Philosophy Commons^™

Science, Physicalism, And Supernaturalism, Carlo Filice

Myth and Science, 2023-24

This lesson on science and the supernatural tries to explain that science is committed neither to physicalism, nor to supernaturalism. Mainly, it studies the physical world, and examines the claim that the physical world is all that exists. The lesson then examines reasons why people have claimed that physicalism cannot be true.

How Do We Address Misinformation?: Applying Philosophy To The Problem, Jonathan Auyer

Myth and Science, 2023-24

Who do we want to be? What values are most important to us? How can we manifest those values in our daily life, specifically in our online presence? The end goal of this standalone lesson is to have students understand and reflect on why they are susceptible to misinformation and develop personalized practices to combat it. The intention is not to arrive at a perfect plan to avoid falling prey to it (that will never be possible). Rather, this lesson begins from the assumption that recognition (both of one’s own imperfections as well as the markers of false information) will …

Friendship, Mysticism, And Resistance: Review Of Kindred Spirits: Friendship And Resistance At The Edges Of Modern Catholicism, William J. Collinge

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

The Life Of An American Catholic Radical: Review Of Christian Anarchist, Ammon Hennacy, A Life On The Catholic Left, William L. Portier

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

Just Peace Framework: A Brief Primer, Eli S. Mccarthy

The Journal of Social Encounters

This short primer will describe the basic components of a just peace framework. Then I will describe the recent trajectory of Catholic and Christian discourse on just peace, as well as engage a related discourse at the United Nations on sustaining peace.

The Implications Of Solidarity For Food Ethics, John Sniegocki

The Journal of Social Encounters

This essay examines numerous ways in which commitments to solidarity have relevance in the area of food ethics. Among the topics explored are food insecurity and hunger, workers’ rights, ecology, and the treatment of animals. Particular attention is paid to the impacts of the production and consumption of animal products. These issues are examined through the lens of the developing understanding of solidarity present in the tradition of Catholic social teaching (CST). The ethical framework provided by CST, it is suggested, could be further enhanced by insights drawn from the growing tradition of “Black veganism” and its holistic, intersectional understanding …

Dangerous Religious Ideas As Threats To Solidarity: Review Of Dangerous Religious Ideas: The Deep Roots Of Self-Critical Faith In Judaism, Christianity, And Islam, John C. Merkle

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

Religion And Global Solidarity: Review Of Toward A Global Civilization? The Contribution Of Religions, James Malarkey

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

A Stewardship Curriculum To Promote Financial Independence: Congregants Of Sbc Depend On The Church For Financial Support, Davon Simpson

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This thesis project investigates the congregation of Second Baptist Church of Selma, Alabama, and their dependency upon the church for financial support. The thesis presupposes biblical illiteracy on stewardship as the hinderance for congregants of Second Baptist Church in obtaining financial independence. This project will launch a research study of the congregants of Second Baptist Church using a triangulated approach evaluating the knowledge of participants from the congregation in comparison to the stewardship curriculum. The research method includes surveys, one-on-one interviews, and small focus groups as tools to investigate the problem. This design proposes that when the curriculum is implemented …

Hearing A New World, T. Michael Mcnulty Ph.D.

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Aesthetics Of/And The Universe, Reza Tavakol

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Modern cosmology has revealed a Universe that is wholly unexpected; a defining feature is that its largest constituent parts are either dark or hidden behind the cosmological horizon, making them in principle unobservable.

These discoveries raise the important question of what constitutes an aesthetic appreciation of the Universe? By considering various modes of appreciation, I argue that a fuller aesthetic appreciation of the Universe would need to augment its visual forms of appreciation with conceptual and imaginative modes of appreciation informed by scientific knowledge.

This argument can have a direct bearing on the long-standing debate concerning the role of cognitive …

Flickering The W-Defense, Michael Robinson

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

One way to defend the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP) against Frankfurt-style cases is to challenge the claim that agents in these scenarios are genuinely morally responsible for what they do. Alternatively, one can grant that agents are morally responsible for what they do in these cases but resist the idea that they could not have done otherwise. This latter strategy is known as the flicker defense of PAP. In an argument he calls the W-Defense, David Widerker adopts the former approach. I argue that, while Widerker's argument does a poor job showing that these agents are not morally responsible …

Panem's Parallel's: Authoritarianism In The Real World, Quentin J. Stewart

Honors Capstones

Throughout the twentieth century, there has been an increasing awareness and fear of authoritarian governments in the Western world, the United States in particular. While these methods of governance were steadily becoming more present in Western media throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, portrayals of authoritarianism and dystopia experienced a peak in popularity toward the end of the two-thousands decade, with book and film franchises like The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins spearheading this emergence. Many of the themes and aspects of the series setting alert the audience to many of the ways authoritarianism can be seen in real life, …

Being Curious With Secrecy, Clare Stevens, Elspeth Van Veeren, Brian Rappert, Owen D. Thomas

Secrecy and Society

This article contributes to ongoing attempts to broaden out theorizations of secrecy from an intentional and willful act of concealment to a cultural and structural process. We do so by fostering a conversation between secrecy and curiosity. This conversation is enabled through a review of central themes in secrecy studies and curiosity studies, but also through an examination of a collaboration between the science center “We the Curious” and a network of academic researchers. In doing so, this article makes a case for the benefits of paying more attention to curiosity as a means of facilitating a multifaceted understanding of …

Duck Tape Down, Lisa Heldke

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

An ordinary ski jacket is rendered both fashionable and immortal by the judicious application of duck tape (duct tape).

Proposing A Measure Of Ethicality For Humans And Ai, Alejandro Jorge Napolitano Jawerbaum

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Smarter people or intelligent machines are able to make more accurate inferences about their environment and other agents more efficiently than less intelligent agents. Formally: ‘Intelligence measures an agent’s ability to achieve goals in a wide range of environments.’ (Legg, 2008)

In this dissertation we extend this definition to include ethical behaviour and we will offer a mathematical formalism and a way to estimate how ethical an action is or will be, both for a human and for a computer, by calculating the expected values of random variables. Formally, we propose the following measure of ethicality, which is computable, or …

Alienation, Resonance, And Experience In Theories Of Well-Being, Andrew Alwood

Economics Faculty Publications

Each person has a special relation to his or her own well-being. This rough thought, which can be sharpened in different ways, is supposed to substantially count against objectivist theories on which one can intrinsically benefit from, or be harmed by, factors that are independent of one’s desires, beliefs, and other attitudes. It is often claimed, contra objectivism, that one cannot be _alienated_ from one’s own interests, or that improvements in a person’s well-being must _resonate_ with that person. However, I argue that every theory of well-being must allow that we can be alienated from our own well-being, and that …

Tarski And Bachmann In Regina: A Magical Connection, James T. Smith

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This is a personal account of an intersection of the schools of research in foundations of geometry founded by Alfred Tarski and Friedrich Bachmann. Their academic lineages and the origins of the schools are also described, as well as the mathematics that resulted from this intersection.

Paradigms And Logical Morphology In Wittgenstein’S Philosophy, Idris Robinson

Philosophy ETDs

This dissertation investigates the notion of a paradigm and its related morphological method through the lens of the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951). At once exegetical and philosophical, it is a project that aims to trace the progression of Wittgenstein’s thought, from his early to his mature phase, in order to arrive at a twofold conclusion regarding the ontological status of paradigms and a closely related approach to logic grounded in morphology.

Unruly Periods: Reproductive Futurities And The Rhetorics Of Menstruation, Hannah Taylor

All Dissertations

“Unruly Periods: Reproductive Temporalities and the Rhetorics of Menstruations” argues that dominant rhetorics of shame and regulation around menstruation work to maintain strict reproductive temporalities that uphold heteropatriarchal norms. Specifically, I draw upon scholarship in queer studies and disability rhetorics to assert that sexual health texts (such as puberty books), menstrual care products (pads and tampons), and technologies of menstruation (period-tracking apps) function as a form of chronobiolitics—a teleological force that seeks to reinforce bodily normalcy. In doing so, these rhetorics of menstruation deny or elide the embodied experiences of diverse, queer, and disabled menstruators, limiting reproductive possibilities. Reproductive justice …

Ethics In The Age Of Disruptive Technologies: An Operational Roadmap, José Roger Flahaux, Brian Patrick Green, Ann Gregg Skeet

Faculty Book Gallery

The primary goal of this handbook is to help companies developing, procuring, or adopting advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence, understand the ethical risks that these technologies introduce, and implement the infrastructure necessary to mitigate those risks throughout the entire product and service life cycle.

The ITEC Handbook offers a thoughtful and pragmatic roadmap for providing technology ethics governance and implementing it throughout the organization. It guides enterprises on their transformation journey from adoption and implementation of ethical behavior to operationalizing ethical and humane use principles, into a new mindset and culture of technology ownership and accountability, where everyone thinks …

The Interpretation Of Measurement, Austin David O'Connor

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The interpretation of measurement representations, such as blueprints and 3D models, has been debated in engineering offices and philosophical colloquiums alike. A resurgence has begun in the philosophical literature which focuses on the recent International System of Units (SI) change in the base unit definitions. Additionally, a recent revision in the form of ASME Y14.5-2018 has been adopted by prominent engineering firms in America. This revision limits the number of viable interpretations for the Geometric Dimensioning & Tolerancing (GD&T) system of blueprint guidelines, which is meant to more effectively streamline communication between differing industries regarding part features and allowable extremities. …

Do You Think This Is Some Kind Of Game? An Examination Of The Validity Of The Trust Game, Alexander Quellhorst

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Although we have a familiarity with trust that begins at infancy, we still struggle to agree on what trust is. Even after decades of trusting others, trying to be trustworthy, and experiencing betrayal, we form definitions of trust that only scratch the surface. Turning to scholars in order to improve our understanding of trust has offered limited guidance; some refer to trust as an emotional state, some think of it as a belief, and others label trust as a kind of prediction or calculation. Regardless of the sheer complexity of trust and its neighboring ideas – i.e., betrayal, expectation, reliance …

Toward A Trustworthy And Responsible Artificial Intelligence, Saleh Afroogh

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Being trustworthy and responsible—particularly in terms of decisions and actions—in artificial agents is as crucial as it is in human agents. However, the dominant theories surrounding pertinent concepts such as trust, trustworthiness, moral responsibility, legal rights, etc., are primarily proposed, developed, and applied to human agents, not artificial ones. The absence of well-developed conceptualization and characterization of relevant concepts concerning critical agents continues to exacerbate the challenges and importance of these concepts in the realm of artificial intelligence. This void necessitates novel perspectives and approaches toward the metrics needed to foster genuinely trustworthy and responsive artificial intelligence systems. In this …

Storytelling In Motion: Rhetorical Approaches To Autoethnography, Critical Pedagogy, And African Filmmaking, Sethunya Mokoko

All Dissertations

This dissertation exposes the marginalization in the education systems of my country Lesotho, South Africa, an injustice that still survives long after the plague of Apartheid. Drawing on the values in African epistemologies of storytelling, I describe and illustrate their principles, then show how storytelling can transform composition pedagogy and thus help eradicate the residue of colonization. The methodology draws from auto-ethnography, narrative, spoken word, traditional oral wisdom, and African filmmaking as counter-story and resistance to the ideologies plaguing the minds of colonized South Africans. The goal is to celebrate oral traditions while improving reading comprehension and writing. With an …

On Neo-Humean Accounts For Natural Laws, Tori Helen Cotton

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Humeanism about laws is a metaphysical doctrine that claims that the complete scope of the world is comprised of the mosaic—a vast collection of particular, localized facts about the world, and everything else supervenes on this arrangement of facts. Reductionism about laws, the claim that laws of nature reduce to, and thereby supervene on, the Humean mosaic, follows from this view. The first part of the thesis explores Humeanism about laws and the evolving landscape of pragmatic approaches within this domain. Building upon the insights gained from this analysis, the second part of the thesis proposes a novel response to …

A Calvinistic Divine Glory Defense, Stephen Thomas Irby

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Calvinists, because they embrace the view that God ordains whatsoever comes to pass, cannot appeal to libertarian free will while trying to defend theism against the problem of evil. However, they can appeal – and, in fact, some have appealed – to God’s desire to be glorified to account for why He has ordained the evils of our world. This is the divine glory defense, and my dissertation aims to develop a version of it. After spending some time framing my defense in the context of the rest of the literature on the problem of evil, an account is provided …

The Multiverse Argument For The Existence Of God, Michael Dover

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Fine-Tuning Argument for the Existence of God is one of the most powerful arguments in favor of God’s existence. Perhaps the most common objection to this argument involves the Multiverse Theory, which posits an infinite or very large multiverse, adequately explaining the fine-tuning of the universe without positing an intelligent designer. Thus, the Multiverse Theory is often posited as a way of maintaining Atheism. In this paper, I argue that the Atheistic Multiverse View is untenable: if the multiverse exists, God or gods are highly likely to exist as well. Additionally, this paper explores topics like: the conceivability of …

Queer Crises: Movements From Queerness And Feelings Of White Religion In The United States, Austin Williams Miller

Communication ETDs

Anchored by contemporary crises surrounding queer and trans people in the United States, I employ movements from queerness within an affective queer phenomenological framework to understand how arrangements of “white religion” (Schaefer, 2015, p. 63), a process whereby U.S. American Christian forms escape ideology into religious affective economies in the United States, relegate queer people “to the background… to sustain a certain direction” (Ahmed, 2006, p. 31). I assemble a queer rhetorical context analyzing white religious space in documentary film, secular sexual regulation through contemporary U.S. legal contexts around marriage, and settler colonial Christian nationalist political imaginations to critique how …

A Transcendental Phenomenological Study Of The Lived Experiences Of Law Enforcement Officers Challenges In Combatting Human Trafficking In Alabama, Patience S. Johnson-Daniels

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Human trafficking (HT) is a heinous crime that has gained international attention. Millions of people (specifically young girls and women) are affected by prostitution and sexual exploitation, the most common forms of human trafficking. Currently, anti-trafficking law enforcement agencies are struggling to respond to human trafficking due to the lack of data, the hidden nature of the crime, the current service providers, and the strategies of human trafficking task forces. The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study will be to understand better the challenges of law enforcement officers and the impact of law enforcement officers in combatting human trafficking. The …