Philosophy Faculty Research

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https://hdl.handle.net/1794/1178

This collection contains some of the work undertaken by faculty in the Department of Philosophy.

For more information on the department and its programs, visit the web site.

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 39

Open Access
Anonymity and Sociality: The Convergence of psychological and philosophical Currents in Merleau-Ponty's ontological Theory of Intersubjectivity
(Paris : Vrin ; Milan : Mimesis ; Memphis : University of Memphis, Dept. of philosophy, 2003) Stawarska, Beata
Open Access
Attention Metaphors: How Metaphors Guide the Cognitive Psychology of Attention
(Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1999-01) Johnson, Mark, 1949-; Fernandez-Duque, Diego, 1967-
The concept of attention is defined by multiple inconsistent metaphors that scientists use to identify relevant phenomena, frame hypotheses, construct experiments, and interpret data. (1) The Filter metaphor shapes debates about partial vs. complete filtering, early vs. late selection, and information filtering vs. enhancement. (2) The Spotlight metaphor raises the issue of space- vs. object-based selection, and it guides research on the size, shape, and movement of the attentional focus. (3) The Spotlight-in-the-Brain metaphor is frequently used to interpret imaging studies of attention. (4) The debate between supramodal and pre-motor theories of attention replays the dichotomy between the Spotlight and the Vision metaphors of attention. Our analysis reveals the central role of metaphor in scientific theory and research on attention, exposes hidden assumptions behind various research strategies, and shows the need for flexibility in the use of current metaphors.
Open Access
Being Interrupted: The Self and Schizophrenia
(The Pennsylvania State University, 2005) Lysaker, John T.; Lysaker, Paul H.
Open Access
Between Impotence and Illusion : Adorno's Art of Theory and Practice
(Telos Press Ltd., 1992) Lysaker, John T.; Sullivan, Michael
Open Access
Bioethicists Should be Helping Scientists Think About Race
(Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, 2021) Russell, Camisha
In this essay, I argue that bioethicists have a thus-far unfulfilled role to play in helping life scientists, including medical doctors and researchers, think about race. I begin with descriptions of how life scientists tend to think about race and descriptions of typical approaches to bioethics. I then describe three different approaches to race: biological race, race as social construction, and race as cultural driver of history. Taking into account the historical and contemporary interplay of these three approaches, I suggest an alternative framework for thinking about race focused on how the idea of race functions socially. Finally, using assisted reproductive technologies as an example, I discuss how bioethicists and scientists might work together using this framework to improve not only their own but broader perspectives on race.
Open Access
Cause and Effect Theories of Attention: The Role of Conceptual Metaphors
(American Psychological Association, 2002-06) Johnson, Mark, 1949-; Fernandez-Duque, Diego, 1967-
In everyday discourse, as well as in science, concepts of attention are defined by metaphors. In scientific theories these metaphors determine what attention is and what count as adequate explanations of the phenomena. We analyze these metaphors in the context of three types of attention theories: (1)'Cause' theories, in which attention is presumed to modulate information-processing (e .g., Attention as a Spotlight ; Attention as a Limited Resource), (2 )`effect' theories, in which attention is considered to be the by-product of information-processing (e.g., the Competition metaphor), and (3) hybrid theories that combine `cause' and `effect' aspects (e .g., Biased-Competition models). Our analysis reveals the crucial role of metaphors in cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and the efforts of scientists to find a resolution to the classic problem of `cause' versus `effect' interpretations.
Open Access
Cowboy Bill Rides Herd on the Range of Consciousness
(Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002) Johnson, Mark, 1949-
Open Access
Cultural Cartographies: The Logic of Domination and Native Cultural Survival
(Pennsylvania State University, 2000) Pratt, Scott L.; Huhndorf, Shari M. (Shari Michelle), 1965-
Open Access
Dependence on Place, Dependence in Place
(Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002) Mann, Bonnie
Open Access
Embodied meaning and cognitive science
(Northwestern University Press, 1997) Johnson, Mark, 1949-
Open Access
Heidegger's Absolute Music, or What Are Poets for When the End of Metaphysics Is At Hand?
(Brill Academic Publishers, 2000-09) Lysaker, John T.
Open Access
How Moral Psychology Changes Moral Theory
(MIT Press, 1996) Johnson, Mark, 1949-
Open Access
Human Values as a Source for Sustaining the Environment
(Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002) Zack, Naomi, 1944-
Open Access
Image-Schematic Basis of Meaning
(Canadian Semiotic Association, 1989) Johnson, Mark, 1949-
According to a new program known as “Cognative Semantics,” there exists an intimate relation between perception and meaning. The allegedly “higher” cognitive functions that construct meaning and make reasoning possible are continuous with and inseparable from our sensorimotor activities. I explore the nature of an “image schema” as the basic imaginative structure that connects our embodied experience with our understanding of abstract domains and acts of inference. This account indicates the ways in which standard objectivist theories of meaning, knowledge, and rationality fail to capture crucial dimensions of our cognitive experience.
Open Access
Inquiry and Analysis: Dewey and Russell on Philosophy
(Springer Science+Business Media B.V., 1998-06) Pratt, Scott L.
In an environment characterized by the emergence of new and diverse (and often opposed) philosophical efforts, there is a need for a conception of philosophy that will promote the exchange and critical consideration of divergent insights. Depending upon the operative conception, philosophical efforts can be viewed as significant, insightful and instructive, or unimportant, misguided and not real philosophy. This paper develops John Dewey's conception of philosophy as a mode of inquiry in contrast with Bertrand Russell's conception of philosophy as a mode of analysis. I argue that while Russell's analytic conception of philosophy justifies the dismissal of non-analytic philosophies, Dewey's conception of philosophy provides a theoretical framework for the comparison, evaluation and interaction of alternatives.
Open Access
Law Incarnate
(Brooklyn [Brooklyn Law School], 2002) Johnson, Mark, 1949-
Open Access
Lockean Money, Indigenism and Globalism
(University of Calgary Press, 1999) Zack, Naomi, 1944-
The term 'indigenism' is currently used to refer to the traditions, interests, and goals of the descendants of original, or "pre-contact," inhabitants of lands that Europeans and Americans invaded and exploited. In general, during the modern period, indigenist civilization has been oppressed by European civilization. Although liberatory critics have addressed the political and moral aspects of European colonial oppression, not much, at least by philosophers, has been written about the nature of money. Money was the nonviolent mechanism of land dispossession, which was the main material form of European oppression of indigenists.
Open Access
Meeting the Moment: Bioethics in the Time of Black Lives Matter
(Taylor and Francis Group, 2021) Russell, Camisha
In this article, I begin by describing what I call this Black Lives Matter moment in the US. I then offer three reasons for considering racism as a bioethical issue, the least discussed of which is the way in which racism acts as a barrier to the creation of better healthcare systems. Next, I argue that the concept of race itself constitutes a bioethical issue in a way that is not fully reducible to racism. Finally, I discuss how we, both bioethicists and health care professionals, might meet this moment by identifying individual points of responsibility (beyond liability) for structural injustice.
Open Access
On Black Women, ‘In Defense of Transracialism,’ and Imperial Harm
(Hypatia, 2019) Russell, Camisha
This essay is a response to the events surrounding Hypatia's publication of “In Defense of Transracialism.” It does not take up the question of “transracialism” itself, but rather attempts to shed light both on what some black women may have experienced following from the publication of the article and on how we might understand this experience as harm. It also suggests one way for feminist journals to reduce the likelihood of similar harms occurring in the future. I begin by describing a discussion that occurred in my classroom that bears some resemblance to the much larger debate that emerged around Hypatia. Next, I elaborate a concept of imperial harm. I then address how this concept comes to be relevant to the experience of black women within the discipline of philosophy in general, before briefly describing how academic feminism (including feminist philosophy) has served as a particular site of imperial harm for black women. Finally, touching on the idea of expressive harm, I conclude with an appeal for the adoption of more feminist publication ethics.
Open Access
Philosophical aspects of the `AAA Statement on "Race"'
(SAGE Publications, 2001-12) Zack, Naomi, 1944-
I apply philosophical analysis to the AAA Statement on "Race"' (American Anthropological Association, 1998) and the commentary on its earlier draft published in the Anthropology Newsletter (1997). Racial essentialism is the theory that there are distinct and general human biological traits that determine racial membership and cause the presence of specific racial traits. This theory is false, as is the belief that a taxonomy of human races, or race, exists. But the 1998 `AAA Statement on "Race"'fails to repudiate racial essentialism explicitly. Instead, the Statement denies that race determines culture or psychology and thereby misses the broad logical point that race cannot determine anything, because it does not exist. In the AN discussion of Kennewick Man, which appeared to be a debate about racial essentialism, contributors spoke past one another in confusing population-based measures of human diversity with race. The same confusion clouds contemporary concerns about the relevance of common-sense racial categories to medical diagnosis and treatment. Education is the solution to the public's ignorance about the scientific foundation for its ideas about race. It is an empirical question whether such education will remedy racism or unjust treatment based on the false racial taxonomy. Although mixed-race categories are no more real than 'pure' ones, their acceptance may help unsettle the prevailing false taxonomy of race.