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- Item“What Is More Wonderful?”: Existential Violence, Gender, Freedom, and Erotic Love beyond Levinasian Ethics(2024) Khanna, Bela; Mason, Qrescent MaliEmmanuel Levinas famously declared that love is the negation of ethical society, that love constitutes a collapse of the ethical constraints and demands that the face of the Other makes upon the Self. This project takes his claim as a starting point for examining the socially contingent factors that distinguish what I term the romantic-erotic face-to-face, between lovers, from the social-ethical face-to-face, between Levinasian neighbors. If we take Levinas’s and Beauvoir’s notion that transcendence and self- actualization are promised to us in the face of the Other, then something has gone wrong if we simultaneously believe that a love relation, which delivers heightened proximity to the Other, is the negation of the possibility for self-realization. First, I will examine the (self-)destructive dynamics that contribute to ethical amputation in romantic-erotic encounters, looking at both gender and romantic love through a cross-analysis of heterosexual relationships. Next, I will argue that the mutilated woman, whose free, transcendent subjectivity is obscured by sociopolitically contingent factors, becomes assimilable into the masculine in love relations. By becoming all-object or less-than-object via objectification, abjection, mystification, and other forms of what I am calling “existential violence,” women and feminized individuals are rendered partial and thus are able to be possessed, without concerns of justice, by the masculine Other, who is positioned as the Same—indeed, as the Only. This conclusion leads us to the third and final section of this project, which takes Sylvia Plath’s “undesirable impossibility” of fusion as a jumping-off point for imagining an “ethical love” that transcends the social factors that lead to existential violence. I aim in this final section to synthesize the imaginative claims of Simone de Beauvoir, bell hooks, Sylvia Plath, and several other writers about love into a complete picture of an ethical love, free from othering and objectification, as an invaluable tool for self-actualization. I hope to dispel the notion that we must choose between justice and love and propose rather that love is a particular, privileged form of sociality that surpasses ethics into a mutual obligation to not only respect, but to actively take up the existential adventure of the Other in a fluid, trusting balance.
- ItemTrue Solidarity and bell hooks’ Engaged Pedagogy(2023) Wang, Yufan; Mason, Qrescent MaliHuge inequalities exist in the U.S. K-12 and higher education systems, which further widen the achievement gap between classes and races. In addition to the quantitative studies that reveal the deficiency of social mobility, I want to examine the role of education in perpetuating oppression in various forms. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire argues that the banking concept of education as a tool of oppression prevents the oppressed from developing a critical consciousness about their nature of being oppressed and makes them more submissive and subordinate to the dominant values (47). While Freire's work is primarily focused on developing a pedagogy with the oppressed to regain their humanity and liberation, I argue the privileged students should be included in critical pedagogy, not only because a fundamental change in exploitation and oppression needs them to engage in the movement, but also because banking education prevents them from building true solidarity with the oppressed and engaging the liberation struggle meaningfully. In addition, true solidarity in Freire’s mind is an act of love and a praxis that requires reflection and action. Therefore, if we want to build true solidarity between the oppressors and the oppressed, we must abandon the existing banking education and adopt bell hooks’ engaged pedagogy, which emphasize well-being, healing, love, respect, and equity.
- ItemCoping with Mortality: an argument for a stoic lifestyle(2023) Walker, Khalil Ayele; Mason, Qrescent MaliThis text discusses the difficulty of coping with death and mortality, and how Stoicism can provide a practical approach to dealing with these issues. Stoicism is a philosophy that aims to help individuals live a life of inner peace and tranquility by cultivating virtues such as wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. The Stoics believe that happiness is found in our ability to control our thoughts and emotions and live by reason and purposeful lives. By accepting the natural order of life and death, individuals can focus on living fulfilled lives and achieving inner peace. Stoicism offers a practical and rational approach to dealing with death, in promoting resilience and personal growth.
- ItemTruly Seeing Mathematics: An Exploration of Mathematical Aspects through Ability, Skill, and Expertise(2023) Deuber, Lara; Macbeth, DanielleMathematics has been described as a form of synthetic a priori. This paper uses Wittgensteinian aspects to examine the realm of mathematics in ability, skill, and expertise. These categories show different degrees of mathematical comprehension. Aspects are meant to help us “see” meaning under the original concept of an object. This thesis aims to bring examples to light to support my claim that mathematics is not black and white. I hope to show how we can see mathematical aspects as they relate to matching identities, patterns, and constructions to gather a deeper understanding for why there are such differences between levels of mathematical knowledge. As a student continues to develop their mathematical familiarity, they take everything they have acquired from ability to skill to potentially becoming an expert one day. But rather than focusing on a linear relationship between these three categories, I hope to instead give an account of why these are distinct categories.
- ItemUneasiness in the Museum: the Affective Subjectivity and Openness of Art Interpretation(2023) Bhat, Amolina; Miller, JerryThis thesis is a part of my journey of coming to terms with the realization that we are not static beings and thus, neither our creations nor our interpretational processes can ever remain final. As my foundation, I use Jacques Derrida’s understanding of the supplement, Sara Ahmed’s theory on the power of emotion, and Hans-Georg Gadamer’s understanding of artistic hermeneutics interconnected with the general theme of uneasiness. By using the experience of viewing, interpreting, and internalizing art specifically in the space of the museum as my medium, I problematize three interconnected supposed dichotomies: art and natural language, the humanities and sciences, and emotion and rationality. I use the three theories to begin the process of understanding that the meaning of art is never fixed, neither in a specific context nor to a specific person. I argue that the process of interpretation is not, and can never be, completely satisfied or complete. Art is meaningful because it changes us and it encourages us to do the work to remember that we can be changed. While this understanding may initially generate uneasiness, the conversations we have with each other can alleviate this feeling through the realization that we are not alone in our experiences.
- ItemLeaps in Perception: Towards a Philosophy of Imaginatively-endowed Perceiving(2023) Rousseau, Jade; Yurdin, JoelInquiry into our perception soon leads us to a kind of skepticism, whereby we not only doubt that our senses give us access to the objective world, we doubt they give us access to anything at all. This is the problem of perception. At the heart of this problem lies a distance between us and the world. Introducing the concept of perceptive faith, I argue that our fundamental attitude towards the world is thus one of leaping. Using the lens of the leap, I first consider the way perception unfolds within us. I emphasize the importance of theorizing perception as a lived perceiving, and suggest that imagination may be necessary for our perceiving, as that which allows us to bridge the gaps and give life to them. I then consider two analytic theories of perception, drawing out their phenomenological sensibility, and suggest that if intentionalism begins to tie the world to us, enactivism embeds us firmly in the world. The distance between the world and us thus seems to be bridged when we realize perception is an embodied and imaginatively-endowed perceiving. I contend that such premises were ignored because of a pervasive optocentrism in Western philosophy, an overvaluation of sight and a devaluation of the other senses (especially of touch) which led certain problems, questions, and conclusions to appear at the expense of others. I conclude that a philosophy of perception that emphasized the imaginary texture of the world would allow us to unproblematically encompass both our being towards and away from the world.
- ItemWilfrid Sellars, Language Acquisition, and the Necessity of Joint Awareness(2022) Buckley, Peter; Macbeth, Danielle; Yurdin, JoelI argue that a surface reading of Wilfrid Sellars's thoughts on the split between the conceptual and pre-conceptual leaves children without the necessary tools for language acquisition. With the interpretive tools Sellars makes available to the reader, episodes of joint awareness between infants and adults––a necessary condition for language acquisition––are not conceivable. Thus, work must be done to find room for non-conceptual awareness within Sellars's project if Sellars's account is to hold water. This help comes from John Campbell, who develops a theory that understands humans as non-conceptually aware of objects in their environment. By capturing both a similarity in the perceptual content of awareness between child and adult as well as a similarity in the salience of awareness, Campbell can account for joint awareness between infant and adult, enabling young children to gain sufficient footing in the world of the conceptual. Importantly, Campbell's theory of non-conceptual awareness is compatible with the more general features of Sellars's project. In this light, Sellars's lack of explicit tools to account for joint awareness is not a detriment to his project at large.
- ItemSelfhood as Storytelling: Nehamas, Nietzsche, and Ricoeur(2022) Dodds, Matthew; Miller, JerryIn my thesis, I approach questions of what it means to be a subject after the loss of the referent through analysis of certain features of two philosophical works, Nietzsche: Life as Literature by Alexander Nehamas and Oneself as Another by Paul Ricoeur, that I employ to develop a compelling account of various aspects of subjectivity and our experience of our selfhood. These readings converge at the characterization of a person's life as exhibiting a literary character, the assertion that we might best know ourselves through conceptualizations modeled after literary production. I ultimately offer a way in which we might better conceive of our own subjectivity as it ties in with the telling of stories of the self, a process of self-fashioning we experience as mere recollection of truth.
- ItemThe Problem of Evaluation(2022) Rittler, Alexander; Macbeth, Danielle; Miller, JerryIs it possible to make progress on all philosophical arguments? Ordinarily, we are given to think that we can do just this by correcting any mistakes we perceive, but in order to have the ability to mount a challenge against an argument, it must be unchanging in some way and accessible to us to understand. On the face of it, this does not seem to be a problem as we invariably think of arguments existing in such a static form, but given that human experience is all but known to evolve both on biological and socio-cultural grounds, and thus our relationships with language and arguments may be changing, is this epistemic picture able to be upheld in our necessarily dynamic world? If it cannot be, what methodological resources do we require to allow us to make progress and if these in turn are not achievable, where does this leave the state of our progress and inquiries at large? Otherwise, if our long-held view is in fact correct, what supports the resolution of what seems to be a grave paradox?
- ItemConceptuality of Experience(2022) Ding, Joe; Macbeth, DanielleIn Mind and World, John McDowell makes a Kantian thesis that the two faculties of human knowledge – sensibility and understanding – are inextricably combined, in particular, that the sphere in which the faculty of understanding is operative is unbounded. He explicates this thesis by suggesting that concepts, despite belonging to the side of understanding, are passively drawn into operation in the workings of sensibility. I argue that the "passive operation" account fails to do justice to his original Kantian thesis. Alternatively, I defend the inextricable-combination thesis by building on a proposed reading of the Transcendental Deduction in Critique of Pure Reason. I read Kant as telling us here that it is constitutive of pure concepts to be involved in experience, which enables us to understand the conceptuality of experience in a way that does not invoke the puzzling notion of the passive involvement of concepts. On the proposed account, the co-operation between intuition and concepts is indeed inextricable: pure concepts have no other use than to be applied to intuition so that the latter can fully realize its cognitive role of giving an object to the mind. To fully make sense of the idea of conceptuality of experience, we need a new picture of the kind of interaction between mind and world in experience, which amounts to a reconsideration of what knowledge and its objectivity are.
- ItemIs Beauty Truth and Truth Beauty? Beauty, Style, and Felt Knowledge in Philosophical Writing(2022) Fiscarelli-Mintz, Anna; Berger, Benjamin (Professor of philosophy); Mason, Qrescent MaliBeauty is often considered to have no serious place in philosophy—at best a mere ornament and at worst the indication of poor or even dangerous philosophical writing. This designation is also often weaponized against philosophers whose writing style takes non-traditional forms, forcing them to justify their philosophy (and all too often themselves as philosophers) against a distinctly un-diverse canon of traditional philosophical writing, thus robbing the field of valuable philosophers and philosophy itself from the power and insight of their work, not to mention making the field a far more difficult environment for those who Kristie Dotson calls "diverse practitioners" of philosophy. In this thesis, I will examine the role of beauty in philosophical writing by focusing on the work of feminist philosopher Sara Ahmed. I will examine how style functions in Ahmed's writing, evaluate how existing arguments surrounding style in philosophical writing might account for the effectiveness of Ahmed's work, and posit my own argument as to how beautiful writing allows for a different kind of access to truth through felt knowledge.
- ItemTranslating the machine: rearticulating intelligence and cognition(2022) Aronson, Sam; Miller, JerryAdvances in artificial intelligence technologies are displacing human labor and continue to gain new capacities. Given these displacements, particularly those that not just displace physical tasks but mental ones, there are fears that machines will be able to do all of what humans can, but better. Many accounts of mind flat-out reject the notion that properly programmed computers can have a mind but struggle to provide an account for what they can do. This thesis will sketch such an account. First, it will follow philosophers of mind in accounting for the mind as embodied and constitutive of many behaviors and capacities before unifying the mind and computational resources through an account of cognition. Finally, the topic of translating cognitive contexts will be considered. In all, this will allow us to radically reconceptualize how to think of not just mental occurrences, but the relation between people, machines, and other cognitive beings.
- ItemThe Dough That Kneads the Kneader: an Exploration of the Self and the Viscous(2022) Esner, Sofia; Miller, JerryThe viscous, when it has been discussed at all, has been under the guise of disgust, abjection, or fear. But what if that conversation obscures a more fundamental movement to separate the viscous and self? Drawing on work by Jean-Paul Sartre, Mary Douglas, Gaston Bachelard, Elizabeth Grosz, and Sara Ahmed, I will argue against the traditional viewpoint on viscosity to show that we are essentially viscous beings. We are soft and gelatinous. We sink into the world and the world creeps up into us. I will begin with a taxonomy of the slimy, sticky and the viscous which will lay out the (non)-differences between the three categories. I will argue that Sartre sees the viscous as horrible in and of itself because he sees it as fundamentally denying the project of self-determinacy. In this I will then move into a discussion of labor, showing how Bachelard words against Sartre to argue that we can control the viscous. I will also offer an overview of the relation of the body to the viscous, drawing on Grosz. Finally, I will argue that our relationality with the world can be thought of through stickiness. I will argue we are in part constituted as subjects through viscosity. And, importantly, that using the framework of viscosity allows for a conception of the self that is, like viscosity itself, a kind of process without end.
- ItemMathematical Simulacra: The Opening of a Discourse on Mathematical Deconstruction(2022) Haile, Ben; Macbeth, DanielleHistorically, mathematical language has been relegated as supplemental to an ideal pure mathematics. This paper uses Derridean tools of deconstruction to examine the role of the mathematical supplement. I argue that the limits of our mathematical language are both constitutive and productive in an evolving mathematical discourse. Additionally, I consider the particular and curious sturdiness of mathematical language in comparison to its natural language counterpart. I argue that this "mathematical sturdiness" is on one end due to the tightly iterative and citational nature of the language while at the same time a result of the practiced disciplinary power of mathematics as a historical and academic discipline.
- ItemSong of Wisdom's and Self's Love // Philosophical Systems of Gender and Transness and the Journey to Genderqueer Worlds(2022) Su, Kai-Ling McEvoy; Miller, JerryThough love of wisdom tried to set me free Peace comes only through living life as me n this paper I attempt to find a metaphysical framework of gender in which the philosophical study of nonbinary experience can be grounded. I go about this by first examining the metaphysical systems of gender and transness put forth by Talia Mae Bettcher and Robin Dembroff. Subsequently, I find that both accounts have parallel structure despite differences in grounding. While I find that Dembroff's model lacking due to their framing of kind, I also find that their distinction between modest and extreme ontological pluralism to be an important concept. This leads me to construct a modified account of Bettcher's system. Next, I consider the account of genderqueer as gender kind put forth by Dembroff. Finally, after finding Dembroff's account once again lacking due to the language of kind, I use Dembroff's account in conjuncture with the modified version of Bettcher's system of gender to construct a new account of "genderqueer worlds."
- ItemI Am This World(2022) Bates, Oliver; Macbeth, DanielleThis thesis explores the idea of the self, as understood over and against observable nature as a narrative arc using Renée Descartes, Martin Heidegger, Danielle Macbeth, and Judith Butler. It will argue that one starting place for the modern conception of the self as alienated from the observable world is found with Descartes, then the self as furthered with a Heideggerian reading of Descartes and Heidegger's own contributions, followed by a Macbethian reading of Heidegger which bring the word back from alienation. It will conclude with Judith Butler who points out a new kind of alienation from the world. The bulk of this paper will be a close reading of select works of Heidegger to understand his steps beyond Descartes. This thesis will argue the Heideggerian way of thinking about the self as capacity and the actualization of Being-in-the-world that separates thing and object to avoid idealism and the pitfalls of representationalism. It concludes with the role of the body and why there is a lack of focus on it for Heidegger as understood through Butler. It then posits a re-alienation from the socially familiar world by looking at performative acts of identity as inscriptions of discursive acts on the body.
- ItemUnhappy Solutions: Enduring the Cycle of Institutional Violence From 1972 to the Bi-Co Strike(2021) Woo, Kylie; Mason, Qrescent MaliWalter Benjamin highlights two kinds of violence, mythic and divine, in his Critique of Violence, which sets up a foundation to further explore how linear temporality affects our recognition of violence. Looking at the insurmountable violence that people of color have endured over the past year, from COVID-19 Asian hate-crimes to the murders of Black, unarmed men and women, this thesis explores how we recognize and solve violence according to a linear temporality. However, I argue that this systemic and institutional violence is actually a cycle that must be solved with non-linear solutions, since violence can only recognize itself, an idea stemming from Frantz Fanon. Inspired by Sarah Ahmed, I argue that unhappiness is a non-linear solution that might help to recognize violence as a cycle, therefore alleviate it accordingly. The Bi-Co Strike serves as a personal and philosophical example of how institutional violence is a cycle, as the 1972 Strike at Haverford College highlights the repetitive nature of violence demonstrating that linear solutions do not work. This thesis is an acknowledgement of my own frustration, confusion, and complicity in orienting myself towards the future and towards happiness. This thesis is not a critique of the legal system and the violence that we have endured over the past year, but is a critique of our orientation towards order, towards clarity, to change, and (un)happiness.
- ItemFrom words to meaning reflection on the white horse problem(2020) Zhu, Xianghan; Macbeth, Danielle; Miller, JerryWhite horse problem is a famous proposition in pre-Qin dynasty elaborated by Gongsun Long in 白马论, White Horse Dialogue. The reason that this problem is interesting to scholars is because that it might testify the existence of logic in ancient China, since it has widely been assumed that Chinese does not have logic at all. The mainstream now agrees that the problem is a logical deduction, not a paradox, and scholars have proposed their own methods to account for the legitimacy of it. Although they approach the problem from different aspects, that the dialogue is written in Chinese is a crucial yet often overlooked fact, especially in western academia. Therefore, the white horse problem might need to be regarded as an issue of philosophy of language at first, and of logic secondarily. Scholars speaking alphabet-based languages might unavoidably think that Chinese functions in a similar way in terms of expressing meaning, which fails to capture the particular phenomenology of Chinese. The outcome of such misleading thought would lead to a complete misunderstanding of the white horse problem.
- ItemThe Value of Teleology in Biological Explanation(2020) Gutierrez, Alex; Yurdin, JoelIn the study of living things, there is a general suspicion of teleology as a legitimate mode of explanation. In its place, materialist accounts have been put forth and used by biologists to explain life processes through purely efficient-causal materialist means. Materialist Robert Boyle levels two major critiques at teleology: that it is gratuitous and obscurantist. In this view, teleology is seen as explanatorily unnecessary and potentially discouraging of investigations into the essential parts of a material entity. Materialism, conversely, is seen as simple, perspicuous, and universalizable. Through a Neo-Aristotelian lens, philosophers Martha Nussbaum and Michael Thompson challenge the view that materialist explanation is sufficient and that teleological explanation is gratuitous and obscure through clarifying the notion of the life-form, or the logos. Teleology is championed as a method of biological explanation that, rather than making accounts of living beings unclear or needlessly complex, makes them perspicuous and simple without sacrificing intellectual rigor or depth of analysis. Materialist accounts, rather than replace teleology, should accompany them in explanations of vital processes.
- ItemGeneration(s) of Self: Understanding the Nietzschean Alternative to Self as Causal Substratum(2020) Floyd, Isabel; Miller, JerryNietzsche writes "The doer is merely a fiction added to the deed—the deed is everything" (GM I:13). And yet, though Nietzsche's rejection of the theoretical import of ‘doers' in favor of an account of ‘deeds' is clearly a central part of his philosophical approach, it is a move that is not sufficiently understood in the secondary literature. Many Nietzsche theorists struggle to accept the radical character of this assertion and instead attempt to integrate it into an account of human agency in which being is still more theoretically fundamental than doing. In this thesis, I will examine existing interpretations and attempt to offer a reading of Nietzsche's views on the self that more fully captures the radical nature of his disavowal of doers. The Nietzschean self is active—it is deeds, it does not cause deeds, and such a self destabilizes the notion of causal responsibility that we typically use to understand the connection between subjects and deeds. I propose that the dissolution of causal responsibility makes way for an alternative picture of responsibility as radical, active self-claiming. The Nietzschean self that is claimed in this picture is not a substance but rather an inheritance of enacted relationships in which doing is theoretically central and explanatory of anything that we might call ‘being'. Nietzsche's account compels us to practice self-creation by embracing an understanding of the self as a transformative process of becoming in which change—rather than stability—is theoretically foundational.
- ItemLiberalism and the Conflict of Restraint(2020) Staruski, Joseph; Yurdin, JoelJohn Rawls' A Theory of Justice is an extremely important work of contemporary liberalism that sets up the theoretical framework for a defense of liberal social contract deontology. Michael Sandel, a communitarian, tries to criticize Rawls on the grounds that his liberal political theory will produce alienated and dislocated individuals without clear or thickly-constituted identities. Rawls replies to the communitarian critique by differentiating between the institutional (public) and non-institutional (moral) identities, but fails to address the ethical/metaphysical considerations that are needed to fully account for the communitarian critique. Rawls tries to place ‘communitarian values' within the non-institutional sphere, but since the institutional and non-institutional collapse into the same person who is at once citizen and moral individual, he creates what I call the ‘conflict of restraint.' I will explore how existentialism and Simone de Beauvoir's ethics of freedom help to advance the liberal argument against Sandel's criticisms while also affirming the criticism or Rawls' presumed impartiality. Beauvoir's perspective is analogous to A Theory of Justice in some ways. Beauvoir and Rawls share a similar conception of self and a similar dualism between universal and particular. If seen as a Rawlsian moral identity, Beauvoir's existentialist ethics helps to solve the conflict of restraint by bringing into line otherwise conflicting interests. The existentialist perspective at once shows the potential to bring forward a new way of thinking about justice and addresses the communitarian critique by providing an ethical/metaphysical paradigm to ground liberal claims of goodness.
- ItemAt the Foot of Babel: Derrida, St. Paul, and a Question of Translation(2020) King, David; Miller, JerryFor as long as language has been of interest to philosophers, so has translation. Over the course of the 20th century, sustained focus on matters of language inevitably brought translation to the fore. As a normative conception of translation emerged, so too did its critics, chief among them Jacques Derrida. This essay proposes to re-examine Derrida's critique of the normative conception of language through an analysis of his essay, "Des Tours de Babel." Two prominent themes emerge in this essay: the proper name and the law. I argue that Derrida ultimately cannot escape a law-based conception of language, and therefore fails to see the extent of the damage done by law, given its dominating tendencies. I will then argue, using resources found in St. Paul's writings, that a full critique of the law as the basis for translation enables us to see a fundamentally new picture of language, one in which the non-violent apprehension of linguistic difference becomes a real possibility, instead of the shadow of a promise.
- Item‘The Absence of Presence': Theorizing Unconsciousness Through the Phenomenology of Complex Trauma.(2020) Mohan, Aarushi; Mali Mason, Qrescent; Miller, JerryThe lived experience of complex trauma survivors influences ontology by offering the opportunity to theorize paradoxes within the formation of consciousness. Using Emmanuel Levinas' Existence and Existents, I develop an argument about how diagnostic criteria are an attempt to name the shape of complex trauma but they fail because of their fundamental ontological premises. This is because diagnosis works in the space of consciousness and assumes a certain type of temporal subject, which fails to recognize complex trauma survivors. Similarly, in philosophical literature about trauma, there is also an attempt to use dualisms or neat dialectics to theorize trauma. The fundamental nature of complex trauma, however, is that it resists resolution. Building upon Levinas' critique of Heidegger, I present an argument about how complex trauma survivors can open up a theoretical space to think about unconsciousness, and the liminal or not-yet subject.
- ItemI Mean What I Say: Two Readings of Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument(2020) Goodwin, Jane; Macbeth, DanielleConflicting interpretations have disturbed Wittgenstein's private language argument. I describe two fundamentally opposing readings. In the first, the argument defends an essential connection between the public and the private. In the second, the argument forges a contingent connection based in the empirical reality of our public use. Because of this fundamental opposition, the two readings employ Wittgenstein's appeal to practice either as part of the essential character of meaning-making or as a stopgap for an individual who becomes lost in doubting their own private interpretation of a word. Wittgenstein will seem clearly to mean the former kind of practice, but if practice cannot be read as a positive account of meaning that is not private, then it will not be enough to stop our fall into his regress argument.
- ItemRECOVERING THE ROLE OF EXPLANATORY KNOWLEDGE IN EXPERTISE(2018) Hagan, Mitchell; Yurdin, JoelWhile it is a view that philosophy has largely ignored since Gilbert Ryle's work in the 20th century, we ought to recognize that explanatory knowledge serves a valuable role in expert behavior. With developments that arise in the 20th century, we experience a radical shift in understanding expertise that would have us believe explanatory knowledge, and propositional knowledge generally, simply does not play a role in skilled performance. According to the contemporary literature, while having explanatory knowledge may be relevant to the novice person who is acquiring a skill, having such knowledge in no way manifests in behavior that we generally distinguish as being expert. Only until very recently, many philosophers have come to agree that explanatory knowledge is merely inoperative as it relates to skilled performance, and while considering such knowledge may be useful to a beginner who is learning a new skill, such knowledge is in no way operative once the person has become well-acquainted with the skill. However, simply because philosophers have concentrated on examples involving expertise in which explanatory knowledge does not occupy a central role, we ought to deny the premature conclusion being made that would have us believe explanatory knowledge is always a mere aside to a person's displaying expertise. Ultimately, in analyzing cases involving expertise where explanatory knowledge makes an essential contribution to a person’s displaying expert behavior, we ought to see why exactly the Rylean account of skilled behavior is inadequate, and in what ways explanatory knowledge is in fact valuable and is made manifest in a person’s displaying expertise.
- ItemDeconstructing the Moment of Representation with Spivak and Derrida(2018) Ahmed, Courtney; Miller, JerryThis essay aims to employ a deconstructive understanding of identity and representation in order to identify what an ethical approach to representation should look like, especially with regard to the empowerment of minority and marginalized groups. I turn to Gayatri Spivak and Jacques Derrida who provide the framework for my scope of inquiry. In “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Spivak problematizes the aim of postcolonialism to constitute a postcolonial identity by giving voice to indigenous cultural narratives that counteract dominating Western imperialist ideologies. The problem with this aim lies in its tenuous commitment to a stable, persistent ‘truth’ of identity that can be understood apart from context, which, according to Spivak, results in the failure to recognize how the “epistemic violence” of imperialism has obstructed the subaltern subject’s ability to both speak and be heard. To justify Spivak’s concerns, I will look to her foundation in Derridean deconstructive analysis, which is built upon the premise that all meaning resides in the unstable relations between signifiers, rather than a fixed referent. With her Derridean background, Spivak advocates for strategic essentialism as a way for marginalized groups to achieve discursive power. Due to well-known dangers of essentialism that are highlighted by a deconstructive lens, however, I argue for a representational approach that goes beyond essentialism and seeks to produce an illimitable subjectivity by allowing room for change and possibility. With this goal in mind, I then offer potential strategies for the empowerment of minority and marginalized groups.
- ItemThe Role of Law in the Motion of Objects and Fields(2018) Rodes, Naji; Yurdin, JoelThe laws of nature are laws of nature in virtue of their relationship to a singular entity which I am calling the law-like lump. The law-like lump is a pattern within the time-evolution of the world, but it also has being in its own right, even apart from the being which it has in virtue of its relationship to the time-evolution. The law-like lump is differentiated into individual laws in two major ways. Firstly, it is differentiated by the equations of fundamental physics. Differentiated in this way, it yields laws of temporal evolution. They govern the motion of the fields constituting the time-evolution of the world. Secondly, the law-like lump is differentiated by individual objects moving around within the time-evolution. Differentiated in this way, it yields laws which are singular relations between properties. For instance, it yields the law that all metals are conductive.
- ItemDoes Normative Anti-Realism Entail Nihilism?(2018) Papenhausen, Vaughn; Miller, JerryDerek Parfit argues that normative anti-realism, the thesis that all normative truths are dependent on our normative attitudes, is a form of Nihilism, the thesis that nothing matters. I shall argue that Parfit is right: normative anti-realism is a form of Nihilism, in the sense that it entails Nihilism. I shall then argue, more tentatively, that this fact is grounds for us to reject anti-realism.
- ItemThe Perspectival Nature of Knowledge Exploring Different Accounts of the Theory of Perspectivism(2018) Raff, William; Macbeth, DaniellePerspectivism of knowledge, in conjunction with common epistemic assumptions, entails that perspectives are an inherently distortionary force in the knowledge relation. Often reduced to the thought that “there are no facts, only interpretations,” perspectivism can seem to lead to a skeptical or relativist theory of truth and knowledge. When interpreted as an extension of the Kantian notion of the thing-in-itself and the Correspondence Theory of Truth, it is assumed that a view from nowhere, or a non-perspectival knowledge, would be preferable. This thesis explores the basis of these different assumptions about knowledge, and the aspects of perspectivism that make them untenable. Different versions of perspectivism arises in the works of Arthur Danto, Alexander Nehamas, and Maudemarie Clark, who each argue for a characterization of the theory which in various ways misconstrue the role of the cognitive perspective in knowledge. Perspective always impels access to knowledge, and sometimes impedes it – knowledge originates from an approach to the world which is always taken through a perspective. In some cases, the perspective adopted can confuse our understanding, but that understanding is always made initially possible by the perspective. Rather than making knowledge meaningless through distorting the interpretations made by cognizing subjects, perspectives enable the cognitive relation to occur, and has a structural role in the relation between a cognizing subject and objects of their cognition.
- ItemRogue Expectations: An Ethical Intervention for Political Philosophy of Race(2018) Gladstone, Bradford; Miller, JerryContemporary political philosophers studying the effects of race approach it as being fundamentally a force of differentiation and oppression, taking a thoroughly Rousseauian approach to inequality as based in society rather than basic social interaction. This situation arises from the starting point of the debate, past a discussion on human perceptual and evaluative capabilities. One is left with promises of potential freedom should the structures of society that enforce race fall, leading only to another politics that understands humanity as inherently free from immediate evaluation. When thinkers do take questions of identity formation and association into account, such as Kwame Anthony Appiah’s Ethics of Identity, they simply reiterate the Rousseauian form for a liberal reformation. A critical eye must once again be turned upon the construction of the human and its perceptual capabilities when creating a political model. J. Reid Miller proposes an ethical model that denies a gap between the perception of a person or action and an ethical judgment regarding it. He notes the necessity for race and embodied characteristics to hold evaluative weight as a method of determining the value of a phenomenon. In tying human perception to racial expectations, Miller rejects both any potential value-neutral observation and any promise of equal judgment, as the action of a white person will not be defined as the same action when performed by a black person. From these expectations arises the possibility to challenge those bodies of knowledge perpetuated by political structures in favor of subversive “rogue expectations”.
- ItemThe Intentionality of Machines An Investigation into Computers’ Capacity for Agential Action(2018) Woods, Henry; Macbeth, DanielleThe philosophy of Artificial Intelligence is beset by an intolerable deadlock. In an attempt to answer the question of whether computers can perform the same actions as humans, many philosophers have posited varying solutions. Of particular note are the Machine Functionalist, Biological Naturalist, and Contextualist accounts. By examining the theories that fall under these categories, it becomes plainly obvious that little progress will be made towards deciding this debate, as philosophers of Artificial Intelligence only succeed in talking past each other. The aim of this essay then is to move this debate forward by providing a test that will hopefully create some friction. In order for us to assess computers on their capacity for agency – an essential quality of the sort of actions we are evaluating computers on, such as playing and speaking – we must judge whether computers have the right sort of relationship with the world, one that is Intentional. Whereas the three major accounts delineated in this essay fail to argue against each other on some common point, we will examine how Intentionality plays a role in human action, and why it is necessary for computers to exhibit it in order for them to be doing the relevant action, and not merely mimicking a human performing that same action. This essay will develop these arguments, finally, by examining what relationship a computer would have to have with the world in order for it to be playing chess or speaking language agentially – in other words as a human does.
- ItemAccounting for Identity with Alcoff and Butler(2017) Felder, Francesca; Miller, JerryWhat is the problem with identity? A genre of academic articles has emerged out of concern over the use of identity in various political and social contexts. These articles worry that social identities such as race, gender, and ethnicity limit the freedom of the individual if we assume them to be real or a priori distinctions. They implicitly retain a modern view of the subject that counterposes pre-social individual agency against the imposition of social identity. This modern view of the subject generates the very problem with identity they try to solve. In contrast, the works of Judith Butler (Gender Trouble, 1990) and Linda Alcoff (Visible Identities, 2006) aim to overcome the modern view of the subject by articulating a self that is socially constituted by its identities. Despite the vast differences in their accounts, each continues to employ a split between a pre-social self and the social in which agency can always overcome one’s social identity. I argue that an account of identity must not aim to solve the modern problem with identity, but instead show that such a problem only arises when agency and identity are understood to be mutually exclusive. Identities function as the apparent authorizing origins of the social norms that produce them. But because identities inevitably fail to ever fully justify those norms, they are not inherently reifying.
- ItemHow Can Art Save Us: Reading Heidegger and Nam June Paik in the Age of Technology(2017) Jung, Kelly; Wright, Kathleen, 1944-The aim of this paper is to examine what Heidegger identifies as the danger of modern technology and to understand how art can possibly be an antidote to this present danger. Heidegger’s concern about modern technology stems from its potential effects of blinding humanity from seeing truths, and letting humans to see the world as a set of resources. In this age of danger, Heidegger suggests that art might be the saving power, since art shares its roots but also strays away from technology through its own sense of revealing. Nevertheless, the crux of this paper lies in reevaluating Heidegger’s thoughts and its limits through Nam June Paik’s TV Buddha, which is a 20th century artwork that uses technology. With the different conceptual and material revolutions in the fine arts over the past decade, modern and contemporary art has challenged Heidegger’s definition of art and an artist in different ways. Paik’s work also serves as a great example. On the one hand, he challenges the Heideggerian notion of what art should be, but on the other hand, his TV Buddha also demonstrates how technology, when brought into the realm of art is no longer perceived through its utility but help reveal truths about humanity.
- ItemKnowing Substances through their Causes: An Inquiry into the Role of Essence in Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Posterior Analytics(2017) Jin, Kevin; Wright, Kathleen, 1944-The interpretation of essence and its role in determining substance in Aristotle’s Metaphysics has long been a topic of controversy. In the following article, I will attempt to analyze essence as the sole and definitive cause of substance as Aristotle states in Met. Z 4-6. I argue that essence can be seen as a discursive account or λογος of a substance only when one explains how a rational agent goes through the process of acquiring knowledge of substances. By understanding the conditions for which one begins to grasp entities through their essence, Aristotle reveals the epistemological limits of how we define substances. I will further argue that the limits to our knowledge of substances is only determined by inquiring into their causes. By construing essence as an endeavor to find sufficient causes, I turn to the Posterior Analytics to provide principles for determining the grounds of an appropriate demonstration of substance. In doing so, I shall also show how the principles of sufficient causality all rely on a metaphysical analysis of the possible things we have knowledge of, i.e. substances. In order to develop a cohesive view of how essence explains substance, I will show how both interpretations of essence in the Metaphysics and Posterior Analytics are required to explain how we can only have knowledge of substance through its essence by searching for and being aware of its cause.
- ItemKierkegaardian Ethics and Supererogation(2017) Andolsek, Ian; Miller, JerryThis paper argues that Kierkegaard can make a positive contribution to contemporary debates concerning the possibility of supererogation within a virtue ethics conception of ethics. It uses Kierkegaard’s theories on the spheres of existence, and the concept of what he refers to as a “teleological suspension of the ethical,” as he develops it in Either-Or and demonstrates it in Fear and Trembling, to show how it may be interpreted to support a novel conception of supererogation that appears compatible with virtue ethics.
- ItemWeak Moral Autonomy in Artificial Intelligence(2017) Trisolini, Calvin; Wright, Kathleen, 1944-My senior essay is aimed at asking whether artificial agency is possible, and examining the ethical ramifications of an affirmative answer. In the course of my paper, I accept that agency ought to be defined on a continuum in which there can be more or less autonomous entities that can both be said to be agents. Although artificial agency almost certainly falls below human “full moral agency” on this spectrum, and despite the reality that human programmers are likely responsible for the actions of most computers, I conclude that artificial moral agents could still exist. Because the other minds problem is unresolved, it would be incongruent with our treatment of humans to assume that robots that appear to be acting autonomously are not in fact autonomous. My discussion closes with a brief survey of what I see as some of the important questions that must be answered next if my analysis is correct.
- ItemNietzsche contra Freud: Genealogy/Archaeology of Morals(2017) Dombek, Kelly; Miller, JerryIn the paper “Nietzsche contra Freud: Genealogy/Archaeology of Morals” I argue that the works On the Genealogy of Morals by Friedrich Nietzsche and Civilization and its Discontents by Sigmund Freud should be analysed together as metaethical projects which attempt to discern the psycho-historical development of modern morality. In addition to their historical and intellectual connections, these works display continuity from Nietzsche to Freud’s conceptualization of unconscious drives, the will to power, and the diagnosis that modernity suffers from internalized guilt. Despite their similarities, I argue that these projects diverge in their aim, characterized by the differences between Paul-Laurent Assoun’s concepts of genealogy and archaeology : Freud’s archaeology is constituted by a belief in the fundamental value of truth and aims to dispel illusion, and is distinguished by the systematic nature of psychoanalysis, while Nietzsche’s recursive genealogy is constituted by a persistent questioning of the value of values, and gains its normative force by presenting an alternative to the logocentric discourse of modern science. Through a poststructural critique of Freud’s conception of the death drive, I conclude that genealogy is a stronger theory because of its recognition of the interminable problem of value, seen in Nietzsche’s concept of revaluation and overcoming. Ultimately, the ‘talk therapy’ of psychoanalysis is inferior to the the metaphorical act of dancing, which dissolves the logocentric dichotomies of value at the core of the discontents of modernity.
- ItemAristotle on Epistemic Justification and Embodied Understanding(2017) Stevens, Griffin; Macbeth, DanielleThis paper seeks to dissolve the apparent epistemological tension posed in Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics between, on the one hand, the infallibility of the knowledge-state we are in when we know scientific first principles, and on the other, the fallibility of the inductive process by which we are supposed to arrive at such knowledge. I claim that the tension feels especially pressing because it seems to us as modern philosophical readers to cast doubt on the very possibility of having scientific knowledge. The skeptic wants to press this point and claim that because we can in principle be mistaken when we think we know something scientifically, we may not be able to know scientifically at all. But for Aristotle, because his fundamental scientific conceptions of episteme and nous are about having explanatory knowledge, the justificatory sense in which nous is required has to do with understanding the knowledge we already have, rather than certifying the truth of our knowledge of particulars. Induction, based on embodied experience and perception, already gives us particular knowledge, which we are capable of transforming into understanding when we develop the right ‘why’ explanations of our particular knowledge. In interpreting Aristotle’s epistemology in this way, my hope is that we may reexamine and subsequently broaden our epistemological conceptions of our modes of intentional directedness and knowing with respect to the scientifically knowable world.
- ItemScience, Narrative, and Our Fundamental Comprehension of the World: A Meta-Reflection on the Split in Human Understanding(2017) Schneider, Julian; Macbeth, DanielleMy focus is on two very different forms of understanding—what I call scientific understanding and narrative understanding. I argue that scientific understanding is characterized by its non-agential perspective and non-relational notion of time; by removing oneself from the world, one is able to grasp objective truth. Within narrative understanding, on the other hand, one is immersed in the world; this form is essentially agential and adopts a relational notion of time—i.e. time is in relation to the agent who does things in the world. This split in understanding itself can either be understood scientifically or narratively. The scientific picture of the split makes it seem like narrative understanding is a biased and therefore corrupted form of understanding. This picture of the split accords an epistemic priority to science as the enterprise capable of grasping what objectively is. The narrative picture of the split, on the other hand, shows how science is a useful tool for ascertaining certain types of knowledge, but it must be restricted to the domain within which it is useful. I conclude that there is a distinction between narrative understanding and scientific understanding—and furthermore, that narrative understanding contains a distinction between knowing persons and knowing objects, while scientific understanding is only able to know things (even persons) as objects.
- ItemPerceptible Value: Toward a Weak Realist Account of Moral Properties(2016) Jensen, Luke; Yurdin, JoelRealists and anti-realists about value acknowledge that we have and talk about evaluative experiences, but the status of our experiences and talk is contentious. What is up for debate is whether such experiences are necessarily illusory (anti-realism) or are, at least sometimes, perceptual (realism). This paper aims to extend McDowell’s work on value into an account of moral properties according to which moral properties are real, perceptible as such, internally related to the will, and for us. I articulate the context in which this account is built by mapping the dialectics among four broad positions in meta-ethics along two general dimensions: 1) how each position construes moral concepts, and 2) how each construes moral properties. I utilize Dancy’s distinction between intrinsically motivating states and necessarily motivating states to develop an account of moral error, weakness of will, and how actions come to bear moral properties that blurs two separate but interrelated oppositions between fact and value, and between reasons and motivations. In so doing I reject a Cartesian view of the relation between Mind and World and the classical Humean theory of action. This requires problematizing McDowell’s dispositional account of value, and thereby his account for the perceptibility of value based on a primary/secondary quality model, which, I argue already concedes too much to the Humean-Cartesian anti-realists. Finally, I argue, contra Dancy, that from these considerations it follows that a perceptual model is useful for ethics for two reasons: 1) the objects of perception provide the model for the reality of moral properties, and 2) as the most familiar non-inferential mode of access to the world, it is by analogy to perception that we understand our other non-inferential modes of access to the moral features of particular situations.
- ItemRevision and the Realm of Actuality: Problematizing Wittgenstein’s Account of Logic(2016) Berlin, Emily; Macbeth, DanielleThe project of this paper is to problematize the Wittgensteinian account of logic which treats what we understand to be the laws of logic as infallible and claims that logic does not constitute a branch of knowledge. In his essay “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” Quine takes a radically different position; he argues that all of our beliefs are revisable, including what we believe to be logical laws. In this paper I will argue in favor of logical revisability – citing three instances that I believe demonstrate why we have and why we are able to revise our system of logic (the three instances being: the inconsistency between syllogistic and first-order logic, the evaluative nature of the accepting or rejecting certain laws of logic, and finally, how logical notation mediates our access to truth). By first establishing what I believe to be a shared characterization of what logic is, I will then follow a Wittgensteinian course of reasoning to expose the assumptions that Wittgenstein mistakes as universal truths – specifically that there is no difference between “the laws of logic” and “what we understand to be the laws of logic”. This discussion will make space for considering how and when one revises the laws of logic as well as the relationship between our systems of logic and what we perceive as the realm of actuality evolving – both of which will call for a reconceptualization of logic as a branch of knowledge.
- ItemA Case for Teleology in Modern Biology(2016) Wenzel, Miwa; Macbeth, DanielleAlthough teleology, or explanations in terms of goals or ends, has historically been integrated in biology, within the past few hundred years, mechanistic explanations have dominated the field and teleology has largely fallen out of favor. A prominent advocate for the dismissal of teleology in biology is evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr (1904-2005) who proposed teleonomy, or explanations of goals or ends as directed by a program, to be the proper way to understand biological processes and development of organisms. However, if we undertake Mayr’s teleonomy instead of teleology, we are essentially left with biological reductionism and see living beings as complicated machines. If this is the case, we lose an understanding of what counts as a successful organism and therefore cannot speak of mutations or improper development in organisms. Thus, I suggest that we need to understand living beings for what they are and invoke Michael Thompson’s notion of life form which suggests that living beings are distinguished from non-living artefacts insofar as they have a life form that encapsulates their capacities and activities beyond immediate response to being merely affected by their environment. I argue that this life form is the irreducible potential that Alan Gotthelf claims defines Aristotelian teleology and is what ultimately separates living beings from non-living artefacts, thus refuting Mayr’s concept of teleonomy as a prominent understanding in biology, and bringing back Aristotelian teleology in individual organisms.
- ItemThe Justification Problem in Aristotelian Ethics: Why the Virtuous Life Is Best for Humans(2015) Robertson, Codi; Macbeth, DanielleThe justification problem is an important problem in the field of ethics. If a prescriptive way of life cannot be justified, then it will hold no weight for those who consider it. Because there has been a rekindled interest in the ancient virtue ethics approach, given its emphasis on the agent as opposed to the action itself, I have decided to explore the justification problem in Aristotelian ethics-one of the main sources, if not the main source, of the virtue ethics approach in the ancient world. I first identify where the problem lies-in Aristotle's conception of the flourishing human life, and more specifically, his function argument, which argues for the importance of human rationality, and the virtues, which, according to Aristotle, manifest human rationality expressed excellently. As a theory of ethics that can only be justified to a small number of individuals-Aristotle's own students who had the proper moral education-it is not a strong theory. By first considering other flourishing life conceptions and their shortcomings, and then explaining as carefully as possible, Aristotle's own justification, I am then able to show why a justification that provides practical reasons for the life lived in accordance with virtue is the best one for humans. These practical reasons, inspired by Richard Kraut, have as their focus, answering the questions what is good for humans, and why, and allow for almost anyone to understand why such a life is the best life possible for humans.
- ItemThe Agent in the Deed: Towards an Expressivist Theory of Action(2015) Jaramillo, Sara; Yurdin, JoelMy aim in this paper will be to examine the relation between an agent’s intentions and her actions. I will look at two different ways of approaching the relation: the causal framework and the expressivist framework, and I will attempt to put forth my own critiques of each. The causal theorists I refer to in my paper approach the question from an analytic standpoint, discussing the mechanisms of the act and attempting to understand human action by breaking it down into its simplest and most basic form. I will claim that in doing so, they lose sight of the big picture and the importance of understanding action phenomenologically. The expressivist theorists oppose the causalists from the beginning by assuming an essential difference between human action and mere events, thus seeking to characterize that difference rather than explain it. Expressivists provide what I consider to be a more phenomenologically accurate view of action, producing the beginnings of an artful perspective on human action. I will attempt to defend and enrich the expressivist understanding of human action, while also illuminating the places where the theory still needs to be filled out.
- ItemBonds Beyond Heidegger(2015) Crawford, Charlie; Wright, Kathleen, 1944-Our modem world is one ever increasingly dominated by technology. As such, our relationship to it has become more complicated than one would normally assume. As a byproduct, modernity has conditioned us to value practicality and efficiency above all else, an idea that encourages those involved to miss out on opportunities to create meaningful bonds with entities in both the material and social worlds. It is the goal of this thesis to explore how history suggests that the way we are, our way of being, can be thought of as a fluid phenomenon that need not stay the same. From there I explore how the physical spaces themselves are part of brings a way of being into existence and how engaging with risk and ritual is what opens us to these meaningful connections. I then turn to how Heidegger understands ourselves as beings alongside technology, how the essence of modern technology has done something detrimental to our current way of being, and lastly, how to save ourselves from this condition by engaging with risk and ritual appropriately.
- ItemCrossing the Divide Between Aristotle's Phronesis and Techne to Discover a More Inclusive Way of Living Well(2015) Chai, Rodney Ming-Fui; Yurdin, JoelIn my paper, I argue that the Chinese Taoist philosopher, Zhuang Zi (369-286 BC) can help us see that Aristotle's distinction between two of his intellectual virtues - phronesis (practical wisdom) and techne (craftsmanship) - is not that clear after all. I will first introduce Aristotle's intellectual virtues in his Nicomachean Ethics. In particular, I will distinguish between techne and phronesis. Next, I will show how the two are related, especially how someone who has mastered a particular technical know-how can help him/her gain practical wisdom in living his/her life. Following which, I will bring in Zhuang Zi's parable of Butcher Ting cutting the ox to show how one can cultivate his/her character and state of psychology and therefore live an excellent life by being immersed and excelling in his/her techne. I will then address possible objections from Aristotle, primarily that it is possible for one to excel in his/her techne but nonetheless lack the wisdom to live well in the daily context. Following my counter-response with Zhuang Zi's distinction between 'small' and 'big' understanding, I will then argue that it is sufficient rather than necessary to possess techne in order to live well. Finally, I will conclude by saying that blurring the divide between techne and phronesis provides an alternative route for people to acquire the knowledge of living well despite a lack of education or literacy.
- ItemExtending, Expanding, and Laying Bare: A Unified Account of Generalization in Mathematics(2015) Gabor, Zachary; Macbeth, DanielleIt is quite common for mathematicians to refer to theorems or definitions as generalizations of others. Although one gets a very good sense of what the term means by doing enough mathematics, it is not a term that mathematicians typically formally define. Indeed, with a little consideration, it can be seen that the task of giving a proper and comprehensive definition is highly non-trivial, because there are various different applications of the term in widely disparate contexts. Nonetheless, the use of the term is rarely, if ever controversial within the mathematical community. This suggests that there is something, albeit difficult to articulate, that mathematicians intuitively recognize the disparate cases to have in common. The primary goal of my thesis is to explain precisely what this commonality is, by giving a definition of generalization that is applicable to each of the various cases of the term's use. In service of this goal, I lay out an ontological picture of mathematics that borrows both from the long-standing structuralist ontological view of mathematics, and from the work of Danielle Macbeth, who claims that mathematics is a study of objective concepts, the referents of mathematical definitions, which definitions give Fregean senses. Having given my account of generalization, I then elaborate on generalization's roles in mathematical practice, using my account to shed some light on its utility in these roles.
- ItemEthical and Epistemic Belief Justification(2015) Halterman, Erik; Wright, Kathleen, 1944-This essay seeks to develop a new theory of intellectual virtue. It rejects the popular reliabilist account as a fundamental misunderstanding of the metaphysical nature of virtue. Namely, reliabilism reduces virtues to something akin to mere habits or tendencies when they are in fact normative, fallible capacities. Further work is needed to explain this, however, as the disjunctivist account of capacities suggests that capacities are only relevant when successfully exercised. This leads to the key insight of this new theory of intellectual virtue: the notion of ethical justification for belief as separate from epistemic justification. This notion is essential for explaining why we sometimes praise knowers for their false beliefs and why we can rightfully call these people intellectually virtuous. These knowers are achieving success of a sort which cannot be captured by reliabilist virtue epistemological theories. Armed with this new theory of intellectual virtue as directed at ethically justified beliefs, we are able to answer several problems which have vexed virtue epistemologists, and to which reliabilists have given particularly unsatisfying answers. We are able to explain how historical scientists such as Aristotle who were unreliable in their scientific theories can rightly be called intellectually virtuous, as they certainly seem to be. We are also able to answer Gettier and Gettier-type problems by clarifying that knowledge must be epistemically justified true belief and demonstrating that these cases always involve ethically justified true belief.
- ItemThe Nature and Value of Privacy(2014) Taylor, Jordan; Yurdin, Joel; Macbeth, DanielleMuch like communication or logical thought, privacy has always been fundamental to human experience. The rise and rapid expansion of communication technology has brought the issue of privacy as a right and value to heightened levels of debate. In order to understand privacy's value, we must first determine what privacy is and what function it serves in human life. Having derived a definition of privacy as the reasonable expectation that one is in control of his or her personal information, this project establishes the role and importance of privacy for various social relations. I shall argue that reticence is a key element in the function of privacy; attention to this element makes apparent the nature and value of privacy.
- ItemEmpathy, Sentimental Education, and Restorative Justice: Providing a Larger Participatory Role for Victims in the American Criminal Justice System(2014) Gallagher, Megan; Macbeth, DanielleResearch on crime victims and their experiences within the American criminal justice system suggests that victims can be unjustly harmed throughout the criminal justice process. I argue that this results from victims' lack of a participatory role in the criminal justice process. Restorative justice initiatives have emerged in response to this issue, but have failed to make significant improvements. In an effort to understand why these current restorative initiatives are insufficient, three approaches of restorative justice are considered in light of two different groups of victims-–victims of sexual and domestic violence, and bereaved victims. This consideration suggests that in order to respond to the unjust harm of victims, restorative values must be woven into the criminal justice process. I claim that in an effort to remain fair and just our criminal justice system has inadvertently treated victims as less than rational, and therefore less than human, by marginalizing them within the criminal justice process. A solution would begin with a conceptual shift regarding the value of sentiments in a legal context and the re-articulation of objectivity. Through sentimental education, empathy and restorative values can begin to be woven into the criminal justice system, allowing us to adequately address the needs of victims and their larger participatory role within the criminal justice process.
- ItemFrom Prediction to Explanation: A Defense of Popper's Situational Analysis and a Critique of Rational Choice Theory as a Subset of Economic Theory(2014) Soroush, Navid; Macbeth, Danielle; Miller, JerryThis thesis argues that Karl Popper's situational analysis is a more suitable model for studying social phenomena than utility maximization theory because of the difference in the two models' rationality principle. Utility maximization theory as a subset of rational choice theory claims that agents attempt to maximize some end that they esteem valuable. Although the structure of the rational choice theory allows for the possibility of predictions in addition to a clear distinction between normative and rational behavior, it lacks real explanatory power because of its goal-directed requirement that it imposes upon social phenomena. Arguing that social phenomenon is ontologically such that it ought to be addressed from subject to subject perspective, I show how rational choice theory fails in addressing social phenomena adequately by imposing its own end-directed rationality principle. I show how Popper's rationality principle, in being left ambiguous, allows its rationality principle to emerge through its situations of interest without any pre-specified ends. I argue that social phenomena can never be predictive, and our inquiries should suffice in the pursuit of understanding alone. Additionally, this thesis argues that normativity constitutes the building blocks of rationality following Gadamer's positive sense of prejudice in entering processes of understanding. Furthermore, Popper's rationality principle functions as a prejudice that allows for understanding social situations.
- ItemWhat is the Virtue of a Philosopher?: Plato, Nietzsche, and the Love of Wisdom.(2013) Duncan, Robin; Yurdin, Joel; Wright, Kathleen, 1944-To answer the question of how a philosophical life and character are a virtuous life and character, I begin by surveying Plato and Nietzsche, both directly and through secondary commentaries. For each, I develop a view of their ideal, virtuous philosopher. For Plato this ideal is partly embodied in the natural philosophers of the Republic, but more fully displayed in the figure of Socrates. Figures defined by a philosophic Eros, which drives them to pursue wisdom and truth unrelentingly and despite all resistance. For Nietzsche, the chosen figure is that of the philosopher of the future, a character of supreme mental strength, self-confidence, and a playful experimentalism. Both Plato and Nietzsche's philosophers are seen to have an interest in education, at least insofar as it can cultivate exceptional individuals to achieve true philosophic character. Based on the points of agreement between these two philosophers, I present an ideal of philosophic virtue that focuses on the motivating love of wisdom and the strength of mind and character to pursue that love to its fullest in the face of all obstacles, which I claim will be available only to few, even potentially. Following the formulation of this ideal virtue, I defend the virtuous character of the love of wisdom as the fullest development of a human excellence in knowing the world; it is a virtuous excellence in both answering questions and in determining which questions are worthy of deep study. This second part of philosophic excellence, the determination of what is worth valuing, addresses concerns about the objective value of truth and allows us to argue against reliance on motivational value alone. Finally I answer the objection that may stem from my assertion that most people do not have even the potential to achieve philosophic virtue, this restriction however, is seen to follow naturally from the formulation of philosophic virtue presented.
- ItemFocusing on “What is Happening Right Now”: Understanding Michel Foucault’s Writings On the Iranian Revolution Through Hannah Arendt’s Theory of Action(2013) Soroush, Nazanin; Miller, Jerry; Wright, Kathleen, 1944-Michel Foucault visited Iran in 1978 in the midst of the popular uprisings that ultimately toppled the Shah’s monarchic regime and led to the foundation of the Islamic Republic. His writings and interviews on the Iranian Revolution indicate his astonishment with the movement. He was particularly awed by the surprising unity of the movement and the role that Shia Islam played in bringing hundreds of thousands of people together. His writings, however, received a lot of immediate criticism, especially after Khomeini founded a fundamentalist Islamic government in the aftermath of the revolution. Foucault was asked to admit to his “mistake”. But he refused to reevaluate his observations on the Iranian revolutionary movement in hindsight. In his writings, he explicitly stated that he aimed at grasping what was “happening right now,” indifferent to the past or the future of the movement. The purpose of this thesis project is to analyze Foucault’s understanding of the Iranian movement through a close reading and analysis of his writings on the movement. In doing so, this thesis draws on Hannah Arendt’s theory of action to argue that Foucault witnessed the actualization of human freedom in Iran. Furthermore, this thesis hopes to, in Foucault’s defense, show the value in attempting to grasp a new phenomenon as it occurs, placing emphasis on the process, as opposed to the aftermath, of a movement.
- ItemThe Primacy of Rights: The Relationship Between Citizens and States and A Discussion of the Existence of Natural Right(2013) Maldonado, Jake; Yurdin, Joel; Miller, JerryThis paper attempts to draw upon the work of four key authors in the debate about the origins and justifications of individual freedom using the ongoing Syrian Revolution as in the flesh evidence for the necessity of making determinations in this field. The conflict itself leads one to wonder what the ideal relationship is between citizens and states, and how the people in societies where individual liberties are not part of the current or historical political structure should think of the rights that others take for granted. Is it philosophically sound to say that all individuals deserve a certain set of rights, and if so, what are these rights? While it is unwise to say that philosophical considerations necessitate the reproduction of a specific political structure, it is viable to say that a set of human qualities deserves to be respected and provided the opportunity to flourish. Regimes, I contend, that attempt to suppress free speech and obscure truths from the public eye do not respect the human qualities that all governments must respect.
- ItemWhat is the Human Being?: Examining the Animal, Social, and Rational(2013) Ziff, J. I.; Macbeth, Danielle; Miller, JerryThis essay seeks to explain the metaphysical nature of the human being. It does so on three levels: the animal, the social and the rational. To explain the animal nature of a human being I take from Michael Thompson's book Life and Action. Using his theory I motivate the existence of a category of life separate from mere matter. To explain the social nature I adapt Grice's theory of non-natural meaning. Using this I separate out actions that animals take whose meanings are not fixed by their animal nature. This together with an adaptation of Foucault's notion of the power-structure I hypothesize that between a mere animal and our rational selves there could exist a social animal that has not rational powers. Finally using John McDowell's understanding of the Sellersian space of reasons I motivate the nature of rationality as centered around self-consciousness. Self-consciousness I understand as being able to perceive the signs that one performs as objects in of themselves thereby placing them in the space of reasons. This together with theory from Danielle Macbeth will allow me to show how the space of reasons relies on having well-developed social practices. The world that one gets via John McDowell's notion of Bildung will be re-conceptualized as the world that is encompassed by our social practices.
- ItemTransforming Education through Meditative Dialogue: The Literacy of Crossing Worlds(2013) Kunen, Jason; Wright, Kathleen, 1944-In our global and technological age, our children are being exposed to cultures, worldviews, and perspectives from around the world, and have the opportunity to learn from these diverse traditions. However, this diversity gives rise to a fundamental question, that is, how can we dilate our minds in order to appreciate and understand a way of life different from our own? The art of crossing worlds through dialogue lies at the heart of philosophy, and it is for this reason that education must now address the issues relevant to our time by nurturing students' dialogical and rational abilities in order to pave the way to a societal structure grounded in mindfulness, critical and meditative reasoning, and compassion, that does not objectify the Other. Philosophical education should develop students' intelligence and awareness, and give them the skills of how to think (not what to think) so that they can question their assumptions and their worldview, strengthen their reasoning abilities and their awareness, and learn how to communicate and connect with others regardless of their worldview. This need to promote and facilitate the ethics of dialogue across worldviews can be accomplished through the philosophy for children pedagogy, and by engaging in deep dialogue. Thus, the primary objective of this thesis is to explore pre-college philosophical education and pedagogy, and the way in which it creates a space where students can learn the art and ethics of dialoging across worlds in a non-objectifying manner. Learning to philosophize requires understanding others and crossing into their worldview without objectifying it, and it is for this reason that philosophical education must provide a safe space where deep, profound dialogue can take place.
- ItemHabermasian and Derridian Texts Make Semantic Contact: Exploring the ‘Strategic’ Nature of Linguistic Structures and Identities(2013) Weathers, Sally; Wright, Kathleen, 1944-; Miller, JerryThis study utilizes Derridian deconstruction to subvert the hierarchy order that Habermas posits between communicative and strategic utterances, thus positing strategic utterances as reflective the fundamental structures of language. In so doing, Habermas’s and Derrida’s respective texts are posited as expatriates within the foreign body of this document, thereby demonstrating the intercultural challenges of linguistic communication and structure of linguistic meanings (identities) explored through this text.
- ItemThe Success of Skillfully Knowing(2013) Padilla, Miguel A.; Macbeth, Danielle; Yurdin, JoelIt is nearly universally acknowledge among epistemologists that knowledge is non-accidentally true belief. In this work, I will give an account of what it means to have a non-accidental true belief, that is, an explanation to what is referred to as the nature of knowledge. In doing so, I build around reliabilist virtue-theoretic approaches to give an account that solves Gettier problems that have plagued defenders of justified true belief accounts. Tackling the problem with the virtue-theoretic approach, complemented by a new understanding of ability as fallible, will give us insight into the character-revealing aspects and rational components of abilities. The notions of animal knowledge and reflective knowledge stemming from rationality will show that we can avoid problems of luck that Gettier problems exemplify. Though this formulation will appear as unconducive to cases of knowledge from testimony, our analysis will show that testimony only elucidates the various forms our abilities take, including practical and perceptual. Specifically, knowledge through testimony will show how we come to train our abilities, which are part of our second nature, and in testimony, our testimonial sensibility.
- ItemPurity of Methods(2012) Thorstad, David A.; Macbeth, Danielle; Allen, Benjamin W.Purity of methods is the term given to the demand that mathematical proofs use methods that are in some sense appropriate to the theorem that they prove. Using Selberg’s elementary proof of the Prime Number Theorem as a case study, I argue that any philosophical account of the purity of methods must be able to establish a connection between the methods permissible in a pure proof and the historically contingent domains into which mathematical knowledge is organized. Such an account will be an account of pure solutions to mathematical problems, which are inseparably tied to our historically contingent means of conceiving them, and not of pure proofs of ahistorical theorems. This paper provides an account of the purity of methods along these lines, and shows that this account can interpret and explain common beliefs about purity. This account brings to the surface connections between purity and mathematical explanation that both explain why pure proofs are valuable, and promise insight into the nature of mathematical explanation.
- ItemThe political ontology of the diagram(2012) Dixit, Milap; Wright, Kathleen, 1944-The numerous spatial concepts used by Gilles Deleuze are understood not as a series of arbitrary metaphorical figures but as operative thought-figurations that can be turned back “outside” to rethink actual space. This paper begins by situating the concept of the diagram in the context of Deleuze’s basic ontology. It is argued that the diagram discovers the very being of becoming as rhythm, a transcendental consistency prior to conceptual distinctions of space and time. This is followed by an extended reading of one of Deleuze’s own diagrams of the production of subjectivity. The diagram becomes an experiment in making thought adequate to the affective landscape that both exceeds and constitutes the phenomenological horizon. Taking Walter Benjamin’s call to reinvent the “infrastructure of feeling” literally, the paper ends with a series of theses on how the thought of the diagram might be deployed to reconstitute existing affective regimes.
- ItemThe Strife of Earth and World: An Explication of Heidegger’s Philosophy of Art(2012) Bowditch, James P.; Wright, Kathleen, 1944-Martin Heidegger’s essay “The Origin of the Work” is self-presented as a discursive attempt to “see the riddle” that is art. Here I present this riddle as inhering primarily within Heidegger’s crucial ontological, phenomenological notion that art is the happening of truth understood as (un)concealment. This interdependent play of revealing and concealing inheres in the artwork’s work-being. I bring (un)concealment into view by primarily explicating how the work explicitly “sets up a world” and sets “forth the earth.” Within the unity of the work, the intimacy of these opponents instigates their strife. The world as the open realm of intelligibility, disclosedness, and the earth as self-concealing, that which only shows itself as refusing the disclosure of the world, are reciprocal. I argue that this circling reciprocity is what is most puzzling about the relationship between our being-in-the-world and the world as set up by the work itself. Here we find important clues to the mystery of creativity, which I find to be more a responsiveness to purposiveness in the process of creation than the having of a prior mental intention that is then adequately represented in the work, or not. All of this generates from a careful analysis of Heidegger’s understanding of human being as Dasein. Thus, I rely heavily, at first, on an exposition of his ontology in Being and Time. Finally, I attempt to make visible the significance of all this through an interpretation of Manet’s masterpiece, A Bar at the Folies- Bergère.
- ItemOn Meaning in Interlinguistic Translation(2012) Naydich, Leza; Miller, Jerry; Allen, Benjamin W.Philosophy of language frequently encounters the problem of locating meaning – arguably nowhere more obstreperously than in interlinguistic translation. Theorists of translation, on the other hand, rarely address the issue of identifying meaning. In this paper, I introduce three theories of translation (those of d’Ablancourt, Schleiermacher, and Jakobson). I then discuss two preexisting theories of meaning, put forth by Jacques Derrida and John Searle, no strangers to the problem of locating meaning, who each have developed their own theories of meaning within a text, and put those theories into dialogue. I then examine these two theories of meaning and apply the theories to the three theories of translation (those of d’Ablancourt, Schleiermacher, and Jakobson, respectively) in order to foreground the theories of meaning implicit in the three theories. I conduct an analysis based on each application. I find that though neither Derrida’s theory nor Searle’s aligns exactly with any one theory of translation, they do align to some extent. Thus, the project of bringing out the features of the theories of meaning implicit in the theories of translation is successful. I find, ultimately, that no two theories seem to agree entirely on what meaning is, thus resulting in different aims of translation – this is the robust problem of differing accounts of translation. Based on the discussion in this paper, it seems that theories of translation necessarily contain some implicit understanding of the nature of meaning, which should be brought to the foreground in order to comprehend the deeper features of the theory.
- ItemEmpiricism, Determinism, and Naturalism(2012) Sergay, Nathaniel; Wright, Kathleen, 1944-; Miller, JerryBrian Leiter’s naturalistic interpretation of Nietzsche’s ethics reduces the cause and explanation of all facts about an individual to biological and psychological properties. He makes two central claims. First, that empiricism is the distinctive scientific way of looking at the world, providing access to objective, valueless truth. Second, that Nietzsche seeks to identify the causal determinants of human values, actions, thoughts, feeling, etc. in a fixed psycho‐physical human nature. I argue that Nietzsche’s endorsement of empiricism does not entail his endorsement of Leiter’s strong naturalism. Leiter misconstrues Nietzsche’s arguments concerning truth, failing to realize that his own thesis of truth is susceptible to Nietzsche’s attack on metaphysics. In fact, Nietzsche subscribes to a “postmodern” falsification thesis, rejecting the scientific and/or empirical claim to access “valueless,” objective reality. Nietzsche believes all of our “truths,” “knowledge,” judgments, and experiences are infused with subjective values. Instead of seeking “objectivity” through disinterested empiricism, we must seek objectivity by engaging with our values and affective interests. I go on to show that Leiter also misconstrues Nietzsche’s arguments concerning causality. As a result, Leiter’s thesis that Nietzsche seeks to identify deterministic causes of human facts is untenable. Finally, I show that, due to his naturalistic interpretation, Leiter misconstrues Nietzsche’s dismissal of the Kantian problem of freedom (of the causa sui) as an endorsement of determinism.
- ItemUniting Love and Obligation: Becoming an Expert at Life(2012) Ellman, Isaac; Macbeth, Danielle; Allen, Benjamin W.This essay will aim to present a fundamentally bodily way of being in the world that unites loves and obligation. First, this essay will present the mismatch of love and obligation as an intuitive problem of everyday living. Then, philosophical writings of Nietzsche, Aristotle, and Kant will be discussed as examples of works that confront the problem of the mismatch of love and obligation. We will see that the noble way of being in the world, as discussed by Nietzsche, does not involve a mismatch, but is no longer accessible to us. Kant's reconciliation of this mismatch, in the giving up of inclination for duty, is unsatisfactory because it requires reflective mediation. Aristotle achieves a unity in his discussion of phronesis, but he is not sensitive to today's issues of multiplicity of context. In addition, Aristotle loses individualization in his uniting of love and obligation, so we ought to write a new story to achieve this unity. We will look to the expert coper in the context of a craft who both achieves a unity of love and obligation and avoid problems associated with Aristotle's philosophy. Then, we will see that by conceiving of language as craft, it will allow for the possibility of becoming an expert at language. Because language is the form of the world that shows up to us conceptual beings, achieving expertise at language will allow us to achieve expertise in everyday living, outside of the context of a craft, and unite love and obligation in our daily life. We will see that expert speech is equivalent to Buber's notion of I-You speech (as opposed to I-It speech) which involves bodily confronting another individual with one's whole being. When we speak as an I for a You, we will regain immediacy of being in the world, unite love and obligation, and become an expert at life.
- ItemAccessing Women through Masculine Discourse: Luce Irigaray’s Embodied Syntax(2012) Lieberman, Alyson; Miller, Jerry; Wright, Kathleen, 1944-Men and women’s relationship to their bodies is mediated by the linguistic structures surrounding them. The human body plays an important role in understand the border between language and the body. Contemporary Feminists, Luce Irigaray and Judith Butler, understand this relationship as intrinsically linked. This thesis articulates a possible development of the body that sees the female body as becoming a linguistically necessary reference for the male dominated discourse. By existing in a society that values the phallus as the master signifier women become displaced from their own bodies. This displacement is represented in how women relate to language. Without a connection to their own bodies women lose their position as a subject. Additionally, the rejection of her own body leaves the woman in a state of sexual and psychological repression. According to Irigaray their lost female identity can only be reclaimed through a new understanding of language. This new language would incorporate the materiality of the body in an attempt to reclaim a space for the female subject in discourse. These claims are based on a reinterpretation by Luce Irigaray, of Sigmund Freud’s theoretical and psychoanalytic work on sexual development.
- ItemHow a Concept of Membership Informed by Human Rights Language and National Sovereignty Provides Insight into a State’s Duty to Undocumented Immigrants(2012) Satten-Lopez, Elena; Stauffer, Jill, 1966-; Salkever, Stephen G., 1943-This paper focuses on the question of whether a liberal democratic state possesses certain obligations to nonmembers who reside illegally within its borders, especially in a modern world that prioritizes both the principles of national sovereignty and human rights. Embedded within this question are three key concepts: membership, human rights, and national sovereignty. It is my contention that human rights and national sovereignty speak to different aspects of membership and both offer important values for a political community’s discussion of membership. As a result, it is possible for conflicts to emerge between these two principles. However, rather than resolve this conflict through determining whether human rights or national sovereignty should be the dominant principle shaping membership, political communities should consider both national sovereignty and human rights language when thinking about issues of membership. Therefore, neither principle is universally prioritized over the other. This is because the conflict between human rights language and national sovereignty can provide a fruitful tension in which to frame political discussions about membership. The tension can prove productive for political discourse, because it highlights several political concerns, like the human right to dignity and the state’s right to control its borders, that political actors should consider when addressing questions of membership. I then apply this view of how human rights language and national sovereignty inform membership to the critical political issue of illegal immigration. Specifically, whether in a liberal democratic state this tension between national sovereignty and human rights language in regards to membership brings to light certain state obligations to nonmembers who reside illegally within its borders. Ultimately, while there is no one way for a liberal democratic state to handle illegal immigration, every state must, and the complexity of this problem needs to be confronted. As such, I do not propose a single solution. Rather, I present several ways a state may conceptualize membership in relationship to immigration that respects national sovereignty and also places limits on national sovereignty. Therefore, while each political community’s solution should balance the preservation of the state with the recognition of certain obligations to nonmembers, each state interprets this balance for itself in a way that is aligned with its own professed values.
- ItemIn Nature and In God: Spinoza and Blessedness(2012) Islo, Erin; Wright, Kathleen, 1944-; Allen, Benjamin W.; Macbeth, DanielleThis paper considers the Ethics of Baruch Spinoza through three of the most important concepts presented in the work: essence, knowledge, and blessedness. By thoroughly exploring and reexamining these concepts and the role they play in Spinoza’s ethical project, it becomes clear that it is knowledge of the essences of singular things that is key to the life of blessedness. This exploration is approached from a perspective that intends to unify the metaphysical, epistemological and moral projects presented in the Ethics. This paper will argue that knowledge of the essences of singular things involves the relations of finite modes, both insofar as they actually exist and insofar as they exist sub specie aeternitatis. Therefore, it is not merely reason and adequate knowledge of eternity that lead the philosopher to blessedness, but knowledge of finite modes and their relations to one another that constitutes knowledge of the third kind, viz. scientia intuitiva, the highest good of the Mind.
- ItemOn the Thesis Argument of Immanuel Kant's Third Antimony(2012) Thorstad, Robert S.; Dostal, Robert J.; Wright, Kathleen, 1944-I reconstruct the thesis argument of Immanuel Kant's third antinomy, which seeks to prove that if one does not accept Kant's sharp distinction between appearances and things-in-themselves, one can prove that there is a free cause. Drawing on a close historical methodology, I argue that Kant's argument is valid, but that its soundness depends on whether one is committed to contingent historical notions which Kant invokes about the sorts of things that are involved in causality, the way in which one ought to notate arguments about the infinite, and the possibility of an infinite series of appearances. I discuss Kant's argument in light of the contemporary free will debate, but leave the question of its relevance to the contemporary free will debate unanswered. Is the relevance of Kant's argument historical, contemporary, both, or neither? I leave this question to the reader.
- ItemOn Our Self-Consciousness and Its Evolution(2012) Mundell, Katherine; Macbeth, Danielle; Wright, Kathleen, 1944-Our self‐consciousness is one of the most interesting and debated subjects in the area of philosophy of mind, and debated not only by philosophers, but also by scientists, social scientists, anthropologists, and other intellectuals. Inspired by the work of Wilfrid Sellars, I am joining the debate with the work that follows. I am interested in how we came to be self‐conscious, and I will look at arguments posed by biologists and social scientists to explain why we are self‐conscious (while I am interested in ‘how’, their arguments include a ‘how’ to get to ‘why’). I will also explain Sellars’ argument on the Myth of the Given, as it pertains to and bolsters my argument. Using anthropologist Michael Tomasello’s work studying the links between primates’ communication and ours, in the search for the origination of human communication, I will draw on empirical evidence of how language evolved from primate gestures and the significant differences: our ability to imitate, shared intentionality, and natural helpfulness. Using another one of Sellars’ arguments on the importance of learning how to self‐report and the importance of external reaffirmation, I explain why it is necessary to have others with common sensations to reaffirm one’s own sensations as valid, which can only be done through the utilization of a common language. Ultimately, I will answer that how we come to be self‐conscious is through our acculturation into a society with language, and that there is no answer to why we are self‐conscious because our self‐consciousness does not exist to serve a specific function.
- ItemThe Path Not Taken: Self-Restriction in Nietzsche, Freud, and Plato(2012) Lowenthal, Matthew H.; Wright, Kathleen, 1944-; Miller, JerryThe idea of a physical path is commonly used as a metaphor for different situations in life. Three different philosophers also make arguments that can be viewed in terms of a path. Nietzsche’s notion of the promise in On the Genealogy of Morals is akin to a path in that the promiser vows to achieve a goal and follow a course of action that is required to get there. Freud’s idea of normal human sexuality in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality can also be seen as a path in that he feels it is normal for a person to narrow down their initially vast sexual impulses and conform to the normal straight path. This idea is also expressed in Plato’s Phaedrus when the character of Socrates claims that he never leaves the city walls because there is nothing to learn outside of them. All three of these philosophers promote the idea that sticking to a path is more valuable than deviating from it; deviating is seen as a sign of weakness, or psychological illness, or just valueless. Although these philosophers go to great lengths to promote these views, their arguments are undone by the internal contradictions and ambiguities of the arguments themselves. Nietzsche’s promise is based on the existence of memory, but memory is actually a product of forgetfulness, which Nietzsche says is valuable, and could not exist without it. Freud concedes that there may be no person who actually follows his normal path of sexuality, and that to deviate from the path actually is normal. Plato’s Socrates realizes upon deviating from his path that there is much to be learned outside the city walls, and that deviating from it can help him appreciate the path even more. Though this does not prove that deviating from the path is actually more valuable than sticking to it, it does suggest that such valuations are not as clear as the three philosophers would make it seem.
- ItemA Defense of Nonconceptual Contents(2012) Wingfield, Elizabeth; Franco, Paul; Macbeth, DanielleThe debate over whether perceptual experience includes nonconceptual contents is not only an interesting problem in itself, but has important bearings on other questions in philosophy, especially epistemology and philosophy of mind. The contemporary debate has two sides. On one side, philosophers such as John McDowell think that all perception is necessarily conceptual. On the other side, philosophers such as Christopher Peacocke think that not only are there nonconceptual contents in our perceptions but that these contents ground our knowledge claims. In this paper I first outline the arguments and the motivations McDowell and Peacocke advance in favor of their views. I then argue that both sides, to one extent or another, get it right. I argue that McDowell is correct to insist that nonconceptual contents do not play a role in knowledge but that Peacocke is nonetheless correct in stating that nonconceptual contents are a part of our perceptual lives. I argue that while nonconceptual contents are a rich part of our sensory awareness, it would be untenable to state that they play a role in our knowledge acquisition. In the concluding section I explain why a robust characterization of the nonconceptual contents I defend is in principle an impossible task.
- ItemThe Relational Self in Heidegger, Zhuangzi, and Derrida(2012) Siqueiros, Benjamin; Wright, Kathleen, 1944-In Derrida, Heidegger, and Zhuangzi, there is a certain resonance to the idea of a self. Not the self, as an essential form or transcendental ontological concept, but a self, the instance of an individual being in a given time and space. Where and when we are determines, to a large extent, who we are, in that we are products of our social and historical environments. Since these social and historical environments are constantly changing for us, then we to must be constantly changing within these new times and spaces. The instance of a self, then, is contingent on its social and historical contexts. However, throughout all these contexts, there remains one thing that is determined by them: the self. This self is the intersection of social, historical, and ontological contexts, and is constituted by the relations between these concepts. The shifts in these relations are traced through the works of Heidegger, Zhuangzi, and Derrida, and their conceptions of the self all come to a similar conclusion, that, as Werner Heisenberg puts it, “modern man confronts only himself”, and to some degree humans have always primarily confronted themselves, because we are only here as ourselves. However, we also have potential, we change, and then we cease to exist. This change occurs mainly according to our colloquial descriptions, when we say that someone really put his or her self out there, or when one invests one’s self in an endeavor, or again in the general description of selflessness. Strictly speaking, existentially, we never step outside or leave ourselves, but our sense of self expands as we allow ourselves to take part in life’s changes. This putting of ourselves into relation with our own changes is the most authentic way of being in the world.
- ItemSeeing Anew Through Art(2012) Singer, Julie; Macbeth, Danielle; Miller, JerryI argue that engaging Paintings as a master viewer can promote a transformative experience that yields seeing objects and people in themselves. We understand our world in part through visual engagement. Visual art is unique in that it is visually experienced but is also, as art, a site at which to actively engage and question. Further, Painting is a unique form of visual art in that it is still and flat, yet can contain depth and motion. Its coloration is directly tied to how its content is experienced. Painting can serve as a source of newness in regard to how we see new objects and that which is familiar anew, as well as in regard to how we see the visual modes that structure our experience of seeing: depth, motion, and color. As such, it can be the source of experiencing what I will call the fantastical, an experience in which one sees the content of Painting in itself to the end of seeing content outside of the Painting anew, as in itself. In viewing a Painting, one can engage with objects and people in themselves, rather than as means to ends or use objects. This may lead to experiencing the fantastical to the end of seeing objects and people differently in the world, as individuals with histories and vulnerabilities rather than as defined by the articulated concepts that structure their basic identities. A master viewer can experience the fantastical. Master viewing is characterized as perceptual mastery rather than intellectual mastery. A master viewer’s engagement, centered on perception and visual engagement rather than on articulated knowledge, can allow her to experience the world differently and in a more life-affirming manner. Experiencing the fantastical can promote seeing the world anew.
- ItemThree Types of Scientific Revolution: A Kuhnian Analysis of Evolutionary Biology(2011) Block, Peter; Macbeth, Danielle; Franco, PaulKuhn’s theory of scientific revolution has received much criticism for being overly simplistic and unable to account for more subtle-–and often more frequent-–types of scientific change. Indeed, it is argued that modern biology has simply never experienced a ‘revolution’ in the traditional Kuhnian sense of the word. However, an overlooked aspect of Kuhn’s philosophy of science may provide the conceptual grounds to posit more nuanced types of scientific revolution that can describe more complex scientific changes. It will be argued that Kuhn’s concept of specialization provides the conceptual grounds to posit two other types of scientific revolution in his philosophy of science: divergent revolution and trans‐disciplinary revolution. The case for two new types of revolution will be situated in the field of evolutionary biology, as two events in its own historical evolution will be used to concretize divergent and trans‐disciplinary revolution.
- ItemConsideration for the Predetermined Urban Outlaw: An Analysis of the Racialized Other within Just Punishment Aims in the United States(2011) Contreras, Stephanie; Delpech-Ramey, Joshua; Yurdin, JoelIn this paper, I will rehearse H.L.A Hart’s standard definition of punishment to reintroduce the elements that constitute state punishment, and Michael Davies’s methodology for discussing just punishment.
- ItemAssertoric language & esoteric language: Or, What the encounter of a logician and a transcendental empiricist might teach us about language(2011) Un, AidanThe choice of comparing two thinkers from such different intellectual backgrounds as Gottlob Frege and Gilles Deleuze is on the one hand an invitation to compare, to find similarity, to abstract, with the intention of uncovering some truth about the nature of language. On the other, it is meant to show the profound and, at times, irreconcilable differences separating two conceptions of language stemming from differing and perhaps inimical ways of thinking. The importance of such a comparison and contrast should not be neglected, as the study and development of formal languages currently plays an important role in linguistic research and computer science. To better understand how natural language and formal language are related might offer valuable insight into the possibilities of “formalizing” natural language.
- ItemThe Problem of Philosophy(2011) Koch, Elliott; Stauffer, Jill, 1966-; Yurdin, JoelThis thesis explores the integral role of aporia in Platonic philosophy by exploring its epistemological, philosophical, and ethical contexts. Aporia is the disruption of pre-philosophical opinion – some call it intuition – by pointing out its inherent inconsistency and partial constitution in falsity itself. Opinions, however, also always have something of truth in them, thus they can be called intuitions at all and can allow for the aporetically stirred soul to approach truth at all. This disruption, moreover, occurs philosophically in a realm of value, as it is always due to the need to determine what is good over what is bad that causes one to get mixed up in the first place. Because of this, philosophy is always concerned with coming to know what is good and, because the philosopher is never satisfied by opinions that are inevitably false, this good eventually becomes an ethical problem of ‘goodness’ against ‘badness’ in general. Philosophy is a maddening pursuit after knowledge of truth and goodness, because as soon as one grasps what one is after it becomes immediately apparent that they have again grasped mere opinion. To this extent the acquisition of knowledge comes not in the accumulation of true propositions – opinions – but rather in the honing of one’s skill in understanding them. Aporia non-intuitively begins and ends philosophy by generating the creative pursuit of truth.
- Item“Bursting from Slavery: Processes of Subjection and Struggles for Freedom in Hegel and Foucault”(2011) Martin, Laura; Stauffer, Jill, 1966-; Wright, Kathleen, 1944-How do we become subjects, and what does this process of subjection mean for our freedom? This paper will speak to this question through an exploration of the dynamic differences and similarities between the work of Hegel and Foucault. Hegel claims we are progressing triumphantly towards a re-worked ideal of freedom to be concretely realized in a golden age of modernity. Foucault’s dystopic vision, however, forces us to face the possibility that the attainment of freedom is a mere mirage, and exposes the way progress conceals subtle forms of unfreedom. One conventional way to read these two views are as the positions of a modern and a post-modern thinker respectively. Indeed, the traditional conceptual, chronological narrative tells a story in which Foucault corrects Hegel’s system: Foucault denies the reconciliatory Hegelian view of a totalizing historical progression, and in doing so, takes us beyond the modern myth of progress and freedom to a place more accurately reflecting our ambivalent experience with modernity. Through the exploration of themes of power, freedom, and subjection in both thinkers’ work, I wish to complicate this philosophical order and suggest that in the realm of freedom, each thinker’s work can be used to modify and enrich the other. Foucault’s attitude towards Hegel was at best ambivalent, at worst hostile. He once claimed that the primary task of his generation was to flee Hegel. Despite the fact that his work is in part an effectuation of an intellectual separation from Hegelian themes, there are moments of surprising intimacy between the two thinkers’ theoretical visions. Foucault obliquely admits to this when he confesses, “…truly escaping Hegel involves an exact appreciation of the price we have to pay to detach ourselves from him. It assumes we are aware of the extent to which Hegel, insidiously perhaps, is close to us…” (Foucault 1972, 235) This paper will play upon one of these moments of closeness in order to compare each thinker’s understanding of how we come to 2 be subjects. This is the similar primordial scene of dominating force where both thinkers locate the birth of the subject: for Foucault, this scene is one of repeated enactment of power upon the historical body, whereas for Hegel it is the oppressive power the master exerts over the slave’s embodied self. Despite Foucault’s attempt to break with Hegelian themes, an exploration of these two processes of subjection and their implications for freedom presents us with a Foucaultian aporia prompting a return to Hegel. This partial return to Hegel generates a rich comparison, leading us to ask important questions about the nature of oppression and freedom in today’s society. The paper will be divided into three broad sections. Part I will first situate the work of Hegel and Foucault and their struggles with understanding the freedom of a historical, socialized individual within the development of modern philosophy. Next, I will describe Foucault’s theory of power, drawing attention to the innovative tools he provides to articulate subtle forms of oppression and to enact resistance against this oppression. I will argue, however, that his description of the production of the subject by power renders it difficult to understand how the subject moves from being impacted by forces to being able to resist those forces. His notion of freedom through resistance is problematized by his weak concept of the subject. Part II will focus on the alternative Hegelian vision of subjection figured in the master-slave dialectic, and will draw attention to the way in which intersubjective, self-reflexive Hegelian individual serves to respond to the aporia of the Foucaultian subject. Part III, will describe Hegel’s notion of freedom and its requirements, and will offer some reflections on how we might understand both theories in conjunction with each-other. This reflection will open up space to ask important and necessary questions about struggles for freedom.
- ItemHaving a Taste for What’s There(2011) Keough, Sydney; Yurdin, Joel; Macbeth, DanielleA great deal of philosophical anxiety has fixated on the notorious fact that the world does not always match our experience of it. Conversely, little attention has been paid to the equally interesting and similarly difficult phenomenon of expert perception—the ability to train one’s perceptual sensitivity. In this essay, I analyze the perceptual expertise of tea-tasters and argue that their privileged gustatory standing reveals episodes of perception to be the potentially skilled exercises of a power to take in how things are with the sensible world. This view of expert perception poses an explanatory challenge for both internalist and externalist pictures of mentality—the two of which grow up out of a concern with preserving our perceptual access to the world while simultaneously accounting for the fallibility of this access. This gestures at the possibility that a satisfying account of expert perception requires explanatory work to be done by both the ‘internal’ development of our perceptual mental states and by the world figuring as a constituent of those states. I contend that, should naïve realism adopt the notion that perceptual experience is conceptually articulated, it will be furnished with the resources necessary to answer expert perception’s challenge to externalism.
- ItemSeeking Gender Justice in the Home(2011) Morais, Cristina C.; Koggel, Christine M., 1955-; Yurdin, JoelChallenging gender injustice is not an easy task especially when it comes to the injustices that are present in the family. Part of the difficulty is that moral and political theory has tended to take what happens in the home as irrelevant to justice. In referencing various feminist philosophers I will critically assess the nature of the injustices that take place in the family and focus on these injustices as they are present in Western liberal societies. In the process of determining how women can be elevated from their positions of inequality in the family, I will critically examine the benefits of using an ethic of care or an ethic of justice to address these issues of inequality. To begin my analysis I make use of John Rawls’ theory of justice and examine how, if at all, his theory can be applied to the family structure. My thesis proceeds by examining Susan Okin’s critique of Rawls and her account of how justice should be incorporated into the family. I then outline various accounts introduced by feminist philosophers such as Sarah Ruddick and Joan Tronto who favor using either an ethic of justice or an ethic of care for challenging gender injustice in the home. My thesis offers a critique of these theories and it concludes by arguing that an ethic of care is best suited for addressing issues of gender injustice in the home.
- ItemThe Educational Requirements For A Good Life: Why Growing Just Modern Liberal Democracies Requires Appropriately Educating Citizens(2011) Zoghlin, Jacob; Stauffer, Jill, 1966-; Salkever, Stephen G., 1943-Living a good human life depends on two criteria: first, the development of the capacities required to engage in characteristic human actions, actions without which a life could not be happy or, indeed, fully human; and, second, the political circumstances that permit and promote the exercise of those capacities in a free and just way. It is too often forgotten that education can promote the capacities required to live well; it is not merely professional training, which, alone, would be wholly insufficient. Education is required to arm citizens with the capacities they need to fulfill their roles in political society, which, if the society is good, will promote citizens’ abilities to live well. Proper education is a common requirement for the achievement of both criteria for a good life. This indicates that the success of an educational system at promoting these capacities is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for the ability of political society to achieve what Aristotle says is its telos, its end, of promoting good lives for its people. Political society can be evaluated by how successfully an educational system promotes individuals’ capacities to live well, not just by its success at protecting individual rights. I refer to the criteria that an educational system must meet to promote the capacities individuals need to live well, which determine whether or not a political society can be successful, as the “eudaimonic pedagogical requirement.” The eudaimonic pedagogical requirement stipulates that a good education will cultivate basic human capacities by teaching knowledge of facts; intellectual, civic, and moral virtues; deliberative skills; and will do so in a way that promotes freedom rather than domination, using a formal education system, laws, and society’s basic structures. The eudaimonic pedagogical requirement serves as a measuring stick for the success of education and modern liberal democracies.
- ItemCivic Participation, Ideal Education, and Well-being(2011) Jiang, LinKai; Yurdin, Joel; Wright, Kathleen, 1944-If one is struggling between a decision to party or to organize for social change, this thesis hopes to provide resources for reconciling this tension between personal desires and political duties. I argue that civic participation is an essential part of living a good life. Living well entails more than material satisfaction, it requires active engagement in the affairs of the state. In the process of deliberating the affairs of the state one establishes concrete and genuine relationship with valuable people/objects/events. Such a relationship is an actual manifestation of one's well-being, beyond the lofty psychological state of happiness. I arrive at my conclusion by considering the essential purposes of the state and thus its responsibilities. I structure my thesis according to the following four sub-questions: 1. what sort of responsibilities does a state have toward its citizens? 2. what sort of responsibilities do citizens have toward their state? 3. what constitutes human well-being? 4. what sort of mutual responsibilities will lead to the individual and the collective well-being? I will look at Plato’s 'Republic, and Aristotle’s 'Nicomachean Ethics' and 'The Politics' to locate the responsibilities of ideal citizens and an ideal state. I will look at Mill’s 'Utilitarianism' and James Griffin’s 'Well Being' to locate essential elements of well-being.
- ItemInterpreting Quantum Mechanics: The Subjective Object or the Objective Subject?(2011) Breckinridge, Robert; Macbeth, Danielle; Gangadean, Ashok K., 1941-No theory in physics has been more successful than Quantum Mechanics (QM), or more perplexing. The two most puzzling aspects of QM are that it predicts probabilities rather than determinate outcomes, and it seems to suggest entities that act like waves and particles, but never both simultaneously. Consequently, scientists have been unsure of what the laws of QM imply for our conception of reality. In section I, I demonstrate how the two primary interpretations of QM—the Copenhagen Interpretation and the Many Worlds Interpretation—align with the Cartesian modalities of subjectivity and objectivity. After section II, which outlines the measurement problem, I argue in section III that the Copenhagen Interpretation commits us to a subjective ontology, and in section IV, I argue that the Many Worlds Interpretation commits us to an objective ontology. In section V, I further contend that the Many Worlds Interpretation entails epiphenomenalism, while the Copenhagen Interpretation cannot avoid idealism. Finally, in the last two sections I conclude that our standard conceptions of these modalities must be re-conceived, as they are inadequate for interpreting Quantum Mechanics, and thus reality.
- ItemLiving, Destroying, Creating: The Overcoming of Ressentiment in Nietzsche and Socrates(2011) Chesterton, Eric; Yurdin, Joel; Wright, Kathleen, 1944-
- ItemTranslating Difference: A Postmodern Critique of Benjamin's Language(2010) McClintock, Austin; Miller, Jerry; Macbeth, Danielle
- ItemRejuvenating Ritual Practice: Young Jewish Women Transforming Ritual Practice(2010) Solomon-Tilley, Katheryn Hope
- ItemAn Imperfect Paradise: Recasting the Post-Lapsarian Subject(2010) Franz, Marisa KarylThis paper consists of an examination of Hegel and Kierkegaard’s ideas of the fall and how redemption can occur once the subject has become a post-lapsarian one. Both Hegel and Kierkegaard recognize the fall as a positive move away from ignorance, and therefore do not want a paradise regained, where the corporal post-lapsarian self is negated. Rather, both present a reinterpretation of redemption in which the subject must learn to use the abilities of reason gained in the fall to recast paradise within the post-lapsarian mortal context. While Hegel and Kierkegaard present two different theologies, their core concerns are the same. This paper seeks to demonstrate how their shared conceptual base and divergent interpretations can be seen as representing the importance of continuing philosophical examinations into this area of idealism.
- ItemShakespeare Contra Nietzsche or How to Playwrite with a Hammer(2010) Lanham, Andrew; Yurdin, Joel; Zwarg, Christina, 1949-I argue, two of the primary frameworks by which the academy currently conceives of the human subject fundamentally intertwine, as the Nietzschean thought which has dominated postmodernity conceives of itself on the most basic level as arising from and being like the tragic Shakespearean conception of humanity Bloom describes as paradigmatic for all post-Shakespeareans. Contemporary philosophy and criticism, I believe, may therefore be said to stem from the intersection of Shakespeare and Nietzsche. And so, if we wish to know our own intellectual origins in the crux of Nietzsche and Shakespeare, we would do well to heed Nietzsche’s own figuration of their relationship.
- ItemCrip Sex: On the Intersectionality of Gender, Sexuality, and Disability(2010) Rodriguez, Jennifer; Macbeth, Danielle; Miller, Jerry
- ItemBooks and Bodies and How They Are Different: René Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy and Roland Barthes’ Roland Barthes(2010) Trakumaite, Goda; Muse, John, 1955-; Miller, Jerry
- ItemBeauty as it speaks to life: Study in how Platonic Form of Beauty relates to our interaction with beautiful objects(2010) Yun, Emma; Yurdin, Joel; Macbeth, DanielleBeauty‘s relation to art and the good life is mostly obscure, though the topic has been much debated in the course of Western Philosophy. In this essay, I hope to revive the relationship between beauty and goodness, as understood in Platonic times. My main argument centers on Plato‘s understanding of beauty, which claims that a beautiful object is a particular body manifesting the Form of Beauty. To understand the nature of beauty, separation between the Form and the body is needed. I explain how this separation is possible when one makes the progression from appreciating the beauty of the body to creating artworks, to contemplating the nature of beauty in a philosophical discourse. For Plato, goodness is a life spent in philosophical discourse. In my paper, I take goodness to mean a life devoted to understanding the nature of our existence. Only by understanding the nature our existence, we can develop empathy and tolerance. These attributes are necessary in order for us to lead a flourishing life, since our existence is not individuated. Because the Form is intricately woven into the particular body that is connected to life, one who appreciates the Form is drawn to exploring more of the body that leads to exploring more about life itself. Therefore, I argue that understanding the nature of beauty ultimately leads us to the world of the particulars where the good and the bad, happiness and sorrow, are interconnected. It is this dichotomy that has led scholars to resist the claim that beauty ultimately converges with goodness. I conclude that understanding the nature of our existence does converge with goodness, even when existence itself is not purely good.
- ItemThe Model Man: Beyond Foucault's Medical Gaze(2010) Oliveros-Rosen, Leonel; Miller, Jerry; Emerson, Stephen G.
- ItemGuilty Pleasures: Guilt and Interpellation in Althusser and Nietzsche(2010) Bernhart, Jessica; Miller, Jerry; Koltonski, Daniel
- ItemThe Care of the Self in Foucault and Socrates: Rescuing the Socratic Relation to Truth to Promote New Modes of Being(2010) Marsico, Richard; Yurdin, Joel; Miller, Jerry
- ItemAnd It Spreads: The Observable Reality of Race(2010) Daise, DavidLucius Outlaw claims that the notion of Race contradicts the philosophical commitment to Modernity. Race and Modernity are incongruent in regard to their conceptual frameworks for what constitutes people. While Modernity asserts a unity between people such that everyone is fundamentally the same, the concept of Race attempts to organize people into hierarchical groups. This contradiction requires that the two notions undergo some kind of revision. There are three possibilities for revising the incompatibility: to revise Race to work within the Modern framework, revise the framework of Modernity to include a coherent notion of Race, or revise both Race and Modernity. Outlaw revises both Race and Modernity. He treats Race and its constitutive parts as linguistic concepts that exist as a function of human cognition or recognition of them and change according to historical recognition. While the Modern view examines concepts as representing kinds that exist in the world, post-Modernism examines concepts as historically evolving and linguistic. Therefore Outlaw examines Race through a post-Modern framework. However, Outlaw’s post-Modern examination is not necessary if Race is a physically manifest and intuitively understood concept that takes on projected significance from complex social interactions. Hume’s discussion of causality provides an illustrative example of separating an observation from the projection put onto it. I will use Hume’s fundamentally Modern examination of and framework for causality to establish a parallel framework for separating the essential features of the concept of Race from projections put onto it. My framework for Race is compatible with Modernity and brings up the question of whether an accurate conception of Race requires a rejection of Modernity.
- Item"In This it Moves and Speaks:" Heidegger, Stevens, and Truth's Performance in Poetry(2009) Bisceglio, Paul; Wright, Kathleen, 1944-; Gangadean, Ashok K., 1941-Focusing on Martin Heidegger's later essay that deals explicitly with the nature of poetry, "The Origin of the Work of Art," and a modest selection of Wallace Stevens's shorter poems, this essay aims to allow Heidegger's and Stevens's deployments of a number of shared terms, namely "obscurity," "listening," "nothingness," and "conflict," to encounter each other and reveal the writers' shared understanding of poetry's performative nature. Performativity, in their view, means that poetry communicates meaning through a dialectic exchange with its reader. Poetry reveals truths that speak beyond the poem's stated propositions, and demands its reader's own performance in attending to its revealing. Poetry, in other words, necessitates a specific kind of reading that refrains from the imposition of meaning and reposefully allows for an encounter with poetic language that transforms the reader's self-understanding. Heidegger and Stevens find this performative exchange essential to resisting falsely universalizing truth propositions because it opens the readet to an attentiveness to his or her specific cultural locality. If we consider critical comparison in light of poetry's performativity, I believe we can abolish most of the comparative anxiety that characterizes critical works on these two writers. An understanding of truth as arising in the local moment of exchange between poem and reader suggests that comparison is only superficial when it aims to maintain the supposed integrity of distinct philosophical and literary traditions. Comparison fails, in other words, when it seeks to impose parallels between two static fields. Comparison succeeds when it promotes a more productive exchange. When engaging disparate works in a generative encounter that exceeds traditional disciplinary boundaries, comparison uncovers new truths, and deepens our understanding of our relation to literature and meaning.
- ItemGhostless Cartesianism: Reintegrating the Fractured Self-Consciousness in Action(2009) Kopilow, Emily; Macbeth, Danielle; Yurdin, JoelIn a series of exchanges Hubert Dreyfus and John McDowell take turns accusing each other of succumbing to dualistic theories of action founded in the subtle draws of a Cartesian dualism. The question of the meaning of mindedness, and the extent to which our conceptual capacities extend and are actualized, is the essential question framing what Hubert Dreyfus terms "the battle of the myths" between John McDowell and himself. The paper begins with Dreyfus's phenomenological claim that immersed bodily coping is nonconceptual, nonlinguistic, nonrational, and unminded. The second section supplements McDowell's reply in the exchange, primarily using Mind and World and a series of unpublished lectures. Through McDowell we come to see not only how intentional action cannot be unrational or nonconceptual, he shows us a way to understand how it can be rational and conceptual. The third section introduces what I term 'intellectual activity' as a form of immersed coping that further make Dreyfus's concerns seem unfounded.
- ItemBalancing Sustainable Development: Philosophy of Technology and Aesthetic Evaluation(2009) Gasperik, Dylan; Wright, Kathleen, 1944-; Gangadean, Ashok K., 1941-My thesis is an attempt to explain the imbalanced and incomplete modes of thinking in the modern consciousness that I find to be responsible for humanity's collective irrational and violent destruction of the global environment. I argue that the environment is a direct material extension of human identities and its destruction is evidence of unbalanced behavior and thinking in need of rehabilitation. Furthermore, the discourse of sustainable development fails to provide an adequate alternative to the destructiveness of the modern consciousness. My thesis draws on three distinct traditions of thought to attempt to analyze the imbalance and propose an alternate mode of thinking: Albert Borgmann's "device paradigm," Martin Heidegger's "supreme danger" of modern technology, and David Hall and Roger Ames' "aesthetic cosmology" reading of the classical Taoist texts. The device paradigm highlights the important role of technology in distracting us from the destruction that has become so unavoidable and innocuous in the modern lifestyle. Heidegger's complex analysis of technology provides a foundation for understanding its power for salvation as well as destruction and distraction. Hall and Ames' readings of Taoism provide an example of an alternate mode of thinking that could potentially rehabilitate the imbalances endemic to the modern consciousness that cause us to be destructive. I am aware of and wary of the breadth and ambition of my thesis topic. This has not deterred me or distracted me from writing it, and I have found the process to be helpful in solidifying, clarifying, and justifying my philosophical explorations up to this point.
- ItemFallibility, Skepticism, and Distance in John McDowell's "Mind and World"(2009) Weiss, Zachary; Macbeth, Danielle; Dostal, Robert J.For my thesis, I looked at skepticism in terms of John McDowell's philosophy in Mind and World. In this work, McDowell explains how concepts mediate the relation between our minds and the world. He does so by making use of Kant's distinction in The Critique of Pure Reason between sensibility, our receptive capacity, and understanding, our spontaneous capacity. McDowell argues, similarly to Kant, that sensibility and understanding must be mutually implicated in any cognitive activity; theories of mind that try to explain thought by separating the contributions of sensibility and understanding are, he contends, incoherent. On these grounds, he refutes Davidson's Coherentism and what McDowell calls the Myth of the Given. As such, we will begin by rehearsing McDowell's claims refuting the Myth of the Given and Coherentism, and see how that brings him to assert that "we need a conception of experiences as states or occurrences that are passive but reflect conceptual capacities, capacities that belong to spontaneity, in operation" (McDowell 23). This will lead into his address (or lack thereof) of skepticism, upon which we will look again at The Critique of Pure Reason, utilizing Kant's idea of an intellectual intuition as a foil to McDowell's philosophy. In doing so, we will come to a richer understanding of McDowell's standpoint with regards to skepticism as well as his philosophy as a whole. This richer understanding will be furthered by addressing Charles Larmore's objection to some of McDowell's language, after which we can come to a more thorough understanding of the process of knowing the world.