Other Philosophy Commons^™

The “Indirect Message” In Kierkegaard And Chán Buddhism, Zdeněk Zacpal

Comparative Philosophy

The article seeks to analyse Kierkegaard’s indirecte Meddelelse, which the author proposes to translate as ‘indirect message’. It attempts to consider and illuminate this concept and its general characteristics, types and cases in Kierkegaard's work. They are to serve as a baseline for investigations of indirect messages in Buddhism, especially the famous ‘public cases’ (gong-àn / kōan 公案) of the Chán Buddhists. The author tries to specify indirect messages on both sides of the cultural divide in terms of some Western philosophers. Kierkegaard’s theoretical rationale for his indirect message is profound, sophisticated and appropriate to the theoretical …

On What Is Real In Nāgārjuna’S “Middle Way”, Richard H. Jones

Comparative Philosophy

It has become popular to portray the Buddhist Nāgārjuna as an ontological nihilist, i.e., that he denies the reality of entities and does not postulate any further reality. A reading of his works does show that he rejects the self-existent reality of entities, but it also shows that he accepts a "that-ness" (tattva) to phenomenal reality that survives the denial of any distinct, self-contained entities. Thus, he is not a nihilist concerning what is real in the final analysis of things. How Nāgārjuna’s positions impact contemporary discussions of ontological nihilism and deflationism in Western philosophy is also discussed.

Alejandro Napolitano Jawerbaum's Portfolio, Alejandro Jorge Napolitano Jawerbaum

Honors College Portfolios

This portfolio is a journey through my process in these first two years at Duquesne. I decided to do this now rather than later because I'm finishing my philosophy Honors Thesis and my computer science senior project, which is also a thesis, and in the following semesters I will be focusing on mathematics and computer science.

The writings are varied, reflecting the fact that I am pursuing three majors and two minors. The order will reflect my progression, but will generally correspond to topics. First will be my 'simpler' writings as I began my studies here, and are mostly composed …

Where “Philosophy” And “Literature” Converge: Exploring Tibetan Buddhist Writings About Reality, Yaroslav Komarovski

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

It is well known that the Buddha presented his teachings not just as a philosophical system, but as a raft to cross the ocean of saṃsāra and reach the other shore of nirvāṇa; that he did not answer certain philosophical questions because they were not essential for achieving that goal; and that he likened musings about some philosophical issues to inquiries about the origins and nature of the poison by a person shot with a poisonous arrow. On the other hand, we also know that all such statements about what the Buddha said or said not and why are liable …

In Defense Of Non-Anthropocentrism—A Relational Account Of Value And How It Can Be Integrated, Ian I. Weckler

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Climate change has been show to be caused by humans. Human-centric behaviors have affected the world to the extent that many believe we have entered a new geologic epoch. This epoch— the Anthropocene—has prompted exploration into the ethical relationship between humans and the rest of the world. We know that a purely anthropocentric ethical system of values has lead ecological imbalance and environmental destruction, and that a non-anthropocentric (or humancentric) ethical system of value would be better suited for maintaining and regaining a habitable environment. However, past conceptions of non anthropocentrism have relied on abstract conceptions of value that fail …

Complicity And Climate Change, Shalomita Kristanugraha

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

As individuals, how should we understand our personal complicity in climate change related harms? In this thesis, I argue that the predominant way we think of complicity within the Western moral paradigm—that is, as a distribution problem—is inadequate in helping us understand the nature of our complicity in climate change related harms. This inadequacy, in turn, psychologically hampers individual citizens residing in high-emitting nations of the Global North from effective and sustainable social and political engagement with climate change. To address the inadequacy and obstructions that result from it, I follow the discussion between Christopher Kutz and Iris Marion Young …

Collaborative Conservation: A Philosophical Analysis Of The Efficacy And Commensurability Of Tek And Western Science, Anne M. Belldina

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis seeks to explore the similarities and differences between traditional ecological knowledge and Western science as a way to address long-held misconceptions about the efficacy of traditional ecological knowledge, or TEK. The motivation for this project arose from a deep desire to investigate the historical injustices toward Indigenous peoples in the name of conservation. The goal of this analysis is to illustrate that effective collaboration between Indigenous knowledge holders and Western scientists is not only possible, but desirable. I outline three major barriers from which I draw out three minimum criteria which much be met if collaborative conservation efforts …

Living With Moral Schizophrenia, Rachel Hecke

Augustana Center for the Study of Ethics Essay Contest

A response to Michael Stocker's essay titled "The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories". When attempting to follow an ethical theory, a dilemma is created between one’s justifications for action according to their chosen moral theory such as duties and obligations, and the motivations or desires behind the action. Although this dilemma can lead to a divide in one's psyche, especially in regards to personal relationships, this schizophrenia isn't all that bad to endure.

Wonder: A Phenomenological Exploration, Henry R. Kramer

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This paper presents a phenomenology of wonder through careful description of the internal state of wonder, defined here as “full engagement with something that bewilders you.” This phenomenology explores what is at stake in regards to our inhibitions toward wonder, how we can overcome those inhibitions, what the experience of wonder is like, and what effects wonder can have on our lives and ethical activity. This includes an investigation of the relationships between wonder and topics such as judgment, attention, engagement, imagination, play, and our ethical treatment of the more-than-human world. This paper demonstrates that by cultivating wonder we are …

Ethical Eating: Overcoming Alienation In The Industrial Food System By Aligning Our Practices With Our Principles, André Kushnir

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis arose out of a moment of discord, while an environmental philosopher was eating blackberries in the middle of a blizzard in Missoula, Montana. What follows is an attempt to bridge the gap between our principles and our practices, by asking the questions: What does ethical eating look like? Is it possible within our current industrial food system? and If not, what needs to change? Responding to the publication of the 2019 EAT-Lancet report, this essay moves beyond thinking of ethical eating as “healthy” and “sustainable” and challenges the networks of suffering and labour that we take for …

Cognitivism, Feelings, And The Background Structures Of Emotion, David R. Willard

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this thesis is to call attention to some of the shortcomings of a cognitivist theory’s incorporation of feeling into a philosophy of emotion. There has been a tendency within the cognitivist theories to assume as irreducible the intentional structures through which these theories operate. A consequence of this tendency often sees feelings compartmentalized through internal and external distinctions, such as bodily feelings and world-directed feelings. What appears to be ignored is the notion that prior to all emotional experience we have already found ourselves belonging to a world, and attempts at a phenomenological understanding of a category …

Ephesians And Ecumenism, Toby Eisenberg

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

Christian ecumenism has made great strides during the twentieth century but is now widely seen as needing a new path. Avery Dulles has proposed an “exchange of gifts” notion of dialogue in which the participant churches share their understanding of the Christian life and all of the reasons they have for holding their particular doctrines and practices, drawing on whatever normative sources they believe are appropriate. The approach enables the participants to bear testimony in love in the hopes that they may better understand and appreciate each other more fully, thereby opening a path to increased doctrinal consensus and thus …

The Unwavering Movement: Integrating Reason Into British Penal Code 1730-1823, Rebecca M. Good

International ResearchScape Journal

Between the early 16^th and 18^th centuries, English attitude towards crime and correction were based on the strong held belief that faith and religion were the only cure to immorality. Lawmakers began to threaten citizens with capital punishment for menial crimes such as petty theft and begging. Resulting of a moral panic, lawmakers turned to the deterrence to dissuade citizens from partaking in criminal activity. The list of crimes punishable by death in England rose from 50 offenses in 1688 to over 220 in 1815. This article explains the origins of the Bloody Code and how Enlightenment-Era thought …

An Exploration Of Communication Ethics Scholarship And Economic Spheres, Andrew Tinker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project examines communication ethics scholarship to understand how economics is understood within the field and to establish coordinates for scholars to discuss economic spheres as phenomena that affect communication ethics. Scholars draw from the tradition of virtue ethics to mark communication ethics inquiry as that which explores the practices that protect and promote the “good.” Philosophers of communication and communication ethicists have developed paradigmatic metaphors for the field that allow us to understand the formation of ethical guidelines within communities both familial, corporate, and national, that promote and protect various goods. These metaphors include “hierarchy” and “sameness” from Charles …

Virtual Reality As A Pedagogical Tool For Interdisciplinarity And Place-Based Education, Laureen Park

Publications and Research

Place-based education (PBE) has long been recognized as a high-impact educational practice. It embeds learning in a multi-sensory context that nurtures active, praxis-driven, interdisciplinary, and collaborative learning. More recently, educators have begun to utilize digital media and virtual reality technologies in ways that seem to parallel PBE. Using phenomenological concepts, especially following Edmund Husserl and Alfred Schütz, this chapter explores what the parallels and differences might be between physical and virtual places, ontologically as well as in its pedagogical role in PBE. It also attempts to interpret the other chapters of the book in light of the philosophical implications.

The Trolley Problem In Virtual Reality, Jungsu Pak, Ariane Guirguis, Nicholas Mirchandani, Scott Cummings, Uri Maoz

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Would people react to the Trolley problem differently based on the medium? Immersive Virtual Reality Driving Simulator was used to examine participants respond to the trolley problem in a realistic and controlled simulated environment.

The Conclusion In Which Nothingness Is Concluded, Marissa Rimes

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Samuel Johnson’s The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia is ironically most often classified as an “oriental philosophic tale,” but is rarely analyzed from the point of view of oriental philosophy. Although Buddhism’s ambiguities, inwardness, and nothingness, provoke anxiety in Western critique, Johnson’s The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia does something unique from eighteenth-century British thought in that it disavows this Buddaphobia by actively employing a similar line of thought. Through the lens of a Buddhist framework many of the text’s renownedly gloomy implications, in regard to its circular structure and inconclusiveness, are freed from the great sludge of …

Is Tap Dance A Form Of Jazz Percussion?, Aili W. Bresnahan

Philosophy Faculty Publications

This essay considers whether tap dance might be categorized as a kind of feet- and body-created jazz percussion rather than as a musical form of dance. Its focus is thus primarily ontological, although there is much to be said about the experience and value of tap dance that goes beyond ontology. The nature of tap dance is then investigated in historical, functional, and culturally contextual ways, after which the essay shows how the answers to the historical and functional questions are best solved by cultural and contextual considerations. Finally, this essay concludes that yes, tap dance is a form of …

The City As Illusion And Promise, Remmon E. Barbaza

Philosophy Department Faculty Publications

In The City as Illusion and Promise, the author examines the claim (by Henri Lefebvre, and later David Harvey) that the city no longer exists, at least as we know it. What we have instead is merely an illusion, something that Martin Heidegger also implies in some of his later writings, notably his seminal work on the essence of technology. In confronting such an extreme proposition, the author first raises a conceptual problem: Is the city a city insofar as it is not a province? And vice versa? But the conceptual problematic of course is also manifested in actual material …

The Reliable Revisionist, Caitlyn Schaffer

Philosophy: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

The present text explores how the topic of head and heart is much more complicated than one would expect, according to Paul Henne and Walter Sinnot-Armstrong, contributors of Neuroexistentialism. “Does Neuroscience Undermine Morality” aims at figuring out the problem of which moral judgments we can trust, judgments from one’s head (revisionism) or judgments from one’s heart (conservatism). My hypothesis suggests the opposite of the authors, I believe that if you are a revisionist, your first order intuitions are reliable. After setting the framework, I make three main arguments. (A.) If you are able to self-correct then you can identify errors …

Theorizing About The Self In Panpsychism And The Extended Mind Using The Dao De Jing (道德經) And Zhuangzi (莊子), Ryan Lemasters

The Hilltop Review

In this paper, I begin by briefly showing how the problem of self has been understood and approached historically in Western philosophy. I follow this by focusing on some of the recent literature in the philosophy of mind that suggests that the self is extended, meaning it is not solely located within the boundaries of the brain (Clark and Chalmers 1998). It will be evident that this is in conflict with the traditional Western understanding of the self. Since it seems to be the case that there are strong arguments for endorsing the view that the self is extended (to …

An Intercultural Dialogue Between Confucianism And Western Philosophies Concerning Approaches To Family: A Report From A Workshop, Muzi Marilyn Fang

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

Replies To Laura Guerrero, Rachanna Kamtekar, And Jennifer Nagel, Ethan A. Mills

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

Classical Indian Skepticism: Reforming Or Rejecting Philosophy, Jennifer Nagel

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

Don’T Stop Believing: An Argument Against Buddhist Skepticism, Laura Guerrero

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

Overview, Ethan A. Mills

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

The Quest For Recognition: The Case Of Latin American Philosophy, Stephanie Rivera Berruz

Comparative Philosophy

Latin American philosophy has long been concerned with its philosophical identity. In this paper I argue that the search for Latin American philosophical identity is motivated by a desire for recognition that largely hinges on its relationship to European thought. Given that motivations are seldom easily accessible, the essay comparatively draws on Africana and Native American metaphilosophical reflections. Such juxtapositions serve as a means of establishing how philosophical exclusions have themselves motivated and structured how Latin American philosophy has understood its own quest for philosophical identity. In closing, I gesture toward the possibilities of shifting the conversation away from what …

Yi-Jing Integral (Yi): A New Natural And Cosmic Ba-Gua, Harry Donkers

Comparative Philosophy

In this paper we elaborate on the neo-Confucian interpretation of the Yi-Jing system. Based on a further exploration of the Diagram of the Supreme Polarity of Zhou Dunyi, we develop a cosmological-anthropological model in constructive engagement with Western thoughts and views on systems and on the universe. The vital energy (qi) and the pattern (li) play central roles in this model and also in the interpretation of the images and forces of the trigrams. This leads to a comparative model, based on a quadrant system with four perspectives: naturality, rationality, humanity and morality. This model fits …

Introduction To Biomedical Ethics, Katherine Mendis

Open Educational Resources

This course introduces students to issues in the field of biomedical ethics, the theoretical tools bioethicists use to analyze them, and methodology for resolving clinical ethical dilemmas.

Ivan And His Doubles: The Failure Of Intellect In The Brothers Karamazov, Alex Donley

Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship

The purpose of this research is to explore Dostoevsky’s theodicy in The Brothers Karamazov, including key critical commentary that enhances an understanding of the text. One of the novel’s title characters, Ivan, embodies the emerging spirit of intellectualism and freethinking in nineteenth-century Europe. He confronts the Christian concept of God in two famous speeches. First, Ivan’s “Rebellion” epitomizes the problem of evil by asking why an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God allows earthy atrocities. Second, Ivan’s “Grand Inquisitor” rejects the moral freedom given to men, reasoning that it is too great a burden for mankind to bear. These arguments remain relevant …