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

John Paul Ii On The Development Of Doctrine, Christopher Kaczor

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

The Definition Of Everyday Aesthetics, Kevin Melchionne

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This article responds to recent controversy in the aesthetics of everyday life with a succinct definition designed to clarify the domain of study. The article is intentionally designed for brevity and accessibility in order to facilitate usage.

Post-Liberation Feminism And Practices Of Freedom, Ladelle Mcwhorter

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Most feminist theorists over the last forty years have held that a basic tenet of feminism is that women as a group are oppressed. The concept of oppression has never had a very broad meaning in liberal discourse, however, and with the rise of neo-liberalism since 1980 it has even less currency in public debate. This article argues that, while we may still believe women are oppressed, for pragmatic purposes Michel Foucault’s concept of practices of freedom is a more effective way to characterize feminist theory and politics.

Logic, Truth And Inquiry (Book Review), G. C. Goddu

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Mark Weinstein’s, Logic, Truth and Inquiry is an ambitious and provocative case for a theory of truth and warrant strength that will undergird an “account of argument in the broad sense of current argumentation theory” (p. 12). I begin with a very schematic synopsis of Weinstein’s rich discussion through his six chapters. Weinstein himself notes that his arguments are “frequently presented in broad outline” (p. 1), so my quick sketch will be even broader. I conclude with some brief observations about both what the book leaves unresolved and the merits of Weinstein’s intriguing book.

Socratic Metaphysics, William J. Prior

Philosophy

Did Socrates have a metaphysics? The question is complex. We might begin by asking, what is a metaphysics? We might also ask, who we mean by Socrates? Let me deal with these questions in order. Metaphysics is concerned with what lies at the foundation of things, the principles underlying reality. ln this essay, that will mean primarily an ontology, a theory of 'what there is'. Now one point on which the authors discussed in this article agree, a 'point of departure' that anchors their various views about Socratic metaphysics, is that Plato had a metaphysics: as Gregory Vlastos puts it, …

Do Employers Have Obligations To Pay Their Workers A Living Wage?, Javier S. Hidalgo

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

Jeremy Snyder argues that employers have obligations to pay their workers a living wage if workers stand in relationships of dependence with their employers. I argue that Snyder’s argument for this conclusion faces a dilemma. Snyder can adopt either a descriptive or a moralized account of dependence. If Snyder adopts a descriptive account, then it is false that dependence activates obligations to pay a living wage. If Snyder endorses a moralized account of dependence, then Snyder’s argument is circular. So, Snyder’s argument fails to establish that employers have obligations to pay their workers a living wage.

Between Law And Markets: Is There A Role For Culture And Ethics In Financial Regulation?, Dan Awrey, William Blair, David Kershaw

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The limits of markets as mechanisms for constraining socially suboptimal behavior are well documented. Simultaneously, conventional approaches toward the law and regulation are often crude and ineffective mechanisms for containing the social costs of market failure. So where do we turn when both law and markets fail to live up to their social promise? Two possible answers are culture and ethics. In theory, both can help constrain socially undesirable behavior in the vacuum between law and markets. In practice, however, both exhibit manifest shortcomings.

To many, this analysis may portend the end of the story. From our perspective, however, it …

Inverse Intuition: Repurposing As A Method To Create New Artifacts, To Invent New Practices, And To Produce New Knowledge, Warren Jones

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation argues that Digital Natives, rather than employing novel ways of thinking (such as those suggested by Walter Ong's concept of Second Orality), are in fact employing a way of thinking that has always existed: repurposing. Ruth Oldenziel discusses how, historically, women used "a kind of mental quality" enabling them to re-use objects in novel ways to accomplish more of life's tasks. My research led me to investigate how a wide variety of people, especially historically marginalized people, used this kind of mental quality. This dissertation explores repurposing's real world uses as well as its uses in narratives, specifically …

Shylock And Joachim Gaunse: And A Real Jew, Michael T. Walton

Quidditas

Joachim Gaunse, a Bohemian metallurgist, was brought to England to help evaluate the resources of the New World. During a visit to Bristol in 1589, he defended his Jewish rejection of Jesus. The reaction of those who heard this real Jew gives some indication of how theater audiences may have responded to Shakespeare’s Shylock.

The Several Faces Of Late-Gothic Eve: Gender And Marriage In The Mystery Creation And Fall Plays, Thomas Flanigan

Quidditas

The critical drive to make fundamental, substantive distinctions between Catholic and Protestant dogma and culture has always been central to early modern English studies, but over the past fifty years a prominent contingent of literary and historical scholars has endeavored more specifically to identify and articulate significant differences between Catholic and Protestant perceptions of women and marriage. According to one familiar, now widely accepted theory advanced primarily by Miltonists, a relatively feminist and pro-marriage Protestant ethic emerged in response to the extreme, aggressively misogynistic attitudes attributed to late-medieval Catholic thought. This paper will seek to demonstrate, through a close comparative …

Imagining Pregnancy: The Fünfbilderserie And Images Of “Pregnant Disease Woman” In Medieval Medical Manuscripts, Ginger L. Smoak

Quidditas

The Fünfbilderserie consists of anatomic schematics utilized in medical school dissections beginning in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Anatomists would create these mnemonics to help students envision the internal systems of the body. Besides the standard five male pictures, an additional image, the “Pregnant Disease Woman” acted as a means to understand the reproductive system and organs of the pregnant woman. This paper argues, however, that despite the empirical observation of the anatomy of the gravid woman, they continued to visualize and “imagine” it, largely due to the existing classical ideas these anatomist retained about women, their natures, and their …

Holy Places & Imagined Hellscapes: Qualifying Comments On Loca Sancta Sermon Studies—Christian Conversion In Northern Europe & Scandinavia, C. 500-1300, Todd P. Upton

Quidditas

The paper uses methods from medieval sermon studies to argue that an insularity in “monastic consciousness” can be traced to earlier centuries than the more generally discussed (and better documented) scholastic environments of 13th century monastic and cathedral schools. It assesses how a monastic discourse reliant on Biblical typologies informed the Christian conversion of northern Germanic and Scandinavian peoples (c. 500-1300, including the British Isles and Iceland). Moments of encounter between Christian missionaries and pagan cultures helped delineate this discourse, most apparent in extant records that reveal Christian and Norse perceptions of geography, holy places, deity worship, and eschatological expectations. …

Classifying Early Modern Sexuality: Christopher Marlowe, Edward Ii, And The Politics Of Sexuality, Michael John Lee

Quidditas

This paper argues that Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II (1594) questions gender expectations and sexuality. The analysis finds that the same-sex attraction and affective relationship that develops between King Edward and Gaveston can be seen as neither simply sodomy nor exclusively as male friendship. Instead, the emotional bonds and marriage-like relationship between the king and his minion suggest that their identities are, in part, formed by their same-sex attraction.

Kierkegaard, Paraphrase, And The Unity Of Form And Content, Antony Aumann

Journal Articles

On one standard view, paraphrasing Kierkegaard requires no special literary talent. It demands no particular flair for the poetic. However, Kierkegaard himself rejects this view. He says we cannot paraphrase in a straightforward fashion some of the ideas he expresses in a literary format. To use the words of Johannes Climacus, these ideas defy direct communication. In this paper, I piece together and defend the justification Kierkegaard offers for this position. I trace its origins to concerns raised by Lessing and Mendelssohn about the relationship between form and content in works of art. I maintain that Kierkegaard follows early German …

Carruthers And Constitutive Self-Knowledge, John C. Hill

Student Publications

In his recent book, The Opacity of Mind, Peter Carruthers advances a skeptical theory of self-knowledge, integrating results from experimental psychology and cognitive science. In this essay, I want to suggest that the situation is not quite as dire as Carruthers makes it out to be. I respond to Carruthers by advancing a constitutive theory of self-knowledge. I argue that self-knowledge, so understood, is not only compatible with the empirical research that Carruthers utilizes, but also helps to make sense of these results.

In Praise Of Ambiguity: Musical Subtlety And Merleau-Ponty, Tiger C. Roholt

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

When a jazz, rock, or hip-hop drummer strikes certain notes in each measure slightly late, instead of hearing the degree to which those notes are late, we typically hear the effects of those variations; namely, a groove, the "feel" of a rhythm. Slight variations of pitch function similarly. In this essay, I argue that certain analytic theorists go astray due to their preoccupation with the variations themselves. By invoking Maurice Merleau-Ponty's insights into subtle visual perceptions, and his notion of perceptual indeterminacy, I avoid an account of musical subtlety suggested by Daniel Dennett that is too coarse-grained, as well as …

Managing The Polarities Of Democracy: A Theoretical Framework For Positive Social Change, William J. Benet

Journal of Sustainable Social Impact

People around the globe have embraced democracy to bring about positive social change to address our environmental, economic, and militaristic challenges. Yet, there is no agreement on a definition of democracy that can guide social change efforts. The Polarities of Democracy model is a unifying theory of democracy to guide healthy, sustainable, and just social change efforts. The Polarities of Democracy model consists of ten elements, organized as five polarity pairs: freedom & authority, justice & due process, diversity & equality, human-rights & communal-obligations, and participation & representation. In this model each element has positive aspects and negative aspects and …

Sites Of Passage: Art As Action In Egypt And The Us-- Creating An Autoethnography Through Performance Writing, Revolution, And Social Practice, Tavia La Follette

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

As a performance artist and arts activist I present my research project to the audience in performative writing, a postmodern research style that advocates the integration of the artist/researcher identity. In the summer of 2010, I left for Egypt to teach a performance and installation art workshop at Artist Residency Egypt, the first step of the Firefly Tunnels Project, a virtual and tangible exchange between artists in the United States and Egypt. This venture began with the awareness that the 10th anniversary of 9/11 was approaching. What I could not have foreseen were the other world events that would have …

Prolegomena To Kant's Theory Of The Derangement Of The Cognitive Faculties, Gisele Velarde La Rosa

Dissertations

In the literature on Immanuel Kant there is no systematic account of the derangement of the constitutive cognitive faculties from an exclusively philosophical point of view. This dissertation opens the path for the development of such an account. It does so by presenting Kant's positive account of the proper functioning of the constitutive cognitive faculties, namely, sensibility, imagination, and understanding. As such, the dissertation offers a series of "prolegomena" to a Kantian theory of the derangement of the cognitive faculties. At the foundation of Kant's theory of cognition is the transcendental unity of apperception, the original ground of cognition. Through …