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Introduction: Special Issue of Prize Winners from the Northwest Undergraduate Conference on Literature
Get PDFThe articles in this special issue represent five prizewinners from the Northwest Undergraduate Conference on Literature (NUCL), held on March 22, 2022 at the University of Portland. These research essays represent the wide range of periods and theoretical approaches that the conference addressed, as well as highlighting students’ impressive, new contributions to ongoing conversations in literary analysis
“How do Filipinos clear deyer nose?”: Humor, Race, and Cultural Adaptation in Plantation-era Hawai‘i
Get PDFThrough sociopolitical history and ethnography, this research examines the influence of Hawai‘i’s historical plantation-based racial-hierarchy on the current social mobility of Filipino migrants and their subsequent cultural adaptations. The sociopolitical history centers on the Filipino experience with systematic oppression under the supremacy of plantation owners between the early- to mid-1900s, the contemporary socioeconomic position of Filipinos, and the formation of the Local identity. Results of the ethnography identified adaptations in areas of cultural assimilation, closed ethnic communities, and Local-Ethnic-Humor (LEH). Modern perpetuations of the racial hierarchy are found to be interconnected, and many simultaneously function as cultural adaptions, which include access to education, seclusion of ethnic communities, cultural assimilation and heritage loss, the reconstruction of ethnic stereotypes in Local ethnic humor, and diasporic immigration.Faculty Advisors: Patricia Fifita, Eirik SaethreFaculty Sponsor: Patricia Fifita, Eirik Saethr
The Discrimination of Hair-Based Drug Testing
Get PDFBusiness ethicists usually debate workplace drug testing by appealing to safety (consequences of drug use for the public) and employees\u27 contracts with the company. However, the means of catching these unsafe workers are rarely analyzed. I discuss the means of hair-based drug testing through the lens of discrimination. Drawing on Richard Lippke’s criticism of drug testing, my paper demonstrates that there is an unequal hindrance of autonomy of long-haired women, the unsheltered homeless, and darker haired individuals over others and, as a result, that hair-based drug testing is morally wrong
Detection of Radioactive Isotopes from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in the Kittitas Valley of Washington State
Get PDFFollowing the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster in March, 2011, various radioactive isotopes were emitted from the plant [Ewing, 2011]. We hypothesized that emissions would bind to particulate matter, which then could be dispersed by wind currents and deposited across the planet. We analyzed an aerosol sample collected with a high volume cascade impactor in the Kittitas Valley of Washington state. NaI(Tl) gamma spectrometry revealed the presence of the isotopes 132Te and 131I, consistent with the type of nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi
A Criticism of the Argument from Vagueness for Unrestricted Composition
Get PDFA subject of much recent philosophical discussion is the thesis that for any finite class of objects, the xs, there is necessarily an object composed of those xs. Composition is unrestricted. Some support for this view arises from concerns about whether composition can be a vague matter. Ted Sider offers an ‘argument from vagueness’ in defense of unrestricted mereological composition which relies heavily on the premise that composition cannot be vague. However, he endorses a particular view of vagueness which, I propose, commits him to abandoning certain premises of his argument. I will defend Sider’s charge that composition cannot be vague. I will argue, though, that Sider should actually be committed to accepting sharp cutoffs with regard to composition, since the theory of vagueness Sider endorses itself requires sharp cutoffs. The purpose of this paper is to show that his views on vagueness and sharp cutoffs are at conflict with one another, and because of that, his argument for unrestricted composition fails
Categories and Schemata
Get PDFIn this paper, I argue that once Kant has established his argument about the a priori transcendental ideality of Time, the objectivity of the Categories and their schematization can be established. If we remember that the Categories are not only concepts, but transcendental concepts, we will see that their objective nature is not as difficult to establish as if we were to consider them only as concepts as such. Further, once we understand the function of the Schematism and how Kant conceives of the Schemata, this will shed light as to the nature of the Categories themselves. Finally, I will propose an understanding of the relationship between the Categories and Schemata that will make a transcendental solution to the problem of the objectivity of the Categories and Schemata possible
A Study of Analytic Metaphysics: Meinong, Quine, and Williams on Conceptual Simplicity
Get PDF[From the introduction]Analytic metaphysics has come under fire from many directions under the rubric of naturalism. The irrelevance of analytic metaphysics for exploring the nature of ultimate reality is already at the level of household slogans: purportedly all it does is rest on armchair analysis consisting of linguistic intuitions. Yet analytic metaphysics even during its heyday was less uniform than the current slogans indicate. If analysis is or was the basis for its epistemology, then practice of analytic metaphysics leaves open not just how the process of analysis occurs, but also the objects of analysis themselves.In this paper, I will consider a couple well-known debates in analytic metaphysics and explicate some of the features of their epistemology. These include Alexius Meinong’s formulation of analysis and his conclusions concerning possible objects and subsistence as interpreted and supported by Roderick Chisholm in Being and Nonbeing; Russell’s reformulation of propositional structure and his use of definite descriptions as presented and discussed by W.V.O. Quine in On What There Is; and trope theory proposed by D.C. Williams in The Elements of Being in which he substitutes the analysis of propositions which contain terms that represent the constituents of concrete objects (labeled ‘abstract particulars’) and their relations in place of propositions which contain terms that represent ‘objects’ and their relations – an approach used by Meinong and Russell. I will argue that some of these examples show some common epistemological criterion such as systematic use of conceptual simplicity or epistemic immediacy as their slogans. Yet I still maintain that the object of analysis differs. They analyze different representational systems based on their ontological commitments – not just their linguistic ones. Thus I will maintain that, like Carnap, we cannot have a uniform epistemology for metaphysics; and we cannot have a principled analysis based epistemology for all represented metaphysics
The Call: Heidegger and the Ethical Conscience
Get PDFIn Being and Time, the philosopher Martin Heidegger portrays the conscience in a different sense from another common, characterization of the conscience, where the conscience acts as a guide to satisfy a moral code. Instead, for Heidegger, the conscience calls the human to ‘take up,’ or accept, the “who” that the human is, without measurement to an external, “ethical,” code. In “The Call,” I affirm Heidegger’s distinctive characterization of the conscience. I adjust Heidegger, however, to argue that we may understand the call of conscience as a call toward the ethical if we both understand Heidegger’s description of the call as different from our own and adjust our understanding of the “ethical” to reflect Heidegger’s different depiction of the call. I believe this adjustment is significant for ethics because it broadens the understanding of “the ethical” to include an acceptance of the internal self
Possible Problems with Four-Dimensionalism and a Possible Solution
Get PDFMark Heller, in “Temporal Parts of Four-Dimensional Objects,” argues for an ontology of objects with four dimensions. He thinks that by arguing for an ontology that incorporates the temporal dimension he is able to deny some distasteful propositions that the proponent of a three-dimensional ontology must choose between to avoid contradicting themselves as they attempt to develop an account of how objects are able to persist, as the same objects, through change. This is a view that I find attractive, but with some reservation. This paper will explain Heller’s fourth-dimensionalism by looking at an argument he brings up against three-dimensionalism. I will reply to his handling of the argument by raising two important areas of clarification that the four-dimensionalist must address. After this, I will bring up a possible solution to the areas needing clarification by suggesting an ontology that includes an essential part alongside temporal parts