Philosophy Commons^™

A Is For Animal: The Animal User’S Lexicon, Joel Marks

Between the Species

In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice, “When I use a word … it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” When Alice questions this license, Humpty Dumpty replies, “The question is … which is to be master — that’s all.” The present article offers a lexicon of words that are used by human beings, however unintentionally or ingenuously, to maintain their mastery or prerogatives over other animals. A motivating assumption of the article is that putting on display the verbal menagerie in animal agriculture, animal experimentation, and …

Snark Wars, Kerry S. Walters

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The latest volley in the war of words waged by cultured despisers of Christianity was fired on Christmas Day. Celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, host of the television series "Cosmos," bushwhacked Christians with this tweeted broadside: "On this day long ago, a child was born who, by age 30, would transform the world. Happy Birthday Isaac Newton b. Dec 25, 1642."

Not content with just one shot, Tyson let fly again. "Merry Christmas to all," he tweeted. "A Pagan holiday (BC) becomes a Religious holiday (AD). Which then becomes a Shopping holiday (USA)."

Then, the coup de grace. "QUESTION: This …

What Is It To Be An Ethical Engineer? A Phenomenological Approach To Engineering Ethics Pedagogy, Valorie Troesch

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Two concerns are prominent in engineering ethics pedagogy and, together, pose a conundrum for ethics educators: 21st century technologies raise daunting ethical questions that require a strong engagement with and understanding of ethics by engineers; at the same time, however, engineering students don’t care much about studying ethics. Ethics instruction, however, seems nonresponsive to these issues. It continues to rely on Western ethical theories using case studies to analyze professional engineering conduct. And, although instructors want better student learning outcomes, assessment continues to use quantitative measures of ethical knowledge and ethical reasoning skills which disregard students’ emotional engagement with ethics …

Trust, Trustworthiness, And The Moral Consequence Of Consistency, Jason R. D'Cruz

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

Situationists such as John Doris, Gilbert Harman, and Maria Merritt suppose that appeal to reliable behavioral dispositions can be dispensed with without radical revision to morality as we know it. This paper challenges this supposition, arguing that abandoning hope in reliable dispositions rules out genuine trust and forces us to suspend core reactive attitudes of gratitude and resentment, esteem and indignation. By examining situationism through the lens of trust we learn something about situationism (in particular, the radically revisionary moral implications of its adoption) as well as something about trust (in particular, that the conditions necessary for genuine trust include …

Michel Henry’S Phenomenological Christology: From Transcendentalism To The Gospel Of John, Jeremy H. Smith

English Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Finding Aid To The Collection Of Vernon Lee Materials, Violet Paget, Colby College Special Collections

Finding Aids

The Vernon Lee Collection at Colby College contains over 1000 letters, 136 manuscripts and articles, 117 photographs, and a small number of personal documents and artifacts, spanning the years 1866-1960. First and subsequent editions of Vernon Lee titles are described in the Colby Libraries web catalog. Materials arranged in seven series: Correspondence from Vernon Lee, Correspondence to Vernon Lee, Manuscripts, Published Writings, Photographs, Personal Items and Artifacts, and Clippings.

Der And Policy: The Recommendation Of A Topic, Thomas A. Cavanaugh

Philosophy

If viable, DER justifies certain individual acts that–by definition–have two effects. Presumably, it would in some fashion (at the very least, redundantly) justify policies concerning the very same acts. By contrast, acts that sometimes have a good effect and sometimes have a bad effect do not have the requisite two effects such that DER can justify them immediately. Yet, a policy concerning numerous such acts would have the requisite good and bad effects. For while any one such act would lack the relevant two effects, a series of such acts and a policy governing such a series would have them. …

Abuses Of Double Effect, Anscombe’S Principle Of Side Effects, And A (Sound) Account Of Duplex Effectus, Thomas A. Cavanaugh

Philosophy

No abstract provided.

The Ethical Relevance Of The Intended/Foreseen Distinction According To Anscombe, Thomas A. Cavanaugh

Philosophy

No abstract provided.

On Robust Alternate Possibilities And The Tax Evasion Case, William Simkulet

Philosophy and Religious Studies Department Faculty Publications

In his recent article “Defending Hard Incompatibilism Again,” Pereboom (2008) presents what he calls the “Tax Evasion” case, a Frankfurt-style case designed to show the falsity of the principle of alternate possibilities (PAP). According to Pereboom, PAP requires robust alternate possibilities such that an agent could have acted in a manner in which she knew she would have lacked moral responsibility for her actions. However, according to his “Tax Evasion” case, the tax evader lacks such robust alternate possibilities, and yet is still uncontroversially morally responsible for his actions. Here I argue Pereboom’s account of robust alternate possibilities is deficient, …

Review Of Bioethics And The Human Goods: An Introduction To Natrual Law By Alfonso Gómez-Lobo And John Keown, William Simkulet

Philosophy and Religious Studies Department Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Review Of Happiness And Goodness By Steven M. Cahn And Christine Vitrano, William Simkulet

Philosophy and Religious Studies Department Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Review Of Radio Benjamin By Walter Benjamin And Edited By Lecia Rosenthal, William Simkulet

Philosophy and Religious Studies Department Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Review Of The Soul Of The Marionette By John Gray, William Simkulet

Philosophy and Religious Studies Department Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Review Of The Quest For A Moral Compass: A Global History Of Ethics By Kenan Malik, William Simkulet

Philosophy and Religious Studies Department Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Review Of The Power Of Tolerance: A Debate By Wendy Brown And Rainer Forst, William Simkulet

Philosophy and Religious Studies Department Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Review Of Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life By Howard Eiland And Michael W. Jennings, William Simkulet

Philosophy and Religious Studies Department Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

What Makes A Technology Appropriate?, Barrett Hazeltine

Articles

No abstract provided.

A Company Town, Daniel Peltz, Sheridan Coleman

Articles

No abstract provided.

Urban Eden, Anne Tate

Articles

No abstract provided.

Critical Design And The Critical Social Sciences, Damian White

Articles

No abstract provided.

Playing With Philosophy: Gestures, Performance, P4c And An Art Of Living, L D'Olimpio, C Teschers

Philosophy Conference Papers

John Dewey’s Art as Experience (1934) explores how art develops out of everyday experience. Imbued with the pragmatism of William James, Dewey widens the discourse of aesthetics so as to recognise that our creation, experience and appreciation of the aesthetic is linked intrinsically to being human. By encouraging the natural playfulness of children, advocates of Philosophy for Children (P4C) may creatively engage students to think, reflect and be more aware of the impact their gestures have on others. One of the most fundamental aspects of the embodied human life is human interaction that is based on expressions, what Schmid (2000b) …

Defeatism Defeated, Max Baker-Hytch, Matthew A. Benton

SPU Works

Many epistemologists are enamored with a defeat condition on knowledge. In this paper we present some implementation problems for defeatism, understood along either internalist or externalist lines. We then propose that one who accepts a knowledge norm of belief, according to which one ought to believe only what one knows, can explain away much of the motivation for defeatism. This is an important result, because on the one hand it respects the plausibility of the intuitions about defeat shared by many in epistemology; but on the other hand, it obviates the need to provide a unified account of defeat which …

What Is Moral Reasoning?, Leland F. Saunders

SPU Works

No abstract provided.

Ethics In Exhibitions: Considering Indigenous Art, Rachel Bonner

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

No abstract provided.

Killing Kindly: Applying Jens Timmermann's Kantian Ethics Of Animal Welfare To The Modern System Of Livestock Farming, Alexander Lowe

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

This essay seeks to contribute to this conversation in an ethically applicable way, addressing specifically the Kantian vein of animal welfare discussed by Dr. Jens Timmermann in his essay When the Tail Wags the Dog: Animal Welfare and Indirect Duty in Kantian Ethics. In Part I, I will examine the work Timmermann undertakes to extend greater protection to animals under Kantian ethics. I will also raise a critical question concerning Timmermann’s unwillingness to apply his advancements to the animal welfare problems in our modern world. In Part II, I will attempt to apply Timmermann’s conclusions to the question of …

Of Drones And Justice: A Just War Theory Analysis Of The United States' Drone Campaigns, Ethan A. Wright

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

No abstract provided.

Validating Animal Models, Nina Atanasova

Philosophy and Religious Studies Department Faculty Publications

This paper responds to a recent challenge for the validity of extrapolation of neurobiological knowledge from laboratory animals to humans. According to this challenge, experimental neurobiology, and thus neuroscience, is in a state of crisis because the knowledge produced in different laboratories hardly generalizes from one laboratory to another. Presumably, this is so because neurobiological laboratories use simplified animal models of human conditions that differ across laboratories. By contrast, I argue that maintaining a multiplicity of experimental protocols and simple models is well justified. It fosters rather than precludes the validity of extrapolation of neurobiological knowledge. The discipline is thriving

Book Review: New Heavens And A New Earth: The Jewish Reception Of Copernican Thought, David B. Levy

Touro University Libraries Publications and Research

The author reviews the book New Heavens and a New Earth: The Jewish Reception of Copernican Thought.

Book Review: Science, Reason, Modernity: Readings For An Anthropology Of The Contemporary, David B. Levy

Touro University Libraries Publications and Research

The author reviews the book Science, Reason, Modernity: Readings for an Anthropology of the Contemporary.