Philosophy

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 382
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    A Case for Teleology in Modern Biology
    (2016) Wenzel, Miwa; Macbeth, Danielle
    Although 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.
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    A comparison of Eudaimonia and Satori
    (1993) Ormsby, Shalom Marks; Kosman, Louis Aryeh; Gangadean, Ashok K., 1941-
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    A Comparison of Maimonides' and Aristotle's Models of the Soul: Varying Conceptions of the Virtuous Life
    (1991) Morse, Jonathan; Lachs, Samuel Tobias; Fleischacker, Samuel
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    A Defense of Nonconceptual Contents
    (2012) Wingfield, Elizabeth; Franco, Paul; Macbeth, Danielle
    The 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.
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    A Feminist Reconsideration of the Cartesian Division of Mind and Body
    (1991) Ptomey, Christopher; Desjardins, Rosemary, 1936-; Outlaw, Lucius T., 1944-
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    A New Perspective on Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    (1991) Crompton, Sarah S.; Gangadean, Ashok K., 1941-; Outlaw, Lucius T., 1944-
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    A path to the Self
    (1988) Trowbridge, Elizabeth
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    A Philosophical Investigation of Virginia Wolf's A Room of One's Own
    (1994) McCanless, Katherine W.; Wright, Kathleen, 1944-; Gangadean, Ashok K., 1941-
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    A Prolegomena to a Possible Future Pedagogy
    (1991) Siegel, Benjamin; Outlaw, Lucius T., 1944-; Gangadean, Ashok K., 1941-
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    "A Question of Ethics"
    (1988) Moessinger, Mary
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    A Reconstitution of Virtue for a World after Virtue
    (1994) Abu El-Haj, Tabetha; Outlaw, Lucius T., 1944-; Macbeth, Danielle
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    A Transcendental Exposition of the Intentionality of Perception
    (1992) Lahiri, Smita; Kosman, Louis Aryeh; Dostal, Robert J.
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    Accessing 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.
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    Accident and Essence in Marx's Philosophy
    (1992) Weddle, Justin S.; Outlaw, Lucius T., 1944-; Esheté, Andreas
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    Accounting for Identity with Alcoff and Butler
    (2017) Felder, Francesca; Miller, Jerry
    What 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.
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    Acting in Character: A Re-examination of the Hekousion in Aristotle
    (2008) Reuter, George; Sharma, Ravi; Macbeth, Danielle
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    Aesthetic principles and the sublime
    (2003) Cassidy, Thomas