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Item On the Genealogy of Meaning in Peirce's New List of Categories(Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, 2021) Dillabough, Ronald Joseph; Philosophy, School of Liberal ArtsMany scholars believe that “On a New List of Categories” is a metaphysical or transcendental deduction. This essay will argue that Peirce derives the categories by induction and validates their order by precision . The paper will then draw on Peirce’s early and mature writings to explain how the new way of listing the categories can serve as a genealogy of signification : how different types of terms, propositions, and arguments emerge in the process of reasoning as different types of signs. In this way, the genealogy of signification would then qualify as both a phenomenology of logic and a science of semiotics . Such a science of semiotics will have three types of comparison corresponding to the sign-relation in inference: namely, uniparance, diaparance, and comparance. Then, the three types of comparison will give rise to three types of relatives in different types of proposition: namely, competitors, disquiparance, and equivalence. Finally, the three types of relatives will give rise to the different types of signs corresponding to the different types of terms: namely, icons, indices, and symbols. With this classification, there is then an explanation of how the process of reasoning is a semiotic process with three forms of valid arguments: namely, hypothesis, induction, and deduction.Item Ideal Friendship, Actual Friends(2023) Coleman, Martin; Philosophy, School of Liberal ArtsFriendship, on George Santayana’s account, is a form of human society made possible by consciousness of ideals while simultaneously rooted in the experience of embodied creatures spontaneously drawn to each other. His philosophical and autobiographical writings on friendship (particularly his friendship with Frank Russell) exemplify a practice of cultivating wisdom and suggest how we can come to understand our own actual friendships and the opportunities for self-knowledge and sanity in them.Item On the Expressive Limits of Kant’s Universalizability Tests(De Gruyter, 2021) Kahn, Samuel; Philosophy, School of Liberal ArtsMy goal in this piece is to show that there is a problem lurking in the shadows of recent attempts to derive positive duties from Kant’s so-called universalizability tests and, further, to show that the most obvious way of fixing these attempts renders them unable to fulfill their function. I shall begin by motivating and explaining such an attempt.Item The unexpected activist: Catholic women who donate to pro-choice causes(Wiley, 2022-11) O'Connor, Heather A.; Philosophy, School of Liberal ArtsSocial identity informs philanthropic behavior. Prior research demonstrates that donors are more likely to support individuals and groups with whom they identify. Yet individuals hold multiple social identities simultaneously. At times, these identities may be experienced as incongruent. This grounded theory study examines how the presence of incongruent identities informs philanthropic behavior by considering the experiences of Catholic women who identify as pro-choice donors and activists. Semi-structured interviews explore how participants' religious beliefs and practices influence their pro-choice philanthropy and vice versa. Findings reveal a common process that participants shared in their development from children raised in conservative, pro-life Catholic households to adults identifying as Catholic pro-choice donors and activists. The identified process extends research into social identity in donor decision-making while illustrating implications for practice by organizations representing controversial causes.Item Nary an Obligatory Maxim from Kant’s Universalizability Tests(Springer, 2022-04) Kahn, Samuel J. M.; Philosophy, School of Liberal ArtsIn this paper I argue that there would be no obligatory maxims if the only standards for assessing maxims were Kant’s universalizability tests. The paper is divided into five sections. In the first, I clarify my thesis: I define my terms and disambiguate my thesis from other related theses for which one might argue. In the second, I confront the view that says that if a maxim passes the universalizability tests, then there is a positive duty to adopt that maxim; I also confront a close relative of this view. In the third, I confront the view that says that if a maxim does not pass the universalizability tests, then there is a positive duty to adopt the contradictory of that maxim. In the fourth, I confront two variations of the view that says that if a maxim does not pass the universalizability tests and an agent is deliberating about the action in the maxim, then the agent has a positive duty to adopt the contrary of that maxim. In the fifth, I confront the view that says that if an agent has adopted a maxim of ends, then the agent has a positive duty to universalize that end. I then wrap up the paper with some concluding remarks.Item The Problem with Using a Maxim Permissibility Test to Derive Obligations(Linköping University Electronic Press, 2022-06-23) Kahn, Samuel; Philosophy, School of Liberal ArtsThe purpose of this paper is to show that, if Kant’s universalization formulations of the Categorical Imperative are our only standards for judging right from wrong and permissible from impermissible, then we have no obligations. I shall do this by examining five different views of how obligations can be derived from the universalization formulations and arguing that each one fails. I shall argue that the first view rests on a misunderstanding of the universalization formulations; the second on a misunderstanding of the concept of an obligation; the third on a misunderstanding of the concept of a maxim; the fourth on a misunderstanding of the limits of action description; and the fifth on a misunderstanding of the universalization formulations again.Item Peirce on the Symbolical Foundation of Personhood(Eidos, 2021-10) De Tienne, André; Philosophy, School of Liberal ArtsThis paper discusses the semiotic and metaphysical framework within which Peirce elaborated a symbolical and dynamical conception of personhood. It exhibits the centrality of Peirce’s early conception of the “unity of consistency” along with its decentering advantages. It describes how this gave rise to a metaphysics of personhood that questions the singularity of individuals. It then conducts a semiotic study of the evolutive process across which something indeterminate evolves into something determinate that increasingly personifies itself following the logic of symbolization, taking into account two major types of indetermination: generality and vagueness. It then considers the kind of teleology at work within personification. It concludes that personhood so conceived is not restricted to only individual human beings, for the process of symbolization at work is not confined to a particular species-specific application.Item Platonic Realism(Routledge, 2022) Carmichael, Chad; Philosophy, School of Liberal ArtsIn this chapter, I make the case for platonic realism, the thesis that there are properties that lack spatial locations. After criticizing the one-over-many argument for realism and Lewis's argument for realism, I endorse a modal argument that derives the existence of platonic properties from considerations involving necessary truth. I then defend this argument from various objections. Finally, I argue that epistemic considerations and considerations of parsimony favor a weak form of platonic realism on which there are platonic properties, but each property could have had an instance, and would have been located in its instances if it had any.Item A Peircean Approach to the Umwelt(UNIL, 2022) De Tienne, André; Philosophy, School of Liberal ArtsThe concept of Umwelt has become so significant in biosemiotics that one may wonder whether Peirce could conceivably have missed it within the broader logical and metaphysical context of his realist pragmaticist semiotic theory. This brief paper suggests that far from having missed it, Peirce tackled it front and center at a most fundamental level.Item Vagueness: A Global Approach by Kit Fine (review)(The Philosophy Education Society, 2022-03) Carmichael, Chad; Philosophy, School of Liberal Arts