Philosophy

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Open Access
Decolonizing Environmental Philosophy in the Anthropocene: Toward A Philosophy for Planetary Healing
(2023-03-28) Whittle, Marliese Frances; Boran, Idil
Colonial mindsets and structures in the Western world drive broken relationships between human beings and non-human nature. In 2019, Kyle Whyte identified a tension between the rapid societal transformation required in response to climate change and the considerably slower pace at which remediation of trust, inequity, and imbalances of power happen between people within the colonial construct. This thesis offers a diagnostic tool to begin grappling with the question of how to heal broken relationships with each other and with non-human nature. Problematic assumptions in Western natural laws and environmental ethics undermine efforts to address worsening ecological crises in the Anthropocene – the geological time period defined by increasing instability of Earth system processes from human activity. Drawing on the ideas of scholars Charles W Mills, Serene Khader, Deborah McGregor, and John Borrows, I explore a philosophy of planetary healing - an interdisciplinary, multicultural approach to justice, health and well-being.
Open Access
Normative Primitivism and the Possibility of Practical Thought
(2022-12-14) Steadman, Samuel David; Myers, Robert
Reasons are essentially addressed to agents. Many contemporary efforts to illuminate this feature of reasons effectively reduce them to features of agents, e.g., to rationally-pruned desires, plans, or roles. Such reductive accounts neglect a second feature of reasons, namely, their capacity to transcend agential nature. They also neglect a feature of agents, namely, their orientation to normative entities as entities that transcend—and thus, that can guide and give shape to—agential nature. This dissertation offers a conception of the relation running from reasons to agents that captures both the transcendent character of reasons and the transcended character of agents. I synthesize two strains of thought about reasons. The first captures their formal dependence on agency, which is manifested in each reason’s being essentially a reason for some agent to do or think something. The second captures their substantive independence from agency, which is manifested in the fact that reasons needn’t answer to what agents are like. These two strains of thought can be united in a single conception, but only if the elaboration of the formal features of reasons isn’t taken to license the reduction of reasons to features of agents. In fact, unifying the two in a single conception requires that the relevant agential features be themselves depicted as formally dependent on features of reasons, so that the explanatory landscape for the philosophy of reasons and agents is properly represented in terms of the symmetric relations of a circle, rather than the asymmetric relations of reduction. This refusal to reduce is best framed by primitivism about reasons, i.e., the view that characterizes the idea of reason as primitive. But such a primitivism must nevertheless supply the materials for an account of the practical thought by which agents can receive reasons as addressed to them. I seek to demonstrate how an idea can be primitive while at the same time supplying those materials, and thereby explaining the possibility of practical thought.
Open Access
The Functional Contributions of Consciousness
(2022-12-14) Ludwig, Dylan Michael; Khalidi, Muhammad Ali
Most existing research programs are occupied with the difficult question of what consciousness is, overlooking what the more interesting and fruitful research question: what does consciousness do? My dissertation develops a philosophical method for identifying the functional capacities that conscious experience contributes to information processing systems. My strategy involves systematically consolidating and interpreting a range of psychological and neuroscientific research in order to compare conscious and unconscious processing in different psychological domains, namely, vision, emotion, and social cognition. I also defend the principle of functional pluralism: given that conscious experiences presumably form a relatively diverse class in the natural world, we should expect them to facilitate a diverse range of functions in different psychological domains. My pluralist account implies that we will be able to amass a collection of functional markers that can guide future ascriptions of experience to all sorts of natural and artificial systems. Understanding consciousness’ functional profile should also ultimately help us answer the general but elusive question of what consciousness is as a feature of psychological systems. After laying out the general framework and critically evaluating prominent theories of consciousness in the first chapter, I begin the process of identifying FCCs in particular psychological domains. In my second chapter, I identify some candidate functional markers of consciousness in the functionally-complex domain of visual perception, including the processing of semantic information inherent in more informationally-complex visual stimuli, increased spatiotemporal precision, and representational integration over larger spatiotemporal intervals. My third chapter discusses the domain of emotional processing, where I argue that experience facilitates the inhibition of, the conceptualization of, and flexible response to emotionally valenced representational content. In my fourth chapter, I review a range of bias-intervention strategies that explicitly draw on the functional resources of conscious experience. In my final chapter, I draw some conclusions about the nature of consciousness based on my functional analysis. I introduce what I call a Local Workspace Theory, argue that consciousness is at least in part characterized by a high degree of representational complexity afforded by the structural mechanisms that realize it and reflected in the psychological functions that it facilitates.
Open Access
Minimizing Stigma, Improving Care: An Investigation into Empathy and Narrative for Understanding the Lived Experience of Schizophrenia
(2022-08-08) Molas, Andrew; Boran, Idil; Reaume, Geoffrey
This dissertation explores a phenomenological account of empathy and narrative-based medicine. Its objective is to offer a sustained critical discussion of the benefits of a phenomenological account of empathy and narrative-based medicine for understanding the experiences of persons diagnosed with schizophrenia, improving therapeutic relationships, minimizing the stigma of mental illness, and supporting people with schizophrenia in their recovery. Part one of this dissertation critically examines the nature of empathy and highlights the challenges that impede our ability to understand the experiences of persons with schizophrenia. Schizophrenia has historically been viewed as a condition which defies empathic understanding. This view, endorsed by Karl Jaspers, has been influential in shaping current depictions of schizophrenia in Anglo-American medical literature and informing how clinicians interact with those who are diagnosed with this condition. The dissertation makes the argument that Jaspers' approach is limited and sets the theoretical basis for a more robust account of empathy in the conceptualization of relations with persons with schizophrenia. Part two of this dissertation defends a phenomenological account of empathy, developed by Edith Stein, and presents it as an alternative to simulation theories of empathy. Simulation theories of empathy involve using one's own cognitive resources to replicate the experiences and mental states of others by imagining being in their situation. But one problem with this approach is that it runs the risk of co-opting their experiences and substituting our own, which is morally problematic. In response, Stein's theory offers a solution by recognizing that empathy involves appreciating someones experiences as it is for them and thus it avoids the assimilation of the experiences of others. Part three of this dissertation explores applications of Stein's theory of empathy and examines narrative-based medicine as a model of therapy. The narratives of persons with schizophrenia offer crucial insight into their lived experience of illness. By engaging with the lived experiences and narratives of others, caregivers can learn improved ways of understanding and supporting people diagnosed with schizophrenia as they restore a sense of self that has been harmed due to the effects of stigma that portray mental illness negatively.
Open Access
Heideggers holy and quiet joy: body hermeneutics of two paintings by Lawren S. Harris
(2022-03-03) Svarnyk, Mar'yana; Gonda, Joseph P.
How would our lived human body experience Heidegger's holy? This dissertation uses a phenomenological method of body hermeneutics to develop a lived experience of the notion of the holy from Heidegger's later thought with the help of two paintings by Lawren S. Harris. Body hermeneutics, developed by Samuel Mallin, is a method of systematically feeling out and describing the experience of phenomena through the four regions of the lived body: the perceptual, the motor-practical, the affective, and the cognitive/linguistic. The artworks hold the phenomena and create situations through which the viewer can repeatedly access and explore the phenomena. The artworks also speak to the whole body, not just to the cognitive aspect of our being, and thus make it much easier for us to recognize and overcome our cognitive preconceptions and to develop a fuller bodily experience of the phenomena. The first part of the dissertation, working with the painting Beaver Swamp, Algoma, explores how one can phenomenologically experience and describe that which is not an entity, since both being and the holy in Heidegger's understanding are not entities. By describing the contrasts between the experience of figures and lines in the painting on one hand and colour and light fields on the other, a new bodily attitude can be felt and developed that is quite different from our everyday attitudes towards phenomenology and perceiving things in general. This new bodily attitude is helpful for describing phenomena like being and the holy as understood by Heidegger. The second part of the dissertation, with the help of the painting Northern Lake, further develops the understanding of the new bodily attitude. It explores a particular kind of darkness to better understand the phenomena of depth and abyss, and a particular kind of light to describe the haleness as the experience of the holy.
Open Access
Politically Engaged Wild Animals
(2022-03-03) Papadopoulos, Dennis Vasilis; Andrews, Kristin A
My dissertation is called Politically Engaged Wild Animals; in it, I suggest that wild animals live in a politicized world, which gives their behaviour unintended political meanings—if humans will listen appropriately. To arrive at this conclusion, I start with Dinesh Wadiwel's (2015) biopower critique according to which any proposals to conserve wilderness or protect wild animals, which relies on human representatives, suffer from a particular sort of risk, namely that of transforming the current overt domination into a neoliberal form of continued human supremacy. I find this critique has traction against proposals like Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka's (2011) suggestion of Wild Animal Sovereignty. However, it has less traction against Anishinaabe (Indigenous) legal traditions, which prioritize respect for wild animals and the ecosystems we share with them. In these legal systems, wild animals are not under the jurisdiction of human societies; they are in independent communities that are part of a shared interspecies world. Thinking of wild animal communities as independently entitled to share the land, water, and air with humans can highlight the interspecies political meanings of conflict between human society and wild animal communities. I suggest we can listen to the behaviour patterns of wild animal communities to reveal unintended political meaning (e.g. protesting human activity or negotiating boundaries with neighbouring groups). Further, researchers are already developing ways to better communicate with wild animals so we all might safely share contested spaces. The moral-political implications of these research projects are typically left in anthropocentric terms. In my view we should reframe this communication as a way of respecting the relationships we already have with wild animal communities. If we can communicate with them, negotiating mutually beneficial boundaries, then we ought to take this communication as a form of political participation. Wild animal communities are speaking for themselves, on land they share with humans, in a politicized world.
Open Access
How We Do What We Do: Joint Action and Spontaneity
(2021-11-15) Leferman, Alexander Emil; Myers, Robert
The dissertation defends a novel account of joint agency, one that accommodates the neglected phenomenon of spontaneous joint action. The goals of the dissertation are to reveal the importance of spontaneous joint action, to show why these actions are problematic for many accounts of joint agency, and to produce a satisfactory theory of them. Chapter 1 argues that being capable of explaining spontaneous joint actions is in fact a requirement on a satisfactory theory of joint agency and this poses a challenge to meeting the other requirement on such a theory, the togetherness requirement. Spontaneous joint actions are those performed by co-agents who have not interacted in ways that bind them together. The challenge, then, is to adequately explain how co-agents are joined together without binding interaction. Chapter 2 reviews the literature and argues that extant theories do not meet the challenge of spontaneity because they cannot satisfy both requirements together. Chapter 3 develops the reasons account of joint action, which appeals to normative group reasons, in order to meet the challenge. Grasping a group reason forces agents to occupy the co-agential point of view because the group reason indicates who is to act and what they ought to do together. If two agents grasp their group reason, they are already bound together such that were they to act on the reason, they would act together spontaneously. Chapter 4 investigates which theory of normative reasons is consistent with spontaneity. Both motivating reasons and internalism about normative reasons are found lacking. Instead, it is argued that realism about normative reasons provides the best account of normative group reasons because the objective nature of real reasons eliminates the need for binding interaction, and it can more easily accommodate the inherent publicity of group reasons. Finally, Chapter 5 argues for realism about normative reasons, the existence of group reasons, and the unrestricted publicity of normative reasons. It does this by showing how these are all consequences of Davidsons triangulation argument.
Open Access
Knowing and Expressing Ourselves
(2021-07-06) Winokur, Benjamin Ian; Verheggen, Claudine E.
This dissertation concerns two epistemologically puzzling phenomena. The first phenomenon is the authority that each of us has over our minds. Roughly, to have authority is to be owed (and to tend to receive) a special sort of deference when self-ascribing your current mental states. The second phenomenon is our privileged and peculiar self-knowledge. Roughly, self-knowledge is privileged insofar as one knows ones mental states in a way that is highly epistemically secure relative to other varieties of contingent empirical knowledge. Roughly, one has peculiar self-knowledge insofar as one acquires it in a way that is available only to oneself. In Chapter One I consider several more detailed specifications of the authority of self-ascriptions. Some specifications emphasize the relative indubitability of our self-ascriptions, while others focus on their presumptive truth. In Chapter Two I defend a Neo-Expressivist explanation of authority. According to Neo-Expressivism, self-ascriptions are authoritative insofar as they are acts that put ones mental states on display for others, whether or not these mental states are also known by the self-ascriber with privilege and peculiarity. However, I do not dispute that we often have privileged and peculiar self-knowledge. This raises the question of what such knowledge does explain, if not the authority of our self-ascriptions. In Chapter Three I examine several extant answers to this question, focusing on privileged and peculiar self-knowledge of the propositional attitudes. Each answer meets with objections. In Chapter Four I develop a Social Agentialist account of the explanatory indispensability of privileged and peculiar self-knowledge. I argue that such knowledge enables at least three forms of social-epistemic agency: interpersonal reasoning, complex group action, and linguistic interpretation. Next, I argue that, even though privileged and peculiar self-knowledge does not explain the authority of our self-ascriptions, it is importantly related to our (Neo-Expressively understood) authority. In Chapter Five I consider possible sources of our privileged and peculiar self-knowledge, focusing again on propositional-attitudinal self-knowledge. I eventually defend a Constitutivist view. This is the view that, for agents who meet certain background conditions, self-knowledge is privileged and peculiar because it is metaphysically built into the attitudes self-known.
Open Access
The Social and Political Dimensions of the Ethics of PrEP for HIV Prevention Among MSM
(2021-03-08) Montess, Michael Martin; MacLachlan, Alice C.
For many men who have sex with men (MSM), the risks, treatment, and prevention of HIV are central and unavoidable aspects of their experiences of sex and romance. This constant vigilance around HIV complicates their lives in medical as well as interpersonal and socio-political ways. Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is a relatively new method of HIV prevention that is already revolutionizing the lives of MSM by lessening the need for this ongoing vigilance. However, the wide-ranging effects of PrEP on MSM are as of yet unclear. Therefore, the ethics of using PrEP among MSM is a timely issue that demands philosophical engagement. As MSM in North America face decisions of whether or not to use PrEP and the consequences of those decisions, philosophy has an important role to play in helping us think more clearly about the situation today by moving away from a strictly medical conception of the ethics of PrEP. In my first chapter, I motivate my investigation into the social and political dimensions of the ethics of PrEP by providing a critical history of HIV and HIV prevention. In my second chapter, I challenge the prevalent risk assessment approach to the ethics of PrEP, arguing that it has a distorting effect, overblowing some risks while overlooking others. The second half of my dissertation demonstrates how a relational approach, focused on the conditions for trust and solidarity, better reveals the ethical terrain facing MSM with decisions about PrEP. In my third chapter, I examine the role of trust in sexual and romantic relationships between MSM as well as relationships between MSM and healthcare providers. In my final chapter, I argue that PrEP complicates relationships of solidarity within gay communities, focusing in particular on intergenerational differences in perspectives on HIV and HIV prevention. Overall, my dissertation helps move us towards a more socially and politically informed conception of the ethics of PrEP, which helps us understand how MSM can live ethically within communities whose sexual and romantic lives continue to be medicalized, both internally by members of gay communities and externally by a broader culture and public health establishment.
Open Access
The Value of Genetic Ties as Ethical Justification for Banning Gamete Donor Anonymity
(2020-08-11) Schuman, Olivia; Maclachlan, Prof. Alice; Rini, Prof. Regina
Do we have a right to know who our genetic parents are? Do donor-conceived individuals have a moral right to know their gamete (sperm and egg) donors? From the beginning of the clinical practice of donor conception, anonymity for gamete donors was considered in the best interest of all involved parties. However, in recent decades the discourse has changed. Many jurisdictions have now banned the use of anonymous donors on the grounds that having access to ones genetic parents is a moral right. This dissertation is a philosophical analysis of this moral justification for banning gamete donor anonymity on the grounds that genetic ties are valuable. One potential negative consequence of banning donor anonymity is that it communicates a particular kind of normative message, namely that people who have access to their genetic kin have something valuable or irreplaceable that people without access to their genetic kin do not have. Internalizing such messages can be harmful and oppressive to many groups. For example, it suggests that families that are formed through donor-conception, adoption, or re-marriage are inferiour to families who are genetically related. If the State bans donor anonymity on the grounds that genetic ties are valuable, then it becomes complicit in reifying and perpetuating these kinds of normative standards. We know that genetic ties can have subjective value for many people, but that justification is too weak to ground a right to know the donor. Thus, I look for evidence for its independent value. I consider empirical studies, evolutionary arguments, as well human dignity arguments. I show how valuing genetic ties arises by way of various biases and false beliefs. If we correct for these biases, we lack adequate justification for the value of genetic ties. Thus, knowing the donor does not promote substantial enough interests to ground a right, and therefore the State should not ban donor anonymity.
Open Access
Accounting for the Epistemic Benefits of Diversity: Social Location, Identity, and the Politics of Knowledge
(2020-08-11) Harron, Nathan Alan; Code, Lorraine B.
This dissertation investigates and supports arguments intended to justify claims that social diversity in scientific research communities not only promotes justice but is good for knowledge. One such claim that I focus on is that increasing the social location diversity of research communities increases that communitys capacity for critically evaluating knowledge claims. I investigate existing arguments defending this position and point out a common weaknessthey inadequately detail how social diversity in research communities can be epistemically beneficial, and end up implicitly invoking an untenable identity essentialism. I aim to support the epistemic benefits of social diversity claim by providing a solution to this weakness. In chapters one and two I describe arguments defending the epistemic benefits of social diversity claim, explaining where current accounts run out, and suggesting how they could be enhanced. I argue that appeals to increase social diversity in research communities for the sake of epistemic benefits are also implicitly appeals for the inclusion of researchers who occupy critical standpoints on knowledge production, and claim that the resources of feminist standpoint theory are vital. In chapter three I expand my discussion to consider other aspects of subjectivity in knowledge productive practices, and argue that feminist standpoint theory, as well as discussions of the epistemic value of social diversity, do not yet adequately account for the positive epistemic role that advocacy, care, affect, and emotion can play in knowledge making projects. I explore this claim both theoretically and in an extended analysis of the development of Insite, a safe-injection facility in Vancouver. I use the STS idiom of co-production to analyze the entanglement of the activist coalition to establish Insite and long-term health science research programs in the region. In chapter four I apply my findings to the work of an international collaboration, known as Gendered Innovations, attempting to use various policy initiatives to address the under-representation of women and girls in the sciences. I argue that lack of attention, in key works of this collaboration, to the significance of social location in generating epistemic advantage, limits the transformative epistemic potential of their proposed policy initiatives.
Open Access
3D Reconstruction of Indoor Corridor Models Using Single Imagery and Video Sequences
(2020-05-11) Jahromi, Ali Baligh; Sohn, Gunho
In recent years, 3D indoor modeling has gained more attention due to its role in decision-making process of maintaining the status and managing the security of building indoor spaces. In this thesis, the problem of continuous indoor corridor space modeling has been tackled through two approaches. The first approach develops a modeling method based on middle-level perceptual organization. The second approach develops a visual Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM) system with model-based loop closure. In the first approach, the image space was searched for a corridor layout that can be converted into a geometrically accurate 3D model. Manhattan rule assumption was adopted, and indoor corridor layout hypotheses were generated through a random rule-based intersection of image physical line segments and virtual rays of orthogonal vanishing points. Volumetric reasoning, correspondences to physical edges, orientation map and geometric context of an image are all considered for scoring layout hypotheses. This approach provides physically plausible solutions while facing objects or occlusions in a corridor scene. In the second approach, Layout SLAM is introduced. Layout SLAM performs camera localization while maps layout corners and normal point features in 3D space. Here, a new feature matching cost function was proposed considering both local and global context information. In addition, a rotation compensation variable makes Layout SLAM robust against cameras orientation errors accumulations. Moreover, layout model matching of keyframes insures accurate loop closures that prevent miss-association of newly visited landmarks to previously visited scene parts. The comparison of generated single image-based 3D models to ground truth models showed that average ratio differences in widths, heights and lengths were 1.8%, 3.7% and 19.2% respectively. Moreover, Layout SLAM performed with the maximum absolute trajectory error of 2.4m in position and 8.2 degree in orientation for approximately 318m path on RAWSEEDS data set. Loop closing was strongly performed for Layout SLAM and provided 3D indoor corridor layouts with less than 1.05m displacement errors in length and less than 20cm in width and height for approximately 315m path on York University data set. The proposed methods can successfully generate 3D indoor corridor models compared to their major counterpart.
Open Access
Semantic Scepticism and the Possibility of Meaning
(2019-11-22) Sultanescu, Alexandra Olivia; Verheggen, Claudine E.
Nearly four decades ago, Saul Kripke articulated a semantic version of scepticism, according to which no finite goings-on, either mental or behavioural, can establish what someone means by an expression. The semantic sceptic reveals, among other things, the hopelessness of a deeply temptingand widely madeassumption, to the effect that we must be able to articulate what it is for a subject to use expressions meaningfully without presupposing meaning. According to a strain of thinking that is influential in contemporary philosophy, this suggests that there is no general story to be told about what it is for expressions to be used meaningfully This dissertation seeks to contribute to the project of undermining the dichotomy between reductionism and quietist non-reductionism about meaning. It does this in the first instance by examining, and ultimately rejecting, a range of views offered in response to the challenge. Then, it proceeds to extract from the later writings of Donald Davidson a version of semantic non-reductionism that provides an answer to the challenge of the semantic sceptic. At the core of his view is the idea that we cannot shed light on what it is for expressions to be used meaningfully without shedding light on the special sort of active engagement characteristic of the simultaneous interaction of two subjects with each other and their shared world. Meaningfulness is grounded in such triangular transactions. This dissertation also illuminates the connections between the philosophical conceptions of two thinkers who have made an enormous contribution to the project, central to analytic philosophy, of making philosophical sense of meaning. Davidson seems never to have been genuinely gripped by Kripkes challenge, and Kripke seems never to have engaged in any substantive way with Davidsons views on triangulation. And yet, Kripkes challenge about meaning and Davidsons overall conception of meaning can each be seen as lending support to the other. Furthermore, what Davidsons writings show is that endorsing semantic non-reductionism need not be the desperate move that Kripke takes it to be, for it does not force us to give up on the distinctively philosophical search for generality.
Open Access
Defending the Coherence and Practicability of Autonomy through a Multi-level Analytical Approach
(2019-03-05) Robertson, Jamie Kathleen; Myers, Robert; MacLachlan, Alice
The objective of this dissertation is to develop a coherent account of autonomy that builds on a general understanding of autonomy as the capacity by which people decide or discover for themselves what is valuable and live accordingly. I will advance a multi-level, multi-factor theory of autonomy while responding to potential criticisms relating to autonomys coherence as a concept and practicability as a capacity. In my first chapter, I refute allegations that taking practical considerations into account in developing a theory of autonomy constitutes a wrongful inclusion of normative considerations into what should be a purely conceptual analysis. I also respond to situationist arguments against the possibility of autonomy. In so doing, I will articulate the common-sense psychological standard I will use to judge theoretical adequacy throughout the remainder of the dissertation. In the second chapter, I track how common-sense concerns about the practicability of autonomy have been used to bring contemporary conceptions of autonomy more in line with human experience and limitations. I argue that while considerable nuance has been added to the otherwise proceduralist picture of autonomy, this increased complexity exacerbates concerns about the (lack of) conceptual coherence of autonomy and raises concerns that the exercise of autonomy is overly demanding. In the third chapter I respond to Nomy Arpalys claim that the concept of autonomy is incoherent. I do so by advancing a three-level approach to analyzing autonomy in which important elements of Arpalys discussion of moral responsibility feature at different levels of analysis. While my model helps join different aspects of autonomy together into a coherent picture, it simultaneously reveals the extent to which the exercise of autonomy requires an extensive range of abilities and is highly complex. Defending autonomy against these renewed concerns about practicability will be the objective of the final chapters of the dissertation. This defense will rely on three additional features of my theory of autonomy: degree, automaticity, and reinforcement/substitution. In both chapters four and five, I will endeavour to convince the reader that these proposed features are plausible on a common-sense understanding of human psychology.
Open Access
Non-Naturalism and the Metaphysics of Normative Properties
(2019-03-05) Rocheleau-Houle, David; Myers, Robert
Normative non-naturalists seem to be committed to a supervenience relation about the normative. This means that the normative necessarily varies with the non-normative, such that the normative features of a person or a thing cannot change if the non-normative features of that person or that thing do not change either. Furthermore, according to normative non-naturalists, normative properties are metaphysically discontinuous with non-normative properties, as the former are irreducible to the latter and cannot be exhaustively understood in terms of the latter. However, it is not clear that normative non-naturalists can explain the necessary connection between the normative and the non-normative they themselves seem to maintain; this is the core of the problem of supervenience. In order to respond to the problem of supervenience, non-naturalists could either try to explain the necessary connection between the normative and the non-normative, or deny that this necessary connection between the normative and the non-normative holds. I first define normative non-naturalists theoretical commitments and give a few reasons to take this view seriously (Chapter 1), and then I explain how the problem of supervenience against non-naturalism should be understood (Chapter 2). Then, I argue that there are issues with the most convincing attempts to explain the necessary connection between the normative and the non-normative (Chapter 3) and with the most convincing attempts to deny this necessary connection (Chapter 4). My conclusion is then that non-naturalists do not have a convincing response to the problem of supervenience.
Open Access
Becoming Godless: Heidegger's Nietzsche and the Eternal Return
(2018-08-27) Lauretani, Aaron; Vernon, James P.
Nietzsches concept of eternal return best exemplifies his anti-theological thought, but it is often misread as either classical physics or a thought experiment. Insofar as Anglo-American and analytic interpretations reject eternal returns cosmology, their ethical implications are minimized. By contrast, Heideggers synthesized cosmological and ethical reading is shown to be more normatively significant in framing Nietzsches philosophy as radical atheism. However, it is also shown that Heidegger limits Nietzsches radicalness by approaching eternal return as the notion that being as a whole returns identically. To that end, it is next argued that Heideggers explication of the cosmology as an ethical projection is superior to scientific interpretations in analytic and Anglo-American readings, but also that Heidegger partially misreads eternal returns cosmology. It is therefore finally demonstrated that Nietzsches cosmology actually rejects that an identical state of being returns. This finally allows for the most profound ethical implications in Nietzsches philosophy.
Open Access
A Narrative Account of Argumentation
(2018-08-27) Tamimi, Khamaiel Aoda Wahib Al; Gilbert, Michael A.
In this dissertation I attempt to accomplish three goals. The first goal is to develop a narrative account of argumentation. I show that storytelling serves as a legitimate mode of argumentation. I develop an account of narrative argument based on generalized features of narrative and a conception of argument that is rhetorical and in line with Charles Willards notion of argument as an interaction. I identify features of narrative argument that enable narrative to function as an argument and thus to provide reasons for a claim in the context of disagreement. As a result, I synthesize literatures on narrative and argumentation to provide a definition of narrative argument. The second goal of the dissertation is to argue for maintaining the narrative as a process without reconstructing the narrative into the dominant model of argument. In this part of the dissertation, I elaborate on the definition of narrative argument and argue that narrative argument must be understood as a process, and not as a product of argument. While the product view focuses on the form and structure of an argument as being linear, explicit, and containing premises and a conclusion, and treats arguments as things, the process view focuses on the whole act of arguing, thus highlighting the importance of the context of argumentation and the people involved. In support of this thesis, I show that reducing the narrative into premises and a conclusion is problematic because it deprives it of some of its persuasive force. Reducing the narrative into a product removes the real argumentpart of which is implicitfrom its context, its unique situation, and its complex social setting. The third goal of this dissertation is to develop an account of argument evaluation that is suitable for narrative argument understood as a process. I offer an account of how to evaluate narratives using the virtuous audience, combining theories of virtue argumentation and rhetorical audiences. In sum, this dissertation provides a definition of narrative argument, stipulates the conditions of narrative arguments that make them successful, and offers ways of evaluating the narrative while maintaining its form as a process.
Open Access
Religion and Secularism-Towards a Reconciliation
(2018-08-27) Scott, Xavier Devon; Giudice, Michael G.
This dissertation examines the evolving relationship between religion and the state in political philosophy. I begin with an examination of what religion is. I argue that religion is not primarily a belief system about metaphysics but rather a social system, which is better understood in terms of politics than science. In the second chapter, I look at the origins of secular political philosophy in early-modern Europe and contrast it with medieval political theory. I note that this transition does not mark a separation of church and state, but in fact accomplishes the expropriation of religious functions by the state. Therefore, I argue that the modern, secular state should not be mistaken for a neutral arbiter between competing religious perspectives. The modern state is itself a very interested party in how religion is expressed, understood, and in which religions are supported by the state. In my third chapter, I look at the rise of secular ideologies in the context of what Charles Taylor calls the modern moral order. I note that secular ideologies have attempted to reform society on the basis of ideals that avoid taking a stand on questions of religion. I question whether societies are capable of functioning on the basis of principle alone and note the tendency of liberal and communist states to adopt different forms of nationalism. I show that where universalist ideologies were once on the rise and spreading across the globe, they are increasingly met with the particularisms of culture and religion. Finally, I return to the topic of religion in contemporary political life. I examine four features of religion that have come under attack. Each of these problematic features of religion, I argue, also preform salutary functions in society. I show that this is particularly the case in societies where secular institutions are failing to provide institutional support or a sense of belonging to their members. By recognizing the complexity of religions interaction with the secular state, we can develop more nuanced approaches that are able to avoid the extremes of xenophobia and cultural relativism.
Open Access
From Indifference to Difference: Theorizing Emancipation through Sylvia Wynter and Alain Badiou
(2018-03-01) Paquette, Elisabeth Anne; Vernon, James P.
In this project I argue that Alain Badious theory of emancipation fails to properly account for racial and racialized subjects as well as racial emancipation. All particularities, including race, must be subtracted from emancipatory movements and this is central to his conception of politics. On this view, racial identities are considered divisive and arise merely as the result of hierarchical structures. For these reasons, in Badious account, no conception of racialized subjecthood can provide the conditions for universal emancipation. I turn to two examples in order to demonstrate several unintended consequences of Badious theory of emancipation: the Ngritude movement (1930s-1940s) and the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804). According to Badiou, Ngritude fails to be a political movement because it retains a focus on race. While he claims that it is an important cultural movement, the conditions for it to become a political movement would require that Ngritude writers and artists move beyond racial identity so that they can affirm a universal subject position. I argue that Badiou's discussion of Ngritude mirrors that of Jean-Paul Sartres discussion of Ngritude in Black Orpheus (1948) a position that has been critiqued by various critical race theorists, including Frantz Fanon, Kathryn Gines, and Robert Bernasconi. Second, I discuss how Badious theory of emancipation would apply to the Haitian Revolution. Within his framework, the Haitian Revolution could only be considered political if its adherents shifted their focus away from race. However, I argue that race is a central and defining feature of this revolution, and that it ought to be understood as a political emancipatory movement. As a result, the failure of Badious political theory to account for the Haitian Revolution in this way demonstrates a limitation of his theory of emancipation. This project then culminates in a discussion of the decolonial project of Sylvia Wynter, and I propose that her work addresses the limitations of Badious political theory. In particular, I develop her view of a pluri-conceptual theory of emancipation developed from the work of C. L. R. James that argues that particular identities, such as race, need not be subtracted from a theory of emancipation.
Open Access
The Semiotic Mind: A Fundamental Theory of Consciousness
(2018-03-01) Champagne, Marc; Jackman, Henry
One of the leading concerns animating current philosophy of mind is that, no matter how good a scientific account is, it will leave out what its like to be conscious. The challenge has thus been to study or at least explain away that qualitative dimension. Pursuant with that aim, I investigate how philosophy of signs in the Peircean tradition can positively reshape ongoing debates. Specifically, I think the account of iconic or similarity-based reference we find in semiotic theory offers a more promising variant of the phenomenal concept strategy. Philosophers who endorse this strategy think that the difficulties we have fitting conscious qualia into a scientific picture may owe to the peculiar nature of indexical concepts. They point to the fact that, when we try to convey the feel of our experiences, we employ context-dependent gestures and/or utterances that are indexed to perspectives unique to each person. However, according to the theory I defend, there are three ways signs can refer, namely by convention, causal contact, and similarity. Since similarity is not reducible to proximity, I argue that a theory of reference that turns on shared quality can bypass some of the implausible consequences that plague indexical accounts. In the first chapter, I describe the apparatus needed to make sense of this claim. In the second chapter, I present my account of iconic reference. In the third chapter, I justify my reliance on a distinction that is less than real yet more than nominal. In the fourth chapter, I sketch a trinitarian metaphysics well-suited to house the foregoing account of qualia.