Philosophy of Mind Commons^™

Needs, Desires, Fears, And Freedom, George Cain

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

No abstract provided.

Buddhism, Confucianism, And Western Conceptions Of Personal Autonomy, Joshua Sias

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

The contemporary conversation surrounding personal autonomy theory is primarily concerned with discussing autonomy in relation to western liberal conceptions of individualism, society, and other elements surrounding modern understandings of personal autonomy. An outsider reviewing the modern discourse over personal autonomy theory may be led to believe that either those within the conversation are simply indifferent to the exclusion of eastern philosophical notions relevant to self-government (and self-determination), or that eastern classical models are incapable of offering much to the discussion of personal autonomy. The following paper is aimed at addressing common components of the modern discussion over personal autonomy theory …

Trust, Trustworthiness, And The Moral Consequence Of Consistency, Jason R. D'Cruz

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

Situationists such as John Doris, Gilbert Harman, and Maria Merritt suppose that appeal to reliable behavioral dispositions can be dispensed with without radical revision to morality as we know it. This paper challenges this supposition, arguing that abandoning hope in reliable dispositions rules out genuine trust and forces us to suspend core reactive attitudes of gratitude and resentment, esteem and indignation. By examining situationism through the lens of trust we learn something about situationism (in particular, the radically revisionary moral implications of its adoption) as well as something about trust (in particular, that the conditions necessary for genuine trust include …

Novels, Philosophies, And Sex, Aleksondra Hultquist

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Against Self-Defense, Stephen Blake Hereth

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Absolute Pacifism (or AP) is the thesis that no act of assault is morally permissible. This entails that all acts of self-defensive assault are impermissible. This essay defends AP against non-eliminativist theories of justified self-defensive assault - that is, theories of self-defensive assault which, contrary to AP, claim that at least some instances of self-defensive assault are morally permissible. Chapter 1 begins by defining assault and AP and subsequently exploring a species of AP wedded to the Doctrine of Double Effect (or DDE). Chapter 2 defends AP against the thesis that self-defensive assault is morally permissible but not morally obligatory. …

Mitigated Skepticism Explanations And Why Its Valuable, Shane Crouch

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

Skepticism is one of the oldest epistemological positions. Since the time of the Greeks, philosophers have been asking the question of is any knowledge possible. The Ancient skeptics of the time doubted everything while David Hume was skeptical of only some things. He further recognized that a global view was not viable for daily life. I argue in this paper that we should follow Hume’s approach in adopting a skepticism that begins with doubt and then examines the evidence for claims before coming to a conclusion. This will be markedly different from a priori assumptions of no knowledge which will …

Pursuing The Good Life, Kevin Corcoran

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

Christopher Peterson's Pursuing the Good Life: 100 Reflections on Positive Psychology

On The Permanence Of Heideggerian Authenticity, Seth Daves

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this essay I pose the following question: is Heideggerian authenticity permanent? To investigate this question I begin with a thorough analysis of what Heidegger means by authenticity. Afterwards I look into the leading figures within the field, seeking guidance in answering the question of the permanence of Heideggerian authenticity. Ultimately I conclude that an amended version of John Haugeland's analysis of resoluteness gives rise to the affirmative response to my question. I conclude by investigating potential problems concluding that Heideggerian authenticity is permanent.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: From Buddhism To Transcendentalism, The Beginning Of An American Literary Tradition, Irene Jue

English

No abstract provided.

How To Be Happy: An Interview With Kevin Corcoran, Kevin Corcoran, Evan Rosa

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Defending The Multiple Realization Argument Against The Identity Theory, David Barrett

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A classic argument in the philosophy of mind is that the identity theory is false because mental state types are multiply realized in brain state types. In this dissertation I provide a detailed elaboration of the argument and a defense of it against a few of its prominent contemporary critics. Finally I offer empirical evidence from inter-species differences in humans and monkeys, and also from a case of extensive neural plasticity, which shows that mental state types are multiply realized in brain state types.

A Nietzschean Account Of Human Flourishing: Affirming The Will To Power Inside The Contours Of Friendship, Christian Joshua Roos

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I examine Friedrich Nietzsche's notion of the will to power, his account of friendship and his understanding of human flourishing. Through textual analysis, I offer a new way of interpreting the will to power, as the achieving of self-realization. The process of achieving self-realization is undergirded by the satisfaction of seven existential needs that are rooted in the paradoxical human conflict between instincts and consciousness. The existential needs are the need for a frame of orientation, the need for devotion, the need for unity, the need for rootedness, the need for stimulation, the need for effectiveness and …

The Mind In Motion, Shayan A. Gates

Senior Honors Projects

The Mind in Motion

Shayan Gates

Faculty Sponsor: Galen Johnson, Philosophy

The origin of most scientific disciplines can be traced back to a few philosophical insights posed by a few curious thinkers throughout time, and cognitive science is no exception.While intrigue has nearly always surrounded the human mind and its relation to the brain, validation of this relationship has not been so easy to come by, and there are still areas of contention during this time of advancement in neurological sciences and related technologies.

This topic is very broad (to say the least) so I decided to confine this paper …

Does The Mind Extend Out Into The World, Andrew D. Kishino

CMC Senior Theses

The extended mind debate juggles the possibilities of whether or not the mind extends out into the world. Today, with the rise in technology, we have an additional claim that our tools are responsible for extending our minds. The internet, smart phones, and other tools give us a foothold in the extended mind debate by providing real world examples of how our mind is perceived as extending out into the world. In discovering where the divide between mind and environment exists we can come up with a conclusion whether or not the mind truly extends out into the world.

Responsible Believing, Miriam S. Mccormick

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In most of our decisions as parents or educators concerning how we should talk to children about difficult subjects, the question turns to what degree we should withhold the truth, how much information we should provide, or what details are appropriate. We, as adults, know the answer to the child's question, and the difficulty arises in figuring out what to convey and how. Questions about death and the afterlife are not like this. We - and by "we;' I mean especially educated adults of the Western world - are often as confused about what we should believe about these matters …

Rightly Or For Ill: The Ethics Of Remembering And Forgetting, Alison Nicole Reiheld '93

Doctoral Dissertations

Forgetting a birthday, a wedding anniversary, a beloved child's school play or a dear colleague's important accomplishments is often met with blame, whereas remembering them can engender praise. Are we in fact blameworthy or praiseworthy for such remembering and forgetting? When ought we to remember, in the ethical sense of 'ought'? And ought we in some cases to allow ourselves to forget?

These are the questions that ground this philosophical work. In fact, we so often unreflectively assign moral blame and praise to ourselves and others for memory behaviors that this faculty, and moral responsibility for it, deserve careful philosophical …

The Tragedy Of Death In The Pursuit Of Spiritual Immortality, And The Physician’S Response, Rachel Furman

Senior Honors Projects

Life is a tragedy in the sense that it amounts to one single contradiction: man will die, and knows this, yet he still does not want to die. He thus spends his entire life fighting the battle to survive, though he knows that victory is impossible. That is, victory in the sense of corporeal immortality is impossible – but what happens to the soul? That human soul, which we have come to distinguish from the body by placing it above the temporal world, and equating it with eternity. Belief in immortality, in this case, spiritual immortality, is, according to Miguel …

The Philosophical Approach To God: A New Thomistic Perspective, 2nd Edition, W. Norris Clarke, S.J.

Philosophy & Theory

This book is a revised and expanded edition of three lectures delivered by the author at Wake Forest University in 1979. Long out of print, in its new edition it should be a valuable resource for scholars and teachers of the philosophy of religion.

The first two lectures, after a critique of the incompleteness of St. Thomas Aquinas’s famous Five Ways of arguing for the existence of God, explore lesser-known resources of Aquinas’s philosophical ascent of the mind to God: the unrestricted dynamism of the human spirit as it reaches toward the fullness of being, and the strictly metaphysical ascent …

Human Behavior: Self-Discrepancy Reduction, Derek Drake

Undergraduate Review

No abstract provided.

Williamson On Knowledge And Psychological Explanation, P.D. Magnus, Jonathan Cohen

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

According to many philosophers, psychological explanation canlegitimately be given in terms of belief and desire, but not in termsof knowledge. To explain why someone does what they do (so the common wisdom holds) you can appeal to what they think or what they want, but not what they know. Timothy Williamson has recently argued against this view. Knowledge, Williamson insists, plays an essential role in ordinary psychological explanation.Williamson's argument works on two fronts.First, he argues against the claim that, unlike knowledge, belief is``composite'' (representable as a conjunction of a narrow and a broadcondition). Belief's failure to be composite, Williamson thinks, …

To Philosophize Is To Learn To Die, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

As the quintessential man of letters, Roland Barthes had the genial gift of being able to sympathize with an endless variety of discourses, texts, myths, and semiotic systems. The profusion of apparent subjects-Japan, Brecht, Balzac, photography, "mythologies," classical writing, the theater-is perhaps calculated to provoke the purist who insists on the values of thoroughness and well-grounded inquiry. At the same time, one would have to be obtuse to fail to recognize the critical projects that animate the many books, essays, and studies; these are explorations that put into question the often closed and crabbed commitment of the scholar or critic …

Husserl's Position Between Dilthey And The Windelband-Rickert School Of Neo-Kantianism, John E. Jalbert

Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

The controversy and debate over the character of the relationship between the natural and human sciences (Natur- und Geisteswissenschaflen) became a central theme for philosophical reflection largely through the efforts of theorists such as Wilhelm Dilthey and the two principal representatives of the Baden School of Neo-Kantians, Wilhelm Windelband and Heinrich Rickert. These turn of the century theorists are major figures in this philosophical arena, but they are by no means the only participants in the effort to grapple with this issue.

Soren Kierkegaard's Philosophy Of Authentic Existence, John B. Merrell

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This undergraduate honors thesis discusses the life and philosophical works of Soren Kierkegaard as it relates to the concept of authentic existence.