Unfelt offers a new account of feeling during the British Enlightenment, finding that the passions and sentiments long considered as preoccupations of the era depend on a potent insensibility, the secret emergence of pronounced emotions that only become apparent with time. Surveying a range of affects including primary sensation, love and self-love, greed, happiness, and patriotic ardor, James Noggle explores literary evocations of imperceptibility and unfeeling that pervade and support the period's understanding of sensibility. Each of the four sections of (...) Unfelt—on philosophy, the novel, historiography, and political economy—charts the development of these idioms from early in the long eighteenth century to their culmination in the age of sensibility. From Locke to Eliza Haywood, Henry Fielding, and Frances Burney, and from Dudley North to Hume and Adam Smith, Noggle's exploration of the insensible dramatically expands the scope of affect in the period's writing and thought. Drawing inspiration from contemporary affect theory, Noggle charts how feeling and unfeeling flow and feed back into each other, identifying emotional dynamics at their most elusive and powerful: the potential, the incipient, the emergent, the virtual. (shrink)

Throughout the twentieth century, German writers, philosophers, theologians, and historians turned to Gnosticism to make sense of the modern condition. While some saw this ancient Christian heresy as a way to rethink modernity, most German intellectuals questioned Gnosticism's return in a contemporary setting. In No Spiritual Investment in the World, Willem Styfhals explores the Gnostic worldview's enigmatic place in these discourses on modernity, presenting a comprehensive intellectual history of Gnosticism's role in postwar German thought. Establishing the German-Jewish philosopher Jacob Taubes (...) at the nexus of the debate, Styfhals traces how such figures as Hans Blumenberg, Hans Jonas, Eric Voegelin, Odo Marquard, and Gershom Scholem contended with Gnosticism and its tenets on evil and divine absence as metaphorical detours to address issues of cultural crisis, nihilism, and the legitimacy of the modern world. These concerns, he argues, centered on the difficulty of spiritual engagement in a world from which the divine has withdrawn. Reading Gnosticism against the backdrop of postwar German debates about secularization, political theology, and post-secularism, No Spiritual Investment in the World sheds new light on the historical contours of postwar German philosophy. (shrink)

Why do we sometimes fail to do the right thing? Socrates is known for his intellectualistic answer to this question: wrongdoers are ignorant. I argue that Socrates' longer explanation of wrongdoing also assigns importance to our non-rational mental states, i.e., our emotions, appetites, pleasures, and pains. In a Socratic account, non-rational states are felt evaluations that can influence our beliefs about what is best to do and, thereby, influence our actions. While someone who knows what is good and bad does (...) not take her non-rational states to be true, the ignorant person takes them to be true, and so she fails to do the right thing. (shrink)

This dissertation sketches a theory of expected conversational roles. An expected conversational role is the trajectory you expect a person will take when contributing to a conversation about a certain topic. ECRs are used to explain instances of surprise that arise in response to what people say. I distinguish Content Directed Surprise from Speaker-Oriented Conversational Surprise. We see the latter in, say, a sexist math professor’s surprise that a young woman has given a correct answer. Here the object of his (...) surprise is not her answer, but that she had it. Instances of speaker-oriented conversational surprise occur when an ECR is violated. I draw attention to two familiar ways we form them. ECRs are formed through practicing what we will say to certain people given certain subject matters. ECRs are also passively formed via tacit beliefs we come to have about people based on their social identity. Last, I give an account of the normative profile of instances of speaker-oriented conversational surprise. This account distinguishes the assessment from the phenomenological charge of an instance of speaker-oriented conversational surprise. The assessment reflects how an utterance has violated expectations while the phenomenological charge reflects the personal importance this violation carries for the subject of speaker-oriented conversational surprise. (shrink)

This dissertation consists of three independent papers that are linked by two threads. The first thread is the question of what sorts of explanatory roles can be played by propositions and semantic values. The first paper, “Doing without Minimal Propositions”, explores this question by looking at the role of semantic values in conversation, in particular examining the claim that only a small range of linguistic expressions need context in order for sentences containing them to have a proposition as their semantic (...) content. I argue to the contrary that the largely context-insensitive propositions posited by such a view are not needed to explain the range of linguistic facts that motivates them. My second paper, “Problems for Metasemantic Expressivism”, explores the question of whether the semantic values standardly assigned to normative expressions can help explain the special connection that normative thought and discourse seem to have to non-cognitive mental states: states like desire that play a special role in motivating action. I argue against the metasemantic expressivist attempt to do this, which is a version of expressivism that states that normative expressions have their semantic values in virtue of expressing non-cognitive mental states. Specifically, I claim that there is no way for an expressivist theory to give a satisfactory explanation of in virtue of what normative predicates have their extensions. My final paper, “Referential Normativity and the Metaphysical Commitments of Normative Realism”, is linked to my second one by the other thread: the question of whether non-cognitive mental states play a central role in grounding the content of normative language and thought. The issue examined in this paper is whether every concept with a certain normative role, which connects uses of that concept to non-cognitive mental states, must refer to the same thing, and if so whether this fact could result in a version of normative realism that does without controversial metaphysical commitments to irreducible normative properties or objects. I argue that the realist motivations that lead theorists to posit this explanatory role for non-cognitive mental states could not be satisfied by a theory that avoids controversial metaphysical commitments. (shrink)

The term innovation orientation has been frequently used in the innovation literature, but with a mix of conceptualizations and meanings. Drawing from work found in the innovation, management, and marketing literatures over the past 35 years, the concept of innovation orientation as a system is conceptualized and defined in this article. The domain of innovation orientation is delineated as a multidimensional knowledge structure and a framework for understanding innovation orientation and its consequences in an organizational context are developed. The framework (...) defines the innovation orientation knowledge structure as composed of a learning philosophy, strategic direction, and transfunctional beliefs within an organization that define and direct the organizational strategies and actions toward specific innovation-enabling competencies and processes. These innovation-oriented firm competencies are in the areas of resource allocation, technology, employees, operations, and markets. The framework then explains that these appropriately developed innovation-enabling competencies lead to innovation outcomes, specifically ideal innovation form, type, and rate that, in turn, affect firm performance. An inventory of propositions for future research that correspond to the innovation orientation concept is also presented in this comprehensive framework. This study provides two important contributions to the existing innovation literature. First, the article examines the vast innovation literature to arrive at a clear definition of the innovation orientation construct to provide a consistent conceptualization for future research. Second, the article develops a comprehensive, organized framework for understanding innovation orientation and its effects. In doing this, the framework extends the dynamic capabilities research stream by offering an explanation of how innovation orientation fosters the development of organizational competencies and makes it possible for a firm to recognize and respond to shifts in market dynamism. (shrink)

Poison and Disease in Anglo-Saxon Medicine and Metaphor bridges a gap between scholarship on medieval medicine and literary analysis of Anglo-Saxon literature by examining the relationship between beliefs about disease causation in medical recipe-books and the use of extended metaphors of illness in Old English poetry and other non-medical works. Chapter 1 takes a novel approach to identifying beliefs about the causes of disease by analyzing preventive prescriptions in the Old English Herbarium and Medicina de Quadrupedibus, two recipe-books that have (...) traditionally been considered practical rather than theoretical in content. These texts point toward attor or “poison” as a key concept in disease causation. In the next two chapters, my project explores the role of attor and related terms in works of Anglo-Saxon literature that make heavy use of medical metaphor. Chapter 2 performs a detailed study of the Old English poem Guthlac B, examining Saint Guthlac’s physical and spiritual experience of disease and how it relates to the poem’s account of Eve offering Adam a deadly drink in Eden. Drawing on evidence from Chapter 1, I argue that the poem’s two primary representations of death, as a battle and as a poisonous drink, are united by the quality of bitterness. While this quality binds Guthlac’s individual illness to Eve’s cup of death, it also evokes Christ’s bitter drink on the cross. The poem uses these associations to emphasize that the bitterness of physical pain does not have to lead to spiritual embitterment and distance from God. The final chapter examines medical metaphors in the penitentials, using previous scholarship on affective meditation as an interpretive framework. I identify three main categories of medical metaphor in the introductions to penitential manuals and argue that these metaphors, including imagery of poisoning and purgation, provide scripts for the cultivation of emotions crucial in penance. The chapter concludes with an examination of Soul and Body I, an Old English poem involving penitential themes that uses imagery of the corrupted body to encourage a spiritually desirable emotional response. Overall, this project argues for the importance of considering concepts of disease in analysis of Anglo-Saxon literature. (shrink)

This dissertation takes the form of three papers. Each one can be read on its own, and I present them here in a format that lends itself to such reading. However, they also center around a common topic: how Immanuel Kant conceives of immorality and how this theory informs his understanding of morality. In the first paper, I argue that Kant does not think immorality in human beings is always interpersonally arrogant, focusing in particular on what Kant means by “self-conceit.” (...) I argue that self-conceit is a happiness-emphasizing conception of self, in which one overvalues the inclinations. When life goes well, this self-conception and the standard of assessment it implies do lead to the opinion that one is worth more than others. When life goes badly, however, they lead to the opposite misunderstanding. In the second paper, I address another motivation for the claim that Kant thought interpersonal arrogance was the central moral problem for human beings: Kant’s theory of happiness. Kant held that human beings are competitive, as can be seen in several of his doctrines about how human beings conceive of and pursue happiness. I show how Kant explains this competitive bent in human nature while maintaining the thesis that human beings are interested in happiness only because it promises to be satisfying. I argue that Kant’s understanding of human rationality and of human interdependence result in competitiveness without the assumption that human beings are arrogant. In the third paper, I turn to Kant’s theory of self-respect, using my understanding of Kant on immorality and arrogance to explain the importance of self-respect in his moral theory. I argue that self-respect is significant specifically because it is a way of valuing oneself that acknowledges the disharmony between one’s desire for happiness and one’s commitment to morality. (shrink)

During the struggle for democracy in France, political thinkers across the spectrum pressed into service an unusual image of violence. Rather than a source of anarchy and disorder, this violence generated social cohesion. Instead of fragmentation, it promised to retie the bonds of democratic society. This dissertation studies how a variety of writers and intellectuals weaponized this image of violence in the political culture of nineteenth century France. What could this violence accomplish that other languages of democratic agency could not? (...) What were the sources of its appeal? To answer these questions, I consider four episodes where French thinkers believed social disintegration threatened the nation: the regicide of Louis XVI, early French colonization of Algeria, the Paris Commune, and the eve of World War I. In each episode, political thinkers warned of social breakdown spurred by democratization. In each case, they also claimed that violence by the people could repair the cohesion of the French social body. Studying these episodes underscores how no single intellectual tradition held a monopoly over regenerative violence in France, because the problem it hoped to answer was fundamental: how can the cohesion of the social body be repaired in the age of democracy? It was a problem that could not be remedied by simple appeal to constitutionalism or natural law theory. Thus, to repair the moral foundations of “the social,” French thinkers on both the left and right pushed towards a vision of democratic violence as social regeneration. To form a democratic society in history rather than in theory, French thinkers did not repudiate violence as anti-social or pre-political. Instead, they reached for it in the form of democratic terror. (shrink)

This is a study of the philosophy of being in the Zhuangzi as both the ontological “being in itself” that defines the ontological reality and the existential “being in human experience” that constitutes the very human existence. Addressing the problems of mysticism, skepticism and relativism in the Zhuangzi, it raises an alternative Chinese version of ontology that does not necessarily assume the ancient Greek pursuit of the determinate, universal and permanent truth. It argues that without any universal or transcendental Being, (...) the Zhuangzi emphasizes the various manifestations of beings, through which the truth of reality and human existence are simultaneously constituted. The absolute truth of being lies in and only in the conditional constitution of each being itself upon its inviolably firm ontological grounding without opening for dualistic conflict with other beings. Through the ontological-existential approach to the beings, it seeks to overcome the modern Western philosophical separation between epistemology and metaphysics by revealing the intimate connection between human existence and ontological reality. In respecting the beings as the necessary and ceaseless presencing of themselves, the human being eventually reconciles himself in the temporal unfolding of the beings in his life and accomplishes his own existence in residing in the beings as both the mission and destiny of his life. (shrink)

Philosophy is dangerous business. At least, this is what Plato tells us. The literature on Plato’s metaphilosophy and methodology, however, has largely ignored this fact. In this dissertation, I show that an overemphasis on a narrow definition of Plato’s understanding of philosophy has meant we have missed an important account of how he proposes we navigate the dangers of rational inquiry. Framed as continuing the Platonic project of successfully and safely converting people to philosophy, this dissertation takes seriously the fact (...) that Plato is wary of philosophy being done badly, and shows that this perspective sheds light not only on methods such as elenchus, but also on Plato’s psychology, epistemology, and metaphysics. (shrink)

Extraordinary Matters: The Political After Martin Heidegger examines why a return to ontology became a vital source for conceptualizing political beginnings in contemporary continental thought. Martin Heidegger was exemplary of this trend. His ontological view of political foundation, I contend, reveal a philosophical desire to challenge everyday life and denounce quotidian monotony and repetition. My research rereads this period in Heidegger’s work in order to propose a radical rethinking of current accounts of political beginnings. I argue, in particular, that his (...) theoretical unification of politics and ontology epitomizes a pervasive philosophical enmity toward ordinariness. Such an enmity has since become widespread in continental thought, influencing thinkers from Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe to Jean-Luc Nancy to Ernesto Laclau. Breaking with such readings of Heidegger that see political novelty as part of the realm of “the extraordinary,” my work instead reassesses the ordinary enactment of what I call “the common” as constituting the very core of political beginnings. The first chapter of my dissertation uses archival material to reconstruct the understudied encounter between Heidegger and Carl Schmitt in the 1930s. Analyzing the dispute between the two thinkers and its broader context, I argue that this encounter catalyzed Heidegger’s ontologization of politics. Heidegger rejected liberal and communist versions of “life in common” both politically and philosophically, replacing these conceptions with what I describe as “exceptionalism”—an ontological account of “the political” [das Politische] based on extraordinariness. In the remaining chapters of the dissertation, I scrutinize the variations on exceptionalism as they appear in a number of postwar works of continental philosophy influenced by Heidegger. In the second chapter, I begin with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Jean-Luc Nancy, and their Centre de recherches philosophiques sur le politique, to illustrate the impact of the notion of “the political” on French deconstruction and the problem of “the common.” Through a theoretical reading of archival material, this chapter raises questions about the ontological distinction between “politics” [la politique] and “the political” [le politique]—a distinction that has become prominent in contemporary critical theory. In its stead, I argue for a politics of the common that radicalizes what Lacoue-Labarthe terms a “déconstruction active du politique.” The final chapter further questions the collapse of politics and ontology by examining “the populist moment” in political thought. This chapter considers plural and ordinary enactments of “the many” at work in political beginnings, eschewing essentialist theories of the political body found in texts such as Ernesto Laclau’s On Populist Reason. Challenging prevalent conceptions of contemporary continental thought, especially the idea that exceptional moments or the actions of “great men” might account fully for political beginnings, I turn to the role played by “the many,” that is, those who manifest what I claim is an an-archic principle of democratic politics. (shrink)

On a basic desert conception of moral responsibility, any agent who freely, knowingly, and inexcusably acts immorally deserves a negative response just because s/he so acted. The predominant view is that blame is the negative response at issue. I argue that, even if we know that an agent has freely, knowingly, and inexcusably acted immorally, there is no reliable evidence that this fact alone renders the agent deserving of blame or other form of censure. We ought, then, to be skeptical (...) about the desert of blame, and in turn forego blaming or censuring on that basis. I argue that this does not entail that agents are never morally responsible for immoral acts. Some agents may still deserve to feel guilt for their immoral acts, and it is this guiltworthiness that explains their moral responsibility. Moreover, I argue that skepticism about the desert of blame does not impugn the rationality of our blaming emotions. These views stand in stark contrast to extant views concerning blame and moral responsibility, and offer solutions to heretofore unresolved issues in ethics. (shrink)

The end of the _Theaetetus_, including Socrates' "Dream" and his three proposals about _logos_, raises a variety of epistemological and metaphysical problems. These essays attempt to illuminate some of them. In the first essay, I discuss the three _logos_-proposals and argue that Socrates' discussion here is, in a certain sense, epistemological and not metaphysical. In the second essay, I argue that the Platonic notion of uniformity has not been properly appreciated, and I offer a candidate interpretation. In the third essay, (...) I argue that the distinction between being and becoming in the Dream, and elsewhere in Plato, should be understood as a difference in kinds of predication. (shrink)

This work addresses two important issues of investing through asset managers: similarities in the investment philosophies of low cost funds and share restrictions of hedge funds. For the low cost funds, I create a framework to reveal their investment philosophies and study the resulting predictability of the aggregate fund trading actions. First, I develop a new methodology, which, using discrete trading observations, quantifies the fund's preferences towards available factors and their values. The approach enables us to classify quantitative factors into (...) "Action" or "Attention" types. The latter is used to identify whether the fund is using a given factor to make trading actions or merely as a filter to concentrate its attention on a subset of stocks. I apply the model on the US mutual fund holdings data and find that 82.7% of the US mutual funds have a significant preference towards certain factor regions. For the funds which existed in the period from 1994-2014, 6-month momentum is the most popular "Action" factor. Whereas, the most popular "Attention" factors are turnover and size. I find that a fund's preference towards a factor value might change depending on the quantities of other factors. In particular, within different factor deciles, fund's preferences towards the same factor might be completely opposite to each other. After, I create a theoretical model, where agents follow pre-defined investment philosophies and make trading decisions based on the changes in the underlying "Attention" and "Action" factors. The model is developed to work in a framework where funds have a finite-dimensional source of public information. I adjust the model for possible trading style changes and use it to predict the next quarter trades for each fund. I aggregate those predictions to test the model on the US mutual fund holdings data. I find that for stocks with large institutional holdings, the change of the holdings between adjacent quarters can be predicted with the model. The results provide evidence against the commonly accepted hypothesis which states that the mutual fund herding happens because the funds follow each other's trades. The Action|Attention model provides an alternative explanation, where an "unintentional herding" happens because of the similarities of the trading philosophies of the low-cost funds. For Hedge Funds, I create a framework of optimal portfolio construction that can incorporate the costs of re-balancing constraints and share restrictions. I do that by transforming a constrained portfolio construction problem into an unconstrained one by penalizing the expected returns of the underlying assets. The methodology is applied to computing the lockup premium of hedge funds in Markov-Switching and transaction cost frameworks. In contrast to the approaches I find in academia, I argue that the hedge fund lockup illiquidity should be modeled as a lost investment opportunity premium. I compute the premium for an experimental data set. (shrink)

Scholars have defined Guido Guinizzelli, Guido Cavalcanti, Dante Alighieri, and Michelangelo Buonarroti philosopher-poets, and yet, they have overlooked the implications of such articulation. In my dissertation, I clarify how these authors articulate philosophy and poetry into a single one discipline – a lyric science – devise its thinking tools, and urge us to consider love as the defining experience of human life, and the gateway to knowledge. The results of this experiment can be summarized in four key-terms which name the (...) different chapters of my dissertation: likeness, bewilderment, sweetness, and excess. Chapter 1. “Irresistible likeness: Al cor gentil rimpaira sempre amor” is dedicated to Guinizzelli’s poetical manifesto, in which he challenges the primacy of logical argumentation by devising a mode of thinking based on resemblance, likeness. Chapter 2. “Bewildering love: Donna me prega” deals with Cavalcanti’s response to Guinizzelli’s manifesto, in which he devises a theory of bewilderment, an experience of love as destructive, disconnecting, and eventually mortal. However, Cavalcantian love also works positively, since it manifests the basic structures of human’s intellect. Chapter 3 “Unfinished praise: Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore” analyzes how Dante lays out the ground work to connect Cavalcanti and Gunizzelli’s approaches into a comprehensive doctrine of love. Lightness and sweetness are Dante’s provisional solutions to transforms the deadly experience of love into a positive and salvific one, eventually lay the ground for his opus magnum, the Comedia. In chapter 4, I investigate the use of the term superchio in Michelangelo’s poetry in relationship to grace, love, and art. Over the course of the analysis two important traits of Michelangelo’s poetry emerge: the use of analogy to structure his verses, and the use of highly antithetical – if not contradictory – logic to express his key concepts concerning art, grace, and love. (shrink)

"Luminous Flesh, Haunted Futures" examines the haunted sites and transmedia possibilities of trans-Chinese cinemas that reveal the fictionality of Chineseness as ethnic, ideological, linguistic, or national affiliation. From site visits and in-depth interviews, I consider the remains of Fuhe Grand Theatre, which Tsai Ming-liang bid farewell to in Goodbye, Dragon Inn, as an accidental archive of the materiality of cinema. I then locate its afterlives in Chu Yin Hua's photographic project Goodbye, Goodbye Dragon Inn and the digital restoration of King (...) Hu's restored Dragon Inn, to argue for the luminous intertwining of cinematic worlds as a mode of survival. In Chapter Two, through the elliptical editing of In the Mood for Love and the various forms of substitution on the level of plot and also of location, I develop the conventional practice of creating geographical illusions as part of the palimpsestic invisibilities of cinema. I argue that this invisible substitution, common in the practice of filmmaking, forms an interstitial non-encounter that has ethical implications. In Chapter Three, I connect this analysis of the surfacing of invisibilized worlds to the affective screenscapes of post-2010 independent cinema in Singapore and Malaysia that contest authoritarian narratives of progress. "Luminous Flesh, Haunted Futures" concludes with imaginations of alternative futurities in two video series: Tsai Ming-liang's seven-part "Walker Series" and Charles Lim's multi-year "SEA STATE Series". This dissertation shows that the phantomaticity of cinema can illuminate the phantasms of sovereignty. Through foregrounding the densities and textures of my archives, I argue that the visible world of cinema operates as an "as if," in which each film constitutes a world-making project of memory and forgetting, and is embedded in unequal networks of psychical, physical and spectral relations. (shrink)

This dissertation offers a systematic account of St. Augustine’s principles of interpretation, or hermeneutics. Chapter 1 treats the dialectic of Confessions XII and argues that Augustine privileges the intention of the human author of Scripture as the best possible meaning of the text that readers must try to find, though they can still find other valid interpretations as long as they are seeking the author’s intention. Chapters 2-4 then treat six principles that Augustine appeals to in his theory of Scriptural (...) interpretation. Chapter 2 argues for an inherent connection between Augustine’s intentionalism and his starting claim that Scripture is true inasmuch as it is authored by God; it also discusses his first interpretive principle, by which he appeals to general and linguistic knowledge as a prerequisite for interpretation. Chapter 3 explains three principles that Augustine ties together in a series and bases on the content of Scripture: Christ’s command to love God and neighbor as the purpose of all Scripture; the role of “clearly stated” passages in establishing the parameters for the moral and doctrinal content of Scripture; and the use of figurative interpretation in understanding all Scripture, but especially passages that are unclear or objectionable. Chapter 4 argues that Augustine also uses two sources outside of Scripture, the authoritative statements of the Church and the sure arguments of philosophy or science, to limit and to add to the possible meanings of Scriptural passages. Chapter 5 returns to the issue of the human writer's intention and its role in interpretation, comparing the account in De Doctrina Christiana and Confessions XII to the earlier one in De Utilitate Credendi, and then proposing a larger theory of the role of the writer’s intention in light of some of Augustine’s later works. (shrink)

This dissertation consists of three independent essays treating Kant’s notion of an intuitive intellect. I provide a brief description of each below: 1. In §76 of the third Critique, Kant characterizes an intuitive intellect as a mind that represents the world only as it is. Taken together with his commitment to a divine intuitive intellect, this gives rise to a problem: If God does not represent other ways the world could be, it would seem to follow that there is no (...) other way the world could be, which would be an unwelcome implication for Kant given his commitment to a conception of human freedom that presupposes that our moral characters could be other than they are. The first essay of this dissertation explores the philosophical resources Kant has to reconcile these commitments. 2. According to a received view, Kant maintains that only God could possess an intuitive intellect, i.e., a mind with an ‘intellectual intuition’ or, equivalently, an ‘intuitive understanding’ of objects. Such a view finds support in the first Critique, for instance, where Kant writes, "intellectual intuition […] seems to pertain only to the original being" and in lecture transcripts where we read, "[o]nly the understanding of God is called intuition." However, such a view is also brought into question by neglected texts suggesting that it involves a considerable oversimplification of his position. The second essay of this dissertation examines these texts in an effort to illuminate Kant’s conceptions of the intuitive and human intellects. 3. Scribbled in the margins of Kant’s copy of Baumgarten’s Metaphysica, we read: "That is the divinity of our soul, that it is capable of ideas." This final essay pursues this description of our ideas as "the divinity of our soul" with the aim of correcting a popular but misleading narrative that the critical Kant flatly rejects a theocentric model on which human cognition is measured against the norm of the divine intuitive intellect. Along the way, it also suggests a significant and ultimately illuminating Platonic influence on Kant’s notion of an intuitive intellect and on the critical philosophy more broadly. (shrink)

My three projects here explore some semantic and metaethical problems that are unique to normative language and our normative reasoning. Ch.1 argues that the notion of a contrary-to-duty obligation and its role in normative discourse and reasoning are not adequately captured in the standard semantics for ought-statements, developed by Angelika Kratzer and David Lewis. I show this by presenting a new puzzle, the CTD Trilemma, using a famous example from Chisholm’s Paradox. I claim that two different roles played by ought-statements (...) in normative discourse and reasoning have to be captured in any satisfactory semantic account for normative language. I draw the distinction between axiological and deontological ought-statements in my version of deontic update semantics and how this distinction nicely solves the puzzles about CTD obligations. Ch.2 discusses the challenge that the possibility of moral dilemmas poses to the ordering semantic account of ought-statements. I critically discuss and compare the advantages and disadvantages of two ordering semantic analyses of ought-statements when it comes to moral dilemmas: the conflict and disjunctive accounts. I conclude that in order to adequately describe one’s normative predicament and reasoning in a dilemma situation, two kinds of ought-statements defined by the two accounts have to be captured in a single semantic framework. And, I show how it can be done in the ordering semantic framework. Ch.3 critically evaluates the real force of the Disagreement-Based Argument in metaethics, exemplified by R.M. Hare’s cannibals argument and Horgan and Timmons’ Moral Twin Earth argument. I analyze the structure of the DBA and defuse its direct threat to descriptivism by disproving its most problematic assumption : that genuine disagreement between two parties requires that the parties agree in what they mean by the key terms in the dispute. I argue that the disagreement data the DBA elicits from thought experiments does not put real pressure on descriptivism, because the proponents of descriptivism can explain the data away by showing how two different linguistic communities can genuinely disagree about what to do and how to live. (shrink)

In this dissertation I address three philosophical problems in the philosophy of biology united by the underlying, and interlocking, issues of the explanatory role of teleological, normative, and representational concepts in biology. In the first chapter, I argue that extant accounts of functions have foundered on a problem I dub the Dysfunction Dilemma, and I offer a way to move forward. Functions are of philosophical interest because the concept plays an important explanatory role in biology, and other sciences, but is (...) apparently teleological and normative –an item’s function is its end, purpose, or goal, and a dysfunctional item is one that fails to realize a particular norm, performance of its proper function. Extant accounts of function do not successfully capture both its explanatory import and its normative and teleological character, either painting dysfunction as conceptually incoherent or painting functions as epiphenomenal. I diagnose the source of the dilemma and offer an account of functional explanation which avoids it. In the second chapter, I defend the idea that genes, like words or concepts, have intentionality or representational/semantic content. First, I argue that while the standard motivation for this idea is mechanistic analogies between molecular mechanisms and digital computation, Ernst Mayr, one of the architects of the modern synthesis in biology, has provided an alternative and more defensible justification for taking the idea seriously. Parallel to the standard case for representational and computational theories of cognition, Mayr’s justification rests on the need to invoke representations to explain end-directed processes. I then put Mayr’s argument to work answering three kinds of objection to the idea that genes are representational: 1) Genetic representations are causally or explanatorily inert, 2) Genetic processes are too complex and context sensitive to be captured by representational concepts, and 3) Details of molecular biology undermine representational conceptions of genes. In the final chapter, I develop a historical and philosophical interpretation of Ernst Mayr’s distinction between proximate and ultimate causes and its relation to Niko Tinbergen’s "four questions." Both frameworks have been influential in the biological study of behavior and are typically presented as a single framework, with Mayr’s proximate-ultimate distinction corresponding to one of two axes dividing Tinbergen’s four questions. I argue that this interpretation misrepresents Mayr’s and Tinbergen’s philosophical positions. I offer a positive account of both frameworks and their relation to one another, and I argue that contrary to many critics, Mayr’s proximate-ultimate distinction, when properly interpreted, does not present a barrier to the project of integrating biological work on Tinbergen’s four questions. (shrink)

Actors may be called on to judge their reasons for action at two different points in time: once when they form an intention to act in the future and again at the time of action. At the time the actor forms her intention, her perspective is a general one, encompassing a range of possible circumstances that cannot be narrowed or fully specified in advance of action. At time of action, the actor's perspective is particularized, with more evidence available about reasons (...) for action. This difference in perspective presents a dilemma for rational agents. In many contexts, reliable advance planning has great value. It allows for intra-personal and interpersonal coordination and minimizes bias in favor of salient or emotionally charged facts. At the time of action, additional evidence about the context of the act clarifies, or appears to clarify, current reasons for action. I describe this dilemma in two contexts: rule-following and promissory commitment. In each case there may be significant practical reasons for agents to stand by their original intentions, treating them as exclusionary reasons for action. Yet, if the agent revisits her intentions at the time of action, her reasons for action may support, or appear to support, a change in course. I begin by examining theories of practical rationality that extend rationality over time and thus permit agents to act on their initial intentions. Understood in this way, practical rationality may require agents to follow rules or honor promises without further consideration of reasons for action. I argue, however, that on a plausible understanding of epistemic rationality and epistemic responsibility to respond to evidence, acting without reflection may be epistemically irrational. If this is correct, then the dilemma of general and particular decisionmaking persists, and affects important aspects of human life. We manage only by being imperfectly irrational. (shrink)

This dissertation focuses on the philosophy of Sextus Empiricus, a skeptic who provides the most complete account of Pyrrhonian skepticism that survives from antiquity. In particular, this dissertation examines Sextus' account of skeptical assent, the attitude that structures and informs the life of the skeptic. Accordingly, this dissertation has two aims: first, to elaborate and defend a novel method of interpreting Sextus' claims and concepts, one based on their significance in ordinary life and language; and, second, to apply this method (...) to Sextus' claims about the nature of skeptical assent in order to generate a novel account thereof. In the first chapter, the most widely-held and influential interpretations of skeptical assent are elaborated and taxonomized. It is argued that all these interpretations neglect to pay sufficient attention to the self-reflexivity of Sextus' skepticism, in consequence of which Sextus' own claims about skeptical assent must be understood as expressing skeptical assent. It is argued, moreover, that this neglect of self-reflexivity cannot be remedied without abandoning these interpretations. In the second chapter, Sextus' claims about ordinary life are examined and it is argued that Sextus regards skepticism as a distinctive expression of ordinary life. However, ordinary life may be understood in two different ways and the failure to distinguish them has resulted in a misconception of Sextus' outlook. The two different conceptions are therefore elaborated and it is argued that Sextus' understanding of ordinary life accords with only one of them. Finally, responses are provided to some important objections to the close connection between iii skepticism and ordinary life. In the third and final chapter, Sextus' conception of ordinary life is deployed to produce a novel understanding of skeptical assent. The focus here is Sextus' account of assent in Outlines of Pyrrhonism 1.13. Each of the key concepts in that account are explained in light of chapter two's results. Additionally, the roots of a concept central to skeptical assent are located in Aristotle's methodological reflections. Finally, the novel account of skeptical assent is distinguished from two other closely related accounts.. iv. (shrink)

The focus of this dissertation is a special type of moral ignorance: non-culpable ignorance of truths of the form I am obligated to do/not do X. Call ignorance of this type NCFPO ignorance. Many philosophers believe that NCFPO ignorance exists. But whether NCFPO ignorance is possible hangs on the issue of whether a person can be obligated to perform an action that, for good reason, she does not believe that she is obligated to perform-an issue about which philosophers disagree. Is (...) it the case, then, that NCFPO ignorance is possible? And if it is, just how extreme can a person's NCFPO ignorance be? Is it possible for a person to be non-culpably ignorant of all of her moral obligations? If so, under what conditions is this possible? I argue here that NCFPO ignorance is not only possible, but it is possible for a person to be non-culpably ignorant of all of her moral obligations. This conclusion sheds light on several previously unexplored connections between epistemologists' views of external world skepticism and ethicists' views of moral skepticism. It also has implications concerning moral practice, since, as I argue in the dissertation, NCFPO ignorance constitutes an excuse for wrongdoing. (shrink)

Recorded in Ithaca, NY by Cornell University., Sponsored by: Classics, Department of., Lecture, February 25, 1986.

Recorded in Ithaca, NY by Cornell University., Notes., Sponsored by: Classics, Department of., Lecture, April 1, 1986.

Recorded in Ithaca, NY by Cornell University., Sponsored by: Andrew D. White Professors-At-Large Program., Speaker: French philosopher and author., Lecture, September 11, 1985. Transcript provided by Albe Harlow.

Recorded in Ithaca, NY by Cornell University., Sponsored by: History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, Program in the., Lecture, February 19, 1986.

Recorded in Ithaca, NY by Cornell University., Speaker: Professor of sociology at the Frankfurt School, West Germany., Lecture, September 11, 1984.

Recorded in Ithaca, NY by Cornell University., Speaker: Professor of sociology at the Frankfurt School, West Germany., Lecture, September 12, 1984.

Recorded in Ithaca, NY by Cornell University., Speaker: Professor of sociology at the Frankfurt School, West Germany., Lecture, September 10, 1984.

Recorded in Ithaca, NY by Cornell University., Sponsored by: Center for World Community,Interreligious International Ministries Committee., Lecture, October 3, 1984.

This dissertation consists of three papers on a handful of related metaphysical and metametaphysical topics. The first examines the connection between analyticity and ontology. Some hold that we can trivially resolve longstanding ontological debates by appealing to "ampliative" analytic truths. I argue that once we clarify the theoretical role that analyticity needs to play for this view, it turns out that analyticity is ill-suited to play it; rather, what is motivating these theorists is a distinctive sort of equivalence claim - (...) for instance, that 'Socrates is wise' and 'wisdom is characteristic of Socrates' merely provide different means of describing the same fact. I go on to argue that equivalencies of this sort are independent of controversial claims about analyticity, and threaten to hold important consequences for ontological inquiry. The second paper explores the metaphysical underpinnings of this type of equivalence claim. Part of the project is to clarify the content and consequences of such claims, and part is to canvass some motivations for accepting them; but the main goal is to explore two importantly ways of understanding their metametaphysical import. Briefly, one such view allows that 'Socrates is wise' and 'Socrates instantiates wisdom' can describe the same fact, but goes on to suggest that one of these sentences does a better job of carving that fact at its metaphysical joints. Another denies that such distinctions in joint-carvingness can be drawn. Although both views face serious challenges, I ultimately recommend the latter. The third paper develops a positive account of this equivalence relation. In contrast to one prominent view found in the literature, according to which this relation is cashed out in terms of a coarse-grained relation of necessary or truthconditional equivalence, I recommend a fine-grained alternative, motivated by way of some traditional assumptions about the connection between facts and truthbearers. I go on to discuss several metaphysical and metametaphysical consequences of this position. (shrink)

My dissertation explores the making of the modern division between the political and the economic realm. To modern political reason, the economy appears like a self-standing reality, internally related in terms of functions and understood to follow regulating laws of its own. The dissertation counters this account of the relation between the economic and the political realm. It analyzes the epistemological claims to objectivity, on which this division rests and shows how the allegedly neutral depictions of economic necessity remain inextricably (...) linked to political imaginations of order. The main thesis of the work posits that the modern rendering of economic reality in terms of a self-contained and functional realm stems from the desire to establish secure foundations for a viable body politic. The works of Malthus and Keynes are the exemplary cases for this study of the intimate relations between political reason and accounts of economic objectivity. The writings of Malthus crystallize in important respects the emergence of the specific modern objectivity at the beginning of the nineteenth century. With him, the notion of scarcity gained its important role for defining economy. It is shown that the definition of economy in terms of scarcity is tied to Malthus? attempts to envision a regulatory epistemology for the social body, which ensures a silent and visceral order against the uncertainties of the political world. The economic realm is thus conceived as the foundation of the body politic. The writings of Keynes witness the crisis of this economic foundation at the beginning of the twentieth century. The dissertation explicates Keynes? critique of the epistemology of scarcity, which underwrites modern accounts of economy. He opens a perspective on economy in terms of temporality, conventions and power, which traverses the closed boundaries of the economy. But this different view on economy is overlaid by Keynes? political desires to procure new foundations for the body politic: the envisioning of a national economy under the guidance of the economic expert, for which Keynesian economics is known, fulfills this desire. The thinking of economy is thus shown to be inextricably tied to the question of the political. (shrink)

Materials, as the physical human-environment interface, are key challenges and requirements for sustainable design. This study investigates the epistemology of building materials to understand the considerations and consequences of material selection, both in and within the specific context of Punta Cana. By employing reflective research methods to interpret six environmental building philosophies, this study reveals the building community's need to resolve inflexible dualisms regarding technology, globalization, and cultural meaning to overcome professional divisions that hinder interventions toward sustainability. The results call (...) for common goals, such as zero waste, to explore a wider range of suitable building solutions and provide unified sustainable design criteria. Finally, a qualitative life-cycle analysis suggests that bamboo, a building material commonly disregarded by dualistic mindsets, may convey more environmental, economic, and social benefits in Punta Cana than concrete, the prevailing Dominican structural building material. The conclusions of this study call for increased criticism and ethics throughout the design process to avoid misleading assumptions, represent implicated stakeholders, and promote context-based building solutions. Keywords: sustainable materials, environmental philosophy, zero waste, vernacular, bamboo, Dominican Republic. (shrink)

Cicero wrote de Natura Deorum , de Divinatione and de Fato in succession and describes the latter two as continuations of the first. I argue that the three dialogues form a trilogy, in which Cicero as author indicates a stance on the material he presents . There are much-debated attributions of preferences to Cicero's propriae personae at the conclusions of dND and Div.; I take these preferences to express Cicero's authorial stance. I examine relevant parts of the speeches to which (...) they react and, first, make philosophical interpretations of each and, second, pay attention to the interaction of Cicero's characterization of each speaker with the arguments the speaker gives. I find that Balbus in dND advocates the avoidance of superstition and the reform of religious beliefs in line with Stoic physics and that Cotta has a strong commitment to traditional Roman religious views consistent with his sceptical epistemology. Cotta's scepticism is elusive in its details but perhaps yields a kind of fideism. I find that Quintus Cicero's advocacy in Div. of a Stoic account of divination is formally based on empirical arguments for a natural divinatory capacity in humans and the possibility of fallible empirical divinatory arts. But Quintus also provides a theory of divination based in Stoic pneuma theory, psychology, theology and fate. Marcus Cicero's reply makes a general argument against the prospects for divination in a Stoic fated world, and many specific arguments against Quintus' empirical data that accept the data but suggest that they do not support the reality of divination. Cicero's authorial stance, it emerges, is that traditional religion should stand but that religious beliefs should be reformed in line with physics broadly as Balbus suggested , but that belief in divination errs by that very standard and is superstitious. (shrink)

This thesis explores the prospects of a distinction between subjective and objective properties in terms of how they are instantiated. While there are many ways in which the subjective can be separated from the objective, the one that interests me here is the difference between properties instantiated subjectively and properties instantiated objectively. The idea is that in some cases what makes it so that object o has the property p is what a thinking subject thinks of it or how she (...) reacts to it, while in other cases what makes it so that o has p has nothing to do with what the subject thinks or does. In the first kind of case, the instantiation of the property is mind-dependent, or subjective, and in the second kind of case the instantiation is mind-independent, or objective. I examine ways to draw a distinction between subjective and objective properties in this sense and defend the possibility of such a distinction against conceivable threats. I then go on to arguing that instead of sorting properties into two groups, subjective and objective, it is more fruitful to think of them as on a continuum ranging from entirely subjective to entirely objective. While there may be cases of properties that are entirely objective, i.e. instantiated only objectively, finding entirely subjective properties if more difficult. Candidates for subjective properties do not seem to be exclusively subjective; i.e. they are instantiated objectively to some extent. I use color as a paradigm case to argue for my account of properties whose instantiation is partly objective and partly subjective. I then go on to arguing that all sensory properties should be treated as color in this respect. (shrink)

We are conscious beings who think, understand, feel and perceive. We are also material beings composed out of ordinary material stuff. Determining the precise connections between the psychological and the material remains problematic. The harmonia theory is one of the first attempts to frame this as a problem about composite objects. The theory itself is simple: the soul is the harmonia of the material parts of the body. But what a harmonia is and what the theory amounts to are matters (...) of much dispute. I argue that a harmonia is best understood as the structure of the body's material parts. Plato introduces the theory in the Phaedo, and Aristotle mentions it in On the Soul. In both instances it is roundly criticized. Given that Plato thinks the soul is independent of the body, it is not surprising that he rejects the harmonia theory. However, he has been described as "extraordinarily obtuse" for arguing against the view, since doing so seems to undermine his arguments for a tripartite soul. Aristotle's rejection has been thought equally perplexing, since his own positive view looks very much like a version of the harmonia theory. Looking closely at the harmonia theory helps clarify persistent misunderstandings of the view and the reasons Plato and Aristotle reject it. This avenue offers insight into Plato's and Aristotle's positive theories about the soul and its relation to matter. In addition, their rejections of the theory shed light on how they understand the relation between parts and wholes. The problems lying behind the ancient debate about the harmonia theory are not just historically significant, but also resonate with contemporary discussions about material composition and the metaphysics of mind. Plato articulates a version of the harmonia theory which is perhaps the first expression of a supervenience thesis about the mental, but the precise sort of supervenience at issue hasn't been well understood. But most importantly, whether wholes and souls are causally relevant and whether conscious beings are mereologically simple are issues at the heart of the debate, both ancient and modern. (shrink)

The thesis presents two reflections on what it might mean to read Wallace Stevens philosophically. The first section argues that we would be better off avoiding the search for a supreme fiction in Stevens' poetry. By the poet's own standards, he never succeeded in creating one. The second section attempts to justify the abandonment of the search for the supreme fiction by suggesting another, perhaps more productive way in which Stevens' poetry might be philosophically read. In particular, it will be (...) argued that what Helen Vendler calls Stevens' "qualified assertions" can be seen as a potent technique for the avoidance of philosophical dogmatism. (shrink)

From the video archives of the Cornell Law School Heritage Project. The interviewer is Alfred C. Aman ; the videographer, Thomas R. Bruce. This video covers Elbert Tuttle's reflections the end of his military service and the effect of his years in the military on his professional career, as well as a summary of his judicial philosophy. The initial phase of this project was sponsored by a generous grant from the law firm of Sutherland Asbill and Brennan LLP.

From the video archives of the Cornell Law School Heritage Project. The interviewer is Alfred C. Aman ; the videographer, Thomas R. Bruce. This video covers covers Elbert Tuttle's impressions of Andrew D. White, his views on preparation for law study, and the origins of Tuttle's approach to civil rights. The initial phase of this project was sponsored by a generous grant from the law firm of Sutherland Asbill and Brennan LLP.

This dissertation explores the ideas and philosophies of government administrators that animated a deliberative democracy effort which took place in rural communities in the 1930s and 1940s under the auspices of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in partnership with the Cooperative Extension Service and land-grant universities. It is the construction of a narrative about civic professionals cultivating spaces for citizens to become informed and educated about public problems. This deliberative democracy effort was an extraordinary attempt to take seriously (...) the problem that people were not thought of as citizens and that there were implications when we failed to recognize them as such. This dissertation is based on a central question: how did government administrators function as civic professionals committed to helping people become informed and engaged citizens? This study is told as a prophetic narrative, emphasizing the thoughts and ideas of those who brought these efforts to life. As a historical study, this dissertation explores the development of institutions such as landgrant universities, Cooperative Extension, and the USDA. It also focuses on the ideas and actions of key leaders, such as M. L. Wilson, Henry A. Wallace, and Carl F. Taeusch, who brought farmer discussion groups and Schools of Philosophy for Extension Workers to life. It concludes with lessons for today's scholars and practitioners of the university engagement and the civic renewal movements. (shrink)

The topic of study of Human-Computer Interaction is constantly changing as people develop new uses for new technologies. In this thesis I present three contributions to the field of HCI that address these ongoing changes. These contributions are around the themes of epistemology, experience, and evaluation. I begin by importing from the field of Science & Technology Studies the notions of epistemology and comparative epistemology . STS researchers work from an intellectual position outside their field of study; I propose "epistemological (...) reflection" as a way for HCI researchers to engage with questions of knowledge and validation while remaining within the field. I argue that epistemological orientations have impact throughout the research process, and that HCI currently lacks the vocabulary to discuss intellectual clashes on an epistemological level. My second contribution is a study of the term "experience" in HCI, a discussion of its meanings in the field, and the identification of an emerging sub-field I call experience-focused HCI. Experience-focused HCI aims to design for the multiple, complex and situated experiences people have with technologies. This is not simply a shift from researching "tasks" to researching "experiences". Rather, it treats experiences as situated interactions formed in the course of a specific interaction, and recognizes any representation of an experience is inherently incomplete. Experience-focused HCI also implies engagement with themes of affect, aesthetics, the body, human practices, and the role of the artifact in knowledge production throughout an open-ended research process. My third contribution is a set of methods for the evaluation of experience-focused HCI, based on a discussion of the epistemological foundations of evaluation: a successful evaluation not only validates the technology in question but also the topic of study and methods used to study it. Due to the open-ended nature of experiences, evaluation must shift from defining a priori metrics which can then be tested in laboratory situations to developing situated metrics through user experiences "on the ground". (shrink)