Philosophy Commons^™

How U.S. Legal Stagnation Can Be Aided By Decolonization, Marquel Gardner

McNair Summer Research Program

Decolonization is a term often used to present a simple shift from colonial thinking, heavily maintaining the establishment of colonial systems today. However, this usage oversimplifies and overshadows the word’s key purpose. Common proclamations of the term forgo the fundamental indigenous essence behind the word. Doing so, we not only strip the word of its inherent power, but obstruct further possibilities for actual decolonization to appear in our world. Many argue that the U.S. legal system, a product of colonial factors, has reached an alarming state. Our current legal, political atmosphere gears not towards justice or morality, but fascism and …

The Thousand Mysteries That Bind Us: The Multiverse As Spiritualverse And The Holism Of Mystery, Giovanni Rossini

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

While we exist historically within evolving worldviews, we live amid the paradoxical necessity of mystery; one shared by scientists and non-scientists, theologians and atheists, and artists and philosophers alike. A thousand mysteries bind us with their imperative presence. While pre modern astronomers pondered the mysterious randomness of the night sky, today our sense of cosmological awe is fuelled not only by its randomness, but by a new scientific theory that says multiple skies inhabit the creation. The multiverse — a thesis emerging from cosmological science, wherein parallel worlds are posited to coexist — augments mystery. In this paper, I explore …

Keeping The Problem Alive: Curriculum, Problematisation And The Eyfs, Claire Walsh

Plymouth Interdisciplinary Education Open Journal

This paper explores how problems are understood in debates about England’s Early Years Foundation Stage (Department for Education [DfE], 2025). Discussions of the EYFS often focus on identifying what is wrong with it and proposing ways to improve or replace it, including both critical perspectives and alternative approaches to early childhood education. While these positions appear different, the paper argues that they share a common tendency: they treat problems as things to be solved. The paper introduces the concept of solution-binding to describe this habit.

Rather than offering another critique or alternative, the paper asks what happens if problems are …

Man's Modern Need For God: A Literary Apologetic, Matthew G. Jones

Masters Theses

This thesis argues that modern man’s attempt to dispense with God inevitably results in psychological, moral, and existential collapse, a reality most powerfully revealed through the literary works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Leo Tolstoy. Before Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God and called humanity to transcend traditional morality through the rise of the Übermensch, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy had already responded, not merely with philosophical counterarguments, but with stories that exposed the devastating consequences of life divorced from the divine. Through literary apologetics, this thesis examines the broader cultural and spiritual conversation taking place between these nineteenth-century thinkers and …

Theories Of Time And Free Will, Sarah Otto

Honors Theses

This paper examines the intersection of the philosophy of time and the philosophy of free will, asking whether theories of time, such as the B-Theory or presentism, have an impact on free will beyond what they suggest about the truth or falsity of determinism. It first discusses common connections made between free will and time in past literature and dismisses determinism as a connection. The paper proceeds to provide three conditions for free will: the existence of a self, the ability of that self to inform decisions, and the ability of that decision to adequately participate in the causal chain. …

Nietzsche And Socrates: Reflections Of Redefined Virtue In Greek Tragedy, Kyle M. Lowry

Senior Honors Theses

The works of Friedrich Nietzsche were used to study how Greek Tragedy was “born” and “died,” particularly in relation to the rise of Socratic philosophy in Ancient Greece. The intoxicated “Dionysian” and disciplinary, artistic “Apollinian,” are the elements Nietzsche claims encompass and catalyze human experience; the former containing the primal nature of the Being, and the latter containing the ordering through which identity is formed and art is created. Tragedy, the art form perfectly balancing these two elements was “born” within the conditions of a Dionysian Pessimism, by which the inevitable life of suffering was redeemed aesthetically. Socrates introduced rationality …

Soma: Exploring Touch As Performance And Performance As Therapy, Erica Pamson

Expressive Therapies Theses

This project investigated the role of touch within a performative context and its potential as a creative intervention within Expressive Arts Therapy. Grounded in phenomenology and intersubjectivity, the study draws on Expressive Arts Therapy (EXAT) and Performance Art frameworks that position meaning as emerging through embodied, co-created experience. Existing literature identifies touch as a primary mode of perception and communication, essential to both physical and emotional well-being, while also noting its increasing absence and regulation within contemporary Western culture. Performance art literature further highlights the body as both medium and site of relational exchange, often dissolving boundaries between performer and …

Wind In A Dry Glass, Khia Hong

Theses and Dissertations

Khia Hong’s paper unfolds in five sections, tracing the ontological and epistemological inquiries behind her sculptures. When the sculptures stepped down from the pedestal and entered the plane of lived reality, the question “What is sculpture?” expanded into “What is sculpture, the self, and the world?” Through reflections on the self, Hong details how these questions emerge and are addressed in her material encounters.

Neither Academy Nor Convent: Reconciling Religious And Feminist Readings Of Mary Astell, Hannah E. Brown

Honors Theses

Mary Astell is frequently interpreting through competing frameworks: as either a feminist advocate of women’s rational autonomy or a religious conservative committed to Anglican orthodoxy. This division reflects a broader tendency in Astell scholarship to separate her intellectual, moral, and theological commitments into distinct and often conflicting domains. This paper argues that such fragmentation is not grounded in Astell’s own philosophy but is instead the result of interpretive assumptions—particularly the view that intellectual autonomy and religious obedience are incompatible. By examining Astell’s account of reason, education for women, and spiritual development, this paper demonstrates that these elements form an integrated …

Awe As Signpost: An Argument For The Consistency Of Lewis’S “Joy” And Psychological Awe, Audrey Hendricks

Senior Honors Theses

C.S. Lewis’s Surprised by Joy details Lewis’s autobiographical apologetic for the existence of God through his experiences of “Joy,” a technical term invented by Lewis. Upon close study, his experiences of Joy contain many similarities to psychological awe. This investigation compares Lewis’s Joy with psychological awe using the Awe Experience Scale (AWE-S) to determine consistency. Lewis’s Joy was found to be consistent with all six criteria of the AWE-S in addition to other recognized psychological characteristics of awe. In addition to qualitative consistency, this review also argues for the teleological consistency of the two concepts, contending for a Christian teleological …

Defending A Partial Inclusion Model In Special Title Education: An Ethics Of Care Approach, Allison Bolanos

Philosophy Student Scholarship

In today’s world, there are several different kinds of schools and classrooms, in terms of the cognitive abilities of the students who are present. Some schools are just for those with cognitive disabilities, and others are schools for those without cognitive disabilities, but also have pull out classrooms in which some students can receive specialized curriculums. Parents of children with cognitive disabilities argue for their children saying they should be fully included and immersed in the general education classrooms. They view any sort of pull -out programs or slightly isolated classrooms to be exclusionary, regardless of whether they will benefit …

Neurophenomenology: A Research Method Combining Neuroscience And Philosophy, Jonas Lokensgard

Posters - 2026

Neurophenomenology – Cognitive Sciences + Phenomenology Phenomenology – the study of consciousness (basically just how you experience things) Cognitive Sciences – The study of the functional processes of the mind, and the operations of the brain that enable these processes to be performed. (“Cognitive Science” 2004)

A Case Against Pragmatic Encroachment, Mahali Kuzyk

Global Tides

In their paper, Evidence, Pragmatics, and Justification Fantl and McGrath offer a seemingly intuitive and attractive route to a revision of what counts as epistemic justification and knowledge. They argue that knowledge is not just a matter of evidence, but depends in part on one’s practical situation. Higher stakes and different utilities can change whether a belief is knowledge-constituting. This essay will argue that Fantl and McGrath’s attempt to use their Knowledge-Action principle (KA) to back pragmatic encroachment ultimately fails.

Keirkegaard And The Algorithm, John Egan

Philosophy Student Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Awe Only At What You See, Thomas Marinelli

Philosophy Student Scholarship

The sublime, as developed by Immanuel Kant in Critique of Judgment and later framed and deconstructed by Jacques Derrida in The Truth in Painting, is much like admiring a view—standing before the ocean, seeing nothing but an endless expanse of water stretching beyond the horizon. Yet this vastness is only visible through the lens of our own perception. Imagine being placed in the middle of that ocean, surrounded by nothing: a sensation of weight, anxiety, perhaps even freedom and clarity, might emerge—a powerful emotion never before felt. That situation itself is not the sublime; rather, it is the feeling, the …

Faster Than Light, Slower Than Morality, Celena Glaghassi

CAFE Symposium 2026

A philosophical analysis of how Necropolitics by Achille Mbembe and Black Reconstruction in America by W.E.B. DuBois relate to the Reverse Flash and his overall message.

Life Beyond The Set: A Philosophical Analysis Of Existentialism In The Truman Show, Sharlene Almanzar

CAFE Symposium 2026

This paper aims to examine The Truman Show (1998) through the existentialist ideas of philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, with particular attention to his concepts of freedom, bad faith, and self-creation, while also exploring the existentialist themes previously articulated by philosophers such as Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. The Truman Show serves as an allegory of existential freedom, demonstrating throughout that individuals are not born with an innate, fixed nature, but rather continually define themselves through their choices, ultimately illustrating Sartre’s principle that “existence precedes essence”. The concluding realization of the main character, Truman Burbank, that his world is an elaborate illusion embodies that …

Emptiness Is Enlightenment: Two Interpretations Of Nāgārjuna's Middle Way As Buddhist Soteriology, Isabella R. Sullivan

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis investigates the soteriological implications of Nāgārjuna’s doctrine of emptiness (śūnyatā) as presented in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (MMK), or Root Verses of the Middle Way. While Nāgārjuna’s radical denial of intrinsic existence (svabhāva) is widely recognized as a masterful critique of metaphysics, modern scholarship remains divided on whether this "right view" can sufficiently ground the Buddhist Path to Liberation. This project centers on a comparative analysis of two prominent modern interpretations: Jay Garfield’s semantic anti-dualism and Giuseppe Ferraro’s anti-metaphysical realism.

The inquiry evaluates these perspectives against the doctrinal frameworks of the Four Noble Truths, dependent …

(2026) The Importance Of Wonder, Maughn Rollins Gregory

Collected Papers of Maughn Rollins Gregory

In this editorial Maughn Gregory presents wonder as the root of philosophical thinking and a lifelong human capacity that begins in childhood. He argues that questioning and curiosity foster critical and creative thought, enriching our understanding of ourselves and the world. Yet social and educational pressures often diminish this openness over time. He encourages adults to actively renew their sense of wonder, especially through philosophical dialogue with children, whose imaginative questions can help revive shared inquiry and discovery.

(2026) Desegregating The Community Of Inquiry In Philosophy For / With Children: A Dialogue On Racism, Maughn Rollins Gregory, Darren Chetty

Collected Papers of Maughn Rollins Gregory

This dialogical article examines persistent challenges in engaging racism, colonialism, and white supremacy within the theory and practice of Philosophy for/with Children (P4/wC). Framed as a mutual interview between two long-standing colleagues, the dialogue revisits formative encounters in the P4/wC community and situates them within broader intellectual traditions, including American pragmatism, deliberative democracy, and Africana philosophy. Drawing on personal experience, archival material, and critical scholarship, the authors interrogate the metaphilosophical assumptions underpinning the “community of inquiry,” particularly its commitments to reasonableness, consensus, and democratic dialogue. Concepts such as the “gated community of inquiry,” white ignorance, nonideal theory, and insurrectionist ethics …

An Arendtian Politics Of Life, Kamryn M. Carter

Senior Theses

As defined in The History of Sexuality (1978), Michel Foucault’s concept of biopolitics focused on a specifically modern phenomenon in which biological processes are used to regulate populations. This concept has been influential in modern analyses of the state such as that of Giorgio Agamben, who sought to both correct and complete biopolitics with his concept of homo sacer as part of his analysis of the concentration camp. This thesis brings the theory of biopolitics into conversation with Hannah Arendt’s politics of life. It seeks to determine the degree to which biopolitics — as seen in the work of Michel …

Passive Listening: Exploring Interpassivity In Ambient Music, David Chechelashvili, Alan Brown

Staff Scholarship - New Zealand

The landscape of ambient music presents unique challenges for critique and classification due to its wide range of subgenres, functions and goals. Often defined by its atmospheric and immersive qualities, ambient music is traditionally seen as providing a backdrop for relaxation or as a means to block out the harsh reality of the outside world. This dominant theory, while valuable in certain contexts, tends to oversimplify the multifaceted nature of ambient music and ignores the potential for more nuanced listening experiences. The proposed alternative theory of interpassivity challenges existing understandings of ambient music production and consumption modes. Drawing on psychoanalytic …

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.

Reassessing The Deontological Undercurrents In Mo Zi’S Ethical Thought, Nuno Miranda

Comparative Philosophy

This article reexamines Mo Zi’s ethical philosophy, challenging the dominant interpretation of Mohism as a purely consequentialist or proto-utilitarian system. While Mo Zi’s emphasis on social utility—such as material welfare, population growth, and aversion to warfare—aligns with outcome-oriented reasoning, I argue that his invocation of the will of Heaven introduces a deontological dimension. Heaven’s will serves not merely as a heuristic for maximizing benefits but as an absolute moral standard, demanding adherence to duties like universal love and non-aggression, irrespective of immediate practical gains. Through a close reading of the Mo-Zi corpus, this study reveals a hybrid ethical framework that …

Later Wittgenstein’S Metaphysics, Jeremy Barris

Humanities Faculty Research

Introduction

Ludwig Wittgenstein, in different ways in his earlier and later work, famously denies the general meaningfulness and consequently the legitimacy of traditional philosophical questions. Accordingly, he also denies the meaningfulness and legitimacy of any metaphysics. I focus here on Wittgenstein’s later view. In that view, words and statements are given their meanings by their uses in specific contexts of everyday life. As a result, any attempt to use words to talk or think about anything outside of those contexts literally deprives those words of their meaning. But traditional philosophical questions, and metaphysical questions and statements in particular, are characterized …

Judicial And Techno-Securitization Of Immigration: Narratives De Filosofia De Inmigracion Y Justicia, Mohammad Rubaiyat Rahman

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In the thesis, I develop a philosophical account which is centered on immigration enforcement discrimination, surveillance and procedural justice. The thesis propounds two arguments. The first argument contends that the immigration enforcement of the United States (U.S.), including the use of surveillance technology, contributes to the structural injustice. The second argument is that the U.S. immigration surveillance and immigration enforcement should be qualified by procedural justice and constitutional democracy.

The thesis prioritizes the practice of the U.S. immigration policy, enforcement and how these promote structural injustice against non-citizens and citizens, specifically those who are Latinos living in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. …

Teaching Philosophy, Growing Child’S Empathy : Derrida’S Trace Theory For Critical Thinking And Character Education, Fatimah Fraya, Fristian Hadinata

International Review of Humanities Studies

Child bullying cases increased significantly following the pandemic and took its toll on the need for emergency tackling and preventive action. This research focused on philosophy as a an approach to character building, using the synthesis method of literature views which also inspired from previous teachings known as Philosophy for Children (P4C), combined with hands-on experiment simulation. The aim is to discover a practical learning concept to enable philosophy to be introduced in children's classrooms at a certain age. Researchers found the intersection between philosophy and child character building beneficial in refining their empathy cognitively and creating better generations in …

A More Robust Ethics: The Weakness And Theistic Dependence Of Godless Normative Realism, Micah Andrew Pycraft

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This dissertation is centered on the metaethics and moral ontology of Erik Wielenberg. The central task of the dissertation is to examine Wielenberg’s metaethical view termed “Godless Normative Realism” and ascertain the ontological implications therein. I contend that Wielenberg’s moral ontology ultimately fails to establish moral realism and aspects of his metaethics are better explained by the existence of God rather than his non-existence.

Chapter One presents Erik Wielenberg’s metaethics within the background of the historical progression of moral ontology and contemporary approaches to moral realism. Tracing from ancient foundations of theistic moral realism I show how moral antirealism grew …

The Fangs Of Philosophy: Religious Experience As A Persuasive Device, Lukas A. Dunford

Comparative Literature Undergraduate Senior Theses

The philosophical systems of Plato and Lucretius use the religious experience to compel readers into their distinct philosophical versions of reality. This compulsion is necessary for philosophy. This study’s three philosophical systems reappropriate this experience from the existing structures of religion to violently produce conviction in readers. The religious experience is not window dressing over the arguments of the philosophical systems, but a necessary component that reorients the audience into a new discursive reality. Ultimately, the philosophers we examine will show how the knowledge structure of philosophy becomes able to grip the audience, consuming them into its reality – how …

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 …