Philosophy Commons^™

The Coherence Of Left-Libertarianism: A New Approach To Reconciling Libertarianism And Socialism, Jesse E. Spafford

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The past twenty-five years have witnessed the emergence and development of what has become known as left-libertarianism—a philosophical position that seeks to show that certain moral principles traditionally associated with libertarianism are compatible with egalitarian views about the distribution of resources. However, this position has also come under fire from various critics who argue that the position lacks coherence. For example, Barbara Fried argues that, even if left-libertarians show that one can simultaneously hold some combination of ethical principles, it doesn’t follow that one should. This dissertation argues that there is a suitably coherent version of left-libertarianism wherein egalitarian …

Homo Ludens Moralis: Designing And Developing A Board Game To Teach Ethics For Ict Education, Damian Gordon, Dympna O'Sullivan, Ioannis Stavrakakis, Andrea Curley

Conference papers

The ICT ethical landscape is changing at an astonishing rate, as technologies become more complex, and people choose to interact with them in new and distinct ways, the resultant interactions are more novel and less easy to categorise using traditional ethical frameworks. It is vitally important that the developers of these technologies do not live in an ethical vacuum; that they think about the uses and abuses of their creations, and take some measures to prevent others being harmed by their work.

To equip these developers to rise to this challenge and to create a positive future for the use …

Commonsense Consent, Roseanna Sommers

Articles

Consent is a bedrock principle in democratic society and a primary means through which our law expresses its commitment to individual liberty. While there seems to be broad consensus that consent is important, little is known about what people think consent is. This Article undertakes an empirical investigation of people’s ordinary intuitions about when consent has been granted. Using techniques from moral psychology and experimental philosophy, it advances the core claim that most laypeople think consent is compatible with fraud, contradicting prevailing normative theories of consent. This empirical phenomenon is observed across over two dozen scenariosspanning numerous contexts in which …

Object-Oriented Musicology: Some Implications Of Graham Harman's Philosophy For Music Theory, History, And Criticism, Eric Taxier

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation brings the ideas of the philosopher Graham Harman (b. 1968) into a musicological context. His “object-oriented ontology” is widely known in continental philosophy, but it has not yet entered rigorous contact with musicology. Certain factors pose difficulties at first glance, such as Harman’s focus on metaphysical issues (originating in his critique of Martin Heidegger) and his rehabilitation of the widely criticized concept of aesthetic autonomy. But these are also sources of novelty that could make an object-oriented encounter with musicology fruitful. In the first chapter, I outline the main features of Harman’s thought. He critiques assumptions about the …

Hannah Arendt’S Vision Of Politics: Exemplary Negativities And The Ostjuden, Jacob E. Pearce

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Hannah Arendt’s vision of politics is one of the most enigmatic, perplexing, thoroughly analyzed, and potentially generative aspects of her philosophic corpus. It is marked by insightful analysis, cutting deconstructions of pressing moral issues, and confusing vernacular wherein her analytic boundaries, topics, and categories appear obfuscated. Although it has been observed that Arendt’s late-career theory of the political owes a debt to her earlier writings on Jewish history, including her Kantian-influenced theory of political judgment and storytelling, in this thesis I would like to narrow down this debt to a specific trope: The Ostjuden, or the imagined associations with Eastern …

A Modelist Proposal, Jian Shen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Many philosophers of mind regard "What is representation?" as a question of paramount importance. In ask this question they overlook the possibility—what I argue is in fact the correct answer—that there is simply nothing specifically representational about representational systems. "Representation" is a label we somehow feel compelled to stick to some systems but not to others, but it fails to pick out an explanatorily relevant kind. This is most clearly seen when we look at representational systems through the lens of formal models—in particular, the sender-receiver model as developed by David Lewis, Brian Skyrms, and others. I offer a cosmetically …

The Chinese Calligraphy Stone Gallery, Yingying Xie

Student Works (2020-2029)

This dissertation studies the reshaping of cultural memory in helping to increase cultural self-confidence and to gain cultural identity. Nirvana Group placed great emphasis on promoting Chinese culture and on the basis of respecting culture; it has established the Chinese Calligraphy Stone gallery. This dissertation found that the Chinese Calligraphy Stone gallery which is specially constructed through the installation of represented structures of China showcased the Confucian principles and Taoist thought. Cultural memory has been reconstructed based on the permanent collection of diachronic masterpieces of the elite culture of calligraphy tradition. I would like to say that the spirit of …

Revisiting Juchitán: Witnessing An Indigenous Mexico Within The Latin American Archive, Michelle G. De La Cruz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Throughout archives of photographic collections, as one discovers the focused, artistic selective process of images that become part of a photographer’s collection, one must venture further and ask: will these choices be decisively remembered by an individual or collective audience or actively be dismissed, misunderstood, and denied presence? For my master’s thesis, I will be analyzing Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide’s photobook, Juchitán de las Mujeres, a photo-collection of the women-empowered indigenous society in Oaxaca, Mexico which erupted during Latin American photography’s prime in the 20th century, turning away from a deeply exoticized past and towards a celebration of Hispanism as …

Environmental Transformative Justice: Responding To Ecocide, Manuel Rodeiro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation’s central objective is to normatively devise ethically appropriate sociopolitical and juridical responses to ecocide (i.e., grave environmental harm). More specifically, the work seeks to philosophically engage the ethical question of what is owed to human societies that are displaced due to intentional environmental destruction.

The motivation behind the project stems from the lack of academic research (excluding a pocket of recent analysis of the international community’s obligation to assist ‘climate refugees’) involving the question: “What ought to be afforded victims of environmental harm?” The dearth of scholarship is surprising, considering growing global concerns, vis-à-vis accelerating rates of environmental …

Queer Displacements: Minorities, Mobilities, And Mobilizations In French And Francophone Literature, Thomas Muzart

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Focusing on the work of Virginie Despentes, Jean Genet, Guy Hocquenghem, and Abdellah Taïa, this dissertation challenges the antisocial turn taken in queer theory, by means of a parallel study of the authors’ geographical and intellectual itineraries. While critics like Leo Bersani and Lee Edelman have suggested that the revolutionary potential in queer identity lies in its opposition to romanticized forms of community, I argue, along with José Esteban Muñoz, that their praising of singularity and negativity is similarly extreme. Alternatively, my study shows how the geographical displacements both experienced and imagined by my primary authors can illuminate the passage …

An Eco-Political Theory Of Territory, Jonathan Kwan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I advance a novel eco-political theory of territory that grounds a people’s territorial rights in its right to political self-determination understood as inextricably and normatively bound up with its right to ecological integrity and duty of ecological sustainability. I develop a social ontology of the people as the holder of territorial rights based on its members’ place-based common activities that aim at their own independent governance rather than in terms of state institutions, cultural nationhood, ethnogeography, political identity, or shared conceptions of justice. The common activities of a people generate a group right to democratic self-determination since …

Narcissus And Beauty: A Renaissance Of Paterian Aesthetics, Amir Dagan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is intended as a correction to the almost universal contemporary assumption that beauty is either nonexistent or a tool of oppression, and that the arts should be judged less by their aesthetic value than their social, political, or moral dimensions. This dissertation will propose a fivefold argument. First, I will assert that the experience of beauty is real, pleasurable, and not in any way culturally determined, second, that beauty is the most significant and characteristic feature of art, third, that the rejection of the reality of beauty is motivated more by the fragility of the mass man’s ego …

Social Contract Theory And Transitional Justice: A Philosophical Approach To A Problem Of Global Importance, Brendan Moriarty

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this thesis, I seek to bring together two areas of scholarly work to see how each can inform the other: social contract theory and transitional justice. The social contract, as it exists and as it was theorized about by Rousseau, was born from the world-historic forces that spread capitalism across the globe, stirring up nationalism everywhere it went. In its wake, there was vast inequality and new legal regimes which protected the hoarded wealth of the capitalist class by enshrining the right of private property along with life and liberty. To examine the intricacies of transitional justice and its …

British Romanticism And The Paradoxes Of Natural Education, Catherine S. Engh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“British Romanticism and the Paradoxes of Natural Education” offers a distinct perspective on Romantic-era ideas on “natural” education and human development. Though the Romantic retreat into nature has long been understood as a break from the Enlightenment’s programmatic commitment to the progress of reason, I contend that the ideas on natural development of four canonical Romantic authors—Mary Wollstonecraft, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Mary Shelley—actually originate in the ideas of one of the foremost figures of the Enlightenment, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Natural education is doomed to failure in Rousseau’s thought because “nature” is paradoxically a social construct. I argue that …

The Problem Of Literary Development In Russian Formalism And Digital Humanities, Basil Lvoff

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The interest of this dissertation is how our understanding of literary development—as gradual or revolutionary; self-governed or socio-politically determined; like or unlike biological evolution—informs the status, meaning, and value of literature and literary studies. The dissertation shows how this problem—most pressing in our post-logocentric age—was addressed at the dawn of contemporary literary theory by the Russian Formalists. The latter are compared with Distant Readers, i.e., the Digital Humanists from, or conducting research in dialogue with, the Stanford Literary Lab: Franco Moretti, Matthew Jockers, Ted Underwood, William Benzon, and others.

This dissertation argues that both Russian Formalism and Distant Reading were …

Argo Navis: A Drifting Circumambulation, Kyle D. Lemstrom

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

This work is a tongue-in-cheek narrative journey through the creative process, using travel and mythology as vehicles for reflection, metacognition, and critical thinking around philosophy, literature, and contemporary art. As a process-oriented piece, it makes use of intentional constraints to force a kind of unfolding, to mimic the act of intellectual discovery, navigating dissonance and doubt. As a creative product, it is something akin to an afterimage, to persist as a vestige of accumulated learning. The piece wrestles with questions of personal agency, authority, knowledge and meaning, yet does not arrive at definitive answers.

The Moment Of Study In Learning That Resists Neoliberalism Body Gesture, Time, And Play, Clarence W. Joldersma

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

The essay develops a case study about a young boy playing with a toy train to address neoliberalism’s problematic discourse that depicts learning as instrumental, as something that can be caused by teaching. This paper’s perspective is enactive, taking the view that central to understanding learning is not the mind or brain working in isolation but involves the interrelationships between mind/brain, body, and world. The analysis revolves around the standing gap between teaching and learning, where navigating the gap involves a dynamic called ‘the moment of study.’ Three of Tyson Lewis’s ideas about study—body gesture, time, and play—are used to …

Hijab In The Indonesian National Struggle, Mangesti Rahayu

International Review of Humanities Studies

Fashion and history cannot be separated, because fashion is one indicator of a change in culture, civilization, behavior, and certain identities. Vice versa, changes and developments in fashion are influenced by conditions at the time the fashion is developing, both the social, cultural, political, religious, economic and others. Fashion that is developing in Indonesia is Muslim fashion. One part of Muslim clothing is the hijab, headgear worn by Muslim women. Hijab is not only part of religious observance, hijab is already part of fashion and we can examine the hijab style of a society from its historical period. We can …

The Transformation Of R.A. Kosasih's Mahabharata Wayang Comics Design: Comparison Of The 1955 Version With The 1975 Version, Iwan Gunawan

International Review of Humanities Studies

Mahabharata was an epic Hindu story that has been adapted to comics for so many times, by many comic artists. R.A. Kosasih, was one that was known for his mastery in creatingWayang Comics, and Mahabharata was his best creation. He created two versions of Mahabharata comics. The first was in 1955, published by Melodi and the second in 1975, by Maranatha. The storylines were basically the same, but there were differences not only in formats or spelling system, but in the visual narratives. The pictures in Maranatha version were designed in a more up dated style in comics. In the …

Kuasa Atas Ruang Pembebasan’: The Resilience Ofwomen In Sasak Culture, Lucky Wijayanti

International Review of Humanities Studies

The Sasak tribe on Lombok island - West Nusa Tenggara, have traditional values and are applied through the social structure of their communities in daily life. Some existing customary values place women in irreplaceable positions. Even so, the existence of financial needs makes them work abroad as laborers, which indirectly results in the occurrence of divorce and early marriage. This is a problem for Sasak women in terms of survival in the Sasak culture. An ethnographic approach derived from Malinowski, the opinion of Svasek, and the value system framework from Kluckhohn are used in this study. This research concludes that …

Backing Up Into Advocacy: The Case Of Smartphone Driver Distraction, Robert Rosenberger

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

For the last decade, I’ve been studying the topic of the driving impairment of smartphones. While this began as an exclusively academic project, it has increasingly compelled public engagement. One example of this came in an opinion piece I wrote in 2018 in response to a new traffic law. I take the opportunity here to fill out the academic backstory of this particular op-ed, reflect on how this larger project has evolved to include an unanticipated public-facing edge, and abstract some lessons about public writing.

From Protecting To Performing Privacy, Garfield Benjamin

The Journal of Sociotechnical Critique

Privacy is increasingly important in an age of facial recognition technologies, mass data collection, and algorithmic decision-making. Yet it persists as a contested term, a behavioural paradox, and often fails users in practice. This article critiques current methods of thinking privacy in protectionist terms, building on Deleuze's conception of the society of control, through its problematic relation to freedom, property and power. Instead, a new mode of understanding privacy in terms of performativity is provided, drawing on Butler and Sedgwick as well as Cohen and Nissenbaum. This new form of privacy is based on identity, consent and collective action, a …

A Philosopher Explains Why Dance Can Help Pandemic-Proof Your Kids, Aili W. Bresnahan

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Dance is good because it expresses human nature – it’s not just fun, although it is certainly fun. It’s not just exercise, either.

At its best, dance is an extension and expression of who we are as human beings in ways that can allow us to share emotions that increase our sense of community and connection. This is why, in good times and bad, in times of war, slavery, fleeing homelands and during pandemics, kids still bounce, leap and spin.

Involving Anthroponomy In The Anthropocene: On Decoloniality, Jeremy Bendik-Keymer

Faculty Scholarship

This book introduces the idea of anthroponomy – the organization of humankind to support autonomous life – as a response to the problems of today’s purported "Anthropocene" age. It argues for a specific form of accountability for the redressing of planetary-scaled environmental problems. The concept of anthroponomy helps confront geopolitical history shaped by the social processes of capitalism, colonialism, and industrialism, which have resulted in our planetary situation. Involving Anthroponomy in the Anthropocene: On Decoloniality explores how mobilizing our engagement with the politics of our planetary situation can come from moral relations. This book focuses on the anti-imperial work of …

Sister Helen Prejean And The Death Penalty: Decades Of Fighting Capital Punishment, University Marketing And Communications, Helen Prejean

DePaul Download

Sister Helen Prejean has dedicated her life to opposing the death penalty after she witnessed an execution in her home state of Louisiana. Her efforts have sparked a national dialogue on capital punishment and she has helped shape the Catholic Church’s position on the topic. In 2011, she donated her personal archives to the university to help the DePaul community continue to learn from her work. On this episode of DePaul Download, Sister Helen talks about life’s work and what keeps her going.

Anorexia Nervosa And Bulimia Nervosa As Expressions Of Shame In A Post-Feminist, Emily Kearns

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Anorexia nervosa and Bulimia nervosa are heavily gendered conditions affecting women to a far greater degree than men in a post-millennium Western setting. The psychologistic and medicalized approaches to studying and treating these disorders do not account for socio-cultural and epistemic preferences. This paper draws a connection between shame (as emotion and affect) and these gendered disorders. Further, this work analyzes neo-liberalism, post-feminism, and consumerism as predatory elements of Western culture especially affecting women.

The Relation Between Spinoza's Monism And Kabbalistic Monotheism, Naomi H. Fredgant

University Honors Theses

Benedict de Spinoza's (1632-1677) excommunication from the strict Jewish-Portuguese community of Amsterdam didn’t erase all of the years of studying Judaic and Kabbalistic thought. His theory of G-d (monism) is deeply connected to Kabbalistic monotheism (the Judiac mystic theory of G-d). This thesis explores the similarities and differences between Spinoza's monism and Kabbalistic monotheism in order to shine new light on Spinoza's proof of the existence of G-d, and the nature of how we exist in relation to Him. By moving through descriptions of the two theories, it becomes evident that both have similar structures. There is one infinite G-d, …

The Potential Of Solidarity In Existential Feminist Discursive Methods, Bella Brown

University Honors Theses

The following paper will be dissecting the ways in which Simone de Beauvoir’s examination of the intertwined nature of selfhood and freedom regarding the body offer a facet of liberation around the construction of womanhood. I will consider the extent to which Beauvoir’s concept of the politicized essentialless body in contemporary feminist scholarship (existentialist, phenomenologist, and post-structuralist) is incomplete in that there are many contemporary scholars who expand her idea of essentialless properties and their effects on identity. The importance of the individual and their freedom in discourse is to work towards solidarity through difference with others in order to …

Projective Aesthetics As A New Discourse, Boris Orlov Ph.D.

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

The Found World: The Role Of Findability In The History Of Botany, Douglas Tuers

Journal of the South Carolina Academy of Science

This study will investigate how a community of botanists used the findability inherent in botanical localities to rediscover species that were previously lost to botany. This article will look at the literature that announced the rediscovery of three species in the vicinity of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. These species are Heuchera hispida, Phlox buckleyi, and Gaylussacia brachycera. These three plants were rediscovered over a short period of time, about 13 years from 1919 to 1932. This study will draw from the announcement of these rediscoveries. In each of these cases there was a surrounding literature that …