Philosophy Commons^™

Woman, Motherhood, And Home: Grappling With Gendered Dwelling, Pamela Joy M. Capistrano

Philosophy Department Faculty Publications

Though ostensibly gender neutral, the word “home” carries with it the baggage of gender, particularly womanhood and motherhood. In English, for instance, “homemaking” is synonymous with “housewifery;” in Filipino, the mother is described as ilaw ng tahanan (“light of the home”). Housing, as well, has a similar neutral connotation; yet, when we consider the impact of urban housing crises, women are disproportionately affected. In this paper, I want to grapple with the broader implications of the gendered baggage of the idea of “home,” its impact on individuals, on how we conceive of houses, homes, and dwellings, and ultimately its impact …

Issue Iii: Sátya, Devin Hecht, Sofia Farinas, Sherry Li, Breeze Hong, Abby Murphy, Alex Mcintosh, Caitlyn Brabo

Sátya

For the fall 2024 edition of Sátya, we have chosen seven submissions from students across the Five Colleges whose writing we felt best embodied the aims of our journal—to focus on interdisciplinary works which push the boundaries of philosophy. Not only did these students produce impressive logical arguments and concise reconstructions, but each and every paper that we chose was distinguished in its accomplishment of producing work that is both original and creative in its aims. Our hope is to create a space for innovative work to be upheld; to create a dialogue that interrogates commonly held conceptions of …

Underrecognized Classics In Philosophy: Expanding The Depauw Philosophy Curriculum, Ian Smith, Jeremy Anderson, Rich Cameron, Erik Wielenberg, Jen Everett

Annual Student Research Poster Session

The Philosophy Department spent the summer developing a reading list for a future Phil. 200 course that would focus on classics not currently represented in the curriculum. One way we framed our goal was through the question, “what works should students have read by the time they reach their 300 and 400 level philosophy courses?” To this end, a work’s potential to broaden the scope of how I—as a current undergraduate philosophy major—understand my discipline, provided the department with an evaluative perspective to complement that of the faculty.

Urban Political Ecology And Informal City: Using The Capabilities Approach In Co-Designing With Slum Communities, Patrick Vance S. Nogoy

Philosophy Department Faculty Publications

Slum communities which compose an informal city offer a serious challenge to urban metabolism approaches that promise to be inclusive in confronting environmental injustice. In particular, urban political ecology (UPE) frameworks critically examine power structures and relational dynamics in the environment where objectionable injustices are identified and corrected. However, Holifield (2009) finds UPE limiting as it excludes marginalized communities and other important factors. The main reason Holifield highlights is the dominance of Marxist UPE frameworks that interpret environmental injustices narrowly as results of uneven social power relations and dynamics driven primarily by neo-liberal capitalist behaviors, institutions, and activities. Alternatively, he …

Phi 172 Contemporary Moral Issues, Naomi Zack Phd

Open Educational Resources

An ethical situation or an ethical aspect to something involves human harm or well-being or life or death. Human well-being and life are universally considered important and valuable. This course will present classical ethics writings in Philosophy, contemporary moral/ethical topics, and tools for reading, thinking, speaking, and writing about ethics. In order to apply ethics to current issues, we need to know what Philosophy has contributed to ethical/moral thinking. This course develops that knowledge. Included are: philosophical moral systems of virtue ethics, deontology, utilitarianism and existentialism. Contemporary issues include animal rights, the life of the mind in college, upward social …

The Power A Generation Holds: A Study On Students Generating Change In American Social Movements, Caroline E. Koziol

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Social activism ebbs and flows throughout American history. In the contemporary period, high visual coverage of activism has contributed to frustrations over the apparent decrease in change despite perceptions of increased participation. Young activists in the classroom ask questions to learn from their predecessors. This paper focuses on answering, “How can students create sustained change through social activism?” The present work recenters activism in the role of students and higher education institutions, noting their potential for creating change through a formula for future activists to engage with. The proposed formula targets methods and theories to bolster success towards the cause …

A Dialetical Materialist Reading Of Language And Ideology In The Metamorphosis, Sidhanth Sethi

Harriet L Wilkes Honors College Theses

In this paper I use a dialectical materialist conception of ideology to analyze how it functions through language in Franz Kafka’s story The Metamorphosis. Beginning with Hegel’s account of consciousness as constituted through contradiction and its material reorientation in Marx and Engels, this project situates ideology within the social relations that shape human life. I then employ Evald Ilyenkov’s conception of material generation and Valentin Volosinov’s semiotic theory, arguing that signs constitute the material medium through which ideological meaning is produced and through which consciousness learns to misrecognize its own conditions. Using this framework, I interpret Gregor Samsa’s transformation as …

Cephalopod Consciousness: Asking The Right Questions, Gordon Burghardt

Animal Sentience

Jennifer Mather has provided a comprehensive and fascinating overview of the various cognitive accomplishments of cephalopods and their sensory, behavioral, and neurophysiological attributes. The advances in our understanding of a clade that has been separated from vertebrate evolution by well over half a billion years is a testament to advances in both methodology and the questions we now feel free to address. Mather embeds her review in the issue of consciousness, which is certainly a perennial issue in mental evolution, going back to Romanes and earlier. I argue that the term “consciousness” has such a checkered history and is used …

The Reality Of Reason: Fiction, Method, And Modernity In The Metaphysics Of Francisco Suárez, William Martin Nee Cox

Theses and Dissertations from DePaul University

In the Metaphysical Disputations (1597), Francisco Suárez asserts that the human intellect, because it is imperfect, must make use of determinate mental fictions in order to know “real being” (ens reale). In this dissertation, I reconstruct why and how this should be the case. I show that the supreme imperfection of our intellect implies our embodiment, which in turn implies our inability to know any being entirely as it is in itself. To compensate for this inability, we humans must make use of both “beings of reason” (entia rationis) and “nonbeings of reason” (non entia rationis). In the process of …

Towards A Non-Alienated Philosophical Practice? A Critical Review Essay On The Latinx Philosophy Reader, Grant J. Silva

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Improving Universities Through The Use Of Ai & Transformative Technology: A Case Study Analysis At The University Of South Carolina, Cameron A. Caulk

Senior Theses

This thesis aims to give university leaders a practical guide to implementing AI, using lessons learned from the University of South Carolina’s experience as a case study. The project started with a review of literature and industry practices for the Finance & Administration division, which led to key deliverables like AI usage guidelines, DoIT’s position paper on AI systems, and the ParkUSC parking app. One ongoing project, Project Shuttlecock, even sets the stage for future AI initiatives at the university.

AI holds immense promise, but universities often hesitate due to concerns about ethics, costs, and the learning curve for staff …

V.1 Fall 2025, 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 Fall 2025 issue contains articles on the intersection of the natural world and human experience, technology, identity, immigration, activism, divestment, institutional history, political resistance, decolonization, and the digital vs. physical realms. The issue contains experimental poetry, visual essays, and reflections on the "nature of publication".

Review Of Victor Fan, “Cinema Illuminating Reality: Media Philosophy Through Buddhism”, Teng-Kuan Ng

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This is a book review of Victor Fan, Cinema Illuminating Reality: Media Philosophy through Buddhism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2022)

Property Rights In The Face Of Historic Injustice, Bas Van Der Vossen, Fabian Wendt

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

It seems natural to adopt a historical approach when it comes to property titles: When property titles have a clean history, they are to be respected as a matter of justice; when they do not have a clean history, for example, in cases of prior theft, they must be returned to the original owners or their descendants. But the historical approach has serious drawbacks. This paper presents an alternative. Starting from the idea that property rights must be stable, we offer an account of why historic injustices sometimes do, but sometimes do not, undermine current titles. This account offers a …

Public Safety Injuries: Treatment And Organizational Support Variations Experienced By Injured Employees, Patrick S. Daugherty Jr.

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Public safety employees work in an environment characterized by a greater risk of injury than the workplaces of employees engaged in other professions. The deterioration of trust in public safety workers has increased both the violence against them and their risk of injury, negatively affecting their retention and recruitment efforts. The effect is exhausted and overworked employees who answer an increasing call volume with less resources, resulting in greater stress and frustration. Frustration can be expressed with negativity and isolation toward accommodated employees while they attempt to recover from their injuries. This phenomenon raises the question of “What treatment variations …

Review Of: Christianity And Human Rights Reconsidered, John Ashworth

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

Review Of: The Life And Thought Of H. Odera Oruka: Pursuing Justice In Africa, Robert Press

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

A Christian Case Against Capitalism, James K.A. Smith

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

Early in his new book, CENTURY columnist Phil Christman recounts a formative, almost mystical episode from a college Bible study. Amped on adolescent anxiety and tormented by the sort of shame in which Christian fundamentalism sadistically specializes, a young Phil gathers with some classmates to read the Sermon on the Mount. This, his younger self muses, is not something a guy with a girlfriend does on a Saturday afternoon. “I am a loser,” he realizes. “We are the losers.”

Disaster Resilience And Normalization: Facing Facts, Naomi Zack Phd

Publications and Research

Disaster resilience requires acknowledgment and preparation to be normalized or integrated into normal life. But denial without preparation normalizes disaster by  leaving it out of normal life. In Disaster Resilience and Normalization: Facing Facts, Naomi Zack explores the normative and factual dimensions of a Climate Change Paradigm, through a global scope. Apart from the normative issues of who is responsible and who should pay for mitigation, the facts of Rising Average Earth Temperatures and more Intense and Frequent Disasters must still be faced.

But facing those facts has always been voluntary for powerful signatories to the 2015 Paris Climate …

Steiner And Jung On Esoteric Knowledge, Katherine T. Ziemke Mst, Jd, Phd Candidate

Journal of Conscious Evolution

For centuries, humanity has been accumulating complex knowledge, systematically building increasingly intricate mathematical and scientific models by accruing predictable circumstances or facts, often designated as theories or laws. This essay proposes that there is a hidden well-spring of ideas or knowledge beyond the methodical accumulation of such mathematical and scientific knowledge, from whence the source that inspired the basis of this knowledge might have originated. Carl Gustav Jung and Rudolf Steiner believe there is an abundance of such knowledge that lies hidden in plain sight and available for a vast expansion of human awareness. In this essay, I take a …

“Pride And Despair”: Denethor’S Struggles Against His Self-Woven Death, Ali Mirzabayati

Journal of Tolkien Research

This paper examines Denethor, Steward of Gondor, as a central figure illustrating the interplay of pride, fear, and mortality in The Lord of the Rings. It analyzes how his Númenórean heritage, grief over the loss of his sons, and obsession with control shape his decisions, leading to passivity, mistrust, and self-destruction. Drawing on Northern literary traditions, including the Danes’ prayers to the Gastbona in Beowulf and Boethian reflections on pride and despair, the study situates Denethor’s downfall within a broader cultural and philosophical context. By exploring how his fear of death undermines judgment and heroic potential, the paper highlights …

Harnessing Ai And Iot For Advancing Sustainable Development Methods, Najm A. Aleessawi, Soud Elmaskali

Journal of the Association of Arab Universities for Research in Higher Education مجلة اتحاد الجامعات العربية للبحوث في التعليم العالي

The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) offer transformative potential for advancing sustainable development, aligning with the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This study conducts a systematic literature review (SLR) of 72 peer-reviewed studies (2019–2025) to explore innovative models, methods, and applications of AI-IoT in promoting sustainability. Grounded in systems theory, socio-technical systems, and sustainability science, the findings highlight prevalent models, such as smart cities and precision agriculture, as well as advanced methods like machine learning and edge AI, with applications across energy, agriculture, healthcare, transportation, and water management. Key outcomes include 15–25% …

Philosophical Purification As Liberation And Transformation, Lachanda C. Davis

Dissertations

This study utilizes Plato’s conception of purification as a diagnostic tool to examine contemporary issues of police brutality and political violence. Within this context, I aim to treat the multiple tensions that arise with the question of living a good life. What does it mean to live and what does it mean to live a good life within constraints that magnify fear, anxiety, and despair? I argue that philosophical purification involves ‘aporia’ (perplexity; difficulty; confusion; loss; or puzzlement) in both a literal and generative sense. Moreover, the multiple aporias that arise cannot be reconciled by merely performing a religious rite …

The Social Aesthetics Of Recognition, Italo Alves

Dissertations

The history of social philosophy is a history of suspicion toward the aesthetic (1). However, since we apprehend social reality fundamentally through its aesthetic appearances, an account is needed of how “the aesthetic” must enter the social-philosophical discourse, particularly in reconstructive models of social critique. I call this account “social aesthetics.” Social aesthetics illuminates how certain social experiences generate normative claims even in the lack of discursive articulation. (2) I argue that the philosophy of recognition, concerned with this relationship between social experience and normative claim-making, contains an unacknowledged aesthetic dimension, which I uncover through a critical reading of Axel …

The Quest For Liberation: Philosophy And The Making Of World Culture In China And The West, Chunjie Zhang

Philosophy & Theory

Contemporary debate on cosmopolitanism routinely refers to Immanuel Kant as its intellectual origin. A group of Chinese and German-speaking thinkers in the early twentieth century, however, used classical Chinese philosophy as an alternative intellectual genealogy to reimagine ethics, politics, society, and modernity for the entire world. Their engagement with Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism broadens the scope of global intellectual history to include a non-European origin of concepts and ideas.

Due to the differences in their local crises, the Chinese and the European stories are often narrated in separate national and cultural contexts. Bridging the critical divide between China and the …

Coding Anti-Discrimination Jurisprudence: A Hybrid Computational Model Of The Arlington Heights Test, Kevin S. Jobe

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The aim of this study is to understand the judicial reasoning process of anti-discrimination jurisprudence by utilizing a hybrid computational model. The advancement of hybrid computational legal studies that combine “law-as-code” and “law-as-data” approaches have led to promising techniques for tackling complex legal reasoning tasks as multifactor judicial reasoning standards. Following this hybrid model, this study conducts a statistical and multilayer perceptron (MLP) analysis of the judicial reasoning process of the multifactor Arlington Heights discriminatory purpose test based on an original hand-coded dataset of discrimination cases. The results of the study show that “sequence of events” predominates the other factors …

Restorationland: The Lost And Found Objects Of Atlanta's Doll's Head Trail, Thomas Fish

Faculty Articles

The Doll’s Head Trail is a grassroots, low-art installation nestled within a Southeast Atlanta wildlife preserve. Constructed by volunteers and visitors from decades of environmental debris, the trail converts waste into folk art-inspired “junk” displays. The creative upcycling ranges from a miniscule shrine to “Toxic Masculinity” to a stark shoe pile commemorating child gun violence. This article details how queer theory’s “temporal turn” provides insights into material performance as collaborative regeneration. The curious vignettes playfully invert hierarchies, revealing the merits of small-time memorialization. Through these defiantly unofficial grassroot performances, the Doll’s Head Trail both remembers and restores community ruins, demonstrating …

Moral Worth And Motivational Demands, Spencer Heitman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

It has become a philosophical commonplace to distinguish actions that are merely right from actions that possess moral worth. To be right, an action needs only to accord with the demands of morality. To possess moral worth, an action needs not only to be right, but to be non-accidentally so. While this much is uncontroversial, what is involved in this sense of non-accidentality is a matter of ongoing debate. This thesis lies at the heart of that debate. Many parties to this debate agree that actions with moral worth must be properly motivated. Suppose someone speaks respectfully to a colleague …

Merit Transference And The Paradox Of Merit Inflation, Matthew Hammerton

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Many religious traditions and ethical systems hold that individuals accrue merit through their good intentions, acts, and character, and demerit through their bad intentions, acts, and character. This merit and demerit, accumulated by individuals throughout their lives, gives each person a kind of ethical “score” that can determine what they deserve, and influence whether good or bad things happen to them (e.g., divine punishments and rewards, a favourable or unfavourable rebirth, etc.). In some traditions (most notably Buddhism, but also to a limited extent in Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity), “merit transference” is a feature of these merit-based ethical systems. This …

“Invention” As Mark Of Different Philippine Decolonial Stream, Niccolo Angelo R. Vitug

English Faculty Publications

I would like to explore the possibility that Filipinization, a movement aligned with decolonization, might have more streams and cannot simply be appropriated by a particular political orientation. I will begin my exploration by looking at a textbook titled Invention. Put together by Philippines-based American Jesuit priest, Joseph A. Galdon, Invention was based on the experimental work of fellow American Jesuit Joseph A. Landy, and distinctively featured work by Filipino students. This fact is interesting because of its context: the experimental work which was the basis of Invention was burned during the heated days of the Filipinization of the Jesuit-run …