Philosophy Commons^™

The Non-Apprehension Of Selfhood And Metaphysical Freedom, Christopher Rinderle

LSU Master's Theses

In this work I take on one of the most axiomatic assumptions humans possess. The sense of self is embedded so deeply inside each one of us that to question it seems utterly ridiculous. Fortunately, I do not outright reject the notion of selfhood. I investigate what it is and is not through multiple angles – ancient and contemporary – which leads to investigations of free will and responsibility.

In the first chapter, I discuss the Buddhist anātman or non-self. I argue that the historical Buddha did not endorse the idea that the self must be overcome through enlightenment – …

Beyond Compulsion: Félix Ravaisson's Conception Of Habit, Christopher Johnson

LSU Master's Theses

In opposition to a tendency present within the history of Western philosophy to regard ‘habit’ as a conservative force (represented by figures including Descartes, Spinoza, and Kant), contemporary philosophers working on habit (including Clare Carlisle and Catherine Malabou) have marshaled the thought of nineteenth century French philosopher Félix Ravaisson. With recourse to the ‘double law of habit,’ Ravaisson, in his 1838 doctoral thesis, depicts habit as both resistance and receptivity to change. I begin, in Chapter One, with a brief overview of the aforementioned negative evaluations of habit, as surveyed separately by Carlisle and Malabou. As these contemporary philosophers observe, …

The Possibility Of Relationships With Others, Joshua Severud

LSU Master's Theses

Levinas offers a rich philosophical insight into the kind of responsibility and ethics that we must have for the Other. This involves a certain conception of what it means to be hospitable which turns out to be impossible. In order to talk about how this impossible relationship can occur, I use Heidegger’s description of the existential Being-with structure and Derrida’s conception of the event in order to make sense of how this Levinasian relationship can possibly exist in spite of—or thanks to—its impossibility.

Plants Detect And Adapt, But Do Not Feel, Paul C. Struik

Animal Sentience

Plant sentience is a hot topic in scientific and popular media. There are moral reasons to respect both the service of plants to humanity and their natural integrity as creatures playing their own significant role in a complex ecosystem. However, to infer that plants have certain cognitive capacities that are present also in certain human and nonhuman animals calls for scientific rigor beyond mere analogy. The unique capacities of plants identified by Segundo-Ortin & Calvo are not necessarily linked to sentience. Nor is it likely that sentience is an evolutionary trait that is present to some extent in all living …

The Nature And Role Of Phenomenology In Hegel And Heidegger, Gabriel W. Connor

LSU Master's Theses

In this work I compare Hegel and Heidegger’s conception of phenomenology and its role in their thinking. Though these two thinkers are not often examined from this angle, and though there is controversy surrounding just how phenomenological each thinker might actually be, an examination of the two thinkers in this regard serves to identify interesting connections between Hegel and Heidegger while also raising questions about phenomenology in general. In short, I seek to establish that phenomenology in both Hegel and Heidegger is not adequately understood unless it is placed in the context of each thinker’s conception of human freedom along …

Natural Lights & Natural Rights: The Problem Of The New Classical Natural Law Theory, Charles Neville Cacciatore

LSU Master's Theses

The present work examines the natural law jurisprudence of John Finnis. It argues that Finnis’s teaching is a genuinely new natural law theory. Finnis’s jurisprudence is not a re- presentation of the jurisprudence of St. Thomas Aquinas because its central element—a doctrine of natural rights—is a departure from Aquinas’s natural law teaching. In support of these claims, the present work relies upon the scholarship of Ernest L. Fortin, A.A. Following Fr. Fortin, it presents an understanding of the natural law that endorses a clear distinction between natural right and natural rights—between premodern political philosophy and modern political philosophy.

The Temporal Asymmetry Of Influence Is Not Statistical, Emily Adlam

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

We argue that the temporal asymmetry of influence is not merely the result of thermodynamics: it is a consequence of the fact that modal structure of the universe must admit only processes which cannot give rise to contradictions. We appeal to the process matrix formalism developed in the field of quantum foundations to characterise processes which are compatible with local free will whilst ruling out contradictions, and argue that this gives rise to ‘consistent chaining’ requirements that explain the temporal asymmetry of influence. We compare this view to the perspectival account of causation advocated by Price and Ramsey.

The Hidden Victims Of War, Drishti Khandelwal

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

This essay explores how the rights of women have been eroded by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Surrogacy As A Means Of Survival, Emma Reyes

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

Surrogacy is an arrangement where a woman agrees to carry a baby on behalf of a couple, typically because they cannot have the baby on their own. This has especially become an increasingly common option for many same-sex couples to have a child. However, many countries have discriminative laws set in place that prohibit surrogates from conceiving a child for same-sex couples. As a result of this, different surrogate agencies have found loopholes to go around these laws. In the Radiolab podcast episode titled “Birthstory '', an Israeli couple who were forbade from hiring a surrogate in their own country, …

The Development Of A Parent Report Instrument Of Early Communication And Language Skills Of Infants And Toddlers In Mainland China, Xueman Lucy Liu, Wendy Lee, Eric Rolfhus, Teresa Hutchings, Liqun Yao, Jingqiu Xie, Yaqing Xu, Yongmei Peng, Jill De Villiers

Philosophy: Faculty Publications

This study was designed to produce a new parent-report measure, the Diagnostic Receptive Expressive Assessment of Mandarin-Infant Toddler Assessment of Communication and Language (DREAM-IT) in order to provide norms for the developmental skills of children aged 0–36 months in four areas: expressive language, receptive language, cognitive play and social skills.

In The Air 2023, Students Of Risd, Risd Archives

All Student Newspapers

In the Air was a community-based photography and poetry zine that was designed to reflect student experiences and build community across majors on campus. The first and only issue is divided into four chapters that contain creative writing and student artwork: To Be in Love, School(ed), Observations, and Life.

Beyond Instrumentalism: Exploring The Affordance Construal Of Technology In Heidegger, Federico Jose Lagdameo

Philosophy Department Faculty Publications

Current philosophies of technology derived from and inspired by Heidegger’s—exemplified by Postphenomenology and Critical Constructivism—have favored a focus on technological design issues; succumbing consequently; to an instrumental view of technology. This favored focus had contributed to an obliviousness to technology’s inherent dangers which are precisely immune from technological design modifications. Exploring the construal of technology as affordances; this paper offers a contrasting reading of Heidegger’s technology as embedded and embodied dispositions for specific possibilities for being and doing. Consequently; it argues for a more viable alternative to the often-implicit instrumentalist and artefactual view of technologies that frequently undergird prevalent empirical …

Zero Textbook Cost Syllabus For Phi 1700 (Global Ethics), Yingshihan Zhu

Open Educational Resources

Knowing how to think and act ethically is essential for living as moral agents. The aim of this course is to introduce you to major ethical theories, both in the West and the East, as well as moral issues that affect people globally. After completing this course, you should be able to: 

• Understand a variety of moral theories
• Identify and articulate a number of moral wrongs in everyday life
• Evaluate ways to respond to moral wrongs
• Present your thoughts verbally and textually in a logical manner
• Predict and handle potential objections to your view

Teaching Philosophy As A Way Of Life With Respect To Our Being, Jeremy Barris

Humanities Faculty Research

What distinguishes philosophy is its attention to reality and sense as such, or what is traditionally called being and essence. As a result, philosophy as a way of life is, most fundamentally, not directly a matter of doing one kind of thing rather than another outside the classroom but instead of how we live with respect to our being. Enacting our being in one way rather than another inflects whatever it is we do, wherever we do it, even if none of the content of what we then do involves the content of philosophy. Consequently, if we do nothing in …

Review Of Dao Companion To Xuanxue (Neo-Daoism), Chai, David, Ed, Steven Burik

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The Dao Companion to Xuanxue (Neo-Daoism), edited by David Chai, is a wideranging volume. Covering both historical backgrounds and philosophical intricacies of the xuanxue 玄學 period in Chinese intellectual history, this volume provides the reader with a well-rounded understanding of one of the most fertile “schools” of Chinese thought, known as the xuanxue or Neo-Daoism. Chai has done an admirable job of bringing together a wide variety of scholars well-versed in one or more aspects of this important period in Chinese philosophy, and the volume even branches out into the historical periods before and after, to provide us with an …

The Categories Argument For The Real Distinction Between Being And Essence: Avicenna, Aquinas, And Their Greek Sources, Nathaniel Taylor

Dissertations (1934 -)

There is a distinctively Avicennian way of understanding the categories to be found in the works of Thomas Aquinas that vindicates Aquinas’s early argument for the distinction between being and essence. Two of the most important and influential Aquinas scholars in the twentieth century recognized the roots of this Avicennian way in Aquinas, but neither Etienne Gilson and Cornelio Fabro made good on their insights. In this dissertation, I trace this Avicennian way through its sources in the Greek commentators and demonstrate how it provides the necessary insight into the structure and nature of the categories that render Aquinas’s Genus …

Discovering Dune: Essays On Frank Herbert’S Epic Saga., Edited By Dominic J. Nardi And N. Trevor Brierly, G. Connor Salter

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

G. Connor Salter reviews Discovering Dune: Essays on Frank Herbert’s Epic Saga, edited by Dominic J. Nardi and N. Trevor Brierly, considering its new contributions to studies of Frank Herbert's work. Essays included fit into four categories (Politics and Power, History and Religion, Biology and Ecology, and Philosophy, Choice and Ethics) and range from Herbert's use of ecology in Dune to how game theory may help explain certain characters' apparent ability to see the future. Discovering Dune also includes an appendix which contains the only up-to-date bibliography of Herbert's work (primary and secondary sources).

Tolkien, Enchantment, And Loss: Steps On The Developmental Journey By John Rosegrant, Timothy K. Lenz

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

No abstract provided.

V.1 Spring 2023, Center For Arts & Language, Students Of Risd, Risd Archives

All Student Newspapers

v.1 is a publishing platform for the ongoing work, ideas, discussions, debates, and aspirations of students at the Rhode Island School of Design. The Spring 2023 issue contains articles on storytelling, mapmaking, the instagram account @tihngs, a reception at the RISD Museum for artist Adam Silverman, the Battambang Market, technological transcendence, fairy tales and Kara Walker, artistic processes of grad students, David Hammons' piece Rock Head, developments in higher education, a platform used by a THAD class, and other student creative writing.

Moral Injury To Inform Analysis Of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Amanda Julia Manea

Senior Theses

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition that almost one out of ten veterans struggle with. Although the National Center for PTSD has made extensive progress in characterizing and developing new treatments for PTSD, most veterans still experience symptoms of PTSD following treatment. Novel avenues of investigation, such as developing algorithms to review electronic health record (EHR) data and better understanding moral injury, are being pursued to address the gap that still exists when it comes to treating veterans. Moral injury is the individual evaluation of exposure to a potentially morally injurious event (PMIE) and can lead to …

Primitive Mythology (The Masks Of God, Volume 1) By Joseph Campbell, Phillip Fitzsimmons

Faculty Articles & Research

Book review of Primitive Mythology (The Masks of God, Volume 1) by Joseph Campbell, reviewed by Phillip Fitzsimmons.

Revisiting Tocqueville's American Woman, Christine Dunn Henderson

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This paper revisits Tocqueville’s famous portrait of the American female, which begins with assertions of her equality to males but ends with her self-cloistering in the domestic sphere. Taking a cue from Tocqueville’s extended sketch of the “faded” pioneer wife in “A Fortnight in the Wilderness” and drawing connections to Tocqueville’s criticisms of the division of industrial labor, I argue that the American girl’s ostensibly free choice to remove herself from public life is not an act of freedom. Rather, it is a manifestation of a particular type of unfreedom that reveals underappreciated connections between the two great dangers about …

Karl Marx On Human Flourishing And Proletarian Ethics, Sam Badger

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation will show that Marx’s philosophy contains a notion of human “second nature” centered on the activity of labor with a corresponding class-centered theory of flourishing and emancipation. This notion shares important similarities with that of Aristotle but also differs in significant ways. Second nature for Marx is created and habituated through education and social labor. Moreover, human nature is molded into different forms as history progresses and modes and means of production change. In a class society everyone becomes is alienated from their nature in a way that inhibits their flourishing. This contrasts with an emancipated society, where …

‘A Vitious Way Of Observing’: A New History Of The Personal Equation, Matthew D. Lund

College of Humanities and Social Sciences Departmental Research

David Kinnebrook is only known today as the assistant to the Astronomer Royal dismissed for marking stellar transits too slowly. Kinnebrook’s firing is commonly listed as the impetus for the personal equation as well as empirical psychology. Historians drawing their accounts from Nevil Maskelyne’s remarks on the dismissal, view Kinnebrook as a slightly misused, though mute, party in the affair. Kinnebrook’s letters, which resurfaced in 1985, present his side of the story. While scholars have discussed some aspects of the letters, they have not addressed Kinnebrook’s account of a months-long dispute with Maskelyne concerning observational disagreements. Kinnebrook’s letters provide an …

Martha C. Nussbaum, Justice For Animals: Our Collective Responsibility, Terence C. Burnham

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

A review of Martha Nussbaum's Justice for Animals.

The Ontological Grounds Of Reason: Psychologism, Logicism, And Hermeneutic Phenomenology, Stanford L. Howdyshell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The following dissertation explains the psychologism debate as it played out in the 19thand early 20th Centuries and then shows how Martin Heidegger radicalized the debate by undermining its key themes and assumptions. First, I explain each side of the psychologism debate, starting with the psychologicists. I explore the philosophies of Jakob Friedrich Fries and John Stuart Mill in order to encapsulate the full spectrum of psychologism in the 19th Century, from Neo-Kantian to British Empiricist. The investigation will show a set of common themes within psychologism, such as the grounding of logic in the constitution of the human subject, …

Overcoming Climate Breakdown Denial And Neglect Through The Aesthetics Of Nature, Marta Tafalla

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Modern industrial societies mostly respond to the threat of climate breakdown with denial and neglect. In this paper, I argue that one of the causes of this is a superficial view of nature, including a shallow conception of natural beauty, and propose a deep aesthetic appreciation consisting of embodied participation, multisensorial perception, naturalist knowledge, and admiration without dominion. This appreciation focuses on following animal stories within the environment, an approach that will reveal how nature is not merely scenery but a network of interrelated stories that weaves the web of life and can be seriously damaged by climate chaos.

Necessary Existent Theology, Rosabel Ansari, Billy Dunaway, Jon Mcginnis

Philosophy Faculty Works

A meta-theology makes claims about the structure of theological claims: it identifies a single, fundamental claim about God, and shows how other theological claims are derivable from the fundamental claim. In his book Depicting Deity and other articles, Jon Kvanvig has identified three distinct meta-theologies: Creator Theology, Perfect Being Theology, and Worship-worthiness Theology. In this article, we argue that the medieval Islamic philosopher Avicenna's views about God have the structure of a meta-theology, and that it is distinct from the three projects Kvanvig identifies. This view is Necessary Existent Theology.

Book Discussion - Violence And Peace In Sacred Texts: Interreligious Perspectives, Maria Power, Helen Paynter

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

Review Of Against War: Building A Culture Of Peace, William J. Collinge

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.