Philosophy Commons^™

Holding Onto Belief, Benny Nyikos

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

It seems that every major book of philosophy is composed of the author's personal views on the world. The philosopher presents his or her views not only to convince readers to take up his or her views but also to send the ideas in the book out for review and debate in order to test the reaction they receive. With this in mind, this paper will present ideas I have encountered in philosophy classes, read in books, and observed in the world at large. The focus will be on the claim that God is dead and what this means to …

Never November, Michael Ettel

Whittier Scholars Program

This is a two-part project. Part one is a 181-page novel titled Never November. The novel explores many universal questions about what it means to be human and to be alive. Part two is an afterword, notes on writing the story, a creative database of characters and important terminology, and a bibliography.

Distributed Cognition And The Task Of Science, P.D. Magnus

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

This paper gives a characterization of distributed cognition (d-cog) and explores ways that the framework might be applied in studies of science. I argue that a system can only be given a d-cog description if it is thought of as performing a task. Turning our attention to science, we can try to give a global d-cog account of science or local d-cog accounts of particular scientific projects. Several accounts of science can be seen as global d-cog accounts: Robert Merton's sociology of scientific norms, Philip Kitcher's 20th-century account of cognitive labor, and Kitcher's 21st-century notion of well-ordered science. Problems that …

The Philosophical Approach To God: A New Thomistic Perspective, 2nd Edition, W. Norris Clarke, S.J.

Philosophy & Theory

This book is a revised and expanded edition of three lectures delivered by the author at Wake Forest University in 1979. Long out of print, in its new edition it should be a valuable resource for scholars and teachers of the philosophy of religion.

The first two lectures, after a critique of the incompleteness of St. Thomas Aquinas’s famous Five Ways of arguing for the existence of God, explore lesser-known resources of Aquinas’s philosophical ascent of the mind to God: the unrestricted dynamism of the human spirit as it reaches toward the fullness of being, and the strictly metaphysical ascent …

Eternal Recurrence And The Categorical Imperative, Philip J. Kain

Philosophy

The question has been raised whether Nietzsche intends eternal recurrence to be like a categorical imperative. The obvious objection to understanding eternal recurrence as like a categorical imperative is that for a categorical imperative to make any sense, for moral obligation to make any sense, it must be possible for individuals to change themselves. And Nietzsche denies that individuals can change themselves. Magnus thinks the determinism “implicit in the doctine of the eternal recurrence of the same renders any imperative impotent…. How can one will what must happen in any case?” At the other end of the spectrum, those who …

A Philosophical Examination Of Proofs In Mathematics, Eric Almeida

Undergraduate Review

No abstract provided.

Human Behavior: Self-Discrepancy Reduction, Derek Drake

Undergraduate Review

No abstract provided.

The Powers Of Silence: Cistercian Monasticism As A Radical Critique Of Information Age Epistemology, Brad Rubin

Undergraduate Review

No abstract provided.

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

Undergraduate Review

No abstract provided.

Would The United States Doctrine Of Preventative War Be Justified As A United Nations Doctrine?, Harry Van Der Linden

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

On the same day, 23 September 2003, that President George W. Bush defended his Iraq policy to the General Assembly of the United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan also spoke to the Assembly. Annan reiterated his opposition to the view that states may independently be justified in using military force “preemptively” to avoid the dangers posed by the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) among states and terrorists, including nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.

Revolution: A Philosophic Perspective On The Automotive Industry, Joshua Beasley

Whittier Scholars Program

For my project I will be utilizing the philosophic principles and business structure found at the sports camp I interned at and apply them in the car industry.

After interning at the camp, interviewing the founder and the current owner of the camp, I have begun doing research into the automotive industry to see where and how such a business structure and philosophic principles can be applied to the car industry, specifically to a new car company. The philosophic principles I will apply will be ones that involve customer relations and environmental ethics. I will apply these to a new …

Aristotelian Privacy: Perfectionism, Pornography, And The Virtues Of The Polis, G. Scott Davis

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

In the United States privacy is a hot topic, not least because of the current administration's desire to have unbridled access to its citizens' overseas conversations. But in what follows I do not plan to deal directly with any legal or policy concerns. Instead, I am interested in the philosophical foundations,- if any there be, of privacy as something to which individuals and other groups may be entitled. Because much of the discussion of "privacy rights" has revolved around matters sexual, I shall key the discussion to individual access to sexually explicit publications and what limits, if any, moral reflection …

[Introduction To] Inventing Leadership: The Challenge Of Democracy, J. Thomas Wren

Bookshelf

The tension between ruler and ruled in democratic societies has never been satisfactorily resolved, and the competing interpretations of this relationship lie at the bottom of much modern political discourse. In this fascinating book, Thomas Wren clarifies and elevates the debates over leadership by identifying the fundamental premises and assumptions that underlie past and present understandings.

L'Islam En Termes Chrétiens : Quand L’Aventure Ambiguë « Croise » Pascal Et Saint Augustin, Mbaye Diouf

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

If it is recognized that The Ambiguous Adventure is one of Africa’s most studied texts, it should also be noted that most analyses of Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s novel are general sociological commentaries on a mythologized Africa or on a society that is caught in the snares of its own mythic “values.” These commentaries often forget that the text is also the passage through a history that was imposed on Africa, and one which the writer tries to interpret in his own way. If Kane’s text plunges into the Christian faith by invoking Pascal and Augustine, it is in order to …

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 …

Splitting Concepts, Gualtiero Piccinini, Sam Scott

Philosophy Faculty Works

A common presupposition in the concepts literature is that concepts constitute a singular natural kind. If, on the contrary, concepts split into more than one kind, this literature needs to be recast in terms of other kinds of mental representation. We offer two new arguments that concepts, in fact, divide into different kinds: (a) concepts split because different kinds of mental representation, processed independently, must be posited to explain different sets of relevant phenomena; (b) concepts split because different kinds of mental representation, processed independently, must be posited to explain responses to different kinds of category. Whether these arguments are …

Can We Talk? Feminist Economists In Dialogue With Social Theorists, Julie A. Nelson

Economics Faculty Publication Series

The article focuses on the issues regarding the social and political theory of feminism. It has been mentioned that political action will be dynamized rather than compromised by a more alive observation of economic organizations and activities. The author has suggested that feminist social theorists across the disciplines must join the several feminist economists who are dropping the negative one-size-fits-all prescription of protection from markets. It is essential to have more positive results in the complex contemporary economies.

Is Pascal A Safe Bet?, Bradley Mumford

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The philosophical writings of Blaise Pascal may have passed completely unnoticed had it not been for the inclusion of his famous "wager". "Pascal's wager", as it has come to be known, has drawn a great deal of commentary and criticism over the years and it has stirred up excitement and speculation over Pascal's intended message. Many critics think his field of possibilities is too narrow. Some critics say that he allows for too few options, while others argue over the validity of his conclusion. In this essay we will discuss a number of the criticisms of Pascal's wager that have …

Donde Habite El Olvido (Reflected In The Photograph), Michaela Mccaughey

Senior Honors Projects

The concept of place, so intangible and yet embedded in all, remains a complicated and debated philosophical topic. What is place? Why are we drawn to certain places and averse to others? Why does a sense of home continue to feel so necessary to us – when there we are nurtured by it and when separated we long for it. Art works, places in themselves, provoke similar questions in us. We are drawn to certain works of art; they signify something to us in their being-in-the-world. Their place matters to us. Art is a place you can return (home) to. …

What’S New About The New Induction?, P.D. Magnus

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

The problem of underdetermination is thought to hold important lessons for philosophy of science. Yet, as Kyle Stanford has recently argued, typical treatments of the offer only restatements of familiar philosophical problems. Following suggestions in Duhem and Sklar, Stanford calls for a New Induction from the history of science. It will provide proof, he thinks, of “the kind of underdetermination that the history of science reveals to be a distinctive and genuine threat to even our best scientific theories” [Sta01, p. S12]. This paper examines Stanford’s New Induction and argues that it— like the other forms of underdetermination that he …

Words In Blood, Like Flowers: Philosophy And Poetry, Music And Eros In Hölderlin, Nietzsche, And Heidegger, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

No abstract provided.

In Love With Life: An American Dream Of A Luxembourger, Edmond Israel, Raymond Flammant, Center For Christian Jewish Understanding

Sacred Heart University Press Books

Based on the author's La vie, passionnément. French edition published in 2004 by Editions Saint Paul, Luxembourg.

On cover and title page: Pampered child, Refugee, Factory Worker, International Banker: New Thinking.

The unprecedented problems that challenge most of our major institutions and our traditional ways of doing things are so new that few of us have the courage or even the capacity to consider them. Yet Edmond Israel enthusiastically relishes the opportunity to think differently and boldly about how to hold our problems together in creative tension and wrestle with them until moral and efficient solutions can be found. …

Respect Of Utilitarianism: A Response To Regan's 'Receptacles Of Value' Objection, Scott Wilson

Philosophy Faculty Publications

According to Regan, classical utilitarians value individuals in the wrong way: rather than valuing them directly, the utilitarians must value individuals merely as receptacles of what is valuable (i.e. pleasure). I demonstrate that Regan's argument is ineffective. I first show that Regan's argument presupposes a faulty understanding of the nature of hedonism and intrinsic value. I then argue that since pleasures are states of individuals, when a person values a pleasure she thereby values the individual as well.

Terminological Reflections Of An Enlightened Contextualist, Robert J. Stainton

Philosophy Publications

No abstract provided.

Lifeworld And Cartography: Echoes, Footprints, And Other Guideposts To The Self, John E. Jalbert

Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

This chapter considers what it means to be in the "fullness of life," but for now I want to clarify the perspective from which the present essay is written. Although the essay follows the general contours of Thoreau's thinking, it is not primarily intended as yet another contribution to the already significant body of secondary literature on Thoreau. Instead, the essay reflects my own relationship with wild nature and how the latter has shaped who I am and who I want to be. In other words, the observations and reflections contained herein are not intended as mere "wissenschaftlich" re-presentations of …

The Ethical Importance Of Being Human: God And Humanism In Levinas's Philosophy, Pat J. Gehrke

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

(2006) Philosophy In A Crowded Curriculum, Laurance J. Splitter

Collected Papers of Laurance J. Splitter

In this key-note Address presented at the Inaugural Conference on Philosophy in Schools held in Singapore in April 2006, Splitter argues that the focus on conceptual development and dialogue makes philosophy an important part of school curricula.

(2006) Training Teachers To “Teach” Philosophy For Children, Laurance J. Splitter

Collected Papers of Laurance J. Splitter

In this seminar presented at the Inaugural Conference on Philosophy in Schools in Singapore in April 2006, Splitter enumerates considerations for models of teacher education in philosophy for children, as well as general features of teacher education that have stood the test of, time, the first and most general of which is that good training programs operate on a model of reflective practice.

(2006) Changing Conceptions Of The Child From The Renaissance To Post-Modernity: A Philosophy Of Childhood, David Kennedy

Collected Papers of David Kennedy

In the eight essays that make up this volume David Kennedy offers provocative insights into what it means, has meant, and might mean in the future, to be a child. As we read him we feel the excitement of discovering truths that we want to think we knew all along. This book includes six essays on images of childhood and two extended reports on philosophical discussions he had with two groups of children. In each of those two reports on children’s thinking Kennedy interpolates his own reflections on the topics being discussed, on the methodology he is using, and on …

Review Of Johanna Oksala's Foucault On Freedom, Ladelle Mcwhorter

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Johanna Oksala has produced a provocative reading of Michel Foucault's work on the issues of freedom and resistance to normalizing oppression. Although many commentators have contended that Foucault's historicization of subjectivity leads to metaphysical determinism and eliminates the very possibility of freedom in human life, Oksala argues that his radical rethinking of both bodies and freedom largely escapes the simplistic criticisms routinely put forward since the early 1980s. She does subject Foucault's work to criticisms of her own, however. While the title of her book leads the reader to expect a tight focus on the question of freedom, much of …