Philosophy Commons^™

An Introduction To Theatre Of Omniscience, Kierstan K. Conway

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

Theatre is an art of infinite possibility and is created and viewed from a variety of different lenses. Throughout history, artistic movements such as realism, surrealism, naturalism, expressionism, romanticism, and many more have influenced the ideologies of theatrical artists. Theatre practitioners make a stake in their artistic beliefs in the form of manifestos, which encapsulate their understanding in an abstract or concrete way. In reading and studying these manifestos, the individual then has the choice to follow suit to a school of thought, or derive their own philosophy. Theatre, in one viewpoint, can be understood as a means of omniscience, …

Natural Law And Latinx Social Ethics: A Narrative Approach, Mathew D. Scruggs

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation will argue concepts rooted in Latinx social ethics provides a corrective to acontextual and ahistorical, Euroamerican natural law frameworks by positing natural law as a type of moral reasoning rooted in the contexts, histories, and narratives of particular communities. Rooting natural law in the narrative practices of Latinx communities not only reveals the need for justice for oppression against Latinx bodies from the wider community, but also offers a corrective to ahistorical and acontextual Euroamerican natural law frameworks. A Latinx natural law functions as a radical and prophetic critique against systems of oppression that destroy the lives of …

An Infinite Horizon: Space, Time, & Mind In The American Imaginary From Thomas Cole To Agnes Pelton, 1825-1961, Jason Friedman

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how artists, intellectuals, spiritual seekers, and industrialists represented the American horizon across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The purpose of this inquiry is to show how art transmuted ideological and religious beliefs across time and to demonstrate the interdependence of esoteric self-perceptions and American hegemonic power.

Responsible Belief- An Interpersonal Approach, R J. Conk

Honors Theses

Beliefs occupy a powerful role in all aspects of our lives and are essential to many of the most impactful realms of human activity. All intellectual, political, and social activity relies on the stable function of our belief practices, and our everyday experience certainly reflects this. At times, we find it fitting to hold people

responsible for the beliefs they develop, and if these beliefs are in some way bad or incorrect, to blame them for them. However, this is in tension with the popular sentiment that opinions are open to (mostly) free adoption and expression. So long as your …

Kantian Approaches To Animals And Obligations, Caroline Kropka

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

In recent years, a number of competing theories have arisen regarding the moral significance of animals to Kant’s deontology, which has traditionally been viewed as unsympathetic towards animals. Based on an overview of how Kant himself positions animals in his moral system, primarily in the Doctrine of Virtue and Lectures on Ethics, I argue that his distinguishing of animals from humans on the basis of rationality is supported, but not to the extent that we are prevented from having moral obligations to animals. One popular reading of Kant only allows us to have indirect duties to animals as they lack …

Dying Well In Nursing Homes During Covid-19 And Beyond: The Need For A Relational And Familial Ethic, Jennifer Parks, Maria Howard

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This paper applies a relational and familial ethic to address concerns relating to nursing home deaths and advance care planning during Covid-19 and beyond. The deaths of our elderly in nursing homes during this pandemic have been made more complicated by the restriction of visitors even at the end of life, a time when families would normally be present. While we must be vigilant about preventing unnecessary deaths caused by coronavirus outbreaks in nursing homes, some deaths of our elders are inevitable. Thus, it is essential that advanced care planning occurs in a way that upholds the familial and relational …

Some (Im)Material Girls, Living In (Im)Material Worlds, With Seeds, Stars, And Shit, Matthew Weiderspon

Theses and Dissertations

This writing situates material and gestural vocabularies cultivated in my artwork in relation to my lived experience; primarily my rural upbringing in Colorado. Scattered floor dispersals, calling sounds, and bodily movements desire reconsiderations of hope in precarity through a disorientation of place, association, scale, and language.

Being-With Smartphones, Tiger C. Roholt

Department of Philosophy Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

In a social situation, why is it sometimes off-putting when a person reaches for his smartphone? In small-group contexts such as a college seminar, a business meeting, a family meal, or a small musical performance, when a person begins texting or interacting with social media on a smartphone he may disengage from the group. When we do find this off-putting, we typically consider it to be just impolite or inappropriate. In this essay, I argue that something more profound is at stake. One significant way in which individuals shape their self-identities is through interactions with others in small groups. Much …

Place-Based Philosophical Activism On The Us–Mexico Border, Mariana Alessandri

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Before the Department of Homeland Security instituted the Migrant Protection Protocols in January 2019, as many as 1,000 Central American refugees passed each day through Catholic Charities’ Humanitarian Respite Center, where they received food, clothing, a shower, toiletries, and sandwiches for the road. Sister Norma Pimentel founded the Humanitarian Respite Center in 2014 to “restore human dignity” to refugees who had been degraded and vilified during their dangerous journeys north, not least by way of their processing by the US government. Sister Norma has inspired countless people, including me, to engage with the community as a form of place-based philosophical …

Nietzsche, Foucault, Power: A Study Of Paradox And Ontology In Nietzsche, Nicholas R. Ray

Honors Thesis

This thesis investigates a paradox at the heart of Nietzsche and utilizes Foucault as an instrument to understand this dilemma. The paradox is the synthesis of Nietzsche's doctrine of perspectivism and his ontological doctrine of the will to power. Put simply his doctrine of perspectivism says there can be no ontological facts yet Nietzsche articulates the will to power as an ontological matter of fact. This thesis explores the "First Essay" of Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals to demonstrate the existence of this paradox. Further, I will conduct a Foucauldian cross-examination to further flesh out this paradox, where and why it …

On Narrative Approaches To Conspiracy Theory, John Hydrisko

Honors Theses

This thesis handles narrative approaches to conspiracy theory. It provides an overview of conspiracy theory and narrative before affirming a relationship between the two. It then introduces Fenster’s work on conspiracy narrative before engaging with the considerations therein. After discussing the tradition of visualizing narrative structure, it applies these practices to conspiracy narrative. This application allows for a discussion of recent innovations within conspiracy narrative. By using the QAnon as a case study, the paper investigates the emergence of protagonism and non-narrativism within the genre. Ultimately, this investigation suggests that contemporary conspiracy narrative is both better suited to the modern …

Optimistic And A Little Flawed, Christian Schultz

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The accompanying exhibition to this paper, Optimistic and Flawed is a body of drawings and objects that explores the liminal space between playful and intended actions. Inspired by the landscape of the yard and the actions that take place within, the goalless play of a child and the laborious maintenance of an adult. The value of play exists within labor and labor exists within play. The drawings observe this through the theoretical framework of telic and paratelic motivational states as they relate to drawing. Abstracted yards and landscapes provide a space for the labor of the hand. A history of …

Sovereign Authority And Rule Of Law: The Effect Of U.S. Use Of Torture On Political Legitimacy, Sydney Bradley

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Governmental sovereignty is created and maintained by mutual respect for the rule of law by the government and citizens. To maintain legitimacy, a government must act within the bounds of the contract that created it. Otherwise, the relationship founded by said contract would be nullified, as would the duties and obligations that flow from that relationship. Torture exemplifies an ultra vires act used by the United States to show the consequences of over-extended authority on political legitimacy and the rule of law. Founded on the philosophies of Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, and Christine Korsgaard, this research investigates the nature of …

Coherence, Travis Walthall

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

COHERENCE is a series of oil paintings and pen drawings that explores open narratives, or different ways to read artwork. The paintings and drawings showcase harmony, or tension, between ambiguous and representational forms. The visual experience requires the viewer to create their own narrative and decipher forms to do so. COHERENCE is a psychological and aesthetic exhibition fueled from human experience— one of fragility, uncertainty, imperfection, beauty, faith and memories.

Regional Disputation Between North Halmahera And West Halmahera Regencies, 2003-2010, Liliane Mojau

International Review of Humanities Studies

Ideally, the proliferation of the administrative region is aimed at improving the welfare of society. In reality, the proliferation of the administrative region often triggers the regional disputation. The regional disputation between the North Halmahera and the West Halmahera regencies is one of the cases that took a long time. There are six villages that contested in this regional disputation, namely Dum-Dum, Gamsungi/Akesahu, Akelamo Kao, Tetewang, Bobane Igo, and Pasir Putih. At first, the government of the North Halmahera and the West Halmahera regencies coordinated to settle their region boundaries. But it develops to the status issue of the six …

Optimizing The Use Of Digitization Technologies In Museums, Emma Gunst

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Digital technologies are used mostly for artifact preservation, but they can also be used for educating people about those artifacts in a museum context. This paper investigates the way various age groups react differently to distinct kinds of digitization technology. By using different technologies with certain age groups, adolescents can learn more from the artifacts or objects they are interacting with. This project aims to explore which technologies work with what age group in order to optimize adolescent education and artifact accessibility in museums. Accessibility for this study is defined as a museum making their collections available to a variety …

Securing Equal Relations: An Addition To Elizabeth Anderson's Democratic Equality, James Richard Ewing

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Within social and political philosophy, egalitarianism entails some social theory of equality. In this paper, I will focus on a contemporary relational form of egalitarianism, a theory of Elizabeth Anderson which she calls "Democratic Equality." Through Democratic Equality, Anderson promotes a vision of egalitarianism which seeks to give individuals the capacity to stand in equal relations with one another in society. Although equal relations is a fine goal for egalitarianism (and perhaps the best goal for any egalitarianism), I will argue that Democratic Equality as Anderson describes it is not sufficient to achieve these relations. Ultimately, her theory is insufficient …

Uri And Its Students: A Contract For The Provision Of A Safe Environment, Danielle Joan Beatrice

Senior Honors Projects

DANIELLE BEATRICE (English; Philosophy; Business) URI and Its Students: A Contract for the Provision of a Safe Environment

Sponsor: Judith Swift (Communication Studies, Coastal Institute)

When students begin to attend college, they expect to be consumed with busy schedules, heavy workloads, and an exciting social life. Students do not anticipate being in dangerous situations. However, this does not mean that such situations do not occur. Therefore, it is essential to teach students to be active participants in educating themselves and their peers regarding prevention and response to emergency situations. My Honors Project aims to increase the awareness of safety-related issues …

This Is Your Brain On Facebook: An Analytical Approach To Social Media And Autonomy, Armina Sharif

University Honors Program Senior Projects

This paper examines how data mining and microtargeting on Facebook undermine its users’ autonomy, that is their capacity to make their own free and deliberative choices. Facebook profiles a user by creating a psychological model of their preferences (beliefs and values). It then frames the content that appears in a user's News Feed on the basis of this model and thus shapes their preferences. This shaping of preferences has implications for the user’s autonomy. To show this I will apply John Christman’s conception of autonomy that focuses on how external covert influence can interfere with a user’s independent process of …

Tapestry And Tomb, Choreography And Clot : Metaphors For Mobilities And Moorings In Geographical Literature, Zachary Robert Cudney

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Metaphors, alongside maps, are important tools in geography. More than just a form of figurative language which helps represent space, metaphors play a fundamental role in shaping geographical theory and practice. They have been shown to influence conceptual systems at both an individual and a disciplinary level. Many geographical terms, like “foothill” and “congestion,” contain metaphors in disguise. However commonplace, metaphors are nonetheless steeped in the circumstances of their formation. To better examine the implications and opportunities of their usage, I focus specifically on metaphors used in geographical literature on mobilities and moorings—those points at which mobilities come to a …

What And Whose Confucianism? Sinophone Communities And Dialogical Geopolitics, Quan Gao, Justin K. H. Tse, Orlando Woods

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This commentary responds to An et al.’s (2020) article, ‘Towards a Confucian geopolitics’ by re-examining ‘the political’ of Confucianism and its contribution to fostering a cosmopolitan form of Confucian geopolitics. By taking note of the differences within and between Sinophone communities, we discuss the variegated forms of Confucianism, and their various geopolitical implications. In doing so, we call for re-theorising Confucian geopolitics as dialogical geopolitics that challenges the cultural and ideological basis of statist and Sino-centric geopolitics.

How Is It That Anything Matters?: A Defense Of Metaethical Constructivism Against Nihilism, Sierra Whitney

Philosophy

A contemporary view of nihilism about values asserts that there is no way to rationalize one normative assessment over another. Metaethical constructivism holds that this is mistaken, seeing that values are non-objective and our standpoint from the practical point of view supplies us with our own set of substantive values. As long as our normative assessment about a given situation follows logically from the practical point of view, then we can say that we have a true and justified normative assessment. The contemporary view of nihilism holds that our values and judgements are arbitrarily ranked, but this is mistaken for …

Animal Independence: A New Theory For Animal Rights, Christopher Harry Möller

Philosophy

In this thesis, I intend on solving a puzzle. How can animals be wronged, but rights are not attributed to them, even though wrongs presuppose rights? I will first lay out a paradigm case of animal wrongdoing. Next, I will examine two potential solutions in the Will Theory and Interest Theory, but, as I will draw out, each have attributes—that have been noted in the literature on rights before—that make animals unable to have rights or question whether the right is truly valuable for them. Although it seems animals might be stuck from the first two possibilities, either they can …

Skorupskian Allyship: Human Rights Reconstructed Through Efficacious Enforcement And Social Relativism, Chase Opperman

Philosophy Honors Papers

This project aims to take the subject of Human Rights and attempt to wrestle with its clarity. The concept has been, since its more modern manifestation, as represented by the United Nations’ Uniform Declaration of Human Rights, heavily criticized for its being indeterminate, unclear, ambiguous, or somehow not fully understood. Despite the concept’s incredible moral potential, the extent to which this potential can be realized is determined by the concept’s intelligibility and defensibility—both of which are affected by the concept’s being understood to a sufficient point. Given Human Rights’ moral potential to challenge the forces of evil in the world, …

The Interconnectedness Of Jonathan Edwards's Ontology And Trinitarianism, Holly Davis

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Jonathan Edwards scholarship has been divided in recent years on the correct interpretation of his work. Scholars like Sang Hyun Lee and Amy Plantinga Pauw maintain that Edwards used a radically new dispositional ontology to understand the fundamental realities of nature. Oliver Crisp, Kyle Strobel, and Steve Studebaker have argued that Edwards used an essentialist ontology. I will defend the latter position and explain how it is tied to Edwards’s Trinitarianism. I argue for an interpretation of Edwards that situates him in his historical and theological context. The early modern philosophy of his day was marked by essentialist ontology. The …

The Art And Importance Of Deliberative Rhetoric In Political Communications, Cameron Sadler

Honors Theses

This project explores the use of deliberative rhetorical appeals in political communications. Seven professionals spanning all levels of politics were interviewed about their work as communications specialists and strategists. Their insights further proved the necessity for attention to rhetoric in messaging.

An Examination Of The Themes Of Invisibility And Hypervisibility In Black Women’S Experiences Within The Prison System, Sarah N. Kuhns

Honors Theses

Using Kimberlee Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality, the author argues that how incarcerated Black women are treated because of how others perceive their identities lead to certain traits of theirs being rendered invisible or hyper-visible. Their humanity and needs are rendered invisible while stereotypes of criminality, insanity and hyper-sexuality are hyper-visible. Because their humanity is not fully seen, while their criminality is seen as hyper-visible, state violence is used against them as a tool of control and domination. Due to the fact that incarceration and the state violence that comes with a prison sentence, prison abolition should be considered as a …

Dialectical Reasoning And Developing Responsive Models Toward Political Ecology, Dawson J. Vandervort

Honors Theses

In this thesis, I seek out the modes of thought that we have developed for making sense of the world and elucidate how the logic of domination and reduction of reason to a calculative tool has led to the climate crisis. Throughout my research, I look for models to overcome mechanized thought and find two useful remedies that will require time and effort to implement: critical self-reflection and storytelling skills. Self-reflection involves dialectically thinking or considering alternative approaches to how we understand the world rather than accepting the standard norms for thinking and using them without question. Storytelling involves the …

Being-In-Capital: A Study In The Existential And Sociological Conditions Of Post-Industrial Capitalism, Edgar Mauricio Llamas

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is threefold: firstly, to argue for the possibility of a Heideggerian Marxism through demonstration; secondly, to attempt to establish the foundation for a future phenomenology of capitalism; and thirdly, to attempt to redress Karl Marx’s weak theory of alienated subjectivity. I do this through the gradual development of a new concept that I have come to call being-in-capital. The first chapter is thus generally dedicated to preparation, concretized through a familiarization with Martin Heidegger’s system of thought, as embodied in four of his works: Being and Time, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” the …

The Origin Of Beach Names In Tanjungsari: Toponymy Studies, Netiasa Adab, Frans Asisi Datang

International Review of Humanities Studies

This toponymy study discusses the origin names of beaches in Tanjungsari Subdistrict, Gunungkidul Regency, Yogyakarta which are spread in three villages, namely Kemadang, Ngestirejo, and Banjarejo. This research aims to documents the naming of beaches in the area and classifies the naming into three presuppositions meaning based on Nyström’s theory, which are categorical, associative, and emotive meaning. This study used a qualitative research method. Research data were collected by means of observation and interviews with Village Hall officials and the community. The results of this study can be used to add information that can be conveyed to tourists. The results …