Tuesday, April 11, 2006
My non-publications, post 1: Papers I kept from my philosophy undergraduate degree at Western Washington University
Here's the first batch of files, using www.sendfile.com. Sorry for the download delay. All these and files in future posts are read-only (mostly MS Word .docs).
Man, are a lot of these bad. And apparently written before I discovered spellcheck. I started my degree in fall of 1997, if that helps with chronology.
A paper on a specific argument against the foundationalist theory of justification, written
for Dr. Neil Feit in Epistemology II: Theories of Justification. Click here.
A paper on human reasoning (not a big topic at all), written for Dr. Paul Olscamp in History of Philosophy: the Rationalists. Not good, but my first foray into my critique of the rationalistic positivism tradition of analytic philosophy and the beginning of my break with the Phil Dept. My insistance annoyed a few cages. I'm quite proud of the direction, because I concluded, "having unjustifiable belief(s) is a necessary conditions of being human, and these beliefs can be the only foundation for knowledge," years before I read of N. T. Wright's critical realism; he may have written 500 pp. and gotten there first, but I got there independently... Click here.
A paper against Newton-Smith's argument (from science?!) for the non-beginning of time (to a metaphysical position?!), written for Dr. Ned Markosian in Metaphysics II: Philosophy of Time. (My sources were absolute rubbish, however...) Click here.
An essay exam on supererogation, written for Dr. Phil Montague for Ethics I. I have no idea what any of it means anymore. Click here.
A paper on the connection between Hume's epistemology and theory of causation, arguing that all empiricist epistemology inevitability decays into hard, self-contradictory skepticism, written for Dr. Hud Hudson in History of Philosophy: the Empiricists. Another foray into a critique of the analytic tradition. For five class assignment in two terms, I won runner-up for best paper three friggin times; this was one of those. Around now, my writing ability starts becoming decent. Click here.
A paper on the 'gap problem' for Kant (the gap between his metaphysics and his epistemology)--Kant can't--written for Dr. Hud Hudson in History of Philosophy: Kant and Post-Kantian Traditions. Very dense, but that's Kant's fault, not mine; he didn't start writing until he was fifty, and twenty years later did all his future students a huge favor by dying. Easily the one of the worst writers in history. This was the big paper, and this time I won the best paper [Kant] award. Click here.
A paper arguing for compatiblism for human free will and physical determinism, written for Dr. Fracis Howard-Snyder in Metaphysics Guided Study. Basically, I think that human's have moral responsibility, straight up. So it is logically necessary and trivially true that anything, whatever happens to be true, is compatible with human moral responsibility. Click here.
A paper discussing compatibilism, Okhamism, and Boethianism about human free will and divine foreknowledge, written for Dr. Fracis Howard-Snyder in Metaphysics Guided Study. I think the whole issue is the result of a category mistake and have no problem maintaining that humans have moral responsibility, even if that runs against the grain of the analytic tradition; a side-effect of my losing interest in philosophy. Click here.
A paper discussing the phase-sortal view of material composition, written for Dr. Ned Markosian in Philosophy of Composition. The only interesting thing is because I'm tired of the analytic tradition, I don't argue for anything but instead just discuss and point out conditional commitments--all the firmer you can get with rationalistic positivism. Click here.
Man, are a lot of these bad. And apparently written before I discovered spellcheck. I started my degree in fall of 1997, if that helps with chronology.
A paper on a specific argument against the foundationalist theory of justification, written
for Dr. Neil Feit in Epistemology II: Theories of Justification. Click here.
A paper on human reasoning (not a big topic at all), written for Dr. Paul Olscamp in History of Philosophy: the Rationalists. Not good, but my first foray into my critique of the rationalistic positivism tradition of analytic philosophy and the beginning of my break with the Phil Dept. My insistance annoyed a few cages. I'm quite proud of the direction, because I concluded, "having unjustifiable belief(s) is a necessary conditions of being human, and these beliefs can be the only foundation for knowledge," years before I read of N. T. Wright's critical realism; he may have written 500 pp. and gotten there first, but I got there independently... Click here.
A paper against Newton-Smith's argument (from science?!) for the non-beginning of time (to a metaphysical position?!), written for Dr. Ned Markosian in Metaphysics II: Philosophy of Time. (My sources were absolute rubbish, however...) Click here.
An essay exam on supererogation, written for Dr. Phil Montague for Ethics I. I have no idea what any of it means anymore. Click here.
A paper on the connection between Hume's epistemology and theory of causation, arguing that all empiricist epistemology inevitability decays into hard, self-contradictory skepticism, written for Dr. Hud Hudson in History of Philosophy: the Empiricists. Another foray into a critique of the analytic tradition. For five class assignment in two terms, I won runner-up for best paper three friggin times; this was one of those. Around now, my writing ability starts becoming decent. Click here.
A paper on the 'gap problem' for Kant (the gap between his metaphysics and his epistemology)--Kant can't--written for Dr. Hud Hudson in History of Philosophy: Kant and Post-Kantian Traditions. Very dense, but that's Kant's fault, not mine; he didn't start writing until he was fifty, and twenty years later did all his future students a huge favor by dying. Easily the one of the worst writers in history. This was the big paper, and this time I won the best paper [Kant] award. Click here.
A paper arguing for compatiblism for human free will and physical determinism, written for Dr. Fracis Howard-Snyder in Metaphysics Guided Study. Basically, I think that human's have moral responsibility, straight up. So it is logically necessary and trivially true that anything, whatever happens to be true, is compatible with human moral responsibility. Click here.
A paper discussing compatibilism, Okhamism, and Boethianism about human free will and divine foreknowledge, written for Dr. Fracis Howard-Snyder in Metaphysics Guided Study. I think the whole issue is the result of a category mistake and have no problem maintaining that humans have moral responsibility, even if that runs against the grain of the analytic tradition; a side-effect of my losing interest in philosophy. Click here.
A paper discussing the phase-sortal view of material composition, written for Dr. Ned Markosian in Philosophy of Composition. The only interesting thing is because I'm tired of the analytic tradition, I don't argue for anything but instead just discuss and point out conditional commitments--all the firmer you can get with rationalistic positivism. Click here.
