Philosophy Commons^™

Divine Practical Thought In Plotinus, Damian Caluori

Philosophy Faculty Research

Plotinus follows the Timaeus and the Platonist tradition before him in postulating the existence of a World Soul whose function it is to care for the sensible world as a whole. It is argued that, since the sensible world is providentially arranged, the World Soul’s care presupposes a sort of practical thinking that is as timeless as intellectual contemplation. To explain why this thinking is practical, the paper discusses Plotinus’ view on Aristotle’s distinction between praxis and poiêsis. To explain why it is timeless, it studies Plotinus’ view on Aristotle’s distinction between complete and incomplete actuality. The …

Review Of How Universities Can Help Create A Wiser World By Nicholas Maxwell, William Simkulet

Philosophy and Religious Studies Department Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Small Discovery: Avicenna's Theory Of Minima Naturalia, Jon Mcginnis

Philosophy Faculty Works

There has been a long-held misconception among historians of philosophy and science that apart from brief comments in Aristotle and Averroes, the theory of minima naturalia had to await Latin Schoolmen for its full articulation. Recently scholars have shown that far from sporadic comments on minima naturalia, Averroes in fact had a fully developed and well-integrated theory of them. In this study, I complement these scholars’ important work by considering Avicenna’s place in the history and development of the doctrine of the minima naturalia. There is no study to date that mentions Avicenna in connection with this doctrine despite the …

Review Of Self And Soul By Mark Edmundson, William Simkulet

Philosophy and Religious Studies Department Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Review Of Simone Weil: Late Philosophical Writings Edited By Eric O. Springsted, William Simkulet

Philosophy and Religious Studies Department Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Review Of Freedom And The Self: Essays On The Philosophy Of David Foster Wallace, Edited By Stephan M. Cahn And Maureen Eckert, William Simkulet

Philosophy and Religious Studies Department Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Glossaries Of Philosophical Terms, Richard D. Mckirahan

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

This collection of glossaries is intended to assist two groups of people: 1) speakers of German or Modern Greek who need to read and translate works of philosophy written in English or to write philosophical works in English, and 2) speakers of English who need to read and translate works of philosophy written in German or Modern Greek or to write philosophical works in those languages. It gives standard and otherwise acceptable translations of over 2000 philosophical terms, but does not explain their meanings. The current glossaries are presented in two separate pairs of pdf files, one for translating from …

Violent Sex Versus Sexual Violence: Constructing A Consensual Moral Framework, Katherine A. Barnekow

Honors Program Theses

This project aims to, through an analysis of existing frameworks and their resulting harms, justify the need for a new sexual ethical framework. Such a framework is then constructed, employing three discrete philosophical tools, and justified by existing theory and answers to potential objections.

Critical Programming: Toward A Philosophy Of Computing, John Bork

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Beliefs about the relationship between human beings and computing machines and their destinies have alternated from heroic counterparts to conspirators of automated genocide, from apocalyptic extinction events to evolutionary cyborg convergences. Many fear that people are losing key intellectual and social abilities as tasks are offloaded to the everywhere of the built environment, which is developing a mind of its own. If digital technologies have contributed to forming a dumbest generation and ushering in a robotic moment, we all have a stake in addressing this collective intelligence problem. While digital humanities continue to flourish and introduce new uses for computer …

Diseases, Patients And The Epistemology Of Practice: Mapping The Borders Of Health, Medicine And Care, Michael Loughlin, Robyn Bluhm, Jonathan Fuller, Stephen Buetow, Kirstin Borgerson, Benjamin R. Lewis, Brent M. Kious

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Last year saw the 20th anniversary edition of JECP, and in the introduction to the philosophy section of that landmark edition, we posed the question: apart from ethics, what is the role of philosophy at the bedside'? The purpose of this question was not to downplay the significance of ethics to clinical practice. Rather, we raised it as part of a broader argument to the effect that ethical questions - about what we should do in any given situation - are embedded within whole understandings of the situation, inseparable from our beliefs about what is the case (metaphysics), what it …

Dispersal: A Multidisciplinary Investigation Of Plant Life, Alexandra E. Arzt

Theses and Dissertations

Using plants as a basis for exploring the interstices between the human and nonhuman, this thesis investigates ideas of awareness, intelligence, deep time, animism, and the fluctuating human perception of the agency of Nature. It outlines environmental art practices since the 1950s involving vegetal life. In addition, the paper provides a critical analysis of plant perception of Jakob von Uexküll’s work and theories of vital materialism and “critical plant studies” while noting recent studies in plant neurobiology. In my work, plants become active participants via their movement, seeding, and smell. This study takes the form of imitation, purposeful symbiosis, anthropomorphism, …

Armed With An Easel: Understanding Artistic Political Praxis Through The Works Of Theodor Adorno And Chantal Mouffe, Evelyn Yu Yu Swe

Senior Independent Study Theses

This Independent Study is divided into four chapters. The first chapter examines the role of capitalism in the formation of our culture. The argument presented here is that culture plays an important role in reinforcing modern neoliberal capitalism and that neoliberal capitalism has massive control over the dissemination of culture and the arts. The chapter concludes that it is necessary to utilize socio-cultural means in combating the influence of capitalism, and there does indeed exist emancipatory potential in artistic political praxis.

The second chapter focuses on Theodor Adorno’s aesthetic theory in articulating his conception of the emancipatory potential of art. …

Philosophy Of Mathematics: Theories And Defense, Amy E. Maffit

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

In this paper I discuss six philosophical theories of mathematics including logicism, intuitionism, formalism, platonism, structuralism, and moderate realism. I also discuss problems that arise within these theories and attempts to solve them. Finally, I attempt to harmonize the best features of moderate realism and structuralism, presenting a theory that I take to best describe current mathematical practice.

Role Tension In The Academy: A Philosophical Inquiry Into Faculty Teaching And Research, Nicolas Michaud

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to understand the conjunction of faculty roles as teachers and as researchers. This understanding is pursued through philosophical analysis. Discourse ethics, in particular, is used as a framework by which to best understand the roles played by faculty and if the roles of teacher and researcher are, in fact, commensurable. The purpose of the work is two-fold: 1) to develop a construct that may be used by future researchers to better understand the roles played by faculty, and 2) to suggest a best-construct that enables future researchers to propose how actual lived roles should be instantiated in …

Epistemic Categories And Causal Kinds, P.D. Magnus

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

Within philosophy of science, debates about realism often turn on whether posited entities exist or whether scientific claims are true. Natural kinds tend to be investigated by philosophers of language or metaphysicians, for whom semantic or ontological considerations can overshadow scientific ones. Since science crucially involves dividing the world up into categories of things, however, issues concerning classification ought to be central for philosophy of science. Muhammad Ali Khalidi's book fills that gap, and I commend it to readers with an interest in scientific taxonomy and natural kinds. He works through general issues to craft a useful philosophical conception and …

Epistemological Realism And Onto-Relations, Max Lewis Edward Andrews

Liberty Theological Review

The traditional concept of knowledge is a justified true belief. The bulk of contemporary epistemology has focused primarily on that task of justification. Truth seems to be a quite obvious criterion—does the belief in question correspond to reality? My contention is that the aspect of ontology is far too separated from epistemology. This onto-relationship of between reality and beliefs require the epistemic method of epistemological realism. This is not to diminish the task of justification. I will then discuss the role of inference from the onto-relationships of free invention and discovery and whether it is best suited for a foundationalist …

Science And Rationality For One And All, P.D. Magnus

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

A successful scientific community might require different scientists to form different beliefs even when faced with the same evidence. The standard line is that this would create a conflict between the demands of collective rationality which scientists face as members of the community and the demands of individual rationality which they face as epistemic agents. This is expressed both by philosophers of science (working on the distribution of cognitive labor) and by epistemologists (working on the epistemology of disagreement). The standard line fails to take into account the relation between rational belief and various epistemic risks, values of which are …

Augustinian Approach To Holistic Christian Pedagogy, Adam Schultz, Neal Deroo

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

Presenters explain how in their CORE philosophy class they seek to demonstrate that their students' real life-spiritual life distinction is symptomatic of a dualism endemic to contemporary Christianity (section 1), and that their reading of Augustine's Confessions can provide a unified and holistic corrective to it (section 2) and that doing so helps students see a more radical vision of Christian faithfulness, one that calls for a holistic, life-wide response to the work of Christ that will not allow for an easy distinction between ‘spiritual’ life and everyday life (section 3).

Are Digital Pictures Allographic?, Jason R. D'Cruz, P.D. Magnus

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

Nelson Goodman's distinction between autographic and allographic arts is appealing, we suggest, because it promises to resolve several prima facie puzzles. We consider and rebut a recent argument that alleges that digital images explode the autographic/allographic distinction. Regardless, there is another familiar problem with the distinction, especially as Goodman formulates it: it seems to entirely ignore an important sense in which all artworks are historical. We note in reply that some artworks can be considered both as historical products and as formal structures. Talk about such works is ambiguous between the two conceptions. This allows us to recover Goodman's distinction: …

Faut-Il Obéir À La Loi ? – Les Pensées Politiques Des Femmes Dans La Littérature Épistolaire Et Les Mémoires Choisis À L’Époque De La Révolution Française, Justyna Czader

Open Access Theses

L'écriture est un témoin qui est difficilement corrompu-Montesquieu, L'esprit des lois. Mémoires and lettres de prisons take us to places we haven't been: prisons in bloody revolutionary Paris and the deadly Place de la Concorde. Women with different social backgrounds fought for their rights denied officially by the revolutionary authorities. They fought back was through plays, mémoires or letters. According to Philippe Lejeune, since the 18th century autobiography has become a phenomenon of civilization. I argue that the lettres de prison present not only a form of epistolary communication, but also as many personal testimonies, recollections of events and emotions …

Nietzsche's Revaluation Of All Values, Joseph Anthony Kranak

Dissertations (1934 -)

This dissertation looks at the details of Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of the revaluation of all values. The dissertation will look at the idea in several ways to elucidate the depth and complexity of the idea. First, it will be looked at through its evolution, as it began as an idea early in Nietzsche's career and reached its full complexity at the end of his career with the planned publication of his Revaluation of All Values, just before the onset of his madness. Several questions will be explored: What is the nature of the revaluator who is supposed to be instrumental …

In What Senses Are Free Spirits Free?, Christa Davis Acampora

Publications and Research

My broadest claim in this article is, unsurprisingly, that there are multiple senses of freedom associated with the freedom of the free spirit. These include both positive and negative senses – that is, when describing how free spirits are free, Nietzsche sometimes characterizes this as freedom to do something, and sometimes as freedom from certain kinds of constraints. In this article, I do not aim to provide an exhaustive catalogue of the different senses invoked in Nietzsche’s ‘free spirit’ texts. Instead, I wish to highlight some particular senses, including some that are less frequently discussed in the scholarly literature and …

Symbolic Misery And Aesthetics- Bernard Stiegler, Noel Fitzpatrick

Articles

In this article I will deal with the development of a theory of aesthetics within the work of the French contemporary philosopher Bernard Stiegler with particular reference to his concept of symbolic misery. Rather than give an extensive account of Bernard Stiegler’s aesthetics this article will focus on some key concepts mobilized in the definition and analysis of symbolic misery. Firstly, I will argue that Stiegler’s understanding of the aesthetic comes from an expanded notion of aesthesis, where the political and the aesthetic are mobilized together. In this regard I will interrogate some key concepts in his work Symbolic Misery …

Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard And The Unspeakable, Joseph C. Mohrfeld

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

Soren Kierkegaard and Ludwig Wittgenstein have long been thought of as philosophers with little, if anything in common. There are but a handful of contemporary philosophers who have provided links between works by Kierkegaard and works by Wittgenstein; however no one has, at least explicitly, provided the following link I intend to show in this paper. I will show Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico Philosophicus have a remarkably common theme. The theme is the ability of one to communicate, or understand the unspeakable, that which remains beyond the limits of language. Both have a unique approach to …

Intentionality In Kant And Wittgensetin, Ryan Feldbrugge

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

How is thought about and experience of a world possible? This has been the framing question of the present work and it is generally understood as the problem of intentionality. The more specific problem dealt with has been whether or not intentionality has an internal structure that can be made explicit through science, particularly cognitive science. In his Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant outlines an internal, mental structure that, when imposed on our sensory data, makes thought about and experience of a world possible, which can be viewed as highly anticipatory of modern cognitive science. On the other hand, …

Can Libertarianism Or Compatibilism Capture Aquinas' View On The Will?, Kelly Gallagher

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The contemporary free will debate is largely split into two camps, libertarianism and compatibilism. It is commonly assumed that if one is to affirm the existence of free will then she will find herself in one of these respective camps. Although merits can be found in each respective position, I find that neither account sufficiently for free will. This thesis, therefore, puts the view of Thomas Aquinas in dialogue with the contemporary debate and argues that his view cannot be capture by either libertarianism or compatibilism and that his view offers a promising alternative view that garners some of the …

Morality And Nonviolent Protest: The Birmingham Campaign, Lindsey A. Mahn

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

Birmingham, Alabama was a racially segregated city up until 1963 when members of Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) began a movement to stop discrimination against the African American population. Though the movement itself was conducted in a peaceful nonviolent manner, opposition from the white civic authorities was often cruel and bloody. Images of protesters both young and old were projected across the news and made the American people think deeply about the problems within their country. Eventually, the protests paid off and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed, prohibiting racial discrimination in public accommodations, facilities, transportation and the workplace. …

Novels, Philosophies, And Sex, Aleksondra Hultquist

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Antonio T. De Nicolás: Poet Of Eternal Return, Christopher Key Chapple

Research Resources

This book includes essays in honor of Professor Antonio de Nicolas.

Scientism, Satire, And Sacrificial Ceremony In Dostoevsky's "Notes From Underground" And C.S. Lewis's "That Hideous Strength", Jonathan Smalt

Masters Theses

Though the nineteenth-century Victorian belief that science alone could provide utopia for man weakened in the epistemological uncertainty of the postmodern era, this belief still continues today. In order to understand our current scientific milieu--and the dangers of propagating scientism--we must first trace the rise of scientism in the nineteenth-century. Though removed, Fyodor Dostoevsky, in Notes From Underground (1864), and C.S. Lewis, in That Hideous Strength (1965), are united in their critiques of scientism as a conceptual framework for human residency. For Dostoevsky, the Crystal Palace of London's Great Exhibition (1862) embodied the nineteenth-century goal to found utopia through the …