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Session E AbstractsBringing Them to Us and Us to Them: Student-Produced Theatre Northern Irish Drama "Carthaginians"Neil Dunn, Bethany Urban and Hanni Baugh The main challenge in the entirely student produced and directed production of Carthaginians was to present an Irish subject to an American audience and to create a feeling of connection with that subject. Through the filter of American eyes (often filtered through American media), Northern Ireland, like so many other countries where conflict exists, often becomes an "us and them" situation. It is, however, important to remember that the human capacity for emotion and feeling is the same everywhere, perhaps even heightened in areas that have experienced the political hardships that Northern Ireland has. The events of 30 January 1972 forever shattered the emotional conscious of the people of Derry, Northern Ireland. Carthaginians deals with the after-effects of Bloody Sunday on seven Derry characters who were present that day. The play explores the psychology of mourning, remorse, and hope through these seven characters. Presentation Index: E1 The Irrationality of BeliefGuy Rice All belief is fundamentally irrational. Epistemologists, those who study knowledge, have struggled for millenia with the problem of finding a satisfactory basis for justifying belief. Actually, what they've done is try to avoid the fact that perfectly clear and valid criteria have been known for millenia, but that no belief can ever satisfy them. They have avoid this because this view leads to skepticism. As an irrational Pyrrhonist, I demonstrate why common sense and rational thinking lead to the inevitable conclusion that given any proposition P, one can never have better founded reasons for believing P than believing not P. This view is also known as irrationalism, anti-rationalism, or rational nihilism, although I object to the latter terms, as I argue that acceptance of this view does not necessarily lead to a rejection of rationality. Rather, it leads to a better understanding of what rationality can and (perhaps more importantly) cannot do, thus what cannot be reasonably expected of it, such as expecting it to provide a foundation for beliefs. Various attempts to provide support for beliefs are discussed and demonstrated to be insufficient. Specifically, foundationalism is shown to be a form of irrationalism, and coherentism is shown to be both a form of irrationalism and relativism. In fact, whether explicitly stated or not, all supposedly rational accounts of belief ultimately advocate that beliefs be accepted on faith, they only differ in what one should have faith in, and can provide no support for why their articles of faith are more valid than any rival set. The validity of any belief can only be judged relative to the context of a belief system which cannot be rationally justified. Thus, I banish the irrational notion of rational belief. Presentation Index: E2 Testimony, Rationality and the Belief in GodLawrence Giebenhain Alston argues that God exists due to several reasons. One of these deals with the fact that there is no way to confirm that a belief that one holds about God due to a supernatural experience is false. This problem occurs because there are no qualified witnesses to confer with, as there would be about some form of empirical evidence. Alston aligns the perception of God and belief of God's existence with the perception of the senses concerning the physical world. Cormen, Leherer, and Pappas argue against Alston's claim by giving examples of how perception of the senses with regard to the physical world differs conclusively to those of the spiritual realm. They also have arguments to counter Alston's other reasons backing the existence of God. I will agree with both sides on some of the key materials brought up, but feel more sympathetic toward the reasoning of Alston. Presentation Index: E3 Dilemmas of Reflective EquilibriumKeith Johnson Questing for justification of deductive inference, Nelson Goodman attempts to justify his theory of reflective equilibrium. He states that if a deduction is valid, it conforms to a valid set of rules. Naturally, one is inclined to question how these rules are determined to be valid. Instead of alluding to his predecessors, Goodman appeals to "accepted deductive practice". This creates a notable circularity in argument form. Goodman maintains that this circle is not vicious, but virtuous. I argue that such circular argumentation is not justification for deductive inference, and terms like "virtuous", hardly apply to Goodman's reflective equilibrium. Presentation Index: E4 The Rationality and Objectivity of ScienceMichael Paggen Science is commonly taken to be among the most objective and rational pursuits. However, the history of modern science has seen the rise and fall of several different paradigms, all of which, in their own time, were the accepted world view. If the world view of the established scientific community is so apt to change over time, then can we really call science objective? Furthermore, how do we decide which world view it is more rational to accept? In this essay, I will discuss some of the problems of science, specifically the problems of induction and underdetermination. And I will argue that although the process of science may have some claim to objectivity and rationality, the paradigms that we construct based on scientific evidence do not constitute an objective world view. Presentation Index: E5 Ascribing RationalityJ. Christopher Joiner Within the topics of translation and interpretation, there has been a much work done by philosophers of language in the late twentieth century regarding the notions of "charity" and "ascription of rationality". Ascription of rationality is seen as integral to the process of good interpretation. When a translator is confronted with an incoherent translation, one assumes that there is something wrong with the translation. This is how rationality gets ascribed, and is more charitable than assuming the translatee is incoherent. This essay analyses several conceptualist's approaches and their varying degrees of rationality. The views of Davidson, Holles and Stitch are the focus of both praise and criticism. Using examples that appeal to intuition, this essay recommends some sort of distinction in the concept of rationality between intellectual understanding and interpretive understanding. Making this distinction has an effect on things like bizarre religious beliefs. An effect that may be more comfortable than the ultimatum between either our translation system being wrong or that we are dealing with nonsense. The critical element of this essay takes this ultimatum as its primary target. There are several different approaches mentioned; such as an analysis of the concept of nonsense and meaninglessness which are portrayed as being overly clumsy. This discussion meanders through issues of rationality, nonsense, meaning and meaninglessness and of course cultural relativism. Presentation Index: E6 Behaviorism and RationalityJames Newman Abstract was not available at the time of printing. Presentation Index: E7 Karl PopperJustin Cox This presentation considered for the 2001 Philosophy Colloquium is about Karl Popper's hypothesis, concerning the scientific model for composing theories and his refutation hypothesis. The presentation will include a summary of Popper's hypothesis for model of refutation. Some arguments against Karl Popper will then be addressed, including Kuhn's infamous "Dirty Trick Argument". Finally, in an attempt to save Popper's hypothesis, a few replies against the objections of this hypothesis will be explained, in order to gain a better understanding of the model of refutation and support for the Philosophy of Science. Presentation Index: E8 |
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