Graduate Students

Christopher Rahlwes: “Nāgārjuna’s Negation”

Posted on by

Check out graduate student Christopher Rahlwes’ recent article in The Journal of Indian Philosophy, “Nāgārjuna’s Negation.”

Abstract

The logical analysis of Nāgārjuna’s (c. 200 CE) catuṣkoṭi (tetralemma or four-corners) has remained a heated topic for logicians in Western academia for nearly a century. At the heart of the catuṣkoṭi, the four corners’ formalization typically appears as: A, Not A (¬A), Both (A &¬A), and Neither (¬[A∨¬A]). The pulse of the controversy is the repetition of negations (¬) in the catuṣkoṭi. Westerhoff argues that Nāgārjuna in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā uses two different negations: paryudāsa (nominal or implicative negation) and prasajya-pratiṣedha (verbal or non-implicative negation). This paper builds off Westerhoff’s account and presents some subtleties of Nāgārjuna’s use of these negations regarding their scope. This is achieved through an analysis of the Sanskrit and Tibetan Madhyamaka commentarial tradition and through a grammatical analysis of Nāgārjuna’s use of na (not) and a(n)- (non-) within a diverse variety of the catuṣkoṭi within the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā.

Rahlwes, Christopher. Nāgārjuna’s Negation. J Indian Philos (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10781-022-09505-5

2022 Ruth Garrett Millikan Graduate Fellowship Winners

Posted on by

Congratulations to Mengyu Hu and Chris Rahlwes, who are both recipients of the 2022 Ruth Garrett Millikan Graduate Fellowship!

This summer, the fellowship will support Chris’s dissertation research on “Absence, Difference, and Denial: An Analysis of Negation” in the work of Nagarjuna and Zhuangzi, and Mengyu’s dissertation research on meta-semantics and mixed disjunctions.

The Ruth Garrett Millikan Graduate Research Fellowship was created in 2017 with an endowment by some beneficent anonymous donors and continues to be augmented by generous gifts from admirers, friends and colleagues of Professor Emerita Ruth Garrett Millikan, one of the world’s most distinguished philosophers, and a cherished member of UConn’s philosophical community. To support the fellowship fund, please visit the UConn Foundation.

Congratulations Mengyu and Chris!

Steve Núñez: “I’m New Here: Black and Indigenous Media Ecologies”

Posted on by

Graduate student Steve Núñez‘s photo essay “Free the Land: Landscape Photography as a Decolonial Practice” has been featured in the Visual Culture Journal Refract, University of California, Santa Cruz.

***
Exploring themes of race and shared ecologies across the Americas, the born-digital photography exhibition I’m New Here: Black and Indigenous Media Ecologies presents a hemispheric vision of African diasporic and Native life in the United States, Caribbean, and Latin America. The exhibition features experimental virtual reality (VR) and filmic components. In this curatorial essay, themes of the entangled dispossession of Native sovereignty and African enslavement are explored in the works of seven photographers from Trinidad to Wisconsin to Peru to Dominica. Artists Abigail Hadeed, Nadia Huggins, Kai Minosh Pyle, Allison Arteaga, steve núñez, Melia Delsol, and Dóra Papp provide a visual critique of the long history of racial capitalism, climate crisis, and Black and Indigenous presence. Together the photographic essays form a constellation, a vision of what environmental and racial justice can look like for the hemisphere after the catastrophe of European conquest. Speculatively picturing Black and Indigenous coalitions in the past, present, and future, the artists use the technology of the camera to frame nature, exploring visual aesthetic forms that seek not to replicate the capture of the colonial archive.

Drew Johnson: Proper Function and Ethical Judgement Towards a Biosemantic Theory of Ethical Thought and Discourse

Posted on by

Check out Philosophy Graduate Student Drew Johnson’s recent publication titled “Proper Function and Ethical Judgment Towards A Biosemantic Theory of Ethical Thought and Discourse.” You can read the full paper here.

 

***Abstract***

This paper employs Ruth Millikan’s biosemantic theory of representation to develop a proposal about the function of ethical claims and judgments. I propose that ethical claims and judgments (or ethical ‘affirmations’) have the function of simultaneously tracking the morally salient features of social situations and directing behavior that coordinates in a collectively beneficial way around those features. Thus, ethical affirmations count as a species of what Millikan labels ‘Pushmi-Pullyu’ representations that simultaneously have a descriptive and a directive direction of fit. This proposal supports a version of motivational internalism that can accommodate a surprising range of actual failures of motivation. I also briefly situate this proposal in the metaethical literature, contrasting it with other hybrid views incorporating elements of cognitivism and expressivism.

Cody Turner: “Neuromedia, Cognitive Offloading, and Intellectual Perseverance”

Posted on by

Congratulations to graduate student Cody Turner, who’s recent paper titled “Neuromedia, Cognitive Offloading, and Intellectual Perseverance” was accepted for publication at the journal Synthese. To read more check out a preview of the pre-publication version attached below!

Loader Loading...
EAD Logo Taking too long?

Reload Reload document
| Open Open in new tab

Katrina Van Dyke: Wood/Raith Living Trust Summer Graduate Student Fellowship

Posted on by

Congratulations to graduate student Katrina Van Dyke, who has been awarded a Wood/Raith Living Trust Summer Graduate Student Fellowship! She is the first philosopher to receive the award since the graduate student fellowship's inception.

 

Her project is titled Gendered Viewpoints and Objectification: Reconsidering Catharine MacKinnon’s Account of Desire and Power.

 

Heather Muraviov: Millikan Fellowship

Posted on by

The Department is pleased to announce that Heather Muraviov is the 2021 recipient of the Ruth Garrett Millikan Graduate Research Fellowship. The Fellowship will enable Heather to devote the summer to completing two chapters of her dissertation entitled “Liberatory Virtue Epistemology.” Her major advisor is Heather Battaly. For more information about the Ruth Garrett Millikan Fellowship, please visit here.

Drew Johnson: Humanities Institute Fellow

Posted on by

Congratulations to doctoral candidate Drew Johnson for being selected as a fellow for the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute (UCHI). Drew will be working on his dissertation, “A Hybrid Theory of Ethical Thought and Discourse,” which applies prominent recent philosophical theories of expression and representation to develop a novel “hybrid” theory recognizing the joint role of reason and emotion in ethical judgment. For more information check out the article "20th Class of Humanities Institute Fellows Pursue Wide Range of Scholarship" published on UConn Today.