Philosophy Commons^™

Reflections On Williamson On Logic And Validity, Graham Priest

Publications and Research

Over many years now, Tim Williamson and I have engaged in debates over fundamental issues concerning logic. On some things, we have disagreed strongly; on others, we have agreed.

Justice As Fairness Or As Inclusion: Putting Rawls In Conversation With The Bans On Transgender Athletes, Nicole Player

Pomona Senior Theses

The last decade has seen a flurry of anti-transgender bills introduced and passed in the United States, and the topic that has likely been the most hotly debated regards the dozens of state bans on transgender athletes. While most discussions of these bans go straight to a debate about physiology, this thesis centers instead on a question of justice. In the debate of whether to allow a transgender girl to compete in girls’ sports, is it more “just” to prioritize fairness in women’s sport, as these bans do, or is it more just to prioritize inclusion? This thesis, in finding …

Relational Apophaticism And A Contemporary, Ecumenical Practice Of Christian Spiriutal Direction In The Western Church, Ian Raymond Wilson

Theses

Defining and nurturing Christian spiritual growth and maturity is challenging. This is especially so in a contemporary environment that might be considered individualistic and self-preoccupied and where the meaning of the term ‘spiritual’ has become increasingly vague. This thesis explores the concept of ‘relational apophaticism’ proposing it as a pathway of spiritual growth and the essence of spiritual maturity. A contemporary, ecumenical ministry of Christian spiritual direction in the Western Church, and perspectives on spiritual growth and maturity evident in St. Gregory of Nyssa’s mystical writings The Life of Moses and Homilies on the Song of Songs are drawn on …

The Life Of International Law Is Not Logic But Experience, David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. famously maintained that ‘the life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience.’ Holmes’ statement suggests an antecedent question: what is the life of the law? This article construes this question ontologically. What gives law life? What animates it, and in so doing warrants the claim that law contributes to the production of social order in a particular community? The answer, I contend, is that law lives, or exists, only in those societies where law rules, and law rules only when the exercise of political power is conducted under the supervision of …

Volume 15, Connor Thompson, Emily Steffenhagen, Emily Robertson, Luis Fernando Dos Reis, Emily Farmer, Samuel Villa, Robert Allison, Zachary Chessor, Megan Borden, Austin Burnett, Larry W. Grant Jr., Tristan Marowski, Emma Moore, Pearl Siff

Incite: The Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship

Introduction Dr. Amorette Barber, Director, Office of Student Research

From the Editor Dr. Hannah Dudley-Shotwell

Artist’s Statement Connor Thompson

On Mentorship Dr. John Miller

The Meat of the Matter: Alien, Human, and Animal in Terry Bisson’s “They’re Made Out of Meat” by Emily Steffenhagen

“Please REBLOG!”: An Ethical Analysis of Doxxing, Internet Vigilantism and Racists Getting Fired by Emily Robertson

Journaling: Paper Has More Patience Than People by Luis Fernando Dos Reis

The Effects of Climate Change on the Archaeological World by Emily Farmer

Lowered Seat Height Does Not Impair Wingate Performance in Untrained Cyclists by Samuel Villa, Robert Allison, …

Analysing The Prevalence Of Servant Leadership Characteristics And Cultural Values In A Uae-Based Multinational And Multicultural Workforce, Richard John Atkinson

Theses

In an increasingly virtual, pandemic-affected working environment, cross-cultural and people-centric leadership approaches are needed. Scholars have explored leadership effectiveness under different conditions and influences. However, in the body of leadership literature, there is scant attention to the variance across cultures for servant leadership to manage workers effectively.

This mixed-methods study explores whether servant leadership relates to cultural characteristics across three different nationalities in a UAE-based multinational organisation, providing a more comprehensive understanding of these relationships and differences and employees' perceptions. The quantitative method is examined using context-specific knowledge and the qualitative method explores the nuances of participant responses making the …

Commonplace, Heather Lepp

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The paper as follows will explore the conceptual and aesthetic decisions behind my MFA thesis exhibition titled Commonplace. It will outline my personal history, philosophical outlook, and conceptual framework behind making utilitarian pottery to elevate daily experiences. It will also investigate my individual exploration into beauty in relation to the process of making my work. Formal considerations such as visual, tactile, and functional aspects of the work will be addressed. Sharing, gathering, and preparing food influences me as a maker, and being attentive inspires me to create utilitarian wares that are used as cherished tools to enrich daily life.

Not Just Bony Fish: All Nonmammalian And Nonavian Animals Are Neglected In Both Welfare And General Research, Jennifer A. Mather Ph.D.

Animal Sentience

The lack of research on fish welfare highlighted by Oldfield & Bonano (2024) is only part of a more general problem: a relative neglect of animals other than mammals and birds. The causes are our lack of knowledge, our negative view of what we consider to be “lower” animals and our underestimation of their intelligence and sensitivity. Our estimation will increase as our knowledge increases. As a broader view spreads to the public through the media, it should gradually increase the demand to expand both research and welfare, especially beyond mammals and birds.

Becoming A Good Creature (2020) By Sy Montgomery, Samantha Piede

Picture Books

Becoming a Good Creature outlines moral lessons Sy Montgomery has learned from interactions with animals, both domestic and wild, such as “Love Little Lives,” “Don’t Be Afraid,” and “Make Your Own Family.” Our willingness to be attentive to other creatures – not just the ones like us with “two legs,” but also “four or even eight” – opens up the possibility of finding something ethically significant in these encounters. She tells us that “all have taught me something important about how to be a good creature in the world.”

Greta Thunberg (2021) By Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara, Maughn Rollins Gregory

Picture Books

Greta Thunberg learned about climate change in school at the age of eight, when she persuaded her parents to make lifestyle changes to reduce their carbon footprint. At fifteen, after winning a writing competition about the environment, she came up with the idea of a school strike, inspired by student walkouts in the United States to protest legislative inaction on gun control. Though she couldn’t interest anyone else in the idea, her one-child strikes soon gained international attention. Greta’s story demonstrates some of the challenges and gifts that neurodiverse children bring to activism. This book also prods adults to think …

Feathers Together (2022) By Caron Levis, Maughn Rollins Gregory

Picture Books

Feathers Together tells the story of a mated couple of white storks who live and migrate together between Croatia and South Africa, until the female is wounded and can no longer fly. An elderly man builds a rooftop nest for them with a walkway for the injured female and cares for her when the male migrates. On one level, this story is standard animal fable that conveys truths and moral values about the human condition. But the book’s afterword, explaining that this is a true story, raises philosophical questions about the emotional lives of wild animals, the ethics of hunting …

Ugly Place (2022) By Laura Deal, Samantha Piede

Picture Books

Many of us can recall moments when we were stopped dead in our tracks and experienced selfless awe – sometimes in nature, sometimes in art, sometimes in the beauty of another person. The inarticulacy of these moments may present an interesting philosophical struggle for both children and adults trying to capture these phenomena. Still, the recognition that these moments are possible – and ethically significant – presents opportunities for rich discussion. The Ugly Place highlights the importance of moments in which we are reminded that we are not, in fact, the center of the universe – for it is more …

Southwest Sunrise (2020) By Nikki Grimes, Maughn Rollins Gregory

Picture Books

A genuine philosophical inquiry into the natural world has to begin with a genuine encounter with that world. In this arresting picture book by Nikki Grimes, a young boy named Jayden from New York City is forced into such an encounter when his parents relocate to the desert of New Mexico. This review focuses on suggestions the book offers for experiencing a natural landscape deeply, like slowing down, using all the senses, trying ‘beginner’s mind,’ making art, and using a field guide.

Recognition, Subject Formation, And Agency: Marginalization And Agency In Feminist Dystopian Narratives, Samantha J. Quade

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Though more frequently discussed in regard to freedom and intersubjectivity, subject formation and recognition have significant potential in helping us understand the structures of power, domination, and resistance in our lived experiences. Through the portrayal of recognition within literature - particularly within feminist dystopian literature - we can see significant examples of not only recognition experiences between characters, but also the acknowledgement of or resistance against unjust and oppressive power structures through recognition. To explore this phenomena, I begin by assessing the experience of empathy – or moral imagination, according to Martha Nussbaum – in reading and in writing, along …

V.1 Winter 2024, Center For Arts & Language, Students Of Risd, Risd Archives

All Student Newspapers

v.1 is a publishing platform for the ongoing work, ideas, discussions, debates, and aspirations of students at the Rhode Island School of Design. The Winter 2024 issue is formatted as a calendar featuring images of current RISD students recreating scenes from historical photos taken at RISD.

An Integrated Theory Of Happiness: The Yang Zhu Chapter Of The Liezi, Devin K. Joshi

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article examines the integrated approach to theorizing happiness in the Yang Zhu chapter of the book associated with the Daoist master Liezi. While ancient critics famously denounced Yang Zhu as an amoral, pleasure-seeking hedonist, I argue the Yang Zhu chapter offers an individually rational but socially non-conformist approach to well-being of considerable relevance to contemporary scholarship on happiness. Not only does the chapter offer an intriguing and counter-intuitive argument about what constitutes and causes well-being, but its philosophical implications address a large number of inescapably foundational conceptual questions that can serve as metrics for evaluating theories of happiness in …

Compassion Cartography: Mapping The Psychological Landscape Of Altruistic Equity And Effectiveness, Kyle Fiore Law

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Psychologists and philosophers have often championed deliberative reasoning over empathy as a better approach to overcoming parochial biases and guiding altruistic equity and effectiveness. Advocates of the effective altruism (EA) philosophy even advise philanthropists to downregulate empathic responses to maximize the impact of their donations. However, recent research reveals that extraordinary altruists (XAs), such as those who donate organs to strangers, are driven primarily by empathy. This dissertation explores whether empathy necessarily impedes altruistic equity (impartial regard for others’ welfare) and effectiveness (prioritizing impact), revealing a more nuanced reality that challenges this perspective. Across two phases of research involving three …

After The Collapse: Herman Melville’S And Friedrich Nietzsche's Existentialism, Ryan L. Smith

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation compares the works of Herman Melville and Friedrich Nietzsche. Melville and Nietzsche articulate similar arguments about the collapse of Christian metaphysics as a traditional philosophical system. Both authors recognize the moral, intellectual, and spiritual void this collapse revealed, and they craft similar texts that illustrate humanity’s emotional turmoil facing the abyss. In addition to these scenes of upheaval, Melville and Nietzsche promote the importance of the individual’s will to overcome the possible fall into psychological nihilism resulting from recognizing the emptiness of traditional religion’s teachings. Melville’s and Nietzsche’s striving against complete despair in the wake of this collapse …

Introduction: Albert’S Philosophical Scientia. Origins, Geneses, Emergences, Katja Krause, Richard C. Taylor

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Augustinian Composition Pedagogy And The Catholic Liberal Arts In The Time Of Generative Ai, Gavin F. Hurley

Journal of Catholic Education

This article proposes a theoretical basis of Augustinian composition pedagogy by tracing the symbiotic relationship between writing and knowing found within St. Augustine’s Letters, The Trinity, Soliloquies, and Confessions and connecting them to modern writing-to-learn composition pedagogies. Given today’s trying times of generative AI, this article argues that Catholic schools revitalize the writing arts in a manner proposed by Augustine—that is, to enrich inward contemplation and outward love for others. In embracing such philosophy of writing and applying it across the disciplines, Catholic schools can enrich their distinctively Catholic liberal arts mission—and ward off dangers found in …

Andrew Tate, Matt Walsh, And The Discursive Production And Policing Of Gender, Alan J. Bandyk, Alan J. Bandyk

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis utilizes the works of Judith Butler, Simone de Beauvoir, Frederic Jameson, and Edward Said in a discourse analysis of influencers and writers in the right wing "manosphere." The figures analyzed herein are Andrew Tate and Matt Walsh. Their rhetoric aims to create a discursive woman who embodies traditional notions of gender and sex that de Beauvoir critiqued in 1949. The constant adherence and reference to a mythical past exhibits ways of thinking that coincide perfectly with Jameson's own theoretical work with the term and its inherent false nostalgia. Tate's and Walsh's efforts also fall into discursive attempts at …

World Spirit And The Apotheosis Of Artificial Superintelligence: A Speculative Design Proposal, Ian Gonsher

Scholarly Research

This essay puts forth a speculative design proposal for a device with affordances for talking to, and receiving responses from, God. We begin with an analysis and critique of the concept of God, framing this concept within an understanding of Hegelian Spirit (Geist) and technological evolution. In this context, Spirit, or World Spirit (Weltgeist), can be characterized as the aggregate consciousness of all people - as human consciousness itself: In the simplest terms, this immanent framing of the “mind of God” is culturally and socially constituted as the communication that people engage in with each other, in all the diverse …

"Fulfil In Beauty My Imperfect Prayer": Mythologization In Santayana's Aesthetics Of Religion, India M. Johnson-Mccauley

Honors College Theses

This thesis addresses George Santayana’s theories of art and religion in the context of turn-of-the-century religious thought and introduces the concept of the mythologization of religion. Santayana, the Spanish-American turn-of-the-century philosopher, poet, and novelist, took a naturalist, pragmatist, and religious non-realist approach to understanding the world that prompted works regarding the nature of art, The Sense of Beauty (1896), and the nature of religion, Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (1900). Within these two works, Santayana proposes a theory of aesthetics and a theory of religion that seem to function in tandem with each other. According to his theories, art, particularly …

A More Modern Prometheus: What Frankenstein Tells Us About Genetic Modification, Allison M. Ambrose

Honors College Theses

Mary Shelley’s famous novel, Frankenstein, is often hailed as the first true science fiction novel. In my thesis, I use the premonitive lens towards creation of life provided in Frankenstein to evaluate the morality of genetic modification of children. CRISPR-Cas9 is quickly emerging as the most important development in reprogenetic technology of our time, and many argue for its merits as a method of designing our children. I argue against this trend of “designer babies,” specifically raising questions about the soundness of modifying non-disease traits in future children and encouraging a more cautious attitude in both the scientific and philosophical …

Alternative Ontology For Ante Rem Structuralism Based On Huayan Buddhist Metaphysics, Chul Soon Hwang

CMC Senior Theses

Ante rem structuralism is a version of mathematical structuralism presented by Shapiro (1997) that asserts the existence of mathematical objects. It stands out amongst other structuralist views in that it secures a face value semantics for mathematical statements. In this paper, I propose an alternative ontology where structures are fully explained by relations. I argue that this alternative ontology avoids arguments against ante rem structuralism’s endorsement of indiscernible entities while retaining the convenience of a face value semantics for mathematical expressions.

This ontology is based on mereological nihilism and the Huayan Buddhist argument that an object can be fully described …

Shame Clogs The Arteries Of Love: How To Love In The Face Of Shame And Conditions Of Oppression, Theodore J.M. Siasat

CMC Senior Theses

Love and shame, on its face, are at odds with one another. Love tends to foster connection while shame makes one want to hide and isolate oneself. This thesis aims to resolve this tension, particularly in cases of mistaken shame, where the ashamed agent need not feel ashamed, such as in cases of internalized racism, sexism, etc. To do so, this thesis begins by exploring similar cases of love driving people away, looking at (1) love under conditions of oppression and (2) love as seen in Vida Yao’s “Grace and Alienation,” where she is also concerned with ashamed beloveds. …

Death And Grief In 21st Century America: A Literature Review On Bereavement & Attitudes Toward Death, Jordan Whitney

Honors Program Theses

In modern Western society, death has been dissected and neatly packaged like meat at the grocery store. The unsavory aspects are hidden and our discomfort around dying has turned death into a commodity. In typical consumerist fashion, we are sold the “proper way” to die and grieve as a result. Funeral homes guide us through this new experience with the goal of assisting us through our grief. While most report positive experiences with funeral directors’ services, there remains evidence of overcharging and pressuring into the purchases of unnecessary additional services. This thesis explores modern attitudes and practices towards death, grief, …

Decolonizing Yoga: Historical Perspectives And Contemporary Practices, Archana Ram

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Over the last few decades, yoga has become a multi-billion-dollar industry in the West. This industry is typically represented by glossy photographs of thin white women in physical postures. Given its religious origins in South Asia, this mass marketing of yoga has raised important questions about Western commodification and cultural appropriation. As a result, counter-movements have emerged to “Take Back Yoga” and “Honor the Cultural Roots of Yoga.” This thesis analyzes a range of critical-constructive responses to the commodification and colonization of yoga. It focuses on two case studies: Susanna Barkataki, an American yoga teacher of Indian descent, and Kallie …

Inquiry, Value, And Some Peculiarities Of The Pyrrhonist’S Psychology, Chelsea Bowden

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

An Organic Inquiry Into Teacher Experiences Of Self-Healing, Alison Davis

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This dissertation engages the spiritually-inspired methodology of organic inquiry to investigate how teachers practice self-healing in order to become available to students. Self-healing is a vital part of freeing up the teacher’s perceptive capacities to more deeply and fully attend to the needs of students. Self-healing work includes a variety of practices and modalities, including spiritual ones, in order to work through trauma, adversity, dis-ease, stress, and one-sidedness. Research shows that self-healing, especially in regards to mindfulness and meditation, equips teachers to confront compassion fatigue, secondary trauma, burnout, illness, and more. There is also ample evidence that training one’s attention …