Philosophy Commons^™

Island Universe Problems, William Simkulet

Philosophy and Religious Studies Department Faculty Publications

We share a common space-time with everything that we interact with in our world. An island universe would be a spatiotemporally interrelated segment of reality that is isolated from the rest of reality; it would be part of our world but something that we cannot interact with. Spatiotemporal interrelatedness plays an important role in a number of metaphysical theories concerning possible worlds. Here I discuss four problems surrounding the possibility of island universes. I contend the most troubling of these problems gives us good reason to think that island universes are possible; metaphysical theories that cannot make sense of the …

Truth And Falsehood In Plato's Sophist, Michael Oliver Wiitala

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

This dissertation is a study of the ontological foundations of true and false speech in Plato’s Sophist. Unlike most contemporary scholarship on the Sophist, my dissertation offers a wholistic account of the dialogue, demonstrating that the ontological theory of the “communing” of forms and the theory of true and false speech later in the dialogue entail one another.

As I interpret it, the account of true and false speech in the Sophist is primarily concerned with true and false speech about the forms. As Plato sees it, we can only make true statements about spatio-temporal beings if it …

Philosophy, Medicine And Health Care - Where We Have Come From And Where We Are Going, Michael Loughlin, Robyn Bluhm, Jonathan Fuller, Stephen Burtow, Rose E. G. Upshur, Kirstin Borgerson, Maya J. Goldenberg, Elselijn Kingma

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The role of philosophy in discussions of clinical practice was once regarded by many as restricted to a very limited version of ‘medical ethics’, one that has been extensively criticized in the pages of this journal and elsewhere for being at once philosophically untenable and practically unhelpful [1–4]. While this uninspiring view of the nature and scope of applied philosophy has by no means been eradicated, over a number of years there has been a resurgence of interest in the philosophy of medicine and health care as an intellectually serious and practically significant enterprise. Controversies about evidence, value, clinical knowledge, …

Developing Normative Consensus: How The "International Scene" Reshapes The Debate Over Internal And External Criticism, Ericka L. Tucker

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

Can we ever justly critique the norms and practices of another culture? When activists or policy-makers decide that one culture’s traditional practice is harmful and needs to be eradicated, does it matter whether they are members of that culture? Given the history of imperialism, many argue that any critique of another culture’s practices must be internal. Others argue that we can appeal to a universal standard of human well-being to determine whether or not a particular practice is legitimate or whether it should be eradicated. In this paper, I use the FGC eradication campaigns of the 1980s to show that …

Inception And Ibn 'Arabi, Oludamini Ogunnaike

Journal of Religion & Film

Many philosophers, playwrights, artists, sages, and scholars throughout the ages have entertained and developed the concept of life being a "but a dream." Few works, however, have explored this topic with as much depth and subtlety as the 13thC Andalusian Muslim mystic, Ibn 'Arabi. Similarly, few works of art explore this theme as thoroughly and engagingly as Chistopher Nolan's 2010 film Inception. This paper presents the writings of Ibn 'Arabi and Nolan's film as a pair of mirrors, in which one can contemplate the other. As such, the present work is equally a commentary on the film based on …

Humans And Nature: Finding Meaning Through Metaphysics, Justin Stone

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

Before the 19th Century, natural philosophers explored the inner workings of nature and humanity using many different modes of thinking such as logic, mathematics, physics, and metaphysics. The incorporation of these varied concepts brought about a comprehensive understanding of nature and how humans relate to nature. Theories were devised from incorporeal ideas, data was gathered from the human senses, and concrete evidence was pursued to support philosophy. However, through the years from ancient times to modernity, natural philosophy slowly limited its use of revelation and metaphysics, restricting the quest for knowledge to the methodical gathering of empirical data. Science, as …

Experiencing Photographs Qua Photographs: What's So Special About Them?, Jiri Benovsky

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Retroactive Harms And Wrongs, Steven Luper

Philosophy Faculty Research

According to the immunity thesis, nothing that happens after we are dead harms or benefits us . It seems defensible on the following basis: 1. If harmed (benefitted) by something, we incur the harm (benefit) at some time. 2. So if harmed (benefitted) by a postmortem event, we incur the harm (benefit) while alive or at some other time. 3. But if we incur the harm (benefit) while alive, backwards causation occurs. 4. And if we incur the harm (benefit) at any other time, we incur it at a time when we do not exist. 5. Yet nothing incurs harm …

False Negatives, Steven Luper

Philosophy Faculty Research

In Philosophical Explanations, Robert Nozick suggested that knowing that some proposition, p, is true is a matter of being “sensitive” to p’s truth-value. It requires that one’s belief state concerning p vary appropriately with the truth-value of p as the latter shifts in relevant possible worlds. Nozick fleshed out this sketchy view with a specific analysis of what sensitivity entails. Famously, he drew upon this analysis in order to explain how common-sense knowledge claims, such as my claim to know I have hands, are true, even though we do not know that skeptical hypotheses are false. His …

Ideology, Truthmaking And Fundamentality, Anthony Robert James Fisher

Philosophy - Dissertations

In chapter 1 I outline two conceptions of ideology: ideological pessimism and ideological realism. Ideological pessimism is the view that ideological inquiry has dim prospects insofar as ideology is tied to meaning. Ideological realism is the view that there is a fact of the matter about which ideology is taken as primitive when attempting to describe reality correctly. I respond to an argument on behalf of ideological pessimism, develop ideological realism, and then defend it against an objection that attempts to derive the unpalatable consequence that a main dispute in the metaphysics of properties is verbal.

In chapter 2 I …

Not To Be: Modality Without Possible Worlds, Samuel Girwarnauth

The Hilltop Review

For many with broadly Aristotelian intuitions the Humean usurpation of work in philosophy is a frustrating landscape. This is most obviously demonstrated in the arena of the metaphysics of modality, and talk of "possible worlds" specifically. Famously, the Humean denial of necessary connections in the world has led to the most strongly defended thesis on modality to date: the extreme modal realism (EMR) of David Lewis. Pace Lewis, actualism ought to be the preferred position, but whose version, which actuality? The thrust of this paper shall be to argue that the truth makers, or grounding, for modal claims are not …

Politics And Heidegger: Aristotle, Superman, And Žižek, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

This essay discusses Heidegger's thinking on the political and technology in the context of metaphysics in an age that is increasingly directed to both technology and the imaginary or the virtual. The context of Aristotelian phronesis is traced back to Aristotle's youth in Macedonia and the circumstance of war and world conquest, to the allure of a comic book character (that would be the Action Comic's figure of Superman) and the cinematic seduction of a pair of eyeglasses to conclude with a review of Latour's network actants and Žižek on Marxism (and Occupy Wall Street).

Spinoza On Individuals And Individuation: Metaphysics, Morals, And Politics, Matthew David Wion

Dissertations (1934 -)

This dissertation examines Spinoza's position regarding the relationship of the individual to the community and to other individuals in the context of a particular reading of Spinoza's metaphysics as holistic. By the term "holistic metaphysics," I refer to a view of reality as a unified whole rather than as a collection of entirely separate parts. The latter I call a "reductionistic metaphysics." If a reductionistic metaphysics tends to see individuals as essentially separate and only secondarily relational, a holistic metaphysics pictures individuals as primarily relational and only by means of their relations capable of any meaningful "separateness" from other individuals. …

The Ontological Foundations For Natural Law Theory And Contemporary Ethical Naturalism, Bernard Mauser

Dissertations (1934 -)

This dissertation explores some objections to natural law theory- many of which are also leveled against contemporary naturalism. Despite the way the natural law tradition has fallen into disrepute in much of the American academy, this dissertation defends a classical Thomistic approach to natural law from some modern and contemporary criticisms. It begins with a brief explanation of the theory of natural law that will be defended from these contemporary objections. Chapter three examines G.E. Moore and David Hume's classical problems posed to natural law, along with some contemporary defenders of Moore's position. These arguments are purported to undermine using …

A Sense Of Life In Language Love And Literature, Lawrence Kimmel

Philosophy Faculty Research

The fundamental human activity of telling stories, extended into the cultural tradition of literature, leads to the creation of alternative worlds in which we find resonance with the whole range of human thought and emotion from different and often conflicting perspectives. Fiction has no obligation to the ordinary strictures that bind our public lives, so the mind is free, engaging in literature, to become for the moment whatever imagination can conceive. So we become, in fictive reality, madman and poet, sinner and saint, embrace and embody sorrow and joy, hope and despair and all the rag tag feelings that flesh …

A Mage In Motion - Metaphysical Riddles Of Space, Time, And Motion, Juan Ferret

Selected Works Temporary Series

No abstract provided.

A Mage In Motion - Metaphysical Riddles Of Space, Time, And Motion, Ferret

Departmental Papers (Philosophy)

No abstract provided.

Truth, Art, And The "New Sensuousness": Understanding Heidegger's Metaphysical Reading Of Nietzsche, James Magrini

Philosophy Scholarship

This article takes a critical look into Heidegger’s reading of Nietzschean metaphysics in the context of art and finds certain discrepancies in Heidegger’s texts. Heidegger’s claim is that Nietzsche has had some difficulty in discussing the problem of truth, being, and becoming in terms of how the Western tradition of philosophy has understood it. In the context of art, Magrini traces the path that Heidegger took in understanding Nietzsche’s notion of nihilism and finds that Heidegger’s reading of Nietzsche is actually an attempt to elevate the latter as a timely philosophical force whose thought moves away from the rote and …

Paul Redding, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying So Much About Meaning And Love Hegel’S Metaphysics And Kant’S Epistemic Modesty, James Kreines

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

In this interest of time, I’ll just say something directly: this is an incredible book. Reading it, thinking it through, is extremely rewarding. I haven’t read a work of philosophy that had as much impact on me since being in school myself. The book presents you with new ideas and connections and it forces you to see philosophy and its history in new ways, even if you (like me) had been quite attached to your old ways. The book got into my head. Now I find myself, in idle moments, arguing with Paul up there in my head; as if …

Musical Recordings, Andrew Kania

Philosophy Faculty Research

Over the course of the twentieth century, there was a major shift in the way that audiences experienced music. The advent of broadcasting and recording technology brought a sea-change in the standard situation in which music was heard. Where, before, music was rarely heard in the absence of musicians producing it live, now one could listen in one’s living room to a performance that was actually going on thousands of miles away, or, stranger still, one that was already finished, and one could listen to the latter kind over and over again. Musicians and theorists had quite a bit to …

Metaphysics Without Pre-Critical Monism: Hegel On Lower-Level Natural Kinds And The Structure Of Reality, James Kreines

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

My focus here is on what Hegel has to say about nature and natural kinds, in ‘Observing Reason’ from the Phenomenology, and also in similar material from the Logic and Encyclopedia. I intend to argue that this material suggests a surprising way of stepping beyond the fundamental debate. There can of course be no question of elaborating and defending here a complete interpretation of Hegel’s entire theoretical philosophy. I will have to restrict myself to arguing for the unlikely conclusion that there is an approach that can combine and integrate the strongest points made by both sides in …

Plotinus On Primary Being, Damian Caluori

Philosophy Faculty Research

Late antique philosophers took a great interest in metaphysics. Indeed, the discipline's very name, "metaphysics", goes back to late antiquity.¹ One of the main reasons for this great interest can be found in the view - widespread in this period - that an understanding of reality is crucial for our lives and for the destiny and salvation of our souls.² Only by contemplating and by possessing knowledge of reality - a reality that was thought to be beyond the world of our ordinary experience - is the soul in an uncorrupted state of well being. Metaphysics is precisely …

The Logic Of Life: Hegel’S Philosophical Defense Of Teleological Explanation Of Living Beings, James Kreines

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

Hegel accords great philosophical importance to Kant’s discussions of teleology and biology in the Critique of the Power of Judgment, and yet also disagrees with Kant’s central conclusions there. More specifically, Kant argues for a generally skeptical view of teleological explanation of living beings; Hegel responds that Kant should instead defend such explanation—and that the defense of teleology should lead Kant to different conclusions throughout his theoretical philosophy.

I aim to avoid the sort of interpretive charity that would begin with a currently popular philosophical view and then seek to find that view in historical texts. This approach would …

Systems Metaphysics: A Bridge From Science To Religion, Martin Zwick

Complex Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

'Systems theory' is familiar to many as the scientific enterprise that includes the study of chaos, networks, and complex adaptive systems. It is less widely appreciated that the systems research program offers a world view that transcends the individual scientific disciplines. We do not live, as some argue, in a post-metaphysical age, but rather at a time when a new metaphysics is being constructed. This metaphysics is scientific and derives from graph theory, information theory, non-linear dynamics, decision theory, game theory, generalized evolution, and other transdisciplinary theories. These 'systems' theories focus on form and process, independent of materiality; they are …

Systems Metaphysics: A Bridge From Science To Religion [Presentation], Martin Zwick

Complex Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

'Systems theory' is familiar to many as the scientific enterprise that includes the study of chaos, networks, and complex adaptive systems. It is less widely appreciated that the systems research program offers a world view that transcends the individual scientific disciplines. We do not live, as some argue, in a post-metaphysical age, but rather at a time when a new metaphysics is being constructed. This metaphysics is scientific and derives from graph theory, information theory, non-linear dynamics, decision theory, game theory, generalized evolution, and other transdisciplinary theories. These 'systems' theories focus on form and process, independent of materiality; they are …

Complexity, Fine-Tuning, And Multiple Universes: The Insufficiency Of Scientific Theories For Determining Metaphysical Views, Ashley Graham Kennedy

Institute for the Humanities Theses

Many argue that science can provide empirical evidence for the existence of God or a designer. In this thesis I examine three such arguments: the irreducible complexity argument from biochemistry, the fine-tuning argument from physics and the rare earth/privileged planet hypothesis from astronomy. I conclude that all three of the arguments fail to show whether or not the universe was designed, because science is not prepared to answer this question. Further, I argue that scientific theories, in general, cannot be used as the sole basis for metaphysical propositions.

Universals And Particulars: Aristotle's Ontological Theory And Criticism Of The Platonic Forms, Brad Vezina

Undergraduate Review

No abstract provided.

Resembling Nothing: Image And Being In Plato, Yancy Hughes Dominick

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter

A crucial application of Plato’s views on the use of images in philosophy occurs through the use of the image relationship as an image for the relation of forms and particulars. The relation of a picture to the object it depicts, or that between a reflection and what it reflects, can be seen as analogous to the relation of a particular to the form in which it participates. Although the attack on the image model as analogous to the relation of forms and particulars in the Parmenides threatens to undermine any reliance on that model, this essay will present a …

Restorative Rigging And The Safe Indication Account, Steven Luper

Philosophy Faculty Research

Typical Gettieresque scenarios involve a subject, S, using a method, M, of believing something, p, where, normally, M is a reliable indicator of the truth of p, yet, in S’s circumstances, M is not reliable: M is deleteriously rigged. A different sort of scenario involves rigging that restores the reliability of a method M that is deleteriously rigged: M is restoratively rigged. Some theorists criticize (among others) the safe indication account of knowledge defended by Luper, Sosa, and Williamson on the grounds that it treats such cases as knowledge. But other theorists also criticize the safe indication account because it …

Nietzsche, Nihilism, And The Virtue Of Nature, Steven Michels

Political Science & Global Affairs Faculty Publications

Nietzsche’s view of nature and his attack on the platonic tradition has given him a reputation as a nihilist, a label he himself acknowledged. Yet what does Nietzsche mean by nihilism? and to what extent is he a nihilist? This article explores Nietzsche’s use of the term as it relates to modernity, his own postmodern project, and how it is connected with what Nietzsche calls “virtue.”