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Virginia Woolf in the River: The Intersection of Relativity and Modern Buddhism in Mrs. Dalloway
Get PDFThe modernist period ushered forth numerous scientific and philosophical theories that had a notable influence on art, literature, psychology, and philosophy. Discoveries such as Einstein’s general theory of relativity inspired theologians, philosophers, and psychologists to focalize new concepts of self, identity, time, reality, and human experience. These shifts in contemporary human understanding developed in concurrence with increased global travel and intellectual exchange between Western and Eastern countries. As a result, writers, philosophers, and artists became more interested in Buddhism and other Eastern philosophical beliefs. Virginia Woolf, while being a self-proclaimed atheist, was deeply influenced by Eastern philosophy and well versed in contemporary scientific theories. Drawing on literary and biographical criticism of Virginia Woolf, I trace the intersections of Eastern philosophical beliefs and Western scientific theories through the stream of consciousness narration of Mrs. Dalloway by analyzing both what and how things are experienced by individual characters. In the novel, the integration of each character\u27s stream of consciousness fabricates a dissonant medium in which singular moments in the present time are experienced through the minds of multiple characters, while they simultaneously navigate past spans of time within their individual narrative consciousness. Through the analysis of narrative form and narrative consciousness in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, it is possible to track the impact of Eastern philosophies and Western scientific theories in the novel’s exploration of external and internal perceptions of reality
The politics of pointing fingers: Party identification, gender performance, and the Kavanaugh sexual assault hearing
Get PDFDr. Christine Blasey Ford and Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2018 to testify about Ford’s allegation of a previous sexual assault by Kavanaugh. This thesis asks and answers the question of what does this hearing reveal about the relationship between party identity and gender performance in male senators. Structural power and gender performativity built a theoretical context for this question, while pre-existing research on the intersection of nonverbal behavior, gender, and politics outlined a path to answering it. Fifty randomly selected clips from each testimony were coded for facial displays, gestures, and mirroring. Previous research would hypothesize that all men would employ the same behaviors, regardless of political affiliation; however, the results of this coding revealed that Republicans conformed to traditionally masculine behavior, while Democrats did not. These findings demonstrate the way in which party identity influences gender behavior
Improper Parts, Restricted Existence, and Use: Three Arguments against Ted Sider\u27s Four-Dimensionalism
Get PDFThis paper raises and defends three classes of objections to Ted Sider\u27s argument from vagueness in his recent work, Four-Dimensionalism. The first class argues that Sider\u27s case for four-dimensionalism is superfluous, that is, “mereologically promiscuous three-dimensionalists” can accept his argument yet maintain a compatible variety of three-dimensionalism that accepts the existence of temporal parts as improper parts of otherwise enduring wholes. Second, Sider\u27s argument begs the question of unrestricted composition by presupposing an unrestricted conception of objecthood that the three-dimensionalist can freely reject. Finally, Sider\u27s project offends ontology by undermining a deep ontological distinction between temporal existence and extension. Even assuming that any defense of this distinction will be circular, Sider\u27s account contradicts our commonsense and reflective thought concerning existence without sufficient reason to justify this revision. Since three-dimensionalism can preserve our distinctions in conjunction with granting existence to temporal parts, it is to be preferred
Art is in the Doing: Diderot, Jankélévitch, and Artistic Agency
No full text[From the introduction]“Generally speaking, expression is the image of feeling.” The sentiment from Denis Diderot’s “Notes on Painting” sets up a discussion of just what ‘feeling’ is that it necessitates being set up as an image, as well as just how this ‘expression’ that relates to it works. Diderot follows his idea to a conclusion of good ‘expression’ concerned with painting, sculpture, and other visual arts in relation to the subjects within them and the necessity that they be shown as humans, not models. Expression as a word, however, has a multitude of possible applications merely within the realm of art, and a counterexample arises in Vladimir Jankélévitch’s Music and the Ineffable, where music is described as inherently inexpressive, without any direct connection to a ‘feeling’ in and of itself, and must react to itself as this inexpressive entity. However, in exploring the arguments of each, one sees a similar interest in a type of interaction with agency. By examining each idea of expressiveness in an artistic medium in the context of this agency, the two arguments can be reconciled, shown to be concerned with expecting the same things from the artistic process and the good artist. [...
Quantifying Ignorance: A Quantitative Analysis of Skeptical Scenarios in Peter Unger’s ‘Ignorance’
Get PDFIn his book Ignorance, Peter Unger puts forward scenarios meant to illustrate the skeptical view of knowledge and why it is wrong to be certain. In my paper I will examine three sorts of these examples using tools of quantitative analysis: the Ink Bottle, the Voice, and the Scientist, taking each of these to be a typical example of a skeptical scenario. After presenting possible skeptical objections to this sort of analysis, I end by concluding that methods of quantitative analysis stand up to the sort of skepticism that Unger provides and that under most quantitative analysis provides us with a better tool for understanding skeptical scenarios than the skeptic’s dismissal of the possibility of knowledge
Donald Davidson’s Account of Conceptual Schemes as Related to Inter-Lingual Translation
Get PDFIn his address “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme,” Donald Davidson puts forth the notion of varying conceptual schemes. The variation makes relative the notions of truth and concept. Davidson argues against varying conceptual schemes via the construction of a system of translation between different languages. I argue that Davidson’s system, adapted from Tarski’s Convention T, is inconsistent with the requirements of the formal structure Convention T brings. In particular, it is shown that Davidson fails to uniformly apply his notion of what it means to understand a language. Furthermore, it is shown that Davidson’s adaptation of Convention T fails to grasp the heart of Convention T: the removal of the Liar’s Paradox. While these problems disappear upon the repeal of one of Davidson’s assumptions, the cost of the repeal appears to be the loss of a working system
Transcendental Geology: The Relation between Nature and History in Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology
Get PDFIn his lecture course on Nature, Merleau-Ponty makes the intriguing claim that an ontology of Nature is the preferred way toward ontology in general. This paper explores why he makes this claim and asks what philosophical significance this approach to ontology might have. Making use of Merleau-Ponty’s notions of chiasm and flesh as the must fundamental ontological truths, I argue that nature and history are related to one another according to the logic of the chiasm and that thinking them in terms of this relationship opens up avenues for addressing long-standing problems in both philosophy of nature and philosophy of history. Specifically, I explore Merleau-Ponty’s response to the problem of a scientific historical methodology that is distinct from the methodology of the natural sciences and suggest that his response, in its reliance on the logic of chiasm, moves the problem beyond the state it reached in the work of Wilhem Dilthey and Edmund Husserl
A New Perspective on Enantiomorphic Pairs and Substantivalist Spacetime
Get PDFI present a logical argument for the existence of substantivalist spacetime: We should consider the account presented by Kant of spacetime as a genuine substance because it provides a plausible alternative to the widely held relationist viewpoint. I present several examples of enantiomorphic pairs, including the lowercase letters p and q to illustrate differences between such objects that have no apparent connection to the internal structure of each. These differences, I claim, must stem from a direct relationship between the objects and space itself. Furthermore, I examine the implications presented by enantiomorphic objects when time is taken to be the fourth dimension based on Einstein’s view of general and special relativity
Sex, Lies, and Surgery: The Ethics of Gender Reassignment Surgery
Get PDFIn this paper, I argue that in cases in which competent adult patients have been suffering from long-term gender identity disorders which interfere with their everyday life functions, gender reassignment surgery is a morally permissible treatment option. Though many argue that it is morally impermissible to allow the use of surgery for such non-medical things as reassigning gender, I argue that the use of surgery for reassigning gender is morally permissible on the basis of Kantian autonomy and Utilitarian reasoning. In this paper, I will further discuss my argument, as well as the primary objections to the argument and my replies to those objections