Philosophy Commons^™

Philosophy Of Natural Sciences (Phil 225) Syllabus, Ryan J. O'Loughlin

Open Educational Resources

This course explores the philosophy of science via a consideration of Indigenous ways of knowing. We begin by covering some major topics in philosophy of science—e.g., how to distinguish between science and pseudoscience, whether social and ethical values play a role in science, and others—and then we turn to the rich, place-based epistemologies of various Indigenous communities, examining how their worldviews, practices, and values offer unique perspectives on environmental stewardship, sustainability, and resilience.

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

• Synthesize information offered in a philosophical text, determine the author’s perspective & conclusion(s), and evaluate the …

Becoming A Beloved Community: A Restorative Reckoning For A Radical Conversion To Transform Discourse In Higher Education, Latasha Tomay Varlack-Butler

Dissertations

This dissertation critically examines the misappropriation of Restorative Justice Discourse (RJD) within three predominantly white institutions (PWIs), analyzing 59 institutional documents through Critical Discourse Analysis, Relational Critical Discourse Analysis, and Rhetorical Criticism (Fairclough, 1995; Vaandering, 2021; van Dijk, 2008). Tribal Colleges and Universities and South African institutions have emerged as exemplars of authentic RJD, countering co-optation within PWIs. The findings demonstrate that RJD as applied in PWIs is framed in ways that attenuate its transformative potential, perpetuating color-evasiveness (Bonilla-Silva, 2017) and obscuring the intersectional experiences of Black, Indigenous, and disabled communities (Crenshaw, 1991; Million, 2009).

Grounded in decolonial praxis (Smith, …

On The Interpretation And Analytics Of Cogito, Ergo Sum, Jacob H. Riggs

2025 Symposium

Descartes’ famous axiom, “cogito, ergo sum,” was supplied as a supposedly viable first principle of philosophy. According to Descartes, this foundation is so clear and distinct that through our knowledge of it we can deduce nearly any other information we seek to establish as true. Descartes himself contends that the deductions proceeding from this foundation rival those of mathematics and geometry in certainty. The research conducted here aimed at discerning the veracity of Descartes’ claim concerning the validity of the Cogito as a first principle. To determine the validity of Descartes’ principle, first the efficacy of his rationalist …

Concerned Philosophers For Peace, Vol. 33 (2025), Concerned Philosophers For Peace

Concerned Philosophers for Peace

In addition to organizational information, honors, and awards, this issue contains the following articles:

• "The Nature, Ethics, and Politics of Uncivil Obedience," by Jennifer Kling
• "Hegemonic Gamblers Playing with Nuclear Fire," by Edward Demenchonok
• "The Truth Will Set Us Free: A Reflection and Response," by Angela Walter
• "On ‘The Post War Dream’: 80 Years Since the Nightmare," by Court Lewis

Administrators’ And Teachers’ Perceptions And Experiences Regarding Alternative Discipline For Disabled Students, Wanda Charlotte Early

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Compared to other students, students with emotional and behavioral disorders receive more disciplinary consequences from within the public school system, which often means that students with emotional and behavioral disorders do not receive the same education. The purpose of this qualitative generic design study was to explore the perceptions and experiences of administrators and teachers in the public school system regarding using alternative discipline for African American students diagnosed with behavioral and emotional disabilities or disorders. The disability critical race framework was used as a framework for this study. Responses were generated through in-depth, semi-structured interviews of 10 participants. Thematic …

Sacral Glitch, Kareena Naresh Solanki

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Growing up in a multifaith environment in Mumbai, I witnessed many religious sites and people with diverse beliefs. My parents always remained open-minded to other faiths, and my house remained replete with idols of deities of different religions. I studied Nichiren Buddhism, particularly the Lotus Sutra, as my mother began practising it along with her faith in Hinduism. Philosophical studies became a part of my life at the age of nine. Catholic prayers turned into rituals in my convent school days, and Islamic prayers resonated from afar. I often reflect on the influence of multiple religions in shaping my approach …

Perceiving The Perceiver: “Viewing” Sauron Through The Gestalt Theory Of Perception, Cameron Bourquein

Journal of Tolkien Research

This paper uses Gestalt theory, the Gestalt laws of perception, and the reception theory of Wolfgang Iser to elucidate the character “Sauron” as he appears in The Lord of the Rings, The Rings of Power, and Tolkien’s wider legendarium. It argues firstly that Sauron’s high degree of indeterminacy and ambiguity suggests he can be read as a gestalt entity, one the reader creates by mentally constructing a whole from (seemingly) disparate parts. Building on the semiotics work of Nagy (2013), it argues that Sauron in The Lord of the Rings can be read as gestalt across the spatial, …

Generative Ai: Cultural Shift Towards The Machine, Barbara Gilman, Damon Willick

Honors Thesis

No abstract provided.

Invasion As A Structure: Carceral Capitalism, Necropolitics, And The Persistence Of Settler-Colonialism, Ethan Peacock

Honors College Theses

In the United States, settler-colonialism is often dismissed as a "bad chapter" of the past, an embarrassing episode of the nation's history, considered irrelevant to contemporary socio-political discussions. In contrast, while ongoing, Canada's reconciliation efforts remain performative, failing to address underlying colonial power structures. This project argues that settler-colonialism is not merely a historical phenomenon but a pervasive socio-political and cultural structure shaping the contemporary world. Capitalism depends on racialized and gendered hierarchies, continually produced through dispossession, marginalization, and exploitation. The prison-industrial complex (PIC) exemplifies this dynamic by industrializing dehumanization and weaponizing state violence against marginalized communities through mass incarceration, …

Laying The Groundwork: Building Long-Term Community Partnerships Across A Shared Curriculum, Juliana Chow, Eric Robertson, Kate Magargal

Utah Conference on Community Engagement

Maintaining long-term community partnerships is a major challenge for community-engaged classrooms. This poster presents a community-engaged learning (CEL) program template for a project shared between multiple courses and instructors, demonstrating how shared resources, skill sets, relationships, and coordination could result in a long-term community partnership linked to multiple community networks. It shows how 3 courses at the Honors College of the University of Utah can weave together learning objectives and cooperative planning for a course module focused on the Native Plants Program, part of the U of U Climate Action Plan.

Contemporary Appropriation Of Confucian Aesthetics In China: Mao Zedong And Xi Jinping’S Political Discourses On Art And Morality, Eva Kit Wah Man

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Mao Zedong’s thoughts on art and society delivered at the Yan’an Talks in the 1940s had a significant impact on the Chinese Communist Party’s art policies for decades. In 2014, Xi Jinping delivered the “Speech at the Forum on Literature and Art” in Beijing, which echoed Mao’s Yan’an Talks but was arrogated and idealized to emphasize the development of a strong China. His speech focused on boosting artists to celebrate Party-sanctioned morality, cultural heritage, and nationalist sentiment, and he stated that the main purpose of art was to infuse reality with optimism for the future. The ways both leaders appropriated …

The Ethics Of Advertising Unhealthy Food To Children: A Study On Potential Advertising Policy Restrictions And Their Effects On Children Of Disadvantaged Minority Groups, Riley M. O'Neal

Honors Theses

According to the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention, one in five children in America have obesity. Black and Hispanic children experience obesity at higher rates than children of other racial groups. With obesity rates increasing, what should be done to stop this increase? One partial solution is to restrict the advertisements of foods high in sugar fat, and/or refined grains directed towards children. Advertisements may be restricted in their mode (i.e., the media through which they are viewed) or their content (i.e., the substance of the advertisement or product packaging). While these restrictions on advertising may help lower overall …

Extracting Renewables: A Capabilities Approach To A Just Transition Crisis, Mateos Lozano

Honors Theses

Extraction of cobalt and lithium is often regarded as necessary to facilitate a successful transition to renewable energy so that global warming can be limited to 2°C. At the same time, many current cobalt and lithium extraction practices contribute to environmental destruction, expose workers to toxic contaminants, and sometimes involve child labor. This thesis argues that cobalt and lithium extraction, if permissible, must be conducted in a manner compatible with the normative obligations of justice and fairness. I first explain notable differences between prominent types of cobalt and lithium extraction and note how each impacts people and the environment. Then, …

Voices In The Borderlands: Reimagining Identity, Cultural Belonging, And Dystopian Spaces In Anzaldúa’S Borderlands And Viramontes’S “The Cariboo Café”, Oralia G. Ramos

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores how Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera (1987) and Helena María Viramontes’ short story “The Cariboo Café” (1985) portray marginalized individuals navigating liminal spaces of identity, oppression, and survival. Borderlands/La Frontera and “The Cariboo Café” show how systematic violence and displacement shatter the self, pushing characters to navigate trauma in a dystopian space. Sonya, Macky, the café owner, and the grieving mother represent Anzaldúa’s concepts of borderland subjectivity, betrayal, and spectral haunting.

Sonya and Macky, two undocumented children, represent Anzaldúa’s borderlands subjects and reside in a state of nepantla, an in-between space of cultural dislocation. The café owner …

The Contribution Of Catholic Compromise Principles In Global Health, Scott N. Helstad

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Roman Catholic tradition has developed comprehensive ethical principles to address complex practical scenarios that encounter foundational value compromises. These are referred to as compromise principles and they have both a narrow and a broad focus. Narrowly, these compromise principles are critical for Catholic healthcare organizations in the United States with regard to the guidelines of the US Bishops in their Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services. More broadly, these compromise principles are relevant in the secular realm regarding global health. This dissertation examines these varying perspectives, hence its title, “The Contribution of Catholic Compromise Principles …

Hospital Organizations’ Obligation To Promote Spiritual Well-Being Among Nurses: Development Of A Normative Ethical Argument, Michael Jordan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents an innovative strategy to promote the support of nurses' spirituality within hospital organizations. By focusing on the spiritual well-being of nurses by hospital organizations, with a natural extension into nursing schools, the approach aims to enhance nurse’s ability to protect their own spirituality, provide comprehensive spiritual care to patients, and increase nurse moral resilience. By investing in nurses' spirituality and spiritual growth, hospitals can potentially increase job satisfaction among nursing staff, improve patient care outcomes, and create a more holistic healing environment for both nurses and patients. As the nursing shortage continues and the number of nurses …

Entropy And Incarnation In The Duchamp Room: An Inquiry Into Aesthetic Time, Jesse Goodman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the posthumous installation of Marcel Duchamp, Étant donnés, as a test case for how particularly historically situated artworks may or may not change over time. It begins with an overview of Duchamp’s biography, and his own theories of art’s relationship to temporality (which influenced the piece’s construction). It then moves through contrasting accounts of aesthetic time from Adorno and Robert Smithson. Section two works with Walter Benjamin’s writing on photography and aura to produce an account of estrangement between the piece and the viewing subject induced by the historical development of the artwork’s “translation” and “replication”—through …

Achieving Health Equity For Minorities, Marginalized And Vulnerable Populations: The Ethical Challenge For Improving Addiction Health Services And Policies In The Health Care System, Jasia A. Baig

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

During the past few decades, health disparities and substance misuse have transformed into unprecedented healthcare crises facing contemporary society. Although enormous contributions through policies and interventions have been made to promote health equity, substantial health inequalities and disparities persist, particularly in addiction health services and policies at multiple healthcare system levels for the marginalized, minoritized, and vulnerable populations.

The thesis of this dissertation asserts that a biopsychosocial ‘systems’ thinking towards treating addictive disorders along with systematic interventions and coordinated improvements specifically focused on minorities, marginalized and vulnerable populations at research, clinical, public health and global levels will significantly reduce health …

The Ethical Imperative Of The Renewal Of Virtue Within The Moral Community Of Catholic Healthcare, Amanda Altobell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Catholic healthcare is one of the largest nonprofit organizations and providers in the United States, offering medical care to many diverse communities. The fundamental mission of Catholic healthcare is to bring about Christ’s healing ministry and live out the fundamental principle of caring for the vulnerable in pursuit of the common good. However, there have been many missteps, not only due to a more polarized and secular community but also to scandals and conflict due to previous hierarchical and rules-based anthropology that often misses the person's lived experience. Therefore, this dissertation will argue that for Catholic healthcare to survive the …

Tackling Social Stigma: An Ethical Obligation In Healthcare Intervention To Involuntary Childlessness, Persis Naumann

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The stigma associated with involuntary childlessness has negatively affected health and well-being for several decades. This situation is particularly exacerbated for women within the Tamil socio-cultural context, resulting in feelings of shame, neglect, denial, isolation, and constituting a significant barrier to long-term access to healthcare services. Although advancements have been made in the provision of biomedical care, the psychosocial support remains inadequately addressed. Moreover, there are currently no healthcare interventions that specifically target the stigma associated with this issue, which hinders open communication with healthcare providers, delays necessary treatments, and adversely impacts overall health outcomes. The central thesis of this …

On The Deconstruction Of Nothingness In Digital Communication, Matthew S. Lindia

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project argues that digital technologies call for a new problematic of communication, centered around the conditions of (im)possibility for creating perfect digital profiles of users as generated from user data. Beginning with Edmund Husserl’s analysis of essentially occasional expressions, this dissertation posits that user data occurs on three levels: (1) the level of expression, where a user wants-to-say something through their inputs, (2) the level of facticity, where biometric data are involuntarily produced by the user, and (3) the level of nothingness, where the user’s inaction, such as not-answering, is taken as data. Moving beyond what Husserl’s framework can …

The Kinship Of Creatives, Saba Saif Ur Rehman

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This research essay contends that artists and creative individuals must recognize their agency in shaping societal narratives, particularly during times of technological and political upheaval. The essay draws on the insights and contributions of visionaries like Walter Benjamin, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Tomm Moore to emphasize the power of imagination and creativity in addressing real-world issues. It argues that previous technological advances have often reinforced hierarchical and oppressive systems, benefitting a select few while neglecting the masses. As we enter the fourth Industrial Revolution, this essay calls the artists to reclaim their tools from being co-opted for exclusionary and …

On Appreciating Evidence, Auke Alesander Montesano Montessori

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The topic of this dissertation is the kind of understanding or grasping necessary for successfully using something as evidence. I call this kind of grasp “appreciation”. Take the case of a fossil. Intuitively, you can only successfully use a fossil as evidence for the existence of dinosaurs if you appreciate the epistemic link between the fossil and dinosaurs. If you fail to grasp the relevance of the fossil and you think it is just a rock with a funny pattern, you would not be justified to form the belief that dinosaurs once existed based on that fossil. However, what it …

The Ethics Of Insider Trading, Miles Morgan

Global Tides

In business ethics, insider trading has gone untouched by scholars, as the consensus is that insider trading is morally indefensible, however, questions have emerged regarding the moral responsibility of insiders. This paper engages with Analyzing Insider Trading from the Perspectives of Utilitarian Ethics and Rights Theory by Robert McGee to evaluate the relationship between applied ethics and insider trading. A satisfactory anti-insider trading account must be able to economically or philosophically explain why insider trading is morally wrong. The assumption that this is impossible may be due to a misunderstanding of how we decide what morality is or how economic …

Lived Experiences Of African American Women Exposed To Intimate Partner Violence In Single-Parent Homes, Lattakka Salley

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV) is widespread in childhood, but it is generally higher among African American children. Extensive qualitative analyses to understand the experiences of youth who have experienced IPV have suggested that help-seeking is vital to the survival rate of African American women. Nonetheless, most studies have involved mainly White participants from two-parent households. The current research included African American women who experienced IPV. Social learning theory was used in this study to describe the participants’ behaviors and experiences with IPV. A phenomenological approach was employed to uncover the participants’ lived experiences of IPV. Two research questions …

Cuentos De Barro, Daniel Anthony Vasquez

Theses and Dissertations

Cuentos de Barros addresses the complexities of creating art and processing indigenous heritage and personal history as a Salvadoran immigrant within a neo-colonial society. Centering ritual, care, and healing, the artist imbues sculptures with tenderness using abstract forms and the tactile manipulation of unfired clay and graphite.

Ontological Exhaustion And Metabolic Affect, Katelyn Reece Farstad

Theses and Dissertations

Ontological Exhaustion and Metabolic Affect explores the artistic practice of Katelyn Reece Farstad through the logic, physiology, and spiritual symbolism of the housefly. This body of work draws from personal experience with neurological trauma, mapping how perception fractures, reorients, and reforms in the wake of psychic rupture. The housefly—erratic, hyper-attuned, maligned—becomes both method and metaphor. Its larval state mirrors the latency of neuroplastic healing; its compound vision reflects perceptual multiplicity; its obsessive return to sites of decay parallels the recursive nature of memory and loss.

Working across sculpture and painting, I metabolize found objects and sensory residues into forms that …

Voice As Dual Striving: Spiritual Resonance And Psychological Negotiation In South Indian Musical Practices, Ramya Thiyagarajan

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the intricate dynamics of voice within South Indian musical traditions, examining it as both a spiritual medium resonating with the divine concept of Nāda-Brahman and a psychological instrument navigating modernity, identity, and cultural hybridity. Employing the Self-Rasa-Chakra framework, derived from Upanishadic and tantric philosophies, alongside autoethnographic narratives and case studies, it investigates how the voice serves as a site of striving. Through an interdisciplinary lens combining ethnomusicology, psychoanalysis, and sound studies, this research delves into the paradox of voice: its role in sacred surrender within Carnatic music, juxtaposed against its individualistic expression in contemporary independent music. Case …

Geraldo De Barros’S Fotoformas: Towards The Construction Of New Forms Of Legibility, Jay Bravo

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the legibility and reception of Geraldo de Barros’s Fotoformas within Western art institutions, using MoMA’s 2021 Fotoclubismo exhibition as a case study. It argues that the integration of Brazilian modernist photography into canonical narratives often hinges on strategic affinities with Euro-American frameworks. Drawing on institutional critique, postcolonial theory, and the concept of Anthropophagy, the study explores how Fotoformas challenges conventional photographic discourse and reveals broader dynamics of artistic legitimacy and representation.

A Constellation Of Vital Phenomena: Exploring Post-War Ethics, Claire Marshall Watkins

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

In my paper, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena: Exploring Post-War Ethics, I explore the embodiment of care ethics and informed altruism through the novel’s protagonists, Akhmed and Sonja, respectively, who each care for a local girl Havaa whose home has been destroyed and whose father has been disappeared by the Russian Feds from their small Chechen village. Akhmed immediately takes her on as his own while Sonja is hesitant. As the novel progresses, Sonja and Akhmed each provide an even amount of time and effort into her care, though they approach it differently. Akhmed—Havaa’s neighbor and family friend—works together with …