Ph.D. - Philosophy

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Towards a new theory of knowing by imagining
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2025) Nicolay, Ian Elliott; Chakrabarti, Arindam; Philosophy
This dissertation aims to develop a nuanced understanding the relationship between knowledge, imagination, and action in the light of some classical Indian, modern European, and more recent Euro-American sources on these subjects. The narrow thesis is that imagination is a distinct and indispensable source of knowledge—on a par with perceptual experience and rational inference—because it is our sole means of finding out, for the first time, that a novel future action is possible for a particular agent in that agent’s concrete circumstances. The introductory chapter aims to familiarize the reader with the central problematic: the problem of explaining how imagination could ever lead to knowledge. Chapter Two is an exploratory survey of some historical views on the nature of imagination. The result is what I label the “transfigurative conception of imagination” as the power to “present the absent” by actively restructuring the elements of present experience. Chapter Three then reviews some presuppositions of mainstream epistemology which give rise to the “Puzzle of Imaginative Use,” a current formulation of the central problematic. After proposing a principled objection to all extant solutions to the Puzzle, the chapter ends by adducing some philosophical precedent for the view I aim to advance in later chapters. Chapter Four begins to develop that view by sketching an enactivist account of imagination as a source of modal knowledge. Chapter Five applies this account to the domain of practical modal knowledge, the awareness of possibility and necessity that guides our day-to-day activities. Chapter Six then attempts to find, or where necessary, to create some theoretical elbow-room in which to formulate an alternative account of the epistemic value of imagining. The concluding chapter consolidates the results of the entire discussion and indicates some promising directions for future research.
Thinking Like Dao: Environmental Virtue Ethics in Daoism
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2024) Peng, Chih-Wei; Perkins, Franklin; Philosophy
Western environmental philosophers who have turned to Chinese philosophy for inspiration, as well as sinologists concerned with the natural environment, often contend that Daoism can offer valuable environmental insights that may be absent or overlooked in the Western philosophical tradition. However, despite this recognition, broadly speaking, there are two significant limitations in the current academic research on this subject. One issue is the lack of detailed discussion on the nature of Daoist ethics. The other is the narrow focus on only the Laozi (老子) and the Zhuangzi (莊子), with almost no consideration given to the Huainanzi’s (淮南子) potential contribution to environmental discourse. To address these shortcomings, this dissertation aims to establish that Daoist ethics can be understood as a form of environmental virtue ethics, grounded in the Laozi and the Zhuangzi, and supplemented by the Huainanzi. Specifically, the central argument is that the Daoist key concept of wuwei (無為 non-action) can be interpreted as a moral virtue and, furthermore, as an environmental virtue—either as a virtue of environmental stewardship or as a virtue of communion with nature. The ultimate objectives of cultivating wuwei, along with other Daoist environmental virtues—including care (慈 ci), courage (勇 yong), frugality (儉 jian), not-contending (不爭 buzheng), and simplicity (樸 pu)—are to help natural entities return to their state of ziran (自然 self-so-ness) and to assist virtuous individuals in achieving xiaoyaoyou (逍遙遊 carefree wandering) with nature.
ALTERNATIVE TALK OF THE INDEFINITE: A CROSS-CULTURAL EXAMINATION OF EPISTEMIC AND SEMANTIC PROBLEMS IN THE METAPHYSICS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2024) Irwin-Herzog, Emma Jeanne; Chakrabarti, Arindam; Philosophy
This dissertation examines the linguistic nature of metaphysical theorizing about consciousness. Phenomenal consciousness is typically characterized in terms of the subjective character of experience (Nagel 1974). But the conventional reference of the term encompasses the brute fact of phenomenal character (phenomenality for short), which, unlike subjective experience, is neither attached to a point of view nor outside the realm of objective facts par excellance (Ibid). Utilizing classical nondualist Vedānta, I show that phenomenality invariantly pervades all subjective and objective phenomena, including all linguistic phenomena. I argue that we would need to express determinate knowledge of phenomenality to express determinate knowledge of phenomenal consciousness, but would face a powerful dilemma in trying to do so. On the one hand, because it cannot be differentiated from language, phenomenality cannot be tracked as a referent by our determinative linguistic utterances; it is inexpressible in this sense. On the other hand, for the same reason, it also cannot be coherently extended in concept by any utterance expressing its inexpressibility. To untangle this impasse, I engage the Jaina theory of sevenfold modal description (syād-vāda) and the Neo-Vedāntic concept of alternation to demonstrate the semantic functionality of a description of phenomenality consisting in an unconstrained series of qualified determinative linguistic utterances. Then, engaging the Pratyabhijñā Śaiva tradition and the Bhagavad Gītā, I argue that such a dynamic description would embody a distinctive species of knowledge by acquaintance with its ‘referent’ and an intersubjectively accessible variant of release (Mokṣa) from the existential anxiety of seeking absolutist knowledge. I argue systematically for these theses and, along the way, offer a reading of several schools in the Indian philosophical tradition which foregrounds their consensus on our inability to linguistically capture that luminosity which pervades all things and what it is like to know it.
The Worlds of Wang Guowei: A Philosophical Case Study of Coloniality
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2024) Dufresne, Michael; Perkins, Franklin; Philosophy
The Qing dynasty scholar Wang Guowei 王國維 (1877–1927) has received little recognition in the English-speaking world, and even less in the philosophical community. Raised to be a Ruist (or Confucian) scholar official, he gave up this path to pursue the study of the “new learning” (xīnxué 新學) from the West and became enamored with German aesthetic philosophy, especially the works of Kant, Schiller, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. However, by the start of the modern Republic period in China, Wang had denounced all his previous research interests and dedicated himself to “old learning” (jiùxué 舊學), fearing for the future of China’s traditions and cultures. Taking Wang Guowei as a case study, my dissertation functions as an exercise in decolonial philosophy, highlighting the impacts of coloniality on his thinking while attempting to revitalize his theories from the perspective of decoloniality. The Introduction sets up this case study by clarifying the points laid out in the title: Who is Wang Guowei, what is coloniality, and why is this case study “philosophical?” To begin, it details the specifics of Wang’s life and explaining his approach to comparative thinking, which became a target of criticism for later Chinese thinkers, including Qian Zhongshu. Next, it offers an overview of the concept of coloniality, referring to thinkers such as Aníbal Quijano, Maria Lugones, Walter Mignolo and Nelson Maldonado-Torres. From this point, this chapter moves into the literature on colonialism in China, emphasizing Anne Reinhart’s understanding of China’s situation as one of “semi-colonialism.” To end, it briefly outlines the earliest and latest periods of Wang’s life, in order to bookend my own discussion, which focuses on the period after he became invested in new learning and before he abandoned it for old learning. Part I centers on Wang’s philosophical essays, all of which were published in the journal Education World between 1903 and 1908. Chapter 1 focuses on Wang’s earliest writings on “philosophy” (zhéxué 哲學), wherein he aims to properly introduce this imported discipline to his peers and make them aware of its value. Chapter 2 concentrates on the earliest of Wang’s major philosophical influences: Kant and Schopenhauer. Although Wang was attracted to Kant’s demarcation of the limits of reason, he could not accept his reimagining of the demands of reason as regulative principles. And while he sympathized with Schopenhauer’s criticisms of Kantian philosophy, he eventually came to regard metaphysical pessimism and the will to life as flawed theories. Chapter 3 deals with the two thinkers who shaped Wang’s views the most in his later philosophical essays: Nietzsche and Schiller. After rejecting Schopenhauer’s metaphysics, Wang came under the influence of Nietzsche and adopted a psychophysiological worldview. However, even though he accepted Nietzsche’s conception of the will to power, he could not accept Nietzsche’s view of overcoming. For Wang, consolation is all we can hope for in this life, and the best means to attain it is through the creation and appreciation of art, which prompts him to look to Schiller and his doctrine of aesthetic education. Part II revolves around Wang’s mature aesthetic writings, specifically his Remarks on Lyrics in the Human World (1908–1909), a work in the “remarks on lyrics” (cíhuà 詞話) genre of literary criticism, which he published just before the Qing dynasty fell in 1911. Under the influence of decoloniality, Chapter 4 examines this work through the lens of praxis, highlighting the specifics of the traditional “remarks on lyrics” genre. After discussing the unique praxical features of this work, Chapter 5 analyzes it through the lens of theory, discussing its most significant ideas, such as its reimagining of the beautiful and the sublime, and the concept of “poetic worlds” (jìngjiè 境界). The Conclusion examines everything discussed in Chapters 1 through 5 from the perspective of coloniality. It begins by determining how, and to what extent, colonial modernity impacted Wang’s thinking, in terms of both theory and praxis. It then provides some ways in which Wang’s theories and practices can contribute to the development of intellectual “worlds otherwise.” Beyond this, it aims to demonstrate how investigating the scholarly endeavors of non-Western thinkers caught in confluence of tradition and modernity can give us glimpses of alternatives to our modern intellectual and ontological modalities, thereby furthering the movement of decoloniality.
Exploring Alternative Foundations: Xuanxue Philosophers' Quest for Social and Political Order Post-Han Dynasty Collapse
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2024) Yu, Ting Hsuan; Perkins, Franklin; Philosophy
This thesis explores the contributions of three key philosophers in xuanxue: Wang Bi 王弼 (226-249), Ji Kang 嵇康 (223-262), and Guo Xiang 郭象 (252?-312), focusing on their attempts to construct political and ethical order. The first chapter challenges the traditional interpretation of xuanxue as an interplay between Ruism and Daoism, pointing out its tendency to overlook the political and ethical dimensions of these philosophers. The subsequent three chapters are dedicated to analyzing the key arguments and focuses of Wang Bi, Ji Kang, and Guo Xiang. The concluding chapter aims to provide an integrated picture of these philosophers and address the philosophical problems encountered in their interpretations.
Living Death: Exhuming the Politics of Death and Remembrance in Arendt
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2023) Byrnes, Elijah Wilder; Ishida, Masato; Philosophy
Arendt is commonly read as (1) relegating death to the private, and (2) opposing natality—the political condition par excellence—to mortality. And yet, it is no exaggeration to say that, for Arendt, to protect the meaningfulness of death through meaning-generating death activities is to guard against genocide. Death, rather than being a- or even antipolitical, is uniquely connected to meaningfulness and thus of supreme political concern. By situating death in a holistic, phenomenological context, and reading Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) through this lens, we can see the clear connection between Arendt’s early concept of organized oblivion and her later organized remembrance. And, rather than a departure from the political in favor of the philosophical, we find instead an uninterrupted thread of concern for meaningfulness in death as a political safeguard against genocide throughout her corpus—even her ostensibly less political, late work.
The Concept of Ekstasis in the Modern Japanese Philosophy of Nishitani Keiji
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2023) Hoffman, Benjamin k.; Odin, Steve; Philosophy
This dissertation develops a philosophical reading of Nishitani Keiji’s 宗教とは何か (1961), translated as Religion and Nothingness (1982), by way of an analysis of ekstasis or ecstasy (脱自 / 脱体). The first aim of this project is to show that Nishitani’s notion of ekstasis bridges ‘existentialism’ and ‘mysticism.’ This bridge serves also as a place for dialogue between Christianity and Buddhism, tradition and modernity, and religion and science. The second aim is to develop, in the course of a discussion of ekstasis, a philosophical reading of Religion and Nothingness. Compared to other works by Kyoto School associated writers, such as Nishida and Watsuji, Nishitani’s book has been relatively neglected within English-language philosophy. This project aims to defend the philosophical significance of Religion and Nothingness and suggest paths for research.
The Epistemic Value Of Aestheticized Emotions: Wonder, Pathos And Comedy In Aesthetic Experience
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2021) Widdison, Lisa Michelle; Dalmiya, Vrinda; Philosophy
This dissertation sheds light on the virtue conducive role of aestheticized emotions for a theory of knowledge. It brings classical theories of emotion and Kantian reflective aesthetic judgment, on the one hand, and the Sanskrit aesthetic theory of rasa, on the other, into dialogue with contemporary analytic epistemology. In order to account for a ‘reflective-judgment’ in the aesthetic experience of emotion, our vocabulary must be expanded to include impersonal, and subjectively universal / communicable emotions, and we must theorize these “distanced emotions” realistically in terms of aesthetic judgments, rather than logical, moral, and private judgments. Reflectively contemplating, and recognizing rasa-s, refines an epistemic agent into a conscientious, truth-oriented, and more egoless questioner of the world. One of the most expansive text traditions in this philosophy of aestheticized emotions is the Sanskrit aesthetics of rasa, whose authors date from 200BCE to 1000CE. Connoisseur “rasikas” theorize at least eight possible aesthetically relishable emotion-tastes. This dissertation hybridizes Kant’s theory of reflective judgment, and rasa theory to form an ‘emotion-centric account’ of “reflective judgment.” Several points of contact between our two aesthetic theories demonstrate that the affectively reflective epistemic agent is poised to inquire well, but not for the sake of some further end. Mutual harmony between the faculties of ‘imagination and understanding’ leads to communicable judgments of apt tastes. By analyzing three instances of “aestheticized emotions,” this dissertation shows how the cognitive faculties of ‘imagination and understanding’ are critically engaged with intellectual virtues in rasa. The rasa experience is arguably a normative, yet transpersonal and aesthetically moving moment. Specific intellectual virtues of “aestheticized” wonder, pathos and comic sentiments emerge that are theoretically contrasted with the ordinary emotions of “wonder,” “compassion,” and “derisive humor.” Rasas are characteristically linked to traits--lingering, insight, and humbling critique--that guide the process of inquiry, where epistemic value is not confined to propositional knowledge. Virtuosity extends into acquiring an intellectual character conducive to: ‘wisdom,’ ‘insight,’ and ‘self-critique,’ which is crucially important for epistemology.
A Strange Indifference: The Metaphysics and Politics of Boredom
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2021) Underwood, Brandon Pierce; Perkins, Franklin; Philosophy
This monograph examines the genealogy of our modern conception of boredom, and attempts to critique its role in the modern educational institution. We begin with examining acedia and the moral connotations boredom inherited from the concept. We then turn to melancholia and explore the ways in which experiences of boredom began to be medicalized through a detailed taxonomy of causes. Next, we consider more recent ancestors of boredom - langweilig and ennui. In the case of the former, we discover the preoccupation with mechanical time and its role in our modern experiences of boredom. We also find a more secularized version of the moral disapproval first sighted in acedia. In the case of eunni, we see that modern boredom inherits a second sense, one of moral approbation, in the form of the dandy. Finally, we turn to Heidegger’s treatment of boredom to examine how both sides of this moralizing coin are synthesized into a single equivocal space at the heart of our modern conception of boredom.After completing this genealogy in the first two chapters, we return to Kantian language in order to develop our own positive definition of boredom, one that is rooted in the experiences of the will in the face of impotency. We then explore the ways that Foucault’s language of disciplinary technologies can help us characterize the deployment of the concept of boredom in the context of modern educational institutions, including the ways in which this deployment reveals racial and gender inequities within the institutions. In the fourth chapter, we consider three alternative pedagogical styles that can help undermine or alleviate the conditions that make possible experiences of boredom in the hope of resolving these pernicious, inequitable deployments of the concept.
Nishida Kitarō and Evolution: The Experiential Ecology of Emergent Form
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2020) Izor, Matthew Allan; Ishida, Masato; Philosophy
This work is a case-study in comparative philosophy of biology targeting the theory of life, experience, and evolution presented in the work of the modern Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitarō, whose writing offers a fascinating juncture between the epistemological views of the Anglo-European traditions and the epistemology that derives from Asian philosophical sources. In providing a naturalized and biologically aligned interpretation of Nishida’s thought, we begin to see an expression of an evolutionary framework that includes experience and agency as causally influential components. Nishida’s theory as I describe it provides logical parameters of an ecology of experience that includes and in fact prioritizes the concrete existence and influence of non-human experience and agency. This work makes a couple of key moves: I address the conceptual issues with a lop-sided focus on the notion of unity and the default human description of experience as being fundamental to Nishida’s early texts. In his earliest text An Inquiry into the Good, Nishida provides a balanced depiction of the notion of unity, along with the process of differentiation. I argue that, in fact, the tendency to focus one’s attention on the forces of contact and continuity in Nishida’s thought, actually has the potential to overshadow or even obscure the possibility of seeing the larger theory of life Nishida offers, and life through evolution is a primary expression of this differentiation for Nishida. I describe an oscillation of the polarities of unification through differentiation, and vice versa. By doing so, we can frame Nishida’s use of terms like “conscious activity” and “pure experience” in ways that are not exclusively human in Nishida’s description. Experience, as I argue in Nishida’s technical sense, describes determinative interaction in the most basic sense as a processual interlinking of interaction that occurs in very rudimentary living interactions, such as that of cells and plants. What Nishida refers to as “pure experience” is operative behind the epistemological gap, not in terms of pre-existing knowledge within a human organism, but in terms of ontologically preceding the epistemological gap and making it possible, replacing the fundamental assumption that experience occurs within a brain and instead placing experience into a complex historical ecology that includes organisms but is not exclusively internal to them. Through the language of experienced-based approaches to organismic activity such as Situated Darwinism and the concept of affordances, I help bring Nishida’s technical sense of experience into contact with contemporary biological thinking by uniquely characterizing Nishida’s theory of life as a place-based-event dynamic that torques the rudimentary experiential gradients into these emergent meaning-making affordance landscapes. Meaning-making processes occur in the living moments of distinguishing that occur in living organisms at all levels. This “double-rupture” theory of experiential evolution has implications for the evolutionary development of formal cause, something that is at the root if cognition and goal-oriented behavior. Nishida’s theory of formal causality is described as being the experiential place, basho, that is torqued open by the double rupture of living determinative interaction. I argue that this place is the medium where in experiential distinctions become influential as formative acts. And in this way reimagines the causal types that Aristotle lays out, but which have become dominated through certain metaphysical assumptions of a mechanistic view of naturalized causal types.
A Case for the 'Fractal Self': The Scope of Moral Consideration as Influenced by Personal Identity
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2020) Mandelstam, Joshua; Albertini, Tamara; Philosophy
This dissertation begins with an exploration of why various occurrences of cruelty arise and then assess their moral importance. I shall argue that such cruel acts show the psychological basis for all immoral acts. That inquiry shall lead to an examination of the notion of Moral Consideration; the determination of who or what is considered by the agent when determining the consequences of one's actions and how far such consideration extends. From there, it will then look at the case of moral exemplars, and what can be learned from their views about themselves, including the notions of moral considerability that they use. This shall be followed by a detailed outline of the thoughts that allowed a particular exemplar – M. K. Gandhi – to act as he did. Given the implications Gandhi's views have, this dissertation will then turn to examine theories which do discount the individual self; specifically the works of Derek Parfit and Buddhist Ethics. Finally, I will argue that in order to take the most ethically effective actions, one must consider the different notions of self, not to determine the 'best choice' among these notions, but to take as many as possible into account simultaneously in order to determine the most ethical action.
Weiziran (為自然) and Aloha 'Āina: Place, Identity and Ethics of the Environment
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2019) Soh, Andrew; Ames, Roger T.; Perkins, Franklin; Philosophy
“人法地，地法天，天法道，道法自然。”—Daodejing 25 “Ua mau ke ea o ka ‘āina i ka pono.” —Hawaiʻi State Motto Our home, planet Earth, is under threat from a host of environmental problems: global climate change, loss of biodiversity, and pollution of the air and waterways from industries. The reality of climate change affects all of us—it affects habitats and entire ecosystems, and raises other risks such as health and security risks, as well as food production risks. The Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), unequivocally concludes that “[h]uman influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history. Recent climate changes have had widespread impacts on human and natural systems.” I posit that this global crisis arises from the loss of our sense of place in the world, a loss of our rootedness in our natural world. At the heart of this loss of rootedness is a particular understanding of our place in the world. Our view and experience of the world has evolved from an experience of place to one of the world as space. The dynamic, lived experience of being in the world has been replaced by a quantifying and abstracted distance from the natural world around us. In this dissertation, I argue that we need to recover our sense of place in the world in order to address the root problem of the environmental crisis. In this endeavor, I will reflect on the problem of the loss of our sense of place by first examining the meaning of place, and how by recovering what place means, we can begin to redevelop our sense of place. My reflections on place are aided by the insights of humanistic geographers Yi-Fu Tuan, Tim Cresswell and Edward Relph as well as philosophers Martin Heidegger and Edward S. Casey. By recovering a sense of place, I will inquire into the possibility of finding an enduring ethics of the environment. I believe that the challenge of developing such an enduring ethics of the environment requires a way of thinking that is more capacious and inclusive, and that is built on dialogue. The philosopher J. Baird Callicott made a place for dialogue by bringing together environmental ethicists and philosophers of non-Western traditions in search of common ground for a more representative, global ethics of the environment. My dissertation contributes to this ongoing discourse by bringing together the Daoist and Hawaiian traditions in a dialogue on place, from which I glean a Daoist sense of place and a Hawaiian sense of place. Through a reflection on the Daoist sense of place—which emphasizes wu (無), a disposition of not overdoing by which our interactions with the world are undertaken for the sake of achieving harmony and equilibrium (he 和) and the Hawaiian sense of place—which is centered on pono, the Hawaiian value of appropriateness that ensures that we act in a beneficial manner towards the land (ʻāina), I find common ground for my proposal for a Daoist and Hawaiian Ecological Ethics: weiziran (為自然) and aloha ʻāina.
The Metaphysics Of Similarity And Analogical Reasoning
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2018-12) Brown, Jarrod W.; Chakrabarti, Aridam; Philosophy
This work introduces the importance of similarity and analogy to philosophy, argues that analogy should be seen as “similarity based reasoning,” overviews different philosophical discussions to illustrate the scope of similarity-based reasoning, and introduces the assumptions for similarity-based reasoning that form the central topics of the present work. It demonstrates that approaches that reduce or identify relations to non-relational ontological categories fail primarily through the strategy of seeking truthmakers for relational claims. It takes up the related problems of co-mannered relations, substitution instances, individuating relations and similarities. It attacks the notion that substitution instances provide a non-relational account of relations and provides a proof that similarity is a more fundamental concept than substitution. Given, however, that similarity is relational, it argues relations are non-reducible to non-relational entities, but that if given the notion of relating in general and of similarity, one can construct a non-reductive theory of relations that can individuate all relations, including similarity relations themselves. This provides a workable theory of relations, but does not solve problems related to the epistemology of relations and similarity. Sanskritic debates concerning the metaphysical nature of similarity and its knowability are explored through contrasting the views of four Indian schools of thought: the Buddhist, Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika, Bhaṭṭa Mīmāṃsāka, and Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā. Within the Islamic tradition, analogy is rejected as a valid tool for legal reasoning by the Ẓāhirī school, and this is contrasted with the very tempered defense by the Shāfiʿī school. The Islamic debates bring out more clearly the hermeneutical challenges, but it is argued that these challenges of interpretation are bound up in the challenges of the epistemology of relations and similarities. The work concludes that an epistemic virtue-theoretic account can help us better understand how analogical arguments can be true and non-vacuous, and argues we should cultivate the virtue of similarity and relation sensitivity.
The Paradox of Philosophical Disagreement: A Study of Nagarjuna, Haribhadra, and Gadamer
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2018-08) Zenk, Benjamin J.; Philosophy
Taking direction from contemporary epistemology and its recent focus on the question of how to react rationally to peer disagreement, this dissertation explores the related topic of philosophical disagreement in a comparative key. A close examination of some controversial assumptions at work in the current epistemological debate about disagreement reveals a tension, in philosophical discourse and disagreement, between interestedness and disinterestedness. After allowing this tension to be highlighted by the controversiality of those assumptions, this dissertation offers reconstructions of how Nāgārjuna, Haribhadra, and Hans-Georg Gadamer might alternatively illuminate or resolve the tension between interestedness and disinterestedness in philosophical discourse. Through these reconstructions, the dissertation also articulates a shared subject matter between four distinct traditions — i.e., contemporary epistemology, Indian Buddhism, Jainism, and hermeneutics — whose distinct assumptions are otherwise apparently incommensurable. The dissertation consists of five chapters. The introductory chapter problematizes the phenomenon of disagreement as framed in recent literature and articulates the underlying tension between interestedness and disinterestedness in a paradox: the Paradox of Philosophical Disagreement. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 explore alternative resolutions to that paradox — the dialectical refutationism of Nāgārjuna, the nonabsolutism of Haribhadra, and the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer. Chapter 5 situates this expansion of the contemporary debate within a larger debate in comparative philosophy about voices relevant in philosophical discourse.
The You-Turn in Philosophy of Mind: On the Significance of Experiences that Aren’t Mine
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2018-08) Stoll, Joshua E.; Philosophy
This dissertation challenges a dominant way of thinking in philosophy of mind that gives rise to a variety of problems of other minds and, thus, different versions of the threat of solipsism. I contend that these problems arise because of a problematic philosophical starting point. For such ways of thinking start from the removed, contemplative position of a solitary individual, conceptually isolated from the world, trying to bridge the conceptual divide between himself or herself and the world at large. Appealing to a recent trend in cognitive science called enactivism, as well as the medieval Indian philosophy of Kaśmīr Śaivism, I suggest that we can dissolve these problems without entirely neglecting their significance if we take a different starting position for philosophy of mind: the lived position. In the lived position, the possibility of solipsism, for the most part, simply goes unconsidered since we are always already involved in participating with each other to make sense of the world.
Nature Naturing Ziran in Early Daoist Thinking
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2018-08) Liu, Jing; Philosophy
Due to the worsening environmental situation, the relation between nature and humans has been reflected on by environmental philosophers. However, we often find that the very meaning of nature has not been brought to light. So what is nature? My thesis shows that ziran in early Daoism offers us an alternative to the modern concept of nature as an object to be controlled and exploited for human purposes. Ziran is the very process of the transformation of dao and things, in which the intimacy of dao, things and humans is kept. My thesis presents ziran or nature as a way of life that penetrates dao, things, and humans. It is with the understanding of ziran that the nature of humans and all things are illuminated. Daoist ziran also sheds light on the creativity of a feminine power as the realization of nature which emphasizes the interplay between the female and the male (yin and yang), setting a contrast with any exclusively patriarchal principle of the relationship between humans and “nature.” While ziran offers us an alternative to the modern concept of nature, the investigation on ziran seeks dialogue with Western thoughts. By questioning the meaning of nature through the lens of Daoist ziran many important terms in western philosophy, e.g., being and nonbeing, permanence and transience, truth, reality, freedom and so on are reinterpreted and gain refreshed meanings. Therefore being and nonbeing do not exclude each other, but are playful and at one with each other; Freedom allows the spontaneity of nature instead of oppressing it; Truth is not the otherworldly shiny little beings, or the categorical necessity on my mind, but the lively creativity in this world. In fact it is life itself; Permanence and transience are not an antinomy but the same. My research aims to set the metaphysical ground for Daoist studies as well as Daoist environmentalism and ecofeminism. It anticipates the opening of a new way of life wherein human existence and the realization of human freedom take root in nature.
A Comparative Study of ‘Existential Destitution’ in Pre-Qin Chinese Philosophy and Karl Jaspers in the Context of Homelessness in Hawai‘i
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2018-05) Morrow, Sydney M.; Philosophy
This dissertation outlines comparative philosophical approaches to understanding the contemporary problem of homelessness in Hawaiʻi. It also offers a methodology for an applied comparative philosophical project. I provide examples of specific contributors to the problem of homelessness and bring in various Chinese and Western sources that contribute ways of understanding and contextualizing this issue. I build the themes successively from the necessity of constitutive interpersonal relationships, to the supportive and nurturing relationships among people and their natural surroundings, to the psychological response necessary to promote sympathy and solidarity, to a broad and inclusive awareness of the world. At each stage, I bring in my formulation of existential destitution to define and describe how these types of flourishing may fail to come about.
Resolute Agency in Confucian Role Ethics
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2018-05) Harroff, Joseph E.; Philosophy
This dissertation philosophically reconstructs a Si-Meng lineage (思孟學派) of Confucian role ethics and engages in intercultural explorations of non-foundational and resolute agency in ameliorating ethical and political discourse. A family-centric, focus-field dynamic of persons is presupposed in historical and philosophical reconstruction of this living tradition of Confucian role ethics. The guiding idea of "resolute agency" (shendu 慎獨) is explored in a metaethical conceptual constellation within a qi 氣-based correlative cosmology and relational ontology of persons, understood as role-encumbered becomings, rather than discrete metaphysical entities or foundational subjects of ethical-political discourse. Drawing upon recent developments in pragmatism, hermeneutic phenomenology, and other philosophical movements that attempt to think through creative agency, without positing foundational, discrete subjects, this dissertation situates a reconstructed Si-Meng conception of "resolute agency" within larger intercultural comparative philosophical conversations in order to expand the interpretive horizons available to co-creative participants in an intergenerational communicating community of "tian commanding" (tianming 天命) exemplary ethical inquirers striving to realize provisional and disclosive moral truths in experience.
Concepts, Attention, And The Contents Of Conscious Visual Experience
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2018-05) Chaturvedi, Amit; Philosophy
The basic question motivating my dissertation is whether it is possible to consciously perceive objects in the world without possessing any concepts for those objects. Standard phenomenological and epistemological approaches to the issue of non-conceptual perceptual content have presumed that concept-possession entails mastery of a concept's linguistic and inferential usage. I depart from these approaches by developing a naturalized account of perceptual concepts, one which is further informed by theories of perception in the Nyāya tradition of Indian philosophy. Perceptual concepts on a revised conceptualist account can be understood as attention- and memory-based capacities for predicating sensory features to objects. With this account in place, I draw upon recent scientific models of visual processing to argue that essentially non-conceptual, pre-predicative perceptual contents do not phenomenally appear in conscious visual experience. To make plausible the idea that perceptual contents can be both conceptual and nonlinguistic in nature, I demonstrate in Chapters 1 and 2 how perceptual contents can have a compositional, predicative structure in the absence of linguistic formatting. Similarly, I advance several criteria for perceptual concept possession in the absence of explicit linguistic or inferential mastery. I further support my revised account of perceptual concepts by drawing upon insights from Buddhist and Nyāya philosophers, developed in their centuries-long debates over the relation between perception, concepts, and language. In Chapter 3, I then offer a reconstructive reading of Immanuel Kant and the Navya Nyāya philosopher Gȧgesa, which extracts from their theories of perceptual concepts and apperception a thesis to the effect that intentional, object-directed perceptual representations must be conceptually structured in order to have a subjective phenomenal character. Kant and Gȧgesa broadly agree on a set of reasons why we lack any phenomenological evidence for the existence of perceptual states with exclusively non-conceptual content. I take these reasons to be pointing toward several conditions responsible for the integration of perceptual contents into a subject's unified conscious experience. The fourth chapter reframes my reading of Kant and Gȧgesa in naturalized terms, by demonstrating how phenomenally accessible perceptual contents arise through the conceptually modulated activity of attention and visual memory. I show how a unified theory of perceptual attention and conceptualization undercuts the phenomenological intuitions underlying both classical Buddhist and contemporary defenses of non-conceptualism, and further resolves several dilemmas facing recent theories of consciousness. Lastly, the fifth chapter shifts to a discussion of classical Chinese epistemology and psychological studies of perceptual expertise, in order to further characterize perceptual concepts as capacities for allocating attention which we can actively and skillfully exercise in experience. Ultimately, a theory of perceptual concepts as attentional skills allows us to understand perceptual experience itself as an activity which is both skillfully absorbed and permeated with rationality.
From Toleration to Accommodation: Refocusing the Relationship of Religion and Law in the United States.
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2017-12) Scheopner, Cynthia A.; Philosophy
The problem this dissertation seeks to solve is the lack of a principled decision-making process for courts to consider claims of religious free exercise. The problem arose with the initial First Amendment claim: polygamy in 1879. Since then, Courts have engaged in jurisprudential gymnastics to deal with Reynolds v. United States. I reject both the Reynolds division of religious belief from practice, and its consideration of religious practices as exceptions to neutral laws. To refocus the discussion, I create a definition of religion that begins with the metaphysical implications of death. There is a fact of the matter about what happens at death but it cannot be accessed to determine which religious claim is correct. Therefore, the government must adopt a stance of ontological agnosticism. Governments are composed of individuals situated in specific cultural and historical contexts. Therefore, neutrality is as impossible as objectivity, so they must employ epistemic perspectivism, adopting the point of view of the impacted religious individual. Toleration relates to the accommodation clause: all religions are permitted but none may be favored. For religious expression, however, it would mean that the state puts up with the religious identity of its citizens, and is inappropriate. I situate religious personal identity as similar to race or sexual orientation. Shifting the attitude to accommodation creates new legal perspectives. I look to José Ortega y Gasset for a response to relativism: we get closer to truth by accumulating perspectives. The concern that all religious acts must then be permitted is addressed through Ibn Khaldun’s concept of social/cultural identity that I use to locate the contours of community toleration and address changes over time. The potential hazard of using social/cultural identity as an outer boundary of toleration suggests two constraints: first, a Supreme Court ruling that would not be supported or enforceable, and second, any prohibition loses its justification if relevant social mores change. To test my framework, I apply it to polygamy in Reynolds and in 2017. Morocco’s regulatory scheme suggests how participants could be better protected. Accommodation of Islamic veils in the U.S. demonstrates the success of my philosophical refocus.

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