Philosophy Commons^™

Middle Savannah River: An A/R/Tographic Ecopedagogical Ethnography Experimenting With Rhizomatic Perspectives, Lisa Augustine-Chizmar

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This research is an experiment in perspective. Using the four commonplaces (Schwab, 1978), I practiced letting the Savannah River teach me what there is to know about the water, the land, the people, and the other entities that depend on ki through artistic, ethnographic, and ecopedagogical lenses. The ethnographic findings describe the social actors that depend on ki and give a voice to the River. The a/r/tographic findings display the River on a canvas map through two hundred years using paint, clay, photography, video, abstract acrylics, and fabric. Together, these methods contribute to a unique ecopedagogical journey. This word cloud …

Manifesting Magic: Occultism And Feminism In The Art Of Leonora Carrington And Remedios Varo, Margaret Dirschl

MA Theses

The artworks of Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo are replete with
/="/">symbolism and evocations of the occult, formulating bodies of work that are charged with magic and mysticism. When studied within the context of their male contemporaries of the Surrealist group, it becomes apparent that this use of the occult operates as a compelling and historically based feminist strategy. Immediately stemming from the occult revival of the previous century and the issues for females presented by Surrealism, the foundations of this idea originate much earlier in the pagan traditions of antiquity and the witch hunts of the 15th through …

Collecting An Empire: Stolen Heritage Of Indigenous Australians, Kyla Moore

MA Theses

Exploring the importance of the protection and preservation of Australian Aboriginal
cultural heritage, this thesis seeks to examine a need for change in the way
governments approach cultural heritage repatriation from a legal and ethical
perspective. By analyzing binding and non-binding laws of the United Kingdom and
Australia, this paper suggests the need for the improvement of legal frameworks and legislation currently in place regarding cultural heritage repatriation. It also identifies challenges Indigenous communities face in the quest to reclaim control over their cultural heritage, history, and identity. Examining contrasting case studies of repatriation, the impact legislation has on the …

Logic As Applied Mathematics — With Particular Application To The Notion Of Logical Form, Graham Priest

Publications and Research

The word ‘logic’ has many senses. Here we will understand it as meaning an account of what follows from what and why. With contemporary methodology, logic in this sense – though it may not always have been thought of in this way – is a branch of applied mathematics. This has various implications for how one understands a number of issues concerning validity. In this paper I will explain this perspective of logic, and explore some of its consequences with respect to the notion of logical form.

Arendt And Christianity: On Love And The World, Logan Andrew Daly

West Chester University Master’s Theses

Hannah Arendt criticized the Christian faith for what she saw as an inherent wordlessness or ascetic attitude. She believed this focus on the afterlife was an afront to her political philosophy and kept people from participating in the public sphere. This thesis is a selective exploration of Arendt’s criticisms against the Christian faith and aims to show that there is a way of reconciling the respective belief systems, allowing an Arendtian to benefit from Christian ideas and a Christian to improve themselves with the assistance of Arendtian concepts. The project is split into two chapters. Each chapter focuses on a …

Plurality And Epistemic Injustice: A Neo-Arendtian Reading Of Miranda Fricker's Epistemic Injustice, David Casciola

West Chester University Master’s Theses

In this thesis I bring the philosophies of Hannah Arendt and Miranda Fricker into conversation. Specifically, I argue that through Fricker’s concept of epistemic injustice (EI) we are able to see more clearly the importance of testimony—lexis as an aspect of Action for Arendt—in Arendt’s socio-political framework. Arendt divides the world into the Private, Social, and Public as separate realms of human activity (Labor, Work, and Action respectively); it is in the Public where we are able to appear and express our plurality. According to Arendt this is the only space where equality must be ensured. However, in using …

The Assemblage Of The Rings: Reading Lord Of The Rings Through The Philosophy Of Gilles Deleuze And Félix Guattari, Kieran Leeds

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is a monument to literary achievement; a world built so completely that other literature, both canonical and not, attempts in vain to match its grandeur. Likewise, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's body of philosophy is conspicuous not only for its thematic variation across books but also the profundity of its concepts. Given this, it is shocking then that the critical apparatuses of Deleuze and Guattari have not been used to explore Tolkien's novels, given the innate symmetry between the two bodies of work. While ample research has been carried out regarding each separately, there …

The Imperative Of Student Integration In Faculty Research Projects: A Pedagogical Case Study In Digital History, Roger L. Martinez-Davila, Fernando Feliu-Moggi, Sean Wybrant, Ian Torres, Spencer Miles

Quidditas

Traditional pedagogical models, at times, are inadequate for equipping students with real-world skills. A shift towards integrating students into faculty-led research is essential, as demonstrated by the Coronado Muster Roll project. In this project, students use virtual reality technologies to create immersive experiences that explore the complex relationships between Spanish and Indigenous communities during Francisco Vázquez de Coronado’s 1540 expedition. A specific assignment within the course tasks students with developing digital narratives. The muster roll itself is revealed to be more than just a list; it serves as a snapshot capturing the depth and complexities often lost in grand narratives. …

Front Matter

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

History And Directing Shakespeare, James H. Forse

Quidditas

In years past I have been asked, “where did you get that idea?”—from those who perused something I wrote concerning the history of Shakespearean theatre, and from those who saw Shakespearean plays I directed for my local community theatre. Sometimes the question was a compliment. Yet the question, I think, points to a sort of symbiosis that academic research and the practical dictates of directing a play can offer to anyone. For it’s truly hard for me to tell whether my research into theatre history has come to affect how I directed Shakespeare, or whether directing Shakespeare’s plays in a …

Poverty And Critical Theory, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This chapter surveys the various critical theory approaches from Marx to the present in the study of poverty and underdevelopment in relationship to capitalism, democracy, and intersectionality.

The Gay Science: Power On The Body, Population, And Psyche, Nicola Augustyn

CMC Senior Theses

Michel Foucault is a philosopher of power who left behind a legacy of ideas that continue to inspire scholars today. His conceptualization of power is not limited to the figures of kings, monarchs, or the sovereign state. Rather, he regards power as a productive force that shapes subjectivity, manufactures knowledge, and engenders the truth in a particular historical context. In this thesis, I aim to provide a comprehensive account of Foucault’s analysis of power, starting with his refutation of the “repressive hypothesis” that challenges the predominant view of centralized top-down power. Then, I present Foucault’s proposal for redefining power as …

เจตจำนงเสรีในสำนักมาธยมิกะ, จิรายุ สหเวชชภัณฑ์

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

ในปรัชญาพุทธมีหลักการที่เมื่อนำมาพิจารณาร่วมกันแล้วมีความขัดแย้งกันคือหลักการเรื่องอนัตตาและกรรม ความขัดแย้งของหลักการทั้งสองนี้อยู่ตรงที่หลักการเรื่องอนัตตาไม่ยอมรับอัตตาที่เป็นเจ้าของของการกระทำ แต่ในทางกลับกัน หลักการเรื่องกรรมได้เสนอว่ากรรมที่ได้กระทำไปแล้วย่อมมีผลตามมาเสมอโดยกรรมดังกล่าวนี้ย่อมส่งผลแก่ผู้ที่ได้กระทำกรรมนั้นเองซึ่งมีนัยยะถึงอัตตาที่เป็นเจ้าของการกระทำนั้น วิทยานิพนธ์นี้เป็นการวิเคราะห์แนวคิดของนาคารชุนผู้ก่อตั้งสำนักปรัชญามาธยมิกะ เพื่อหาคำตอบว่าในระบบปรัชญาดังกล่าวนี้มีองค์ประกอบที่สามารถพัฒนาเป็นแนวคิดเรื่องเจตจำนงเสรีได้หรือไม่ โดยมีเป้าประสงค์เพื่อนำแนวคิดเรื่องเจตจำนงเสรีมาช่วยในการอธิบายถึงความไม่เข้ากันของหลักการอนัตตาและกรรมที่ขัดแย้งกันในเรื่องอัตตาของมนุษย์ วิทยานิพนธ์เล่มนี้เสนอว่าในปรัชญามัธยมกะมีองค์ประกอบเรื่องเจตจำนงเสรีมากมาย ทั้งเรื่องเจตนา ผู้กระทำ ความเป็นนิยัตินิยม เจตนานั้นมีอำนาจในการสร้างผลและมีนัยยะของการเลือกอยู่ อีกทั้งแนวคิดเรื่องผู้กระทำนั้นยังสามารถเป็นเจ้าของการกระทำของตนเองได้โดยไม่ต้องใช้แนวคิดเรื่องอัตตามาประกอบ เนื่องจากทั้งสองอย่างนั้นอิงอาศัยกัน ทั้งหมดสามารถนำมาสร้างเป็นหลักการเรื่องเจตจำนงเสรีแบบเข้ากันได้กับนิยัตินิยม(compatibilism) อีกทั้งแนวคิดเรื่องเจตจำนงเสรีดังกล่าวยังสามารถช่วยอธิบายและเติมเต็มส่วนที่ไม่เข้ากันระหว่างอนัตตาและกรรมได้บนฐานของความเป็นเจ้าของการกระทำที่ไม่อ้างอิงถึงอัตตา

V.1 Winter 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 Winter 2023 issue has a theme of text, images, and communication. It contains written pieces that experiment with text and language, student visual art, and other work.

Understanding Castration Anxiety Through Contemporary Art And Feminism, Ember J. Nevins

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Ignorance And Moral Responsibility: A Novel Response To The Skeptical Argument From Ignorance And Applications For Responsibility For Implicit Biases, Chad L. Hunter

Wayne State University Dissertations

In this dissertation, I offer a novel solution to a contemporary skeptical argument about moral responsibility stemming from actions from ignorance. The skeptics argue that actions are only blameworthy when they are akratic or result from an akratic act. This condition, the skeptics argue, leads to skepticism about moral responsibility. This is because people rarely conceptualize their action as wrong; they are ignorant of some decisive reason not to do that act. Thus, in order to be blameworthy for the wrong act, the person must be blameworthy for the ignorance. But in order to be blameworthy for the ignorance, the …

Plato's Critique Of Scientific Management In Charmides, Kenneth Knies

Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

I discover resources in Plato’s Charmides for a critique of management as a form of knowledge. After interpreting in a practical register Critias’ idea of a science that would comprehend all sciences without understanding any of their objects (166c – 175a), I argue that the paradoxes with which Socrates confronts this idea can be overcome. With reference to F.W. Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management, I show how this overcoming depends upon transforming productive activity so that it no longer requires the knowledge of products that characterizes techne. As Socrates foresaw, a science that has all ways of working as …

The Gratitude Trap, Sean Chung

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This paper explores the concept of gratitude and the many physical and psychological benefits. However, these benefits have caused us to overlook a trap that is associated with gratitude. Specifically, the paper focuses on two types of gratitude: propositional gratitude, which involves feeling grateful towards a generalized group or concept, and targeted gratitude, which is directed towards specific individuals or entities. The paper argues that there is a trap associated with both types of gratitude and can be invoked maliciously. This paper examines several examples of the trap and how it has been used maliciously in the past as well …

What Could Jesus Do?, Harriet Baber

Philosophy: Faculty Scholarship

According to many orthodox Christian theologies Jesus is not merely sinless but impeccable: he not only did not sin but could not. This is puzzling because one can only sin by doing something else and, prima face, Jesus can do actions that you or I could do by which we would sin. I suggest that appearances to the contrary, Jesus cannot do a variety of actions that a merely human duplicate could do. His doing sinful actions is compossible with a range of empirical facts about his physical abilities and circumstances of the sort we ordinarily take into account in …

Connatural Knowledge Of The Natural Law, Turner C. Nevitt

Philosophy: Faculty Scholarship

This paper traces the basic contours of Aquinas’s account of connatural knowledge in order to see what role (if any) connaturality might play in our knowledge of the precepts of the natural law. It engages a dispute between Maritain and Doolan on this topic. After considering what Aquinas means by “connaturality” in general the paper examines the main elements of his view of knowledge by connaturality in particular. I argue that the true doctrine of Aquinas probably lies between Maritain and Doolan’s opposed interpretations. Although it is not the only way of doing so, connaturality or inclination would still seem …

On Respect For Robots, Daniel Tigard

Philosophy: Faculty Scholarship

We spend a lot of time with robotic and artificially intelligent (AI) technologies today. At the same time, it appears that we are growing more accustomed to interacting with AI and robots as if they were fellow human beings. Such trends have aptly brought about increasing ethical discussions concerning how we should treat technological devices. Do we owe robots some degree of respect, and how could respecting robots be justified? With this article, I put forward a new way of answering these questions. I invoke a revisionist account of Kant’s ethics that amends the usual priority of dignity before respect …

Shaping Knowledge With Distortions: Museums As Oppressive Spaces And Hermeneutical Injustice, Fangzhangyi Chen

CMC Senior Theses

Museums are places where people come to make sense of their and others’ social experiences related to social identities. However, what if museums present a distorted picture containing prejudicial stereotypes that harm socially marginalized groups? In this thesis, I argue that museums are oppressive spaces that reinforce hermeneutical injustice as distorted hermeneutical resources shaped by the socially powerful to sustain the asymmetrical social dynamics at large. The primary objective of the thesis is to contribute to the existing literature of museums being oppressive spaces by offering a novel explanation utilizing Miranda Fricker’s framework of hermeneutical injustice. Hermeneutical injustice arises when …

(2023) Alexander Von Humboldt: Explorer, Naturalist, And Environmental Pioneer (2019) By Danica Novgorodoff, Peter Shea

Collected Papers of Peter Shea

As a young boy, Alexander Von Humboldt came up with divergent questions about the birds and mountains and animals he saw, and brought all those questions together under two big questions that stayed important for him over a long life: “How are these things different?” and “How are they nevertheless connected?” As the reader watches Humboldt looking at a hawk and a mouse, volcanoes and farmland, palm trees and pine trees, Europe and Ecuador, Europeans and Indigenous people, one comes to expect what he will say: “They are different, and yet they are connected.” This idea is much bigger than …

Pluralistic Ethical Personalism, Qifan Hu

Honors Theses

In the thesis, I sketch out a general outline for a pluralistic, personalist theory of ethics. This theory intends to capture the phenomenon that our life experience is saturated with ethical and other kinds of values; and it also emphasizes the idea that each ethical agent, or human being, has a unique ethical project that is understandable in light of various ethical values.

Mechanisms ‘All The Way Down’?, Ioan Muntean

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Book review: Mechanistic Explanations in Physics and Beyond, Brigitte Falkenburg and Gregor Schiemann, editors, European Studies in Philosophy of Science, Vol. 11, Springer International Publishing, Cham 2019, pp.220

Symbolic Logic, Tony Roy

Books

Textbook for symbolic logic, beginning at a level appropriate for beginning students, continuing through Godel's completeness and incompleteness theorems. The text naturally divides into two volumes, the first for reasoning in logic, the second for reasoning about it.

The first volume includes parts I and II of the text. Part I introduces the complete classical predicate calculus with equality, including both axiomatic and natural derivation systems. Part II transitions to methods for reasoning about logic, including direct reasoning from definitions and mathematical induction.

The second volume includes parts III and IV of the text. Part III develops basic results in …

From Building To Dwelling: Unfolding Infinity Through Bioregional Fulfillment, Sanjana Bhatnagar

Pitzer Senior Theses

The causes of anthropogenic climate change touch every feature of our modern-day existences. Approaches to sustainability tend to focus on material actions, but unsustainable practices are guided by an ontological orientation of individuality and human exceptionalism. This thesis provides an alternate account of being that decenters individuality through weaving the metaphysics of Fazang of the Huayan School of Mahayana Buddhism with the metaphysics of Martin Heidegger. To encompass the whole of the relational network that constitutes and conditionally defines our existence, I expand Heidegger’s account of locales as relational sites which are put forth solely by humans to an account …

Spinoza's Cosmopsychism: The Multifaceted Mind Of Nature, Audrey N. Perryman

Honors Undergraduate Theses

In my thesis, I will argue that while at first glance Spinoza's system seems to conflict with itself and provide an explanation of the mind that can be more confusing than helpful, its aspect of panpsychism provides a sort of lifeline for understanding. Not only does Spinoza's cosmopsychism make his system cohesive, but it can also be independently motivated by ideas that are compatible with the more contemporary intuitions in philosophy of mind. I will explore the specific nature of this universal mentality, how Spinoza's particular genre of panpsychism relates to other theories of panpsychism, and how his conception of …

The Ethical Basis For Student-To-Student Training In Dentistry, Larry E. Jenson Dds, Ma, Joel M. White Dds, Ms

Journal of the American College of Dentists

This article will focus on the most ethically contentious student-to student training practice: local anesthesia administration. We will examine the factors that contribute to a broader understanding of the ethical issues involved and introduce a framework that will help to clarify these issues. We have identified six stakeholders in this issue: the student-as-patient, the student-as-student, the university, the faculty, the general public and the profession.

Impact Of Minority Incarceration On The Family Unit, Huey S. Ratcliff

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The economic impact of incarceration on minority family units has both secondary and third-order effects on the minority family unit when a family member is incarcerated, which is exacerbated when the incarcerated family member was both the primary breadwinner and a parent. The purpose of this study was to identify the social and economic effects incarceration has on minority families. The study addressed how minority families adjust to changes in organic composition and how the minority family copes with increased debt and loss of earning potential. Further, the study sought to answer how minority families overcome economic hardship when the …