Other Philosophy Commons^™

Preservation, Passivity, And Pessimism, Sheila Lintott

Faculty Journal Articles

Many committed and passionate environmental thinkers currently champion restoration as an appropriate and positive model for human-nature interaction and interdependence. Recent philosophical defenses of restoration sidestep the issues that have been raised about the possibility of restoring degraded nature to a state that is identical, ontologically or evaluatively, to some pre-degraded state. Informed by feminist theory, I expose and explore some problematic assumptions and associations found in common defenses of restoration and defend the thesis that preservation is the more promising avenue to character remediation and the forging of a harmonious human-nature culture. I allow that many restoration projects will …

Smashing The Mirror Of Yamato: Sakaguchi Ango, Decadence & A Postmetaphysical Buddhist Critique Of Culture, James Shields

Faculty Journal Articles

This article focuses on several key philosophical themes in the criticism of Sakaguchi Ango (1906–1955), one of postwar Japan’s most influential and controversial writers. Associated with the underground Kasutori culture as well as the Burai-ha of Tamura Taijirō (1911–1983), Oda Sakunosuke (1913–1947) and Dazai Osamu (1909–1948), Ango gained fame for two provocative essays on the theme of daraku or “decadence”—Darakuron and Zoku darakuron—pubished in 1946, in the wake of Japan’s traumatic defeat and the beginnings of the Allied Occupation. Less well-known is the fact that Ango spent his student years studying classical Buddhist texts in Sanskrit, Pali and …

Harsanyi 2.0, Matthew D. Adler

All Faculty Scholarship

How should we make interpersonal comparisons of well-being levels and differences? One branch of welfare economics eschews such comparisons, which are seen as impossible or unknowable; normative evaluation is based upon criteria such as Pareto or Kaldor-Hicks efficiency that require no interpersonal comparability. A different branch of welfare economics, for example optimal tax theory, uses “social welfare functions” (SWFs) to compare social states and governmental policies. Interpersonally comparable utility numbers provide the input for SWFs. But this scholarly tradition has never adequately explained the basis for these numbers.

John Harsanyi, in his work on so-called “extended preferences,” advanced a fruitful …

The Status Of Students With Special Needs In The Instrumental Musical Ensemble And The Effect Of Selected Educator And Institutional Variables On Rates Of Inclusion, Edward C. Hoffman Iii

Glenn Korff School of Music: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Creative Work, and Performance

The purpose of this study was to describe the current status of students with special needs in the instrumental musical ensemble and to examine the effect of selected educator and institutional variables on rates of inclusion. An online survey was designed by the researcher and distributed electronically to 600 practicing K-12 instrumental music educators in the states of Idaho, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, and Rhode Island. While 13.6% of the total school-aged population nationwide received special education services, demographic data provided by respondents revealed that students with special needs accounted for 6.8% of all students participating in bands, orchestras, …

Thought And Verse: French Poetry In Conversation With French Existentialist Philosophy, Maxwell E. Edmonds

Senior Honors Projects

Thought and Verse: French Poetry in Conversation with French Existentialist Philosophy

Maxwell Edmonds

Faculty Sponsor: Karen de Bruin, French Language & Literature

What is the meaning of life? Does God exist? How can we live authentically and with purpose? How can we conduct our day to day lives, while faced with our own mortality? These are several of the principle themes focused upon within existentialist philosophy, the philosophy of existing as a mortal human being.

I chose to study existentialist philosophy through the lens of one of my other interests: French poetry. This combination has allowed me to approach both …

Lived Philosophy: How We Define Ourselves And Our Lives, Molly A. Bandola

Senior Honors Projects

As a student about to graduate with a degree in philosophy, the task of merging both the intellectual and practical aspects of the discipline necessarily emerges from the past four years of my study. As I myself am at the precipice of a whole new stage of life, I find myself drawn to questions of reflection and purpose. Throughout the history of philosophy, questions arising around the concept of death and one’s own mortality are ever-present and I am drawn to the stories that individuals have to share of their experiences surrounding death and dying. How is it that one …

Postmodern Developments In Evangelical Theology, Robert Weston Siscoe

Honors Program Projects

Postmodernism has created an epistemological and conceptual climate for different approaches to Evangelical theology. In this study, my purpose is to analyze contemporary trends in postmodern theology and investigate to what extent these trends are affecting Evangelicals. The categories of postmodern theology I have chosen for comparison are deconstructive theology, narrative theology, and radical orthodoxy. The first portion of my research summarizes their formative influences and current approaches in hopes that these observations can then be applied in specific contexts.

After a review of each of these theologies, I compared them to what I experienced in three Post-Evangelical congregations. The …

The Identity Of The Διψυχος In The Shepherd Of Hermas, Jeremiah Mutie

SOR Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

The Influence And Application Of Eastern Philosophy In The Western Musical Tradition, Matt B. Zavortink

Summer Research

This paper documents my summer research on the philosophy of music. Specifically, my research focused on the connection between the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer and the composer Richard Wagner, as is evident in the opera Tristan und Isolde. I composed a piece of music for the University of Puget Sound Wind Ensemble attempting to utilize both a more Eastern approach to Schopenhauer's philosophy, relative to Wagner's interpretation, and to incorporate 20th century developments in musical technique, theory and language.

Co-Creation Of Experiential Qualities, Vuk Uskoković

Pharmacy Faculty Articles and Research

Cognitive sciences have been interminably in search for a consistent philosophical framework for the description of perceptual phenomena. Most of the frameworks in usage today fall in-between the extremes of constructivism and objective realism. However, whereas constructivist cognitive theories face difficulties when attempting to explain the experiential commonality of different cognitive entities, objectivistic theories fail in explaining the active role of the subject in the formation of experiences. This paper undertakes to compare and eventually combine these two major approaches to describing cognitive phenomena. It is argued that constructivist explanations inevitably refer to a ‘hidden’ ontological source of experience, and …