Philosophy

In this paper I attempt to discover the object of Aristotle’s God’s νόησις in Metαphysics Λ.9. In Section I, I catalogue existing interpretations and mention the two key concepts of (i) God’s substancehood and (ii) his metaphysical simplicity. In Section II, I explore the first two aporiae of Λ.9 – namely (1) what God’s οὐσία is and (2) what God intelligizes. In Section III, I show how Aristotle solves these aporiae by contending that God’s οὐσία is actually intelligizing, and being determined to do so by himself, and that the object of his νόησις is himself, such that he intelligizes his own οὐσία, and I explain what this means. In Section IV, I present the second pair of aporiae in Λ.9 and show how, by solving these, Aristotle clarifies the position arrived at in Section III. Lastly, in Section V, I present the final aporia and its solution, and conclude that Aristotle’s God is a radically-unified Narcissus-God who intelligizes his own οὐσία.

Naïve realism is often characterized, by its proponents and detractors alike, as the view that for a subject to undergo a perceptual experience is for her to stand in a simple two-place acquaintance relation toward an object. However, two of the leading defenders of naïve realism, John Campbell and Bill Brewer, have thought it necessary to complicate this picture, claiming that a third relatum is needed to account for various possible differences between distinct visual experiences of the same object (for example, differences that result from changes in the object's spatial orientation relative to the subject, or from changes in the intensity with which the subject focuses her attention on the object). This, I argue, is a mistake. Once it is acknowledged that a subject's visual experience acquaints her with more than just a single object, all of the relevant facts can be explained from within the simpler naïve realist framework.

Transfolk exhibit linguistic strategies by which they work to align with a specific gender identity, and minimize the stigma associated with not “passing.” These strategies are often difficult to adopt as gender identity and language are key outcomes of socialization – patterns of behavior which are internalized through interaction. Transgender speech therapy mostly focuses on masculinizing or feminizing the pitch of an individual’s voice. However, vocabulary and semantics in discourse also help to define the perceived gender of a speaker. While transgender individuals have established informal means of altering their vocabulary, it is largely ignored in voice therapies. Half of transfolk have reported not knowing about the existence of transgender communication therapy, and additionally over half of speech-language pathologists could not describe the components of the therapy. This research examines the outcomes of linguistic modification during gender transitioning. As well, it addresses areas in which therapies may be improved, and methods by which medical professionals may more adequately address current disparities in treatment.

In philosophical discussions, gender has had conflicting approaches to considering the metaphysical reality of itself. Recent work on feminism has centered upon a constructivist notion of gender, born from the traditions of Simone de Beauvoir and Judith Butler. However, many philosophers and ordinary people hold other viewpoints, most notably that of gender
essentialism. These discussions, however take for granted an assumption, which I find problematizing: overdetermination. Overdetermination is the notion that multiple causes are sufficient for a precise outcome. After presenting classifications of overdetermination, I challenge this assumption by presenting causal insensitivity, the idea that additive forces are not necessary to achieve a precise outcome. By taking this stance, I argue for a revised notion of Charlotte Witt’s recent conception of gender “uniessentialism”. By coming to this conclusion, I posit that gender is metaphysically basic due to its causal but not logical dependence. After
establishing this metaphysical model for gender, I will apply the notion to an understanding of trans girlhood, especially how gender may be perceived retrospectively. Finally, I will examine on ethical issues of trans girlhood, notably that of epistemic injustice.

The philosophy of language and linguistic notions such as semantics and syntax provide us with intuitions about the fundamental nature of the world around us. Thus, implications of these fields of study have far-reaching effects into other philosophical theories including, but not limited to: metaphysics, action theory, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. This paper ultimately boils down to a careful exploration of how keenly related language and metaphysics are, and more specifically, how problems arise in language with relation to time travel. I have attempted to outline a metaphysical model of modal-time travel in which problems of language and agency no longer arise, which I hope will give rise to more considerations of modal travel as well as problems of language in relation to time travel.

I argue that one’s views about which “metaphysical laws” obtain—including laws about what is identical with what, about what is reducible to what, and about what grounds what—can be used to deflect or neutralize the threat posed by a debunking explanation. I use a well-known debunking argument in the metaphysics of material objects as a case study. Then, after defending the proposed strategy from the charge of question-begging, I close by showing how the proposed strategy can be used by certain moral realists to resist the evolutionary debunking arguments.

While prior models of the evolution of altruism have assumed that organisms reproduce asexually, this paper presents a model of the evolution of altruism for sexually reproducing organisms using Hardy-Weinberg dynamics. In this model, the presence of reciprocal altruists allows the population to evolve to a stable polymorphic population where the majority of organisms are altruistic. Further, adding stochasticity leads to even larger numbers of altruists, while adding stochasticity to an analogous asexual model leads to more selfish organisms. The contrast between these outcomes demonstrates why it may be important to pay attention to the underlying genetics of a population.

The 'phenotypic gambit,' the assumption that we can ignore genetics and look at the fitness of phenotypes to determine the expected evolutionary dynamics of a population, is often used in evolutionary game theory. However, as this paper will show, an overlooked genotype to phenotype map can qualitatively affect evolution in ways the phenotypic approach cannot predict or explain. This gives us reason to believe that, even in the long-term, correspondences between phenotypic predictions and dynamical outcomes are not robust for all plausible assumptions regarding the underlying genetics of traits. This paper shows important ways in which the phenotypic gambit can fail and how to proceed with evolutionary game theoretic modeling when it does.

This paper analyzes the recent debate surrounding inclusive fitness and argues that certain limitations ascribed to it by critics -- such as requiring weak selection or providing dynamically insufficient models -- are better thought of as limitations of the methodological framework most often used with inclusive fitness (quantitative genetics). In support of this, I show how inclusive fitness can be used with the replicator dynamics (of evolutionary game theory, a methodological framework preferred by inclusive fitness critics). I conclude that much of the debate is best understood as being about the orthogonal issue of using abstract versus idealized models.

It is often claimed that inclusive fitness is essential to explaining the evolution of social traits because it allows us to view organisms, or their genes, as maximizing agents, thus saving the connection between rational choice and evolution. I argue that this claim rests on a subtle confusion between correlation and causation.

Humans are often altruistic in a variety of contexts, even towards strangers they may never meet again. What explains this behavior? Many argue that kin selection cannot explain it, but group selection can. Contra this common line of reasoning, I provide two ways that kin selection might help explain the evolution of broad-scope human altruism: in gene-culture co-evolution and in a 'cultural' version of kin selection.