Philosophy Commons^™

Zhuang Zi And The Education Of The Emotions, Jeffrey Morgan

Comparative Philosophy

This paper examines and defends a conception of the education of emotions found in the Zhuang-Zi. I begin by exploring four principal features of Zhuang Zi’s philosophy as it relates to the emotions: his epistemological perspectivism, his view of the self, his ethics of wandering and natural spontaneity, and his playful non-seriousness. Together these four features allow us to discern a general orientation to the education of the emotions, including a normative account of a good emotional life as well some suggestions for a pedagogy for the development of such a life.

The Yogācāra Theory Of Three Natures: Internalist And Non-Dualist Interpretations, Matthew Mackenzie

Comparative Philosophy

According to Vasubandhu’s Trisvabhāvanirdeśa or Treatise on the Three Natures, experiential phenomena can be understood in terms of three natures: the constructed (parikalpita), the dependent (paratantra), and the consummate (pariniṣpanna). This paper will examine internalist and anti-internalist or non-dualist interpretations of the Yogācāra theory of the three natures of experience. The internalist interpretation is based on representationalist theory of experience wherein the contents of experience are logically independent of their cause and various interconnected cognitive processes continually create an integrated internal world-model that is transparent to the cognitive system that creates and uses it. …

The Confucian Puzzle: Justice And Care In Aquinas, Audra Goodnight

Comparative Philosophy

Ethical theories of justice and care are often presented in opposition to each other. Eleonore Stump argues that Aquinas’s moral theory has the resources to bring justice and care together. There is, however, a potential worry for her view raised by the ‘Confucian Puzzle’. The puzzle poses a moral dilemma between care and justice that serves as a test case for Stump’s picture. In this paper, I provide a brief overview of the justice and care debate along with the subsequent challenges that both positions face in order to situate Aquinas’s position as Stump defends it. Next, I present the …

Game Spirituality: How Games Tell Us More Than We Might Think, Chad Carlson

Faculty Publications

While we often see games as less serious or at least less transcendental than religion there is reason to believe that games can evoke similarly meaningful narratives that allow us to learn a great deal about ourselves and our world. And games do so often using the same symbolic and metaphorical mechanisms that generate meaning in religious experience. In this paper, I explore some of the ways in which game myths—the myths created from and through games—generate meaning in our lives. People experience myths in games very similarly to how they might in religion. I first explain what myth means …

Building An Ethical Small Group (Chapter 9 Of Meeting The Ethical Challenges Of Leadership), Craig E. Johnson

Faculty Publications - College of Business

This chapter examines ethical leadership in the small-group context. To help create groups that brighten rather than darken the lives of participants, leaders must foster individual ethical accountability among group members, ensure ethical group interaction, avoid moral pitfalls, and establish ethical relationships with other groups.

In his metaphor of the leader's light or shadow, Parker Palmer emphasizes that leaders shape the settings or contexts around them. According to Palmer, leaders are people who have "an unusual degree of power to create the conditions under which other people must live and move and have their being, conditions that can either be …

Front Matter

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

The Jacobean Peace The Irenic Policy Of James Vi And I And Its Legacy, Roger B. Manning

Quidditas

King James VI and I furnishes the example of an early modern monarch who pursued a policy of peace that worked to his disadvantage. This irenic policy arose more from circumstances than conviction. As king of Scotland, he had learned to distrust the violent and warlike members of the Scots nobility, and diplomacy and conciliation were the only instruments he had to deal with these ruffians. Despite aspersions upon his manhood, he led attempts to suppress their rebellion, and when he succeeded as king of England, he possessed more military experience than any English monarch since Henry VII. Those of …

“Where Have You Vanished?” Aelred Of Rievaulx’S Lamentation On The Death Of Simon, Anna Harrison

Quidditas

In his lamentation on the death of his friend, Simon, Aelred responds to a centuries-long suspicion about grief by mounting an apology for mourning that is in keeping with a larger Cistercian trend. Aelred’s chief preoccupation in the lamentation is, however, to emphasize the productivity of grief, both for the living and for the dead. Aelred associates the desire to reunite with the beloved dead with stimulating the mourner’s desire for heaven as location for the longed-for reunion, and he conceives of the pain associated with bereavement as payment for the sins of the deceased.

Strategies For Addressing Student Learning Objectives In The Renaissance And Reformation Classroom: Tone, Historical Context, And Kinetic Learners, Vincent V. Patarino Jr.

Quidditas

Like other higher education institutions, Colorado Mesa University has fully embraced modern assessment goals and strategies, especially SLOs (Student Learning Objectives). In HIST 350, Renaissance and Reformation, I focus on two: use of primary sources and historical context. Meeting these objectives with aural and visual learners is met using traditional PowerPoint, laden with images of art and architecture. What about kinetic learners? How does one comprise their learning strengths? When analyzing documents, discerning tone is especially challenging, given our social media age. One strategy is to have students work in groups of two, taking turns reading each other’s emotions. Through …

Delno C. West Award

Quidditas

The West Award recognizes the most distinguished paper given by a senior scholar at the annual conference.

Recipient of the West Award for 2018

Anna Harrison

Selections From Bouwsma's Commonplace Book From 'The Blue Book' On: "The Meaning Of A Word", Ronald E. Hustwit Sr., O.K. Bouwsma

O.K. Bouwsma Collection

Notes for graduate seminars in 1970-71 on Wittgenstein’s Blue Book.

The notes collected here were written for students in Wittgenstein seminars at the University of Texas in the academic year 1970-71. The typed notes from those seminars all focus on the opening sentences of The Blue Book: "What is the meaning of a word?" As was Bouwsma's practice, he wrote in his commonplace book preparing for the weekly seminar meeting. Some students in the class would volunteer to transcribe these preparatory notes and the department secretary would mimeograph them for distribution to the graduate students in the seminar. The …

Truths, Facts, And Liars, Peter Marton

Philosophy Faculty Publications

A Moderate Anti-realist (MAR) approach to truth and meaning, built around the concept of knowability, will be introduced and argued for in this essay. Our starting point will be the two fundamental anti-realists principles that claim that neither truth nor meaning can outstrip knowability and our focus will be on the challenge of adequately formalizing these principles and incorporating them into a formal theory. Accordingly, the author will introduce a MAR truth operator that is built on a distinction between being true and being factual. He will show then that this approach partitions propositions into eight classes, on the basis …

E-Co-Affectivity Beyond The Anthropocene: Rethinking The Role Of Soil To Imagine A New 'Us', Marjolein Oele

Philosophy

Following Isabelle Stengers’ call that the anthropocene should make us feel and think differently, this paper focuses on the human task to shift its affective response. Since Stengers calls for a new “us” that seeks to participate in an entanglement, I propose to explore the material and ontogenetic functions of soil, and specifically soil pores, in reimagining a new form of e-co-affectivity. A new e-co-affective response would emphasize the usually hidden fluidity and diachronic time of pores, and, in doing so, cultivate an epistemic and aesthetic sensitivity, deceleration, and percolation.

Logos I - Philosophy And The Nature Of Morality: The Abolition Of Man, C.S. Lewis, Lucie Steiner

Aristos

C.S. Lewis’ objective stance on ethics is argued to be superior to the moral sentimentalism of David Hume, because if there is not agreement on what constitutes moral action, then there is no basis for argument over the existence of moral law.

Logos Ii - Virtue Ethics And Political Corruption: An Ethical Case Study, Nicholas Potter

Aristos

This ethical case study will apply virtue ethics in moral decision making. It is argued that exposing corruption defends virtue and protects the good life by demonstrating a commitment to honesty and truth. Virtuous behaviour allows us to live socially and undermines the attempts of dishonest individuals to secure a comfortable life immorally.

Are There Many Philosophies Or Is There Just ‘Doing Philosophy’?, Richard Sofatzis

Aristos

The term ‘philosophy’ may be used in more than one sense to refer to both the subjective human activity of ‘doing philosophy’ and its result, namely the production of systems of thought – philosophical theories – which history demonstrates as many and various. It will be argued that there is only one way of doing philosophy and that this is proceeding from the common principles of the human mind in the search for truth of what is real. The mark of true philosophy is unity. A unity of true philosophy may be sought from what seems disparate: Aquinas embodies this …

The Ethics Of Racist Monuments, Dan Demetriou, Ajume Wingo

Philosophy Publications

We focus on the debate over racist monuments as it manifests in the mid-2010s Anglosphere, primarily in the US (chiefly regarding the over 700 monuments devoted to the Confederacy),2 but to some degree also in Britain and commonwealth countries, especially South Africa (chiefly regarding monuments devoted to figures and events associated with colonialism and apartheid). Even with this limited scope, we will not recommend any sweeping policy for many lands, histories, peoples, and monuments in this immensely difficult and emotionally fraught controversy. Our aim rather is to categorize arguments, voice some un-asked questions, and offer a few guidelines for policymakers …

Lying, Accuracy, And Credence, Matthew A. Benton

SPU Works

Traditional definitions of lying require that a speaker believe that what she asserts is false. Sam Fox Krauss (Analysis, 2017) seeks to jettison the traditional belief requirement in favour of a necessary condition given in a credence-accuracy framework, on which the liar expects to impose the risk of increased inaccuracy on the hearer. He argues that this necessary condition importantly captures nearby cases as lies which the traditional view neglects. I argue, however, that Krauss's own account suffers from an identical drawback of being unable to explain nearby cases; and even worse, that account fails to distinguish cases …

God And Interpersonal Knowledge, Matthew A. Benton

SPU Works

Recent epistemology offers an account of what it is to know other persons. Such views hold promise for illuminating several issues in philosophy of religion, and for advancing a distinctive approach to religious epistemology. This paper develops an account of interpersonal knowledge, and clarifies its relation to propositional and qualitative knowledge. I then turn to our knowledge of God and God's knowledge of us, and compare my account of interpersonal knowledge with important work by Eleonore Stump on "Franciscan" knowledge. I examine how interpersonal knowledge may figure in liturgical practice, in diffusing the problem of divine hiddenness, and in motivating …

Knowledge, Hope, And Fallibilism, Matthew A. Benton

SPU Works

Hope, in its propositional construction "I hope that p," is compatible with a stated chance for the speaker that not-p. On fallibilist construals of knowledge, knowledge is compatible with a chance of being wrong, such that one can know that p even though there is an epistemic chance for one that not-p. But self-ascriptions of propositional hope that p seem to be incompatible, in some sense, with self-ascriptions of knowing whether p. Data from conjoining hope self-ascription with outright assertions, with first- and third-person knowledge ascriptions, and with factive predicates suggest a problem: when …

Sr. Holy: A Calling From The Lord, Caitlyn Schaffer

Ask a Sister: Interview Wisdom from Catholic Women Religious

This paper includes a portion of an interview with Sr. Holy, a woman religious missionary who belongs to the congregation of Holy Spirit Missionary Sisters, where her theological beliefs are enacted by her service to others. Within the congregation of Holy Spirit Missionary Sisters, she is focused on directing the novitiate, giving spiritual direction, volunteering with the aid for women, networking with the aid for women, and taking part in a life learning center making disciples. She uses her gifts that Jesus has given her to employ her virtues in the service of others. Throughout her life she mentioned the …

Sr. Sarah Grace: The Common Good, Caleb Wright

Ask a Sister: Interview Wisdom from Catholic Women Religious

This paper includes part of an interview with Sr. Sarah Grace from January 2, 2018. She is a women religious who has worked in education for 25 years. This paper includes a portion of the interview where she shared her perspective on the common good.

Environmental Sustainability For Business Success, Kailyn Cohen

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Sites Of Exposure: Art, Politics, And The Nature Of Experience, David B. Levy

Touro University Libraries Publications and Research

The author reviews the book Sites of Exposure: Art, Politics, and the Nature of Experience.

Book Review: Creatively Undecided: Toward A History And Philosophy Of Scientific Agency, David B. Levy

Touro University Libraries Publications and Research

The author reviews the book Creatively Undecided: Toward a History and Philosophy of Scientific Agency.

Tasseography From Jung's Perspective, Avetisian, Elizabeth

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

Approaching from Jung’s perspective this paper aims to understand how the unconscious communicates through symbolism that may be the basis for synchronicity arising from mantic procedures. A particular ritual of divination called tasseography will be studied whereby the seer interprets patterns in coffee grounds intuitively and by following a standard system of symbolism to foretell the seeker’s future life events or provide answers to seeker’s pressing life questions. The paper will examine various processes involved in the experience of tasseography and its ritual that enable the reader to predict the seeker’s future or bring light to the present or past …

Corporations And Environmental Responsibility: Considering The Moral And Financial Implications Of Oil Spills, Fracking, And Controversial Pipelines, Sarah Becker

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

No abstract provided.

“Christianity, Epistemic Peer Disagreement, And The Abortion Debate”, Michael Jones, John Molinari

Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

A Physcialist Theory Of Managing Impediments To Democracy And Peace Building In The Balkans, Rory Conces

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The post-conflict societies of Bosnia and Kosovo continue to be plagued by the deleterious effects of ethno-nationalism and ethnic enclaves. Unfortunately, this mix impedes both democracy and peace building within these Balkan countries. One way to promote such building is for these enclaves to collapse, thereby allowing multiethnic societies to develop. This essay proposes that enclaves be dealt with physically by ridding them of those evocative objects that help to create and maintain enclaves. By getting physical in this way, how¬ever, we find ourselves in a dilemma, caught on the horns of legality and expediency. Yet there is a promising …

Allen D. Breck Award

Quidditas

The Breck Award recognizes the most distinguished paper given by a junior scholar at the annual conference.

Recipient of the Breck Award for 2018

Alani Hicks Bartlett