Aspiring philosopher, writer, and man of virtue. My name is Gunnar Footh, and I am currently a professor of philosophy at Point Park University and Seton Hill University. Supervisors: Dr. Geoff Gorham (Macalester College) and Dr. Eric Wilson (GSU)
In today’s society there is a great demand on energy output—in the United States alone we rely he... more In today’s society there is a great demand on energy output—in the United States alone we rely heavily on non-renewable energy sources. Thermoelectric materials may be able to be used to create more efficient energy systems or recover wasted heat from inefficient technologies. This paper focuses on the conductivity of a new thermoelectric material that incorporates copper into a tellurium nanowire PEDOT:PSS material. The addition of copper seems to increase the conductivity of the material, although the exact relationship between the percentage of copper to tellurium and its affect on the conductivity is uncertain from the results. Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/mjpa Part of the Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics Commons, and the Optics Commons This Capstone is brought to you for free and open access by the Physics and Astronomy Department at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has been accepted for inclusion in Macalester Journal of P...
Thermoelectric materials are able to transfer heat energy into electrical energy. They have many ... more Thermoelectric materials are able to transfer heat energy into electrical energy. They have many important applications, and an increased understanding of them would allow the scientific community to develop more efficient thermoelectrics. We provide here transient photoconductivity measurements of a thermoelectric nanomaterial PEDOT:PSS with TeCu nanowires on quartz substrate. Increased copper concentration in nanowires decreases photoconductivity in both transmission and reflectance measurements. Fermi blocking provides a reasonable explanation for this decrease in photoconductivity, which occurs when total nanowire mass approaches ~15% copper concentration. Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/mjpa Part of the Astrophysics and Astronomy Commons, and the Physics Commons This Capstone is brought to you for free and open access by the Physics and Astronomy Department at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has been accepted for inclusion in Maca...
Politics and Products: An Arendtian Analysis of Modern Humans' Concern for Immortality, 2020
In her book The Human Condition, philosopher Hannah Arendt analyzes how political theory and acti... more In her book The Human Condition, philosopher Hannah Arendt analyzes how political theory and activity in Western, industrialized societies have changed significantly since the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans. One interesting claim that Arendt makes is that humans in the modern age have lost an “authentic concern for immortality.” The purpose of this essay is to articulate what an authentic, Arendtian concern for immortality is, and to defend her claim that humans in the modern age lack such a concern. By utilizing Jean Baudrillard’s analysis of modern consumerism and social psychology, I defend Arendt’s claim that modern humans do in fact lack such an authentic concern. Finally, I conclude the essay by responding to what I take to be three possible objections to my argument and show that they ultimately fail.
Quality, Subjectivity, and Self-Feeling: A Philosophical and Literary Analysis of Insanity in Pirsig’s Metaphysics of Quality in Light of Hegel’s Account of Madness, 2020
Though his books have been acclaimed by both critics and non-critics alike, author Robert M. Pirs... more Though his books have been acclaimed by both critics and non-critics alike, author Robert M. Pirsig has expressed much dissatisfaction over the inability of his readers to fully comprehend the philosophical system he develops in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals, what Pirsig calls the Metaphysics of Quality. This is not to say, however, that his readers are completely to blame.
There are several reasons one may experience difficulty with Pirsig’s philosophy. For example, Pirsig’s decision to develop his philosophical system in novels has made it difficult to determine where story and philosophy start and end. In addition, many of the topics that Pirsig discusses in the development of his metaphysics of quality are massive in scope and complexity: axiology, cultural evolution, technology, and the history of philosophy just to name a few. Finally, Pirsig does not attempt to define his terms, his justification being that the axis around which his entire philosophical system revolves, Quality, cannot be defined at all. Nevertheless, I do not believe that Pirsig’s philosophy is impenetrable.
In the following pages, I will argue that a significant amount of interpretive difficulty in parsing out Pirsig’s metaphysics of quality dissolves when analyzed through the lens of the philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel. This is because Pirsig’s metaphysics of quality bears resemblance to Hegel’s philosophical system in at least two fundamental ways. First, I will explain why we should expect that Hegel’s philosophy in general might be able to illuminate Pirsig’s philosophical system. Then, I will analyze Hegel’s philosophy of mind and his account of madness. Next, I will briefly summarize Pirsig’s discussion of insanity and the role it plays in his novels. Finally, through a literary and philosophical analysis, I will show that Hegel’s account of madness helps illuminate the plot of Pirsig’s novels, his discussion of insanity, and, by extension, his metaphysics of quality.
Determinacy and Subjective Oscillation: On Hegel’s Views of Awakening and Sleep, 2020
In his Philosophy of Mind, one of Hegel’s projects in his discussion of soul is to describe the n... more In his Philosophy of Mind, one of Hegel’s projects in his discussion of soul is to describe the natural alterations an organism experiences during its life. Among these natural alterations are aging, the development of sexual relationship(s), and the mental states of awakeness and sleep, which Hegel analyzes right before his discussion of sensation. But Hegel’s discussion of sensation begins with further analyzing the roles of awakeness and sleep in the life of the animal organism, which prompts the following question: what, on Hegel’s view, makes awakeness and sleep special to warrant them the starting point of Hegel’s discussion of sensation?
In this essay, I will attempt to explain Hegel’s views on the relationship of awakeness and sleep with sensation. Though both aging and the mental states of awakeness and sleep are natural alterations, Hegel’s decision to include the latter at the beginning of his discussion on sensation reveals important qualitative differences between these alterations and their connections to the other parts of his philosophical system.
Reason and Self-Authorization: A Derridean Deconstruction of Authority, 2020
In his article “The State as the Mystical Foundation of Authority,” Brian T. Trainor criticizes J... more In his article “The State as the Mystical Foundation of Authority,” Brian T. Trainor criticizes Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction of authority and state formation. Trainor argues that the object of Derrida’s deconstruction of authority is a narrow type of foundationalism called ‘architecturalism,’ which renders mistaken his claim that the ultimate authority of the state is based on an originary act of violence. Trainor contrasts Derrida’s architecturalist view with the foundationalism of Thomas Hobbes, arguing that Hobbes’ explanation for the foundation of authority escapes Derrida’s deconstruction.
In this paper, I argue that Trainor’s Hobbesian foundationalism does not remain insulated from Derrida’s deconstruction of authority, because Derrida’s deconstruction of authority does not limit itself strictly to political forms of authority. Utilizing an argument from Thomas Nagel, I argue that, insofar as the Hobbesian practices constitutive of state formation (i.e. forming political covenants, recognizing a common power, determining who wields the authority of God, — and the meeting of certain epistemic conditions) rely on the capacity of reason, Hobbesian foundationalism cannot escape some form of self-authorization. This is because successfully engaging in the practices integral for Hobbesian state formation require taking the capacity of reason and its issuings to be self-authorizing, or valid in itself.
Play in "Plato's Pharmacy:" Derrida on Text and the Pharmakon, 2019
In his work “Plato’s Pharmacy,” philosopher Jacques Derrida makes a number of highly surprising a... more In his work “Plato’s Pharmacy,” philosopher Jacques Derrida makes a number of highly surprising and confusing claims, one of which is as follows: “As soon as it comes into being and into language, play erases itself as such.” In this essay, I will attempt to explain Derrida’s position on the occurrence of play in writing, which is the culmination of several major theses he supports throughout “Plato’s Pharmacy.” This analysis will reveal the erasure of play through the mode of linguistic expression, the destructive nature of translation, and in fact the very impossibility of the occurrence of real play in writing.
Aristotle on the Impossibility of Friendships with Animals, 2019
In The Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle provides an account of friendship and its importance in achi... more In The Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle provides an account of friendship and its importance in achieving eudaimonia in a complete life, since friendship “is a kind of virtue, or implies virtue, and it is also most necessary for living.” The focus of Aristotle’s account of friendship concerns itself mainly with intra-species relationships, namely relationships between rational humans. However, Aristotle says little of relationships between humans and animals, or humans and other humans who are lacking certain rational capacities.
In this paper, I provide an analysis of Aristotle’s account of friendship, and I argue that Aristotle’s conception of friendship implies that friendships cannot occur between animals and humans. This is because animals lack a particular capacity to wish for the well-being of their companions, thus violating one of Aristotle’s criteria for friendship. If this is true, Aristotle’s account of friendship implies that humans cannot maintain friendships with other humans who lack certain rational capacities (e.g. like someone who has a profound intellectual disability such that they cannot take care of themselves). This kind of analysis is useful because it provides the student of Aristotle with information on how she should orient her life and future plans of action with respect to mentally disabled individuals.
In response to this argument, I consider the objection that my analysis of friendship is incorrect. In response to this objection, I attempt to show that such an objection constitutes an objection to Aristotle’s account of friendship, not my interpretation of Aristotle himself. If this is correct, my argument that Aristotle’s view on friendship precludes animals from forming or maintaining such relationships with humans still stands.
Aristotle on the Lazy Argument: An Intellectual and Moral Failing, 2019
Aristotle’s treatment of the Lazy Argument in Chapter 9 of De Interpretatione has received much a... more Aristotle’s treatment of the Lazy Argument in Chapter 9 of De Interpretatione has received much attention from philosophers for being a solution to an intellectual problem about fatalism and free will. However, little scholarly work has been done on the possibility that reflecting on and accepting the Lazy Argument could be a moral failure according to Aristotle’s ethics. Drawing on the work of Richard Moran and Jonathan Cohen, in this paper I argue that, on Aristotle’s view, if an agent thoughtfully reflects on and accepts the Lazy Argument, they are acting viciously. This is because thoughtfully reflecting on and accepting the Lazy Argument turns on engaging in a type of self-reflection that is deceptive. I argue that such an action is vicious because it misses hitting the mean of truthfulness in self-reflection. In response to this argument, I consider an objection, and show that, while not all cases of acceptance are moral failures, cases of acceptance like these can never be virtuous.
Aristotle on Courage: An Analysis of Spirit , 2019
In his article “Are You Man Enough? Aristotle on Courage,” Jonathan J. Sanford analyzes Aristotle... more In his article “Are You Man Enough? Aristotle on Courage,” Jonathan J. Sanford analyzes Aristotle’s account of courage as a virtue. At first glance, Sanford admits that some aspects of Aristotle’s account of courage may strike the modern reader as strange or unintuitive, especially given how Aristotle restricts the exercising of true courage only to men who risk their lives fearlessly in combat. Nevertheless, Sanford argues that Aristotle’s account of courage can be applied to modern-day actions and maintain much of its explanatory and analytic power, provided that it is interpreted through a modern lens.
In this paper, I analyze Sanford’s account of Aristotelian courage and compare it to one counterfeit account of courage that both Aristotle and Sanford dismiss as a genuine case of courage, namely spirit or mettle. I argue that, while Sanford is correct in saying that spirit does not constitute true courage, his analysis of courage fails to explicate what possessing courage consists in, in modern day society. The reason this failure is problematic is because it threatens to undermine Sanford’s project of applying Aristotelian courage to modern day actions and individuals.
The Habitus: Defeater or Enhancer of Rational Agency?, 2019
In his book Authority and Estrangement, Richard Moran provides a philosophical analysis and expla... more In his book Authority and Estrangement, Richard Moran provides a philosophical analysis and explanation of a type of self-knowledge, which is distinctly first personal, deliberative, and differs from the kind of knowledge we have about objects and other people. Central to Moran’s conception of self-knowledge is rational agency, which lies in an agent’s ability to self-reflect and determine which reasons are capable of justifying their actions and behavior. However, some scholars claim that such rational agency may be threatened by the existence of what French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu calls the habitus, a system of dispositions, practices, and structures which seemingly function to deterministically generate and organize an agent’s environment, perceptions, and actions relative to the culture in which she lives.
In this paper, I begin by analyzing Moran’s conception of rational agency and Bourdieu’s habitus. Then, I argue that the habitus, though it does have the power to influence and/or constrain an agent’s actions and behavior through the structuring of her dispositions and social perceptions, does not threaten to undermine the rational agency necessary to maintain the kind of self-knowledge for which Moran attempts to explain and provide an account. In response to this argument, I raise an objection, but show ultimately that, by framing the habitus within a Wittgensteinian conception of rule following, one cannot reject the existence of rational agency without rejecting the habitus entirely. This is because the very existence of the habitus requires the existence of rational agency.
Modularity and Attention: The Nature of Semantic Representations, 2018
Neuroscientists and non-neuroscientists alike are aware that something called ‘attention’ exists.... more Neuroscientists and non-neuroscientists alike are aware that something called ‘attention’ exists. We can attend to the hot mug of coffee right in front of us, or some distant, happy memory of a time well spent with family. However, the scientific community has not yet reached a consensus about what attention is exactly and how it works. Some have implied that attention, if it is an artifact of central cognition, would be incredibly difficult to study, so we should not expect to learn much about it. Others have even argued that attention as we colloquially understand it does not really exist at all.
One recent study in cognitive science argues that attention has the ability to warp the semantic representations of categories in the human brain. This finding is particularly important, because one may interpret it as providing evidence against one of the most important theories to come out of the philosophy of mind and psychology within the last fifty years: Jerry Fodor’s modularity thesis. In particular, if attention warps semantic representation in the human brain, this may provide evidence against the claim that modules possess two important functional properties: informational encapsulation and limited central access.
However, I believe that this recent finding does not constitute evidence against the modularity thesis. In what follows, I first analyze Fodor’s modularity thesis and the properties of mental modules. Then, I argue that the study performed by Çukur et al. does not threaten the modularity thesis: while the study demonstrates that attention plays a causal role in generating the informational content of semantic representations by modifying certain neuronal properties, this finding does not constitute an instance of cognitive penetrability because it does not show that modules use informational content external to their trichotomous structure in generating representations; nor does attention constitute an instance of central access because the study fails to demonstrate that central cognition possesses access to the internal processing of modular systems.
The Limits of Reason: Kant on Free Will in the Groundwork, 2018
In his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Immanuel Kant sets out to identify and corroborat... more In his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Immanuel Kant sets out to identify and corroborate the “supreme principle of morality.” One critical aspect of Kant’s project is his claim that “no true contradiction can be found” between free will and the laws of nature. This claim is important in Kant’s philosophy, because a rational being’s conception of obligation and moral responsibility relies on her presupposing that, as an intelligence, she has a free will that would be undermined if it were determined by the laws of nature of which she also is subject. However, it is possible to read Kant in a way that implies he says more than he actually does about free will and the laws of nature, such that his project is more ambitious than it really is.
In this essay, I analyze Kant’s philosophy in the Groundwork, specifically those passages discussing the relation of free will to the laws of nature as represented to us by reason and the senses. My aim is to clarify what Kant says (and does not say) about the compatibility of free will and natural necessity. I argue that Kant does not claim that we can know or prove that free will and the laws of nature are metaphysically compatible. Rather, he argues that, when we conceive of humans as being both causal forces in the world and subject to the laws of nature, we find no contradiction between our ideas of freedom and human beings as subject to the laws of nature (i.e. what I will call ‘natural necessity’). In response to this reading of Kant, I then consider an objection and show that it is not debilitating to Kant’s modest project.
Concerning Joseph Butler's Recommendations of Self-Deception, 2018
Self-deception is a phenomenon almost all humans have experienced. One method for remedying self-... more Self-deception is a phenomenon almost all humans have experienced. One method for remedying self-deception, philosopher Joseph Butler argues, is by engaging in critical self-deliberation about one’s internal psychological state. In this paper I will consider whether or not Butler’s recommendation constitutes good advice for remedying self-deception. I will begin by analyzing Butler’s seventh and tenth sermons, and I will attempt to elucidate the precise ways in which Balaam deceives himself as a backdrop for discussions about self-deception. I will argue that the efficacy of Butler’s recommendations for self-deception depends on the degree to which an agent is deceiving himself: agents who sufficiently deceive themselves deprive themselves of the self-reflective apparatus required both to recognize that they are engaging in self-deception and remedy this debilitating conduct. If my example case is constitutive of a great number of cases of self-deception, it places Butler on two horns of a dilemma. The first horn stipulates that, if my analysis is correct, then Butler’s recommendations for remedying self-deception need to be revised. If the subject of my example case, however, is not the intended audience of Butler’s recommendations, then Butler’s recommendations are intended for too small a number of cases of self-deception to be significantly useful.
Mass Incarceration and Jim Crow: A Comparative Analysis, 2018
In her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, legal scholar Mich... more In her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, legal scholar Michelle Alexander analogizes the current American justice system (AJS), through the practice of the mass incarceration of Blacks, to the laws of Jim Crow. She argues that the discrimination Blacks in the U.S. face constitutes “a set of structural arrangements that locks [Blacks] into a subordinate social, political, and economic position, effectively creating a second-class citizenship.” Alexander argues that these structural arrangements and the form of discrimination present in these structural arrangements produce a “racial caste system [whose] design … closely resembles [the racial caste system produced by Jim Crow laws]” in its intent, legal form, and political disenfranchisement of Blacks.
Philosopher James Forman, Jr., however, sees the project of analogizing Jim Crow laws with mass incarceration of Blacks as problematic, because it obfuscates the nature of mass incarceration and fails to elucidate the distinct dangers each system poses to the Black community. In his article “Racial Critiques of Mass Incarceration: Beyond the New Jim Crow,” he argues that the analogy “presents an incomplete account of mass incarceration’s historical origins, fails to consider black attitudes toward crime and punishment, ignores violent crimes …, obscures class distinctions, overlooks the effects of mass incarceration on other racial groups, and … diminishes the Old Jim Crow’s particular harms.” For Forman, current analogies of the AJS with Old Jim Crow laws has the unfortunate consequence of obscuring the real horrors of the Old Jim Crow, “important aspects of what made the Old Jim Crow so horrible.”
In this paper, I analyze the views of Alexander and Forman in light of the phenomenon of mass incarceration. Then, I argue that the problems Forman brings to bear on the discriminatory nature of the current AJS pose significant problems to Alexander’s view. In addition to distorting the nature of mass incarceration more generally, I argue that Alexander’s analogy obscures the way in which mass incarceration fails to be analogous to Old Jim Crow in an important legal respect. This is problematic because the analogy as it currently stands runs the risk of undermining the agency of Black individuals and obscuring the racial progress that has been made in America.
Rawls on Race: Ideal Theory as an Apparatus for Rectificatory Justice, 2018
Some contemporary philosophers have argued that John Rawls’s ideal political theory fails to succ... more Some contemporary philosophers have argued that John Rawls’s ideal political theory fails to successfully offer measures to rectify social injustices, especially racial injustice. However, in his article “Race and Ethnicity, Race and Social Justice: Rawlsian Considerations,” philosopher Tommie Shelby argues that it is possible to utilize Rawls’s ideal theory as an apparatus for addressing and rectifying “institutional racism, the legacy of past racial injustice, and the persistence of individual racist attitudes in civil society.” In short, Shelby argues that extending the Rawlsian conception of fair equality of opportunity (FEO) to all persons would “mitigate, if not correct, … race-based disadvantages by insuring that the life prospects of racial minorities are not negatively affected by the economic legacy of racial oppression.” In contrast, in his recent article titled “Retrieving Rawls for Racial Justice?: A Critique of Tommie Shelby,” philosopher Charles Mills doubts that Shelby’s practical reconstruction of Rawls’s ideal theory can be used to sufficiently understand and rectify racial injustices. Mills’s argument rests on several objections, the following two of which I believe are the most important: (1) Shelby’s application of FEO failing to be “consistent with the [deontological] spirit of [Rawls’s] ideal theory;” and (2) extending FEO to racial minorities is unsupported by Rawls’s ideal theory.
In this essay, I will briefly analyze the positions of Shelby and Mills, and I will focus on Mills’s two objections, arguing that they are fatal to Shelby’s practical reconstruction of Rawls’s ideal theory. I will argue that Shelby cannot logically extend FEO to racial minorities because such a Rawlsian analysis cannot fundamentally evaluate or offer measures to rectify the current racialized, white supremacist political structure in America.
However, I will argue that Mills’s argument could be made stronger by elucidating the numerous basic liberties Blacks currently lack, and I will present an original objection to Shelby’s project: the inherent racialized political structure of the United States prevents a Rawlsian analysis from providing any sufficient basis for understanding institutional racism and thus recommending rectificatory justice.
Free Will, Determinism, and Moral Responsibility: An Analysis of Event-Causal Incompatibilism, 2017
In this project, I will analyze, summarize, and critique the incompatibilist theory known as sour... more In this project, I will analyze, summarize, and critique the incompatibilist theory known as source incompatibilism, which argues that a moral agent is morally responsible for an action only if they are the proper source of that action. More specifically, I will analyze the source incompatibilist views of event-causal incompatibilism, which argues that an agent has free will only if there exists indeterminacy in her decision-making process, either before the formation of a decision itself of during the formation of a decision. I will argue that event-causal incompatibilist views suffer from problems of control and moral chanciness. Thus I will argue that event-causal incompatibilism is no more philosophically tenable than its compatibilist counterparts. If this is true, the event-causal incompatibilist ought to abandon it due to considerations of parsimony.
After I have successfully refuted event-causal incompatibilism, I will introduce a novel theory of moral responsibility compatibilism of my own, which I will argue is the only tenable philosophical theory left for the proponent of event-causal incompatibilism. I will attempt to reconcile moral responsibility with causal determinism, utilizing an argument from the philosophy of David Enoch in his book Taking Morality Seriously. When this is complete, I will defend my compatibilist theory from various objections by philosophers Saul Smilansky and Ishtiyaque Haji.
I will end the discussion with a brief introduction to other non-libertarian views of moral responsibility and determinism, which do not require libertarian notions of free will and thus do not require indeterminacy for freedom. These include Saul Smilansky’s illusionism and Derk Pereboom’s hard incompatibilism. I will analyze these views, but ultimately I will critique them. I will argue that these theories also are lacking, and so they are not viable alternatives to the proponent of moral responsibility.
In today’s society there is a great demand on energy output—in the United States alone we rely he... more In today’s society there is a great demand on energy output—in the United States alone we rely heavily on non-renewable energy sources. Thermoelectric materials may be able to be used to create more efficient energy systems or recover wasted heat from inefficient technologies. This paper focuses on the conductivity of a new thermoelectric material that incorporates copper into a tellurium nanowire PEDOT:PSS material. The addition of copper seems to increase the conductivity of the material, although the exact relationship between the percentage of copper to tellurium and its affect on the conductivity is uncertain from the results. Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/mjpa Part of the Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics Commons, and the Optics Commons This Capstone is brought to you for free and open access by the Physics and Astronomy Department at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has been accepted for inclusion in Macalester Journal of P...
Thermoelectric materials are able to transfer heat energy into electrical energy. They have many ... more Thermoelectric materials are able to transfer heat energy into electrical energy. They have many important applications, and an increased understanding of them would allow the scientific community to develop more efficient thermoelectrics. We provide here transient photoconductivity measurements of a thermoelectric nanomaterial PEDOT:PSS with TeCu nanowires on quartz substrate. Increased copper concentration in nanowires decreases photoconductivity in both transmission and reflectance measurements. Fermi blocking provides a reasonable explanation for this decrease in photoconductivity, which occurs when total nanowire mass approaches ~15% copper concentration. Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/mjpa Part of the Astrophysics and Astronomy Commons, and the Physics Commons This Capstone is brought to you for free and open access by the Physics and Astronomy Department at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has been accepted for inclusion in Maca...
Politics and Products: An Arendtian Analysis of Modern Humans' Concern for Immortality, 2020
In her book The Human Condition, philosopher Hannah Arendt analyzes how political theory and acti... more In her book The Human Condition, philosopher Hannah Arendt analyzes how political theory and activity in Western, industrialized societies have changed significantly since the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans. One interesting claim that Arendt makes is that humans in the modern age have lost an “authentic concern for immortality.” The purpose of this essay is to articulate what an authentic, Arendtian concern for immortality is, and to defend her claim that humans in the modern age lack such a concern. By utilizing Jean Baudrillard’s analysis of modern consumerism and social psychology, I defend Arendt’s claim that modern humans do in fact lack such an authentic concern. Finally, I conclude the essay by responding to what I take to be three possible objections to my argument and show that they ultimately fail.
Quality, Subjectivity, and Self-Feeling: A Philosophical and Literary Analysis of Insanity in Pirsig’s Metaphysics of Quality in Light of Hegel’s Account of Madness, 2020
Though his books have been acclaimed by both critics and non-critics alike, author Robert M. Pirs... more Though his books have been acclaimed by both critics and non-critics alike, author Robert M. Pirsig has expressed much dissatisfaction over the inability of his readers to fully comprehend the philosophical system he develops in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals, what Pirsig calls the Metaphysics of Quality. This is not to say, however, that his readers are completely to blame.
There are several reasons one may experience difficulty with Pirsig’s philosophy. For example, Pirsig’s decision to develop his philosophical system in novels has made it difficult to determine where story and philosophy start and end. In addition, many of the topics that Pirsig discusses in the development of his metaphysics of quality are massive in scope and complexity: axiology, cultural evolution, technology, and the history of philosophy just to name a few. Finally, Pirsig does not attempt to define his terms, his justification being that the axis around which his entire philosophical system revolves, Quality, cannot be defined at all. Nevertheless, I do not believe that Pirsig’s philosophy is impenetrable.
In the following pages, I will argue that a significant amount of interpretive difficulty in parsing out Pirsig’s metaphysics of quality dissolves when analyzed through the lens of the philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel. This is because Pirsig’s metaphysics of quality bears resemblance to Hegel’s philosophical system in at least two fundamental ways. First, I will explain why we should expect that Hegel’s philosophy in general might be able to illuminate Pirsig’s philosophical system. Then, I will analyze Hegel’s philosophy of mind and his account of madness. Next, I will briefly summarize Pirsig’s discussion of insanity and the role it plays in his novels. Finally, through a literary and philosophical analysis, I will show that Hegel’s account of madness helps illuminate the plot of Pirsig’s novels, his discussion of insanity, and, by extension, his metaphysics of quality.
Determinacy and Subjective Oscillation: On Hegel’s Views of Awakening and Sleep, 2020
In his Philosophy of Mind, one of Hegel’s projects in his discussion of soul is to describe the n... more In his Philosophy of Mind, one of Hegel’s projects in his discussion of soul is to describe the natural alterations an organism experiences during its life. Among these natural alterations are aging, the development of sexual relationship(s), and the mental states of awakeness and sleep, which Hegel analyzes right before his discussion of sensation. But Hegel’s discussion of sensation begins with further analyzing the roles of awakeness and sleep in the life of the animal organism, which prompts the following question: what, on Hegel’s view, makes awakeness and sleep special to warrant them the starting point of Hegel’s discussion of sensation?
In this essay, I will attempt to explain Hegel’s views on the relationship of awakeness and sleep with sensation. Though both aging and the mental states of awakeness and sleep are natural alterations, Hegel’s decision to include the latter at the beginning of his discussion on sensation reveals important qualitative differences between these alterations and their connections to the other parts of his philosophical system.
Reason and Self-Authorization: A Derridean Deconstruction of Authority, 2020
In his article “The State as the Mystical Foundation of Authority,” Brian T. Trainor criticizes J... more In his article “The State as the Mystical Foundation of Authority,” Brian T. Trainor criticizes Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction of authority and state formation. Trainor argues that the object of Derrida’s deconstruction of authority is a narrow type of foundationalism called ‘architecturalism,’ which renders mistaken his claim that the ultimate authority of the state is based on an originary act of violence. Trainor contrasts Derrida’s architecturalist view with the foundationalism of Thomas Hobbes, arguing that Hobbes’ explanation for the foundation of authority escapes Derrida’s deconstruction.
In this paper, I argue that Trainor’s Hobbesian foundationalism does not remain insulated from Derrida’s deconstruction of authority, because Derrida’s deconstruction of authority does not limit itself strictly to political forms of authority. Utilizing an argument from Thomas Nagel, I argue that, insofar as the Hobbesian practices constitutive of state formation (i.e. forming political covenants, recognizing a common power, determining who wields the authority of God, — and the meeting of certain epistemic conditions) rely on the capacity of reason, Hobbesian foundationalism cannot escape some form of self-authorization. This is because successfully engaging in the practices integral for Hobbesian state formation require taking the capacity of reason and its issuings to be self-authorizing, or valid in itself.
Play in "Plato's Pharmacy:" Derrida on Text and the Pharmakon, 2019
In his work “Plato’s Pharmacy,” philosopher Jacques Derrida makes a number of highly surprising a... more In his work “Plato’s Pharmacy,” philosopher Jacques Derrida makes a number of highly surprising and confusing claims, one of which is as follows: “As soon as it comes into being and into language, play erases itself as such.” In this essay, I will attempt to explain Derrida’s position on the occurrence of play in writing, which is the culmination of several major theses he supports throughout “Plato’s Pharmacy.” This analysis will reveal the erasure of play through the mode of linguistic expression, the destructive nature of translation, and in fact the very impossibility of the occurrence of real play in writing.
Aristotle on the Impossibility of Friendships with Animals, 2019
In The Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle provides an account of friendship and its importance in achi... more In The Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle provides an account of friendship and its importance in achieving eudaimonia in a complete life, since friendship “is a kind of virtue, or implies virtue, and it is also most necessary for living.” The focus of Aristotle’s account of friendship concerns itself mainly with intra-species relationships, namely relationships between rational humans. However, Aristotle says little of relationships between humans and animals, or humans and other humans who are lacking certain rational capacities.
In this paper, I provide an analysis of Aristotle’s account of friendship, and I argue that Aristotle’s conception of friendship implies that friendships cannot occur between animals and humans. This is because animals lack a particular capacity to wish for the well-being of their companions, thus violating one of Aristotle’s criteria for friendship. If this is true, Aristotle’s account of friendship implies that humans cannot maintain friendships with other humans who lack certain rational capacities (e.g. like someone who has a profound intellectual disability such that they cannot take care of themselves). This kind of analysis is useful because it provides the student of Aristotle with information on how she should orient her life and future plans of action with respect to mentally disabled individuals.
In response to this argument, I consider the objection that my analysis of friendship is incorrect. In response to this objection, I attempt to show that such an objection constitutes an objection to Aristotle’s account of friendship, not my interpretation of Aristotle himself. If this is correct, my argument that Aristotle’s view on friendship precludes animals from forming or maintaining such relationships with humans still stands.
Aristotle on the Lazy Argument: An Intellectual and Moral Failing, 2019
Aristotle’s treatment of the Lazy Argument in Chapter 9 of De Interpretatione has received much a... more Aristotle’s treatment of the Lazy Argument in Chapter 9 of De Interpretatione has received much attention from philosophers for being a solution to an intellectual problem about fatalism and free will. However, little scholarly work has been done on the possibility that reflecting on and accepting the Lazy Argument could be a moral failure according to Aristotle’s ethics. Drawing on the work of Richard Moran and Jonathan Cohen, in this paper I argue that, on Aristotle’s view, if an agent thoughtfully reflects on and accepts the Lazy Argument, they are acting viciously. This is because thoughtfully reflecting on and accepting the Lazy Argument turns on engaging in a type of self-reflection that is deceptive. I argue that such an action is vicious because it misses hitting the mean of truthfulness in self-reflection. In response to this argument, I consider an objection, and show that, while not all cases of acceptance are moral failures, cases of acceptance like these can never be virtuous.
Aristotle on Courage: An Analysis of Spirit , 2019
In his article “Are You Man Enough? Aristotle on Courage,” Jonathan J. Sanford analyzes Aristotle... more In his article “Are You Man Enough? Aristotle on Courage,” Jonathan J. Sanford analyzes Aristotle’s account of courage as a virtue. At first glance, Sanford admits that some aspects of Aristotle’s account of courage may strike the modern reader as strange or unintuitive, especially given how Aristotle restricts the exercising of true courage only to men who risk their lives fearlessly in combat. Nevertheless, Sanford argues that Aristotle’s account of courage can be applied to modern-day actions and maintain much of its explanatory and analytic power, provided that it is interpreted through a modern lens.
In this paper, I analyze Sanford’s account of Aristotelian courage and compare it to one counterfeit account of courage that both Aristotle and Sanford dismiss as a genuine case of courage, namely spirit or mettle. I argue that, while Sanford is correct in saying that spirit does not constitute true courage, his analysis of courage fails to explicate what possessing courage consists in, in modern day society. The reason this failure is problematic is because it threatens to undermine Sanford’s project of applying Aristotelian courage to modern day actions and individuals.
The Habitus: Defeater or Enhancer of Rational Agency?, 2019
In his book Authority and Estrangement, Richard Moran provides a philosophical analysis and expla... more In his book Authority and Estrangement, Richard Moran provides a philosophical analysis and explanation of a type of self-knowledge, which is distinctly first personal, deliberative, and differs from the kind of knowledge we have about objects and other people. Central to Moran’s conception of self-knowledge is rational agency, which lies in an agent’s ability to self-reflect and determine which reasons are capable of justifying their actions and behavior. However, some scholars claim that such rational agency may be threatened by the existence of what French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu calls the habitus, a system of dispositions, practices, and structures which seemingly function to deterministically generate and organize an agent’s environment, perceptions, and actions relative to the culture in which she lives.
In this paper, I begin by analyzing Moran’s conception of rational agency and Bourdieu’s habitus. Then, I argue that the habitus, though it does have the power to influence and/or constrain an agent’s actions and behavior through the structuring of her dispositions and social perceptions, does not threaten to undermine the rational agency necessary to maintain the kind of self-knowledge for which Moran attempts to explain and provide an account. In response to this argument, I raise an objection, but show ultimately that, by framing the habitus within a Wittgensteinian conception of rule following, one cannot reject the existence of rational agency without rejecting the habitus entirely. This is because the very existence of the habitus requires the existence of rational agency.
Modularity and Attention: The Nature of Semantic Representations, 2018
Neuroscientists and non-neuroscientists alike are aware that something called ‘attention’ exists.... more Neuroscientists and non-neuroscientists alike are aware that something called ‘attention’ exists. We can attend to the hot mug of coffee right in front of us, or some distant, happy memory of a time well spent with family. However, the scientific community has not yet reached a consensus about what attention is exactly and how it works. Some have implied that attention, if it is an artifact of central cognition, would be incredibly difficult to study, so we should not expect to learn much about it. Others have even argued that attention as we colloquially understand it does not really exist at all.
One recent study in cognitive science argues that attention has the ability to warp the semantic representations of categories in the human brain. This finding is particularly important, because one may interpret it as providing evidence against one of the most important theories to come out of the philosophy of mind and psychology within the last fifty years: Jerry Fodor’s modularity thesis. In particular, if attention warps semantic representation in the human brain, this may provide evidence against the claim that modules possess two important functional properties: informational encapsulation and limited central access.
However, I believe that this recent finding does not constitute evidence against the modularity thesis. In what follows, I first analyze Fodor’s modularity thesis and the properties of mental modules. Then, I argue that the study performed by Çukur et al. does not threaten the modularity thesis: while the study demonstrates that attention plays a causal role in generating the informational content of semantic representations by modifying certain neuronal properties, this finding does not constitute an instance of cognitive penetrability because it does not show that modules use informational content external to their trichotomous structure in generating representations; nor does attention constitute an instance of central access because the study fails to demonstrate that central cognition possesses access to the internal processing of modular systems.
The Limits of Reason: Kant on Free Will in the Groundwork, 2018
In his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Immanuel Kant sets out to identify and corroborat... more In his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Immanuel Kant sets out to identify and corroborate the “supreme principle of morality.” One critical aspect of Kant’s project is his claim that “no true contradiction can be found” between free will and the laws of nature. This claim is important in Kant’s philosophy, because a rational being’s conception of obligation and moral responsibility relies on her presupposing that, as an intelligence, she has a free will that would be undermined if it were determined by the laws of nature of which she also is subject. However, it is possible to read Kant in a way that implies he says more than he actually does about free will and the laws of nature, such that his project is more ambitious than it really is.
In this essay, I analyze Kant’s philosophy in the Groundwork, specifically those passages discussing the relation of free will to the laws of nature as represented to us by reason and the senses. My aim is to clarify what Kant says (and does not say) about the compatibility of free will and natural necessity. I argue that Kant does not claim that we can know or prove that free will and the laws of nature are metaphysically compatible. Rather, he argues that, when we conceive of humans as being both causal forces in the world and subject to the laws of nature, we find no contradiction between our ideas of freedom and human beings as subject to the laws of nature (i.e. what I will call ‘natural necessity’). In response to this reading of Kant, I then consider an objection and show that it is not debilitating to Kant’s modest project.
Concerning Joseph Butler's Recommendations of Self-Deception, 2018
Self-deception is a phenomenon almost all humans have experienced. One method for remedying self-... more Self-deception is a phenomenon almost all humans have experienced. One method for remedying self-deception, philosopher Joseph Butler argues, is by engaging in critical self-deliberation about one’s internal psychological state. In this paper I will consider whether or not Butler’s recommendation constitutes good advice for remedying self-deception. I will begin by analyzing Butler’s seventh and tenth sermons, and I will attempt to elucidate the precise ways in which Balaam deceives himself as a backdrop for discussions about self-deception. I will argue that the efficacy of Butler’s recommendations for self-deception depends on the degree to which an agent is deceiving himself: agents who sufficiently deceive themselves deprive themselves of the self-reflective apparatus required both to recognize that they are engaging in self-deception and remedy this debilitating conduct. If my example case is constitutive of a great number of cases of self-deception, it places Butler on two horns of a dilemma. The first horn stipulates that, if my analysis is correct, then Butler’s recommendations for remedying self-deception need to be revised. If the subject of my example case, however, is not the intended audience of Butler’s recommendations, then Butler’s recommendations are intended for too small a number of cases of self-deception to be significantly useful.
Mass Incarceration and Jim Crow: A Comparative Analysis, 2018
In her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, legal scholar Mich... more In her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, legal scholar Michelle Alexander analogizes the current American justice system (AJS), through the practice of the mass incarceration of Blacks, to the laws of Jim Crow. She argues that the discrimination Blacks in the U.S. face constitutes “a set of structural arrangements that locks [Blacks] into a subordinate social, political, and economic position, effectively creating a second-class citizenship.” Alexander argues that these structural arrangements and the form of discrimination present in these structural arrangements produce a “racial caste system [whose] design … closely resembles [the racial caste system produced by Jim Crow laws]” in its intent, legal form, and political disenfranchisement of Blacks.
Philosopher James Forman, Jr., however, sees the project of analogizing Jim Crow laws with mass incarceration of Blacks as problematic, because it obfuscates the nature of mass incarceration and fails to elucidate the distinct dangers each system poses to the Black community. In his article “Racial Critiques of Mass Incarceration: Beyond the New Jim Crow,” he argues that the analogy “presents an incomplete account of mass incarceration’s historical origins, fails to consider black attitudes toward crime and punishment, ignores violent crimes …, obscures class distinctions, overlooks the effects of mass incarceration on other racial groups, and … diminishes the Old Jim Crow’s particular harms.” For Forman, current analogies of the AJS with Old Jim Crow laws has the unfortunate consequence of obscuring the real horrors of the Old Jim Crow, “important aspects of what made the Old Jim Crow so horrible.”
In this paper, I analyze the views of Alexander and Forman in light of the phenomenon of mass incarceration. Then, I argue that the problems Forman brings to bear on the discriminatory nature of the current AJS pose significant problems to Alexander’s view. In addition to distorting the nature of mass incarceration more generally, I argue that Alexander’s analogy obscures the way in which mass incarceration fails to be analogous to Old Jim Crow in an important legal respect. This is problematic because the analogy as it currently stands runs the risk of undermining the agency of Black individuals and obscuring the racial progress that has been made in America.
Rawls on Race: Ideal Theory as an Apparatus for Rectificatory Justice, 2018
Some contemporary philosophers have argued that John Rawls’s ideal political theory fails to succ... more Some contemporary philosophers have argued that John Rawls’s ideal political theory fails to successfully offer measures to rectify social injustices, especially racial injustice. However, in his article “Race and Ethnicity, Race and Social Justice: Rawlsian Considerations,” philosopher Tommie Shelby argues that it is possible to utilize Rawls’s ideal theory as an apparatus for addressing and rectifying “institutional racism, the legacy of past racial injustice, and the persistence of individual racist attitudes in civil society.” In short, Shelby argues that extending the Rawlsian conception of fair equality of opportunity (FEO) to all persons would “mitigate, if not correct, … race-based disadvantages by insuring that the life prospects of racial minorities are not negatively affected by the economic legacy of racial oppression.” In contrast, in his recent article titled “Retrieving Rawls for Racial Justice?: A Critique of Tommie Shelby,” philosopher Charles Mills doubts that Shelby’s practical reconstruction of Rawls’s ideal theory can be used to sufficiently understand and rectify racial injustices. Mills’s argument rests on several objections, the following two of which I believe are the most important: (1) Shelby’s application of FEO failing to be “consistent with the [deontological] spirit of [Rawls’s] ideal theory;” and (2) extending FEO to racial minorities is unsupported by Rawls’s ideal theory.
In this essay, I will briefly analyze the positions of Shelby and Mills, and I will focus on Mills’s two objections, arguing that they are fatal to Shelby’s practical reconstruction of Rawls’s ideal theory. I will argue that Shelby cannot logically extend FEO to racial minorities because such a Rawlsian analysis cannot fundamentally evaluate or offer measures to rectify the current racialized, white supremacist political structure in America.
However, I will argue that Mills’s argument could be made stronger by elucidating the numerous basic liberties Blacks currently lack, and I will present an original objection to Shelby’s project: the inherent racialized political structure of the United States prevents a Rawlsian analysis from providing any sufficient basis for understanding institutional racism and thus recommending rectificatory justice.
Free Will, Determinism, and Moral Responsibility: An Analysis of Event-Causal Incompatibilism, 2017
In this project, I will analyze, summarize, and critique the incompatibilist theory known as sour... more In this project, I will analyze, summarize, and critique the incompatibilist theory known as source incompatibilism, which argues that a moral agent is morally responsible for an action only if they are the proper source of that action. More specifically, I will analyze the source incompatibilist views of event-causal incompatibilism, which argues that an agent has free will only if there exists indeterminacy in her decision-making process, either before the formation of a decision itself of during the formation of a decision. I will argue that event-causal incompatibilist views suffer from problems of control and moral chanciness. Thus I will argue that event-causal incompatibilism is no more philosophically tenable than its compatibilist counterparts. If this is true, the event-causal incompatibilist ought to abandon it due to considerations of parsimony.
After I have successfully refuted event-causal incompatibilism, I will introduce a novel theory of moral responsibility compatibilism of my own, which I will argue is the only tenable philosophical theory left for the proponent of event-causal incompatibilism. I will attempt to reconcile moral responsibility with causal determinism, utilizing an argument from the philosophy of David Enoch in his book Taking Morality Seriously. When this is complete, I will defend my compatibilist theory from various objections by philosophers Saul Smilansky and Ishtiyaque Haji.
I will end the discussion with a brief introduction to other non-libertarian views of moral responsibility and determinism, which do not require libertarian notions of free will and thus do not require indeterminacy for freedom. These include Saul Smilansky’s illusionism and Derk Pereboom’s hard incompatibilism. I will analyze these views, but ultimately I will critique them. I will argue that these theories also are lacking, and so they are not viable alternatives to the proponent of moral responsibility.
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Papers by Gunnar Footh
There are several reasons one may experience difficulty with Pirsig’s philosophy. For example, Pirsig’s decision to develop his philosophical system in novels has made it difficult to determine where story and philosophy start and end. In addition, many of the topics that Pirsig discusses in the development of his metaphysics of quality are massive in scope and complexity: axiology, cultural evolution, technology, and the history of philosophy just to name a few. Finally, Pirsig does not attempt to define his terms, his justification being that the axis around which his entire philosophical system revolves, Quality, cannot be defined at all. Nevertheless, I do not believe that Pirsig’s philosophy is impenetrable.
In the following pages, I will argue that a significant amount of interpretive difficulty in parsing out Pirsig’s metaphysics of quality dissolves when analyzed through the lens of the philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel. This is because Pirsig’s metaphysics of quality bears resemblance to Hegel’s philosophical system in at least two fundamental ways. First, I will explain why we should expect that Hegel’s philosophy in general might be able to illuminate Pirsig’s philosophical system. Then, I will analyze Hegel’s philosophy of mind and his account of madness. Next, I will briefly summarize Pirsig’s discussion of insanity and the role it plays in his novels. Finally, through a literary and philosophical analysis, I will show that Hegel’s account of madness helps illuminate the plot of Pirsig’s novels, his discussion of insanity, and, by extension, his metaphysics of quality.
In this essay, I will attempt to explain Hegel’s views on the relationship of awakeness and sleep with sensation. Though both aging and the mental states of awakeness and sleep are natural alterations, Hegel’s decision to include the latter at the beginning of his discussion on sensation reveals important qualitative differences between these alterations and their connections to the other parts of his philosophical system.
In this paper, I argue that Trainor’s Hobbesian foundationalism does not remain insulated from Derrida’s deconstruction of authority, because Derrida’s deconstruction of authority does not limit itself strictly to political forms of authority. Utilizing an argument from Thomas Nagel, I argue that, insofar as the Hobbesian practices constitutive of state formation (i.e. forming political covenants, recognizing a common power, determining who wields the authority of God, — and the meeting of certain epistemic conditions) rely on the capacity of reason, Hobbesian foundationalism cannot escape some form of self-authorization. This is because successfully engaging in the practices integral for Hobbesian state formation require taking the capacity of reason and its issuings to be self-authorizing, or valid in itself.
In this paper, I provide an analysis of Aristotle’s account of friendship, and I argue that Aristotle’s conception of friendship implies that friendships cannot occur between animals and humans. This is because animals lack a particular capacity to wish for the well-being of their companions, thus violating one of Aristotle’s criteria for friendship. If this is true, Aristotle’s account of friendship implies that humans cannot maintain friendships with other humans who lack certain rational capacities (e.g. like someone who has a profound intellectual disability such that they cannot take care of themselves). This kind of analysis is useful because it provides the student of Aristotle with information on how she should orient her life and future plans of action with respect to mentally disabled individuals.
In response to this argument, I consider the objection that my analysis of friendship is incorrect. In response to this objection, I attempt to show that such an objection constitutes an objection to Aristotle’s account of friendship, not my interpretation of Aristotle himself. If this is correct, my argument that Aristotle’s view on friendship precludes animals from forming or maintaining such relationships with humans still stands.
In this paper, I analyze Sanford’s account of Aristotelian courage and compare it to one counterfeit account of courage that both Aristotle and Sanford dismiss as a genuine case of courage, namely spirit or mettle. I argue that, while Sanford is correct in saying that spirit does not constitute true courage, his analysis of courage fails to explicate what possessing courage consists in, in modern day society. The reason this failure is problematic is because it threatens to undermine Sanford’s project of applying Aristotelian courage to modern day actions and individuals.
In this paper, I begin by analyzing Moran’s conception of rational agency and Bourdieu’s habitus. Then, I argue that the habitus, though it does have the power to influence and/or constrain an agent’s actions and behavior through the structuring of her dispositions and social perceptions, does not threaten to undermine the rational agency necessary to maintain the kind of self-knowledge for which Moran attempts to explain and provide an account. In response to this argument, I raise an objection, but show ultimately that, by framing the habitus within a Wittgensteinian conception of rule following, one cannot reject the existence of rational agency without rejecting the habitus entirely. This is because the very existence of the habitus requires the existence of rational agency.
One recent study in cognitive science argues that attention has the ability to warp the semantic representations of categories in the human brain. This finding is particularly important, because one may interpret it as providing evidence against one of the most important theories to come out of the philosophy of mind and psychology within the last fifty years: Jerry Fodor’s modularity thesis. In particular, if attention warps semantic representation in the human brain, this may provide evidence against the claim that modules possess two important functional properties: informational encapsulation and limited central access.
However, I believe that this recent finding does not constitute evidence against the modularity thesis. In what follows, I first analyze Fodor’s modularity thesis and the properties of mental modules. Then, I argue that the study performed by Çukur et al. does not threaten the modularity thesis: while the study demonstrates that attention plays a causal role in generating the informational content of semantic representations by modifying certain neuronal properties, this finding does not constitute an instance of cognitive penetrability because it does not show that modules use informational content external to their trichotomous structure in generating representations; nor does attention constitute an instance of central access because the study fails to demonstrate that central cognition possesses access to the internal processing of modular systems.
In this essay, I analyze Kant’s philosophy in the Groundwork, specifically those passages discussing the relation of free will to the laws of nature as represented to us by reason and the senses. My aim is to clarify what Kant says (and does not say) about the compatibility of free will and natural necessity. I argue that Kant does not claim that we can know or prove that free will and the laws of nature are metaphysically compatible. Rather, he argues that, when we conceive of humans as being both causal forces in the world and subject to the laws of nature, we find no contradiction between our ideas of freedom and human beings as subject to the laws of nature (i.e. what I will call ‘natural necessity’). In response to this reading of Kant, I then consider an objection and show that it is not debilitating to Kant’s modest project.
Philosopher James Forman, Jr., however, sees the project of analogizing Jim Crow laws with mass incarceration of Blacks as problematic, because it obfuscates the nature of mass incarceration and fails to elucidate the distinct dangers each system poses to the Black community. In his article “Racial Critiques of Mass Incarceration: Beyond the New Jim Crow,” he argues that the analogy “presents an incomplete account of mass incarceration’s historical origins, fails to consider black attitudes toward crime and punishment, ignores violent crimes …, obscures class distinctions, overlooks the effects of mass incarceration on other racial groups, and … diminishes the Old Jim Crow’s particular harms.” For Forman, current analogies of the AJS with Old Jim Crow laws has the unfortunate consequence of obscuring the real horrors of the Old Jim Crow, “important aspects of what made the Old Jim Crow so horrible.”
In this paper, I analyze the views of Alexander and Forman in light of the phenomenon of mass incarceration. Then, I argue that the problems Forman brings to bear on the discriminatory nature of the current AJS pose significant problems to Alexander’s view. In addition to distorting the nature of mass incarceration more generally, I argue that Alexander’s analogy obscures the way in which mass incarceration fails to be analogous to Old Jim Crow in an important legal respect. This is problematic because the analogy as it currently stands runs the risk of undermining the agency of Black individuals and obscuring the racial progress that has been made in America.
In contrast, in his recent article titled “Retrieving Rawls for Racial Justice?: A Critique of Tommie Shelby,” philosopher Charles Mills doubts that Shelby’s practical reconstruction of Rawls’s ideal theory can be used to sufficiently understand and rectify racial injustices. Mills’s argument rests on several objections, the following two of which I believe are the most important: (1) Shelby’s application of FEO failing to be “consistent with the [deontological] spirit of [Rawls’s] ideal theory;” and (2) extending FEO to racial minorities is unsupported by Rawls’s ideal theory.
In this essay, I will briefly analyze the positions of Shelby and Mills, and I will focus on Mills’s two objections, arguing that they are fatal to Shelby’s practical reconstruction of Rawls’s ideal theory. I will argue that Shelby cannot logically extend FEO to racial minorities because such a Rawlsian analysis cannot fundamentally evaluate or offer measures to rectify the current racialized, white supremacist political structure in America.
However, I will argue that Mills’s argument could be made stronger by elucidating the numerous basic liberties Blacks currently lack, and I will present an original objection to Shelby’s project: the inherent racialized political structure of the United States prevents a Rawlsian analysis from providing any sufficient basis for understanding institutional racism and thus recommending rectificatory justice.
After I have successfully refuted event-causal incompatibilism, I will introduce a novel theory of moral responsibility compatibilism of my own, which I will argue is the only tenable philosophical theory left for the proponent of event-causal incompatibilism. I will attempt to reconcile moral responsibility with causal determinism, utilizing an argument from the philosophy of David Enoch in his book Taking Morality Seriously. When this is complete, I will defend my compatibilist theory from various objections by philosophers Saul Smilansky and Ishtiyaque Haji.
I will end the discussion with a brief introduction to other non-libertarian views of moral responsibility and determinism, which do not require libertarian notions of free will and thus do not require indeterminacy for freedom. These include Saul Smilansky’s illusionism and Derk Pereboom’s hard incompatibilism. I will analyze these views, but ultimately I will critique them. I will argue that these theories also are lacking, and so they are not viable alternatives to the proponent of moral responsibility.
There are several reasons one may experience difficulty with Pirsig’s philosophy. For example, Pirsig’s decision to develop his philosophical system in novels has made it difficult to determine where story and philosophy start and end. In addition, many of the topics that Pirsig discusses in the development of his metaphysics of quality are massive in scope and complexity: axiology, cultural evolution, technology, and the history of philosophy just to name a few. Finally, Pirsig does not attempt to define his terms, his justification being that the axis around which his entire philosophical system revolves, Quality, cannot be defined at all. Nevertheless, I do not believe that Pirsig’s philosophy is impenetrable.
In the following pages, I will argue that a significant amount of interpretive difficulty in parsing out Pirsig’s metaphysics of quality dissolves when analyzed through the lens of the philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel. This is because Pirsig’s metaphysics of quality bears resemblance to Hegel’s philosophical system in at least two fundamental ways. First, I will explain why we should expect that Hegel’s philosophy in general might be able to illuminate Pirsig’s philosophical system. Then, I will analyze Hegel’s philosophy of mind and his account of madness. Next, I will briefly summarize Pirsig’s discussion of insanity and the role it plays in his novels. Finally, through a literary and philosophical analysis, I will show that Hegel’s account of madness helps illuminate the plot of Pirsig’s novels, his discussion of insanity, and, by extension, his metaphysics of quality.
In this essay, I will attempt to explain Hegel’s views on the relationship of awakeness and sleep with sensation. Though both aging and the mental states of awakeness and sleep are natural alterations, Hegel’s decision to include the latter at the beginning of his discussion on sensation reveals important qualitative differences between these alterations and their connections to the other parts of his philosophical system.
In this paper, I argue that Trainor’s Hobbesian foundationalism does not remain insulated from Derrida’s deconstruction of authority, because Derrida’s deconstruction of authority does not limit itself strictly to political forms of authority. Utilizing an argument from Thomas Nagel, I argue that, insofar as the Hobbesian practices constitutive of state formation (i.e. forming political covenants, recognizing a common power, determining who wields the authority of God, — and the meeting of certain epistemic conditions) rely on the capacity of reason, Hobbesian foundationalism cannot escape some form of self-authorization. This is because successfully engaging in the practices integral for Hobbesian state formation require taking the capacity of reason and its issuings to be self-authorizing, or valid in itself.
In this paper, I provide an analysis of Aristotle’s account of friendship, and I argue that Aristotle’s conception of friendship implies that friendships cannot occur between animals and humans. This is because animals lack a particular capacity to wish for the well-being of their companions, thus violating one of Aristotle’s criteria for friendship. If this is true, Aristotle’s account of friendship implies that humans cannot maintain friendships with other humans who lack certain rational capacities (e.g. like someone who has a profound intellectual disability such that they cannot take care of themselves). This kind of analysis is useful because it provides the student of Aristotle with information on how she should orient her life and future plans of action with respect to mentally disabled individuals.
In response to this argument, I consider the objection that my analysis of friendship is incorrect. In response to this objection, I attempt to show that such an objection constitutes an objection to Aristotle’s account of friendship, not my interpretation of Aristotle himself. If this is correct, my argument that Aristotle’s view on friendship precludes animals from forming or maintaining such relationships with humans still stands.
In this paper, I analyze Sanford’s account of Aristotelian courage and compare it to one counterfeit account of courage that both Aristotle and Sanford dismiss as a genuine case of courage, namely spirit or mettle. I argue that, while Sanford is correct in saying that spirit does not constitute true courage, his analysis of courage fails to explicate what possessing courage consists in, in modern day society. The reason this failure is problematic is because it threatens to undermine Sanford’s project of applying Aristotelian courage to modern day actions and individuals.
In this paper, I begin by analyzing Moran’s conception of rational agency and Bourdieu’s habitus. Then, I argue that the habitus, though it does have the power to influence and/or constrain an agent’s actions and behavior through the structuring of her dispositions and social perceptions, does not threaten to undermine the rational agency necessary to maintain the kind of self-knowledge for which Moran attempts to explain and provide an account. In response to this argument, I raise an objection, but show ultimately that, by framing the habitus within a Wittgensteinian conception of rule following, one cannot reject the existence of rational agency without rejecting the habitus entirely. This is because the very existence of the habitus requires the existence of rational agency.
One recent study in cognitive science argues that attention has the ability to warp the semantic representations of categories in the human brain. This finding is particularly important, because one may interpret it as providing evidence against one of the most important theories to come out of the philosophy of mind and psychology within the last fifty years: Jerry Fodor’s modularity thesis. In particular, if attention warps semantic representation in the human brain, this may provide evidence against the claim that modules possess two important functional properties: informational encapsulation and limited central access.
However, I believe that this recent finding does not constitute evidence against the modularity thesis. In what follows, I first analyze Fodor’s modularity thesis and the properties of mental modules. Then, I argue that the study performed by Çukur et al. does not threaten the modularity thesis: while the study demonstrates that attention plays a causal role in generating the informational content of semantic representations by modifying certain neuronal properties, this finding does not constitute an instance of cognitive penetrability because it does not show that modules use informational content external to their trichotomous structure in generating representations; nor does attention constitute an instance of central access because the study fails to demonstrate that central cognition possesses access to the internal processing of modular systems.
In this essay, I analyze Kant’s philosophy in the Groundwork, specifically those passages discussing the relation of free will to the laws of nature as represented to us by reason and the senses. My aim is to clarify what Kant says (and does not say) about the compatibility of free will and natural necessity. I argue that Kant does not claim that we can know or prove that free will and the laws of nature are metaphysically compatible. Rather, he argues that, when we conceive of humans as being both causal forces in the world and subject to the laws of nature, we find no contradiction between our ideas of freedom and human beings as subject to the laws of nature (i.e. what I will call ‘natural necessity’). In response to this reading of Kant, I then consider an objection and show that it is not debilitating to Kant’s modest project.
Philosopher James Forman, Jr., however, sees the project of analogizing Jim Crow laws with mass incarceration of Blacks as problematic, because it obfuscates the nature of mass incarceration and fails to elucidate the distinct dangers each system poses to the Black community. In his article “Racial Critiques of Mass Incarceration: Beyond the New Jim Crow,” he argues that the analogy “presents an incomplete account of mass incarceration’s historical origins, fails to consider black attitudes toward crime and punishment, ignores violent crimes …, obscures class distinctions, overlooks the effects of mass incarceration on other racial groups, and … diminishes the Old Jim Crow’s particular harms.” For Forman, current analogies of the AJS with Old Jim Crow laws has the unfortunate consequence of obscuring the real horrors of the Old Jim Crow, “important aspects of what made the Old Jim Crow so horrible.”
In this paper, I analyze the views of Alexander and Forman in light of the phenomenon of mass incarceration. Then, I argue that the problems Forman brings to bear on the discriminatory nature of the current AJS pose significant problems to Alexander’s view. In addition to distorting the nature of mass incarceration more generally, I argue that Alexander’s analogy obscures the way in which mass incarceration fails to be analogous to Old Jim Crow in an important legal respect. This is problematic because the analogy as it currently stands runs the risk of undermining the agency of Black individuals and obscuring the racial progress that has been made in America.
In contrast, in his recent article titled “Retrieving Rawls for Racial Justice?: A Critique of Tommie Shelby,” philosopher Charles Mills doubts that Shelby’s practical reconstruction of Rawls’s ideal theory can be used to sufficiently understand and rectify racial injustices. Mills’s argument rests on several objections, the following two of which I believe are the most important: (1) Shelby’s application of FEO failing to be “consistent with the [deontological] spirit of [Rawls’s] ideal theory;” and (2) extending FEO to racial minorities is unsupported by Rawls’s ideal theory.
In this essay, I will briefly analyze the positions of Shelby and Mills, and I will focus on Mills’s two objections, arguing that they are fatal to Shelby’s practical reconstruction of Rawls’s ideal theory. I will argue that Shelby cannot logically extend FEO to racial minorities because such a Rawlsian analysis cannot fundamentally evaluate or offer measures to rectify the current racialized, white supremacist political structure in America.
However, I will argue that Mills’s argument could be made stronger by elucidating the numerous basic liberties Blacks currently lack, and I will present an original objection to Shelby’s project: the inherent racialized political structure of the United States prevents a Rawlsian analysis from providing any sufficient basis for understanding institutional racism and thus recommending rectificatory justice.
After I have successfully refuted event-causal incompatibilism, I will introduce a novel theory of moral responsibility compatibilism of my own, which I will argue is the only tenable philosophical theory left for the proponent of event-causal incompatibilism. I will attempt to reconcile moral responsibility with causal determinism, utilizing an argument from the philosophy of David Enoch in his book Taking Morality Seriously. When this is complete, I will defend my compatibilist theory from various objections by philosophers Saul Smilansky and Ishtiyaque Haji.
I will end the discussion with a brief introduction to other non-libertarian views of moral responsibility and determinism, which do not require libertarian notions of free will and thus do not require indeterminacy for freedom. These include Saul Smilansky’s illusionism and Derk Pereboom’s hard incompatibilism. I will analyze these views, but ultimately I will critique them. I will argue that these theories also are lacking, and so they are not viable alternatives to the proponent of moral responsibility.