The End of Art: A Hegelian Conception of the Postmodern Paradigm

This essay will use the Hegelian understanding of dialectical history as a model for the history of art. Through this model it will be shown that postmodern art is the actualization of artistic freedom whereby greater artistic autonomy has enabled artists to conceptualize, philosophize and theorize about the world around them to a much greater extent than at any other point in history. The result of this artistic autonomy is that art has now taken on a dual identity of both art and philosophy. Consequently, art, as it is historically known, is a thing of the past

Why Explaining Religion Is Not Sufficient to Explain Away Religion: An argumentative exploration of the leading evolutionary explanatory accounts of religion to demonstrate the inability of science to explain away religious belief

While science continues to make significant progressive strides, religion has yet to add to its historically established doctrines. Not only has the rapid expansion of science brought into question the validity and necessity of religion, part of scientific inquiry now focuses on how ‘counterintuitive’ notions of religion came to be. ‘Counterintuitive’ ideas of religion posit religious beliefs to go against or violate empirically verified facts or knowledge. Some argue that we can utilize the knowledge attained from advancements in science to explain away religion. One particular aspect of science that is used to explain away religion are evolutionary theories. In this paper, I will argue that while evolutionary accounts can explain our affinity towards religion, it has yet to explain away religion. I will explicate and refute the three different argument for evolutionary accounts of religion, including the socio-evolutionary, bio-evolutionary and cultural-evolutionary, to demonstrate how science has not succeeded in explaining away religion

Reverse Engineering the Anthropocene: Can Human Consciousness Change Reality?

A greater awareness of the Anthropocene brings to the surface critical questions about the nature of human reality or, more specifically, the role human consciousness plays in the formation of the physical world, its construction, functionality, and interactivity. This paper uses a dialogical correlation of Aristotle, Max Planck and Dean Radin in order to first, formulate parameters of reality formation and the active role of consciousness as part of this process; and, second, consider the possibility that humanity’s consciousness can be trained to effect deliberate change in the material world. This paper argues that one of the ways to understand the Anthropocene is through the idea that reality is “running away” from us because we are not aware of the role our consciousness plays in the process of reality formation.&nbsp

MEMETIC INTENTION AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR AGENCY

The mind-body dilemma has historically been one of the more pernicious problems plaguing philosophers’ intent on solidifying the mind as a construct for empirical inquiry. Thomas Nagel so aptly stated, “Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable.”1 The areas of focus in mind research that deal with the essential foundations of consciousness, like our sense of agency, often find themselves mired in conceptual elements; they are unable to produce lasting, universal, operational definitions because the mind-body problem frames the issue as unwaveringly abstract from its inception. While certainly ambitious, my hope is that my endeavours here may be useful in framing a dialogue about elements of consciousness in a familiar, scientific framework that help to, at minimum, narrow the impact of the mind-body problem on the study of consciousness. In order to accomplish this, I will first attempt to tether pre-existing filaments to create a workable analogy between evolutionary biology and the study of the mind. With such a paradigm established, I will then elaborate on the idea of the meme as being analogous to the gene by introducing the concept of memetic alleles. I will then attempt to demonstrate how this type of bottom-up approach can be useful by demonstrating its applicability to the thorny philosophical realm of intention. Finally, I will attempt to show how this can formulate the necessary infrastructure to bring seemingly unfalsifiable arguments like the hard problem of consciousness within the realm of scientific exploration. This inquiry will by no means be exhaustive, but will act as an initial step in the direction of creating falsifiable parameters in areas previously thought to hold little room for systematization

You Ought To Know Better: Acknowledgement and Epistemic Injustice

I would like today to talk about the connection between testimony and social experience, about how the ways one speaks and, moreover, is heard may affect the way in which one may negotiate his or her experience. I would like to see how a discussion regarding the relationships between identities, social groups, prejudices, and knowledge claims may lead to a greater understanding of how who ‘we’ (in a specific socially stratified sense) are may affect what ‘we’ (in both general and specific senses) can know. Examining the relationships between attempts at speaking and being understood, attempts at understanding one’s experience, attempts at negotiating one’s social identity, and attempts at knowing about the world, all with an aim towards virtuous action, will, I hope, provide a space to speak toward both how the ways in which situated individuals attempt to know and how such individuals are situated in society may influence what can be known by both the individuals involved and society at large. Beyond an aim for greater lucidity regarding these relationships, I hope to further suggest ways in which individuals and societies can come to ‘know better’. Such a phrase suggests both a moral and epistemic reading; one may come to normatively ‘know better’ than to consciously participate in epistemically unjust practices (practices that emerge from social prejudices often based upon gender or race), and, as a consequence, both individuals and societies will have an opportunity for a claim on greater, or ‘better’, knowledge

What Would a BIV Do Differently? A Pragmatist Defense of Contextualist Fallibilism

In “Solving the Skeptical Problem”, Keith DeRose offers a contextualist response to a possible formulation of the skeptical hypothesis about knowledge. I will here outline his position in order to demonstrate the potential in the contextualist approach to effectively solve the skeptical puzzle. I will, however, go on to argue that the contextualist response as formulated by DeRose falls short of achieving its persistently elusive goal. In this, I will follow David Lewis, in “Elusive Knowledge”, in order to explain how the type of contextualist solution offered by DeRose is inherently self-defeating. I will then suggest the introduction of a pragmatist understanding of knowledge into the contextualist picture. Shifting towards fallibilism, I will argue that in light of pragmatist considerations, the skeptical puzzle loses much, if not all, of its threatening significance

Public Apologies: A Combined Perspective

Discourses on differing conceptions of justice frequently presuppose that retributive justice and restorative justice are mutually exclusive in their applicability. Given this divide, it is not surprising that there is considerable debate concerning the conception of justice that obtains in a successful public apology. This paper defends the position that, as it relates to a public apology, one specific understanding of restorative justice — namely, Elizabeth Kiss’s — and another specific understanding of retributive justice — namely, Jean Hampton’s — can actually obtain together in a single act. As a paradigm case for such an apology, this paper will consider Willy Brandt’s Kniefall