Philosophy Commons^™

Book Review: Niederberger, Andreas, And Schink, Philipp, Eds. Republican Democracy: Liberty, Law And Politics., Jeremy Waldron, Christopher Mccammon

Department of Philosophy: Faculty Publications

Jeremy Waldron

This is a poorly organized book, and it does not really present any well- structured arguments. In a blurb on the back of the book, Christopher Eisgruber says that “every serious scholar of religious toleration will have to contend with Leiter’s bold claims.” That would have been so if Leiter had proceeded less precipitously to the question that interests him and then focused on it more steadily— if, for example, he had first identified the classic arguments for toleration and criticized them and had then gone on to argue that neither the classic tolerationist arguments ðsuch as they …

Theologies Of Word And State: Some Reflections On The Ottawa Shooting, Justin Kh Tse, Matt Sheedy

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The shooting in Ottawa on 22 October 2014 has uncovered the remarkable way that the Canadian state remains theologically constituted. In some ways, this is a relatively uncontroversial argument. The White House press conference immediately following the attacks made a link between the Canadian support for military action against the Islamic State and the deaths of both Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent on October 20 in Quebec and Cpl. Nathan Cirillo of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders on the October 22. When one says that Ottawa shootings have a religious dimension, the gut response is that my argument will be about …

The Radical Possibilities Of Being Human: Exploring The Risk, Violence, And Rewards Of Knowing And Being Known (A Survival Guide For Liminal Feminists), Parvoneh Shirgir

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Within this liminal feminist survival guide I present a collection of personal experiences and analysis of these moments in order to elucidate how and when violence occurs. I foreground my thought process and the ideas and figures that keep me hopeful, help remind me that our world is not concrete but instead changing, shifting, and malleable. What follows is a necessarily partial (and somewhat useless, somewhat useful) survival guide for liminal feminists, those who exist on the edges of boundaries and encounter all of the possibilities and fears that come with such a position. I present not so much a …

God And Gratuitous Evil, Michael Schrynemakers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

William Rowe has argued for atheism as follows: (1) There seem to be evils God could have prevented without losing a greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse, and (2) God would not allow such evils. This dissertation examines (2), the "No Gratuitous Evil Thesis," and its role in Rowe's argument. In Part One I argue that there are crucial ambiguities in the notion of a greater good this thesis appeals to and that these present dilemmas for Rowe's argument, as well as for defining gratuitous evil. This leads to my approximation of the notion of gratuitous …

Symbolic Misery And Aesthetics- Bernard Stiegler, Noel Fitzpatrick

Articles

In this article I will deal with the development of a theory of aesthetics within the work of the French contemporary philosopher Bernard Stiegler with particular reference to his concept of symbolic misery. Rather than give an extensive account of Bernard Stiegler’s aesthetics this article will focus on some key concepts mobilized in the definition and analysis of symbolic misery. Firstly, I will argue that Stiegler’s understanding of the aesthetic comes from an expanded notion of aesthesis, where the political and the aesthetic are mobilized together. In this regard I will interrogate some key concepts in his work Symbolic Misery …

Exploring The Philosophical Character Of Contemporary Art Through A Post-Conceptual Practice, Clodagh Emoe

Doctoral

This enquiry seeks to explore what philosopher and critic Peter Osborne identifies as the philosophical character of contemporary art. The purpose of this enquiry is not to resolve the ambiguous relationship between art and philosophy that he observes in contemporary art, but to address the complex engagement between them in a focused manner by examining how philosophy comes into play in my post-conceptual practice. This enquiry emerges from and is orientated by an ongoing post-conceptual practice. The central questions of the enquiry ask: What is the relationship between art and philosophy in my post-conceptual practice? How might my artworks raise …

A Critique Of Immaterial Labour: Dublin's Independent Music Scene As A Strategic Site Of Investigation, Susan Gill

Doctoral

This study critiques the autonomist concept of immaterial labour. Both diagnostic and prescriptive, the term immaterial labour was coined by Lazzarato (1997), but became synonymous with Hardt and Negri’s (2001a; 2004; 2010) ‘Empire’ trilogy. They describe post-industrial labour as characterised by the production of immaterial commodities such as culture, creativity and information. Seeing it as a hegemonic form of production, accelerationist Marxists Hardt and Negri (ibid.) suggest that immaterial labour has the radical potential to restructure socio-economic life, resulting in spontaneous communism. However, their thesis has been subject to critique as it homogenises post-industrial production and lacks empirical engagement. This …

Sagp Ssips 2014 Program, Anthony Preus

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Civilization Of The Living Dead: Canonical Monstrosity, The Romero Zombie, And The Political Subject, Nicholas Walter Robbins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes the canonical monsters of Western political theory, including Plato's wolf-man, Hobbes's Leviathan and Tocqueville's mechanical mass. It argues that monster theorists - including horror film director George A. Romero, creator of the zombie and its apocalyptic narrative - utilize the horror genre in order to reveal the hidden dysfunctions and unrealized potentials of self and society. The canon features several prison-like heuristics - including Plato's cave, Hobbes's sate of nature, Tocqueville's prison, and Romero's zombie apocalypse - that bring to light the mass enslavement, intellectual dysfunction, appetitive tyranny, and cannibalism of the political subject. Theorists consistently depict …

Constitutively Embodied Emotions, Daniel Shargel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My primary thesis is that emotions are partially constituted by bodily states. My view derives from the James-Lange tradition, but contrary to Neo-Jamesian theories, I claim that emotions are partially constituted by integrated peripheral bodily states and brain states, rather than bodily perceptions. This view may seem vulnerable to two obvious critiques: emotions, unlike bodily states, have intentional objects, and neuroscientists have already identified the neural basis of emotions, so there is no reason to look for constituents outside of the brain. I argue on the basis of social psychology research that emotions are not intentional states, since they do …

Moral Inscriptions: Politics And The Rhetoric Of Responsibility, Steven Pludwin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation advances two interrelated claims. First, I examine the concept of responsibility and show how it operates as a rhetorical form that mediates a large segment of political life. Framing responsibility as a distinctly political problem, I argue that it functions to produce, discipline and govern subjects as well as legislate forms of identity, difference and community. Second, I argue that the definitional space of responsibility is not sacred, but contested. It is within this contested space that political battles regarding how we ought to understand the world and what it means to live in common with others plays …

Self-Referentiality In Constructive Semantics Of Intuitionistic And Modal Logics, Junhua Yu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores self-referentiality in the framework of justification logic. In this framework initialed by Artemov, the language has formulas of the form t:F, which means "the term t is a justification of the formula F." Moreover, terms can occur inside formulas and hence it is legal to have t:F(t), which means "the term t is a justification of the formula F about t itself." Expressions like this is not only interesting in the semantics of justification logic, but also, as we will see, necessary in applications of justification logic in formalizing constructive contents implicitly carried by modal and intuitionistic …

All At One Point: The New Physics Of Italo Calvino And Jorge Luis Borges, Mark Thomas Rinaldi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This work of comparative literary criticism focuses on the presence of mathematical and scientific concepts and imagery in the works of Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges, beginning with an historical overview of scientific philosophy and an introduction to the most significant scientific concepts of the last several centuries, before shifting to deep, scientifically-driven analyses of numerous individual fictions, and finally concluding with a meditation on the unexpectedly fictive aspects of science and mathematics. The close readings of these authors' fictions are contextualized with thorough explanations of the potential literary implications of theories from physics, mathematics, neuroscience and chaos theory. …

Factlessness & Faultlessness: Individual Differences & Dimensions Of Philosophical Dispute, Geoffrey Scott Holtzman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project addresses the question of why philosophical disputes persist, and tackles the problem of how we might better approach them. I demonstrate empirically several ways in which personality, gender, and other factors are associated with specific philosophical beliefs. Typically, one might assume that these individual difference factors are irrelevant to philosophy, and can only serve to bias philosophical disputants. Against this view, I present four case studies, which collectively highlight the different ways in which individual differences in lived experience may be inseparable from philosophical concepts themselves.

If You See Something, Say Something: A Look At Experimental Writing On Art, Charlotte Lucy Latham

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Signs all over New York City state, "If you see something, say something," but museum studies repeatedly find viewers do not attend to pictures, just as eye witness testimony is invariably skewed. Ways of seeing have been limited to known ways of discussing. Alternative approaches offer new insights. The first section, "Experiments in Art Writing," examines two texts: T.J. Clark's The Sight of Death, a journal of his daily visits looking at two Poussin paintings, for which he maintains the ambiguity of exploration and argues to keep visual images from their dissolution into political symbols; and, Charles Simic's Dime Store …

Dionysian Biopolitics: Karl Kerényi’S Concept Of Indestructible Life, Kristóf Fenyvesi

Comparative Philosophy

Scholar of religion Karl Kerényi’s last book, Dionysos, is a grand attempt at reinterpreting ζωη (zoe), the Greek concept of indestructible life, which he distinguishes from βίος (bios), finite life. In Kerényi’s view, the meaning and sensual experience of zoe was expressed in its richest form in the Cretan beginnings of the cult of Dionysos. The major characteristics of this cult, as Kerényi describes, were beyond the cultural, political, and sexual limits of the Christian interpretations of life and nature. Searching for modern analogies to zoe, Kerényi explains the idea in relation to molecular biology’s minimum definition of life. Despite …

Ecological Tension: Between Minimum And Maximum Changes, Changfu Xu

Comparative Philosophy

This article elaborates the conditions as well as four potential modes of the ecological problem: (1) The mode of the absolute minimization of the ecological problem: minimum population plus minimum Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is characterized by the quantity of destruction being less than the quantity of natural rehabilitation of an ecosystem. This mode is the poorest mode with minimum change. (2) The mode of the relative minimization of the ecological problem: minimum population plus maximization of GDP, which is characterized by the quantity of destruction being less than the quantity of both natural rehabilitation and human rehabilitation of …

Anti-Nature In Nature Itself, Ryōsuke Ōhashi

Comparative Philosophy

Nature and civilization are often regarded in opposition to each other. However, civilization employs technologies and is based on laws of nature. Also, the historical world is a result of the development of the natural world. An “anti-nature” must thus be contained somewhere within nature. The idea of “anti-nature” is neither alien to the Eastern nor to the Western traditional concepts of nature. The philosophy of Lao Zi never embraces mere naturalism. Lao Zi has observed that things in the world are not always “so on their own” but rather in the mode of anti-nature. Anti-nature in nature itself does …

All Or Nothing? Nature In Chinese Thought And The Apophatic Occident, William Franke

Comparative Philosophy

This paper develops an interpretation of nature in classical Chinese culture through dialogue with the work of François Jullien. I understand nature negatively as precisely what never appears as such nor ever can be exactly apprehended and defined. For perception and expression entail inevitably human mediation and cultural transmission by semiotic and hermeneutic means that distort and occult the natural in the full depth of its alterity. My claim is that the largely negative approach to nature that Jullien finds in sources of Chinese tradition can also be found in the West, particularly in its apophatic currents or countercurrents that …

Introduction, Mario Wenning

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

Vol 5 No 2 Content Page, Comparative Philosophy

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

Vol 5 No 2 Information Page, Comparative Philosophy

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

Vol 5 No 2 Cover Page, Comparative Philosophy

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

Democratic Teaching: An Incomplete Job Description, Rachel Bradshaw

Democracy & Education

The importance of public education in democratic states is almost beyond dispute. Too often, though, discussions of democratic education focus solely on policies and systems, forgetting the individual teachers who are ultimately responsible for educating future citizens. This paper attempts to illustrate just how complex and significant the role of teachers in a democratic republic can be.

Language, Truth, And Rhetoric, Collin Pointon

e-Research: A Journal of Undergraduate Work

The words of Martin Heidegger are no example of the lowest form of wit. His sentence is meant to be interpreted in two important ways that utilize different meanings of the word "truth." Our common understanding of the word truth is not something innate but a product of history and culture that stretches back through the Romans to the ancient Greeks. Alētheia in ancient Greek was translated to veritas in Latin. The translation included an interpretation--as all translations do (which is why translation is rhetorical in nature)--of alētheia as a Platonic entity. Alētheia was interpreted as something transcendent; something that …

Investigating The Anthropocene: A Critical Look At A New Geological Epoch, Christopher J. Preston

University Grant Program Reports

No abstract provided.

Reliability For Degrees Of Belief, Jeffrey Dunn

Philosophy Faculty publications

We often evaluate belief-forming processes, agents, or entire belief states for reliability. This is normally done with the assumption that beliefs are all-or-nothing. How does such evaluation go when we’re considering beliefs that come in degrees? I consider a natural answer to this question that focuses on the degree of truth-possession had by a set of beliefs. I argue that this natural proposal is inadequate, but for an interesting reason. When we are dealing with all-or-nothing belief, high reliability leads to high levels of truth-possession. However, when it comes to degrees of belief, reliability and truth-possession part ways. The natural …

Philosophy Of Time Eternalism Vs. Presentism, Philosophical Discussion Group, Armstrong State University

The Philosopher's Stone

No abstract provided.

Can Culture Justify Infant Circumcision?, Eldar Sarajlic

Publications and Research

The paper addresses arguments in the recent philosophical and bioethical literature claiming that social and cultural benefits can justify non-therapeutic male infant circumcision. It rejects these claims by referring to the open future argument, according to which infant circumcision is morally unjustifiable because it violates the child’s right to an open future. The paper also addresses an important objection to the open future argument and examines the strength of the objection to refute the application of the argument to the circumcision case.

The Lord Is There: Christian Views Of The Temple In The First Century Ad, Jonathan Wells

Masters Theses

During the first century, Yeshua (Jesus) and the original Christians viewed the temple as God's dwelling place on earth. Informed by the Hebrew Bible, which they saw as the Holy Scriptures, they continued to hold the temple in high regard. The writings of the New Testament display the thoughts of the first Christians and the teachings of Yeshua concerning their understanding of the Jerusalem temple. This study explores the views of the temple in the New Testament and other Christian writings from the first century to demonstrate that most Christians and especially the writings of the New Testament continue to …