Professor Of Philosophy Research Articles

Is a College Professor Capable of Being A Psychopath? A Character Study from the Campus Novel Black Star

Literature reflects society. People study literature to better comprehend their own and other people's experiences. People in all civilizations interact with one another, and as a result, bonds form. Education makes a person more civilized. Campus life is considered as the most flamboyant days of a person. In Canada Undergraduate degree or Bachelor’s Degree requires 3 to 5 years of study. Canada has some of the prestigious universities. When speaking about campus fiction the most customary or habitual way we analyze the same is how campus life is reciprocating student life and vice versa. At the same time campus novels do give a focus on the life of lecturers and faculties but it’s much fewer. In the novel Black Star by Maureen Medwed interestingly portrays a female philosophy professor named Del Hanks. Studies has been conducted based on Canadian Fiction but there is a lack of study on the 21st century academic fiction that too written by a female author. In the novel Black Star, the central character is female professor her hardships and difficult phases are been described with the inner lining application of trauma. But interestingly nowhere in the novel the word trauma is been used.

Ο Ιάκωβος Αργείος (ca 1660-1736) στην Πατριαρχική Σχολή

Iakovos Argeios (ca 1660-1736) at the Patriarchal Academy of Constantinople. New evidence and answers for an old riddle
 Research into the history of the Patriarchal Academy at the beginning of the 18th century has been primarily based on the works of Manuel Gedeon and Tasos Gritsopoulos. These two historians have recorded and reconstructed all the testimonies and information they had gathered about the operation of the Academy. However, the sources at their disposal were extremely scarce for this period in terms of teachers, such as Iakovos Argeios (1660-1736), on whom the present study focuses, and their teaching activities at the School. The aim of this article is to present the new data which emerged from the identification and study of unknown manuscripts as well as from the study of the scholar’s personal correspondence. These facts militate against Tasos Gritsopoulos’ dominant view that Iakovos was exclusively a home teacher of the Mavrokordatos’family and that his teaching career at the Patriarchal Academy was limited in time (i.e. confined in the years 1707-1715).In this study I examine and reconstruct all the existing testimonies and evidence that I found on the life and work of Iakovos Argeios, “the supreme of the Great Church philosophers”. Through these new data it becomes possible to study and trace the career of Iakovos Argeios at the Patriarchal Academy from the mid-1680s until his death (1736). Iakovos was initially a student in the philosophy course of the Academy (1684), when Antonios Spantones was a professor of philosophy. He completed his studies around 1686/87 and he attracted the interest of his teachers and of the Grand Dragoman Alexandros Mavrokordatos. He subsequently served as tutor to the Mavrokordatos’ family (since the beginning of the 1690s) for at least 20-25 years, while almost at the same time he was appointed professor of rhetoric at the Academy. As a prominent professor he delivered two encomiastic addresses to the Ecumenical Patriarchs Kallinikos II (1698) and Gabriel II (1703).Then, probably in 1702, he was appointed Academy’s headmaster and professor of philosophy. He taught rhetoric theory and practise and Aristotelian philosophy from the textbooks of Theophilos Korydalleus, as evidenced by the manuscripts of his students presented in this article, mainly Antonios Byzantios, Nikolaos Kritias and Azarias Tzigalas: Physics, Logic, On the Soul, On generation and corruption. He also received from the Patriarchate the highly-esteemed office of the “supreme of thephilosophers” (around 1707-1709), through Mavrokordatos’ intervention, as a recognition of his philosophical expertise. He retained this title and remained head of the Academy until the end of his life. From his letters we know that Iakovos was present in Methodios Anthrakites’ conviction (1723). He supported in deeds and words the efforts of Silvestros, the Patriarch of Antioch, to establish a Greek and Christian seminary in Aleppo (1724-1726). Unfortunately, the last years of his life were painful due to health problems and the ingratitude of his old friends. Iakovos found solace only in teaching at the Academy and in correspondence with his dear friends and old students, such as Makarios Kalogeras, who had founded a school on the island of Patmos. For the teachers and students of the School of Patmos, Iakovos was their mentor and spiritual guide. In conclusion, Iakovos Argeios had an important influence on the course of the Patriarchal Academy with his long lasting and constant teaching activity. In his time the Patriarchal Academy became a true “Faculty of Philosophy”.

Historiography: Why Should Historians Pay More Attention to Philosophy of Technology?

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Technology marks the maturity of the philosophy of technology, which has lagged behind the history of technology as a distinct field. The book's thirty-two chapters span almost seven hundred pages, written by thirty-four authors from twelve countries. Shannon Vallor, professor of philosophy at University of Edinburgh, edited the volume and wrote its excellent introduction, which provides a historical framing that is largely absent from the rest of the volume. Although many of the remaining chapters are quite strong, the volume as a whole suffers from an unevenness that reflects the conceptual disunity of the field. Nevertheless, the volume shows the value of this field for historians of technology, especially as an alternative to the stale STS theories that many historians of technology draw on.

Alternative Domiciles for the Domestic Posthuman

AbstractWhat are the most appropriate domestic notions, designs and surroundings for posthumans to flourish throughout the different phases of their life? Colbey Reid, Professor and Chair of Fashion Studies at Columbia College Chicago, and Dennis Weiss, Professor of Philosophy at York College of Pennsylvania, explore these terrains and posit some speculative futures that steer away from the sterile Modernist minimalism often portrayed as the contemporary aesthetics of the smart home, towards a more diverse, expressive and expansive collective of visual and haptic interfaces and social interactions – between posthumans, their contextual machinic ecologies and their communities.

Untimely Proposals for Philosophical Studies of Go

There is no royal road to philosophy. Thanks to Go, however, I have come to be a happy retired professor of philosophy. Go not only led me to the Socratic tradition of knowing nothing but my ignorance but also provided me with ample sources of inspiration for my philosophical journey. As a consequence, I have more difficult questions than ever. Since there is no hope for me to find answers to them shortly, I would like to present proposals to tackle them with all members of the International Society of Go Studies.

Trajetórias formativas em cena: razões da docência em filosofia à docência em filosofia da educação

ABSTRACT This article analyzes aspects of the motivation of teacher trainers who teach philosophy of education in pedagogy programs. The empirical research field is formed by the pedagogy programs at two public universities, chosen because of their tradition in this program, i.e., one since 1939, and the other since 1984. The study was based on the content analysis of accounts in form of interviews with eight professors of philosophy of education. The analyses were developed around four main interpretive topics: the choice for teaching; from teaching philosophy to teaching philosophy of education: between freedom and imposition; being a teacher trainer of philosophy of education. The findings indicate that respondents chose philosophy: i. by vocation; ii. by a motivation from both within and outside the schooling process; iii. through the mediation of a teacher.

A Philosophical Theologian’s Review Essay on Judith Butler’s Who’s Afraid of Gender?

Judith Butler’s work relates directly to science and religion concerns. Scientific questions regarding the nature of male and female sex, and the relation of biological sex to Butler’s conception of gender are important concerns in her work. Butler also has an abiding disdain for traditional Christian anthropology with its binary heteronormative sexual ethics. Conservative Christian religion is thus seen by Butler as a moral and political enemy of progressive humanity and reason. For these two reasons, as well as the fact that Butler has had an enormous impact on contemporary culture and law through her gender studies work, it is important that Christians who are interested in science and in the cultural and political currents of our times, understand her work. People who do not usually read postmodern gender theory will find the terrain demanding. Indeed, Butler’s writing is difficult even for professional philosophers to decipher. However, her 2024 book—Who’s Afraid of Gender—is remarkably accessible. Considering the importance to science, religion, and contemporary culture that these matters are, and considering that this is an unusually accessible text by Butler, I here offer a philosophically engaged and theologically critical review essay of Butler’s latest book.

Oxford mathematics at a low ebb? An 1855 dispute over examination results

ABSTRACT Between December 1855 and March 1856, a public dispute raged, in British national newspapers and locally published pamphlets, between two teachers at the University of Oxford: the mathematical lecturer Francis Ashpitel and Bartholomew Price, the professor of natural philosophy. The starting point for these exchanges was the particularly poor results that had come out of the final mathematics examinations in Oxford that December. Ashpitel, as one of the examiners, stood accused of setting questions that were too difficult for the ordinary student, with the consequence that, in Price’s view, further mathematical study in Oxford – never as robust as in Cambridge – would be discouraged. We examine this short-lived affair, and use it not only to gain insight into the status of mathematical study in Oxford in the mid-nineteenth century, but also to point towards the increasing importance of competitive examinations in British public life at that time.

Atomism and Cartesianism: Gassendi and Gorlaeus (and More) in Utrecht Disputations in the 1650s

Abstract In the 1650s, two professors of philosophy at the University of Utrecht defended atomism. Interestingly, one of them, Johannes de Bruyn, is considered to be a staunch Cartesian, while the other, Daniel Voet, was a neo-Aristotelian and strongly opposed to Descartes’s philosophy. This article examines this curious situation and analyses the theories of both professors. While converging with Gassendi on several crucial points, their theories relied mainly on other sources. Since De Bruyn’s atomistic view has never been studied before, the main part of the article is devoted to him and his sources. Surprisingly, it turns out that David Gorlaeus was a source of inspiration for De Bruyn’s development of a new type of Cartesianism.

PAUL LEUCKFELD (1859–1930) AND THE INDUCTIVE PHILOSOPHY OF WILLIAM WHEWELL (1794–1866)

This article presents a little-studied issue of critical analysis of the main provisions of the inductive philosophy of the English thinker William Whewell (1794–1866) within the framework of university philosophy, in particular in the publications of the famous Kharkiv professor Pavlo Emilievych Leuckfeld (1859–1930). In this context, the main stages of Pavlo (Paul) Leuckfeld's creative and scientific path are indicated at the beginning, in particular his studies at the 2nd Kharkiv Gymnasium (1871–1878) and at the Faculty of History and Philology of Kharkiv University (1878–1883). Further, attention is focused on his teaching activities at Kharkiv University (1884–1918), in particular on his fellowship since 1884, teaching the history of philosophy and logic as a private docent (since 1886), extraordinary professor (since 1893) and ordinary professor of philosophy (since 1899). His participation in international philosophical and psychological congresses, in particular in Munich (1896), Geneva (1904), Heidelberg (1908), and the peculiarities of his scientific fellowship at the University of Graz (Austria) with the authoritative professor Alexius Meinong are also indicated. In addition, attention is paid to the main features of Pavlo Leuckfeld's teaching and publications during his “Simferopol (Crimean) period”, when he was a professor of philosophy and psychology there. Pavlo Leuckfeld's publications were devoted to three main areas: 1) logic and the history of logic, 2) psychology and pedagogy, and 3) the history of philosophy. Among the publications of the first direction, two of his monographs were of great importance: “Various Trends in Logic and the Main Tasks of this Science” (1890) and “Logical Doctrine of Induction in the Main Historical Moments of Its Development” (1896). In these works, he analyzed the relevant positions of famous ancient and English philosophers (Aristotle, Francis Bacon, John Herschel, and John Stuart Mill). An important place in his analysis is occupied by the critical interpretation of the inductive philosophy of William Whewell, presented in particular in the third edition of the three-volume work “History of the Inductive Sciences, from the Earliest to the Present Time” (1857). In this sense, the features of this work of the English philosopher were first pointed out, and then the main theses of Paul Leuckfeld in presenting his understanding of the position of William Whewell.

Standing Firm in the Flux: On Whitehead's Eternal Objects

Abstract Alfred North Whitehead's first book as a professor of philosophy at Harvard University, Science and the Modern World, is not only a historical treatment of the rise and fall of scientific materialism. It also marks his turn to metaphysics in search of an alternative cosmological scheme that would replace matter in motion with organic process as that which is generic in Nature. Among the metaphysical innovations introduced in this book are the somewhat enigmatic “eternal objects.” The publication of the first and second volumes of Whitehead's Harvard Lectures on the philosophical presuppositions (HL1) and general metaphysical problems (HL2) of science provides students of his corpus with an opportunity to catch the thinker in the act of creating his concepts. In searching through student notes for glimpses of what Whitehead really meant, I have kept in mind his admonition that “no thinker thinks twice” (PR 29). Whitehead never ceased philosophizing, and surely he intended for us to continue thinking with but beyond the letter of his ideas. In this spirit and in light of HL1 and HL2, this article seeks to elucidate the role of eternal objects as a category of existence in Whitehead's Philosophy of Organism, with the goal not simply of textual exegesis, but of showing how the meaning of the fifth category of existence (as he refers to eternal objects in PR) is exemplified in the gradual ingression of the idea in Whitehead's imagination. My aim is to sustain the effort at constructive thought he began, making his speculative hypothesis as explicit as possible so as to better prepare it for critical improvement (PR xiv).

Reapprendre à voir: Images, Symptoms and the Media of Appearance

Emmanuel Alloa interviewed by Benediktas Vachninas Emmanuel Alloa, Professor of Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art at the University of Fribourg, is one of the most active contemporary thinkers in the field of new visual studies. His areas of research include aesthetics, phenomenology, theories of image, theories of media, and the French philosophy. Professor Alloa has authored and (co)edited numerous books, of which, the most important ones are Looking through Images. A Phenomenology of Visual Media (Columbia University Press, 2021), Dynamis of the Image. Moving Images in a Global World (De Gruyter, 2020), Partages de la perspective (Fayard, 2020), Resistance of the Sensible World: An Introduction to Merleau-Ponty (Fordham University Press, 2017). He is the recipient of the Latsis Prize 2016 and the Aby Warburg Prize 2019 and currently serves as President of the German Society of Aesthetics.In 2021, Professor Alloa gave an online cycle of lectures titled Orbis Pictus. A Media Phenomenology in an Image World at Vilnius University. This year, I had the pleasure to hold an online conversation with Professor Alloa as he kindly agreed to discuss the topic of images and his project of symptomatology. The interview encompassed questions about the relation of an image with the image theories, the differences between the symptomatological approach to images and the visual semiotics, Derrida’s contribution to the problem of mediality, and the role of images in the philosophy today.This interview was taken on the 20th of June, 2023

Between What Was and What Will Be: Big History Insights from the Philippines

Being a Philosophy professor for eighteen years and then a Big History professor for three, I fell in love with Philosophy long before I fell in love with Big History. But, similar to St. Augustine’s attribution of his relationship with God, I also say: ‘Late have I loved thee, beauty so ancient yet so new.’ This exciting love affair with Philosophy and Big History is a marriage that came along and brought forth many splendid realizations. It introduced a dimension that existed from the very start but was never really pondered upon nor ventured into simply because they were never seen as part of a coherent whole. I used to be intimidated with numbers and chemistry but, suddenly took a different liking, once I was re-introduced to them in a big-history way.

The influence of philosophical training on the evaluation of philosophical cases: a controlled longitudinal study

According to the expertise defense, practitioners of the method of cases need not worry about findings that ordinary people’s philosophical intuitions depend on epistemically irrelevant factors. This is because, honed by years of training, the intuitions of professional philosophers likely surpass those of the folk. To investigate this, we conducted a controlled longitudinal study of a broad range of intuitions in undergraduate students of philosophy (n = 226), whose case judgments we sampled after each semester throughout their studies. Under the assumption, made by proponents of the expertise defense, that formal training in philosophy gives rise to the kind of expertise that accounts for changes in the students’ responses to philosophically puzzling cases, our data suggest that the acquired cognitive skills only affect single case judgments at a time. There does not seem to exist either a general expertise that informs case judgments in all areas of philosophy, or an expertise specific to particular subfields. In fact, we argue that available evidence, including the results of cross-sectional research, is best explained in terms of differences in adopted beliefs about specific cases, rather than acquired cognitive skills. We also investigated whether individuals who choose to study philosophy have atypical intuitions compared to the general population and whether students whose intuitions are at odds with textbook consensus are more likely than others to drop out of the philosophy program.

Curiosity, power and narrative practice

What are some of the dominant and alternative stories of curiosity? How do we wield it and to what effect? What does it mean to attend to the politics of curiosity in our lives and work and to acknowledge it as a collective practice and social force that can colonise, normalise and divide us and disrupt, liberate and connect us? Zan Maeder interviews Perry Zurn, Provost Associate Professor of Philosophy at American University and author of Curiosity and power: The politics of inquiry (2021) about work tracing histories of curiosity in philosophy and political theory and co creating (with many other transgressors, past and present) possibilities for ethical and liberatory curiosity praxis.

What's the Deal with Sophists? Critical Thought and Humor in Ancient Philosophy and Contemporary Comedy

Abstract While committed to the argumentative and reasoned discourse recognizable in the work of contemporary professional philosophers, the actual practice that both Socrates and Diogenes routinely engaged in was in many ways more similar to stand-up and other forms of contemporary performative comedy. This paper analyzes the commonalities between Socrates’s and Diogenes's public philosophizing in Ancient Greece and performative comedy in the contemporary world, and emphasizes the subversive rhetorical efficiency and skeptical significance of public irony for their audiences. The paper begins by exploring the ways in which ancient philosophers relied on irony and humor to promote skepticism and critical thinking, analyzes contemporary comic performances that seem similar, and concludes with reflections on the varieties of philosophical activity and experience.

John Frank Allen. 6 May 1908—22 April 2001

John Frank (Jack) Allen was a Canadian-born pioneer of low temperature physics. With his graduate student, Don Misener, he discovered the phenomenon of superfluidity on passing HeII through very narrow glass capillaries. Simultaneously, and independently, the phenomenon was discovered by Piotr Kapitza FRS in the Soviet Union. Jack's most famous discovery in 1938 was the fountain effect in liquid HeII, a further manifestation of the role of superfluidity at very low temperatures. The Nobel Prize for the discovery of superfluidity was awarded to Kapitza in 1978. Jack invented the O-ring as a reliable vacuum seal and, in 1947, followed this by the indium-ring cryogenic seal. In 1958, with John Bardeen (ForMemRS 1973) and Jan de Boer, he initiated a project that saved three million cubic feet of helium gas from being lost to the world. After running the Mond Laboratory in the Cavendish Laboratory from the late 1930s, in 1947 he was appointed professor of natural philosophy at St Andrews University, where he led the construction of a new physics building and built up an internationally respected department. He campaigned for student representation, and was well known for his physics demonstrations. In later life, he carried out a programme to erect plaques to Nevil Maskelyne FRS, who measured the gravitational constant G , and to celebrate the achievements of St Andrews luminaries.

Emergence in Context: A Treatise in Twenty-First Century Natural Philosophy

Emergence in Context: A Treatise in Twenty-First Century Natural Philosophy

Productive Decontextualization

Abstract Anthropologists are often averse to the decontextualized approaches of moral and other forms of philosophy, arguing that they lack the thickness required to think well and carefully about issues of import. Based on fieldwork with a group of people who meet regularly in pubs to do philosophy, this article argues that decontextualization and abstraction can be useful in attempts to think well about big questions with others, but for oneself. Pub philosophers attempt in their weekly conversations to balance an attention to positioned knowledge with an effort to arrive at general ways of thinking about something. It is not only professional academics and philosophers who value thinking for its own sake, and not in order to find resolutions or conclusions to tricky questions.

Navigating Faith and Science

Navigating Faith and Science