DOCSLIB.ORG

Towards an Animalist Conception of Personal Identity A

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Towards an Animalist Conception of Personal Identity A UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara Matter and Form: Towards an Animalist Conception of Personal Identity A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy by Keith A. Hess Committee in charge: Professor Aaron Zimmerman, Chair Professor Anthony Anderson Professor Sonny Elizondo Professor David Hershenov, University at Buffalo Professor Anthony Brueckner, in memorium September 2017 The dissertation of Keith A. Hess is approved. ________________________________________________ Professor Anthony Anderson ________________________________________________ Professor Sonny Elizondo ________________________________________________ Professor David Hershenov, University at Buffalo ________________________________________________ Professor Aaron Zimmerman, Committee Chair July 2017 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without support from various scholars in the philosophical community. In particular, I would like to thank Professors Robert Pasnau, Eleonore Stump, and Patrick Toner for their guidance via email. I would also like to thank Professors Brian Morley and J. P. Moreland for encouraging me to enter academia and for believing that I had the ability to obtain a PhD. In addition, I would like to thank each member of my dissertation committee. Professors David Hershenov, Anthony Anderson, and Sonny Elizondo provided crucial guidance through the entire process. They gave of their time and energy to help me succeed. The late Professor Anthony Brueckner, my former advisor, assisted me in the early stages of the process and showed excitement for my project. I miss him greatly. Finally, my advisor, Professor Aaron Zimmerman, provided invaluable encouragement and advice on the dissertation. He helped me believe that I could finish well. I will never forget his kindness. I would like to thank my family as well, who provided much help and encouragement. My parents-in-law and parents lovingly encouraged and supported me each step of the way. My wife, Lorna, and my daughters, Allie, Sophie, and Zoey, stood beside me through my entire education. My daughters loved me, encouraged me, and brought joy to my heart. And my wife sacrificed greatly so that I could write my dissertation. She never gave up and believed I could finish, even when I had my doubts. She is my best friend and will be always. I am deeply grateful for her. Finally, and above all, I would like to thank God for giving me guidance and strength. As I continue my career in academia, may I trust in Him with all my heart. iii VITA OF KEITH A. HESS July 2017 EDUCATION PhD in Philosophy – Department of Philosophy, University of California, Santa Barbara, 09/2017 (expected) MA in Philosophy – Department of Philosophy, University of California, Santa Barbara, 12/2012 MA in Philosophy of Religion and Ethics – Biola University, 05/2008 BA in Biblical Languages – The Master’s College, 12/2005 PROFESSIONAL APPOINTMENTS Philosophy Instructor – Department of Social Sciences, College of Southern Nevada, 08/2016 - Present Philosophy Instructor/Teaching Assistant – Department of Philosophy, University of California, Santa Barbara, 9/2010 – 06/2016 Adjunct Professor – Department of Philosophy, Biola University, 08/2014 – 0 5/2015 PUBLICATIONS “Sure It’s Alive, but Does It Have a Soul?” In Frankenstein and Philosophy: The Shocking Truth. Vol. 79. Popular Culture and Philosophy. Open Court Publishing Company, 2013. SELECT CONFERENCE PARTICIPATION/PRESENTATIONS Workshop on Teaching and Learning in Philosophy, American Association of Philosophy Teachers and American Philosophical Association, 6/2016 (accepted) “Animalism and the Incarnation” Presented at the Personhood, Possession, and Place graduate student conference at the University of California, Santa Barbara, 05/2013 “How Significant is Religious Disagreement?” Presented at the Imagining the Good Life Conference at California Baptist University, 04/2013 SELECT HONORS/AWARDS Academic Senate Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award (university-wide award), University of California, Santa Barbara, 2013, 2014 (nominated twice) Graduate Collaborative Award, Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2013 R. W. Church Fellowship, Department of Philosophy, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2012-2013 Graduate Opportunity Fellowship, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2009-2010 Elected to Kappa Tau Epsilon, the Talbot School of Theology Scholastic Honor Society, 2008 iv ABSTRACT Matter and Form: Towards an Animalist Conception of Personal Identity by Keith A. Hess In this dissertation, I defend an answer to the following question in the diachronic personal identity debate: what are the necessary and sufficient conditions for our persistence over time? Two popular approaches to answering this question are the psychological and the somatic approach. On the former approach, we persist in virtue of some sort of psychological continuity. So, some proponents of the psychological approach think that we cease to exist if we lose certain features of our psychology such as our memories, beliefs, and rationality. On the latter approach, we persist in virtue of some sort of physical continuity. Eric Olson defends a version of the somatic approach called animalism. On his view, we are numerically identical to biological organisms and we persist if and only if the organisms we are persist. Although Olson’s animalism has some benefits, it also faces some challenges. For example, many people would say that we go wherever our brains go (if we go anywhere at all) because our brains (more specifically, our cerebra) realize the aspects of our psychology traditionally associated with persons, such as memories, beliefs, rationality, and self-awareness. But on Olson’s animalism, our psychology has nothing to do with our persistence and we go wherever our bodies go rather than our cerebra. Following Aristotle and Aquinas, I lay out an animalist view of v our persistence called hylomorphic animalism. On this view, we are numerically identical to rational animals, which are living bodies composed of prime matter and a rational soul. Furthermore, we persist if and only if the composite of matter and rational soul persists. I claim that hylomorphic animalism makes better sense of certain contemporary personal identity thought experiments than Olson’s animalism. For example, contra Olson, I argue that our psychology does have something to do with our persistence and that we go wherever our brains go. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ..........................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: Animalism.... ....................................................................................................22 Chapter 2: Hylomorphic Animalism ................................................................................. 69 Chapter 3: Hylomorphic Animalism Retains the Benefits of Animalism .......................101 Chapter 4: Hylomorphic Animalism and Transfer Problems ..........................................132 Chapter 5: Hylomorphic Animalism and Multiplication Problems .................................154 References ........................................................................................................................188 vii INTRODUCTION The diachronic personal identity debate in philosophy centers on finding necessary and sufficient conditions for our persistence over time. The notion of identity involved is numerical identity rather than qualitative identity. The latter notion concerns similarity between objects. Object X and Object Y can be more or less similar and they are exactly similar if and only if every property that one object possesses the other possesses. Numerical identity concerns numerical sameness. Object X and Object Y are numerically identical if and only if they are one and the same object. Applied to persons, person1 is numerically identical to person2 if and only if person1 and person2 are one and the same person.1 If the personal identity debate centers around our persistence conditions, what is meant by our persistence? Simply put, the debate concerns human persons like you and me and Donald Trump.2 In specifying the debate in this way, I do not intend to say that it only concerns our persistence qua persons. That is, the central question of the diachronic personal identity debate is not the following: (1) If a [human] person x exists at one time and a [human] person y exists at another time, under what possible circumstances is it the case that x is y?3 1 Throughout this dissertation, unless specified otherwise, when I speak of identity, I mean numerical identity. 2 Eric Olson, What Are We? A Study in Personal Ontology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 8. But what is a human person? See Jens Johansson, “What Is Animalism?,” Ratio 20, no. 2 (2007), 202 – 204 for discussion. In addition, some philosophers distinguish between animals and organisms. See Mark Johnston, “‘Human Beings’ Revisited: My Body Is Not an Animal,” in Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, ed. Dean Zimmerman, vol. 3 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pgs 55-56 and Sydney Shoemaker, “On What We Are,” in The Oxford Handbook to the Self, ed. S. Gallagher (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 352–71, pg. 353. 3 Eric Olson, “Personal Identity,” ed. Edward Zalta, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Winter 2016, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/identity-personal/.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • 1 the Mind-Body-Body Problem Robert
    1 The Mind-Body-Body Problem Robert Hanna and Evan Thompson∗ Theoria et Historia Scientiarum: International Journal for Interdisciplinary Studies 7 (1) (2003): 23-42. From the point of view of Husserl’s ontology, the traditional mind-body problem looks hopelessly simplistic. Not only must we deal with relations between mind— indeed consciousness, soul [psyche], spirit [human personhood]—and body. We must address different aspects of the body itself as living organism and as material thing. This body-body problem is suppressed in a Cartesian ontology that reduces the body to a mechanism in the sense of seventeenth-century physics, as Descartes sought to reduce all of physics to mechanics. —David Woodruff Smith1 It seems to me that post-Kripke, the most promising line of attack on the mind- body problem is to see whether any sense can be made of the idea that mental processes might be physical processes necessarily but not analytically. —Thomas Nagel2 ∗ We gratefully acknowledge the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona, Tucson, which provided a grant for the support of this work. E.T. is also supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the McDonnell Project in Philosophy and the Neurosciences. 1 See David Woodruff Smith, “Mind and Body,” in The Cambridge Companion to Husserl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 323-393, at p. 358. 2 Thomas Nagel, “The Psychophysical Nexus,” in Paul Boghossian and Christopher Peacocke (eds.), New Essays on the A Priori (Oxford: Clarendon/Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 433-471, at p. 434.
    [Show full text]
  • Animalism and the Vagueness of Composition
    Organon F 26 (2) 2019: 207–227 ISSN 2585-7150 (online) https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2019.26202 ISSN 1335-0668 (print) RESEARCH ARTICLE Animalism and the Vagueness of Composition Radim Bělohrad* Received: 13 June 2018 / Accepted: 2 October 2018 Abstract: Lockean theories of personal identity maintain that we per- sist by virtue of psychological continuity, and most Lockeans say that we are material things coinciding with animals. Some animalists ar- gue that if persons and animals coincide, they must have the same intrinsic properties, including thinking, and, as a result, there are ‘too many thinkers’ associated with each human being. Further, Lockeans have trouble explaining how animals and persons can be numerically different and have different persistence conditions. For these reasons, the idea of a person being numerically distinct but coincident with an animal is rejected and animalists conclude that we simply are animals. However, animalists face a similar problem when confronted with the vagueness of composition. Animals are entities with vague boundaries. According to the linguistic account of vagueness, the vagueness of a term consists in there being a number of candidates for the denotatum of the vague term. It seems to imply that where we see an animal, there are, in fact, a lot of distinct but overlapping entities with basically the same intrinsic properties, including think- ing. As a result, the animalist must also posit ‘too many thinkers’ where we thought there was only one. This seems to imply that the animalist cannot accept the linguistic account of vagueness. In this paper the author argues that the animalist can accept the linguistic account of vagueness and retain her argument against Lockeanism.
    [Show full text]
  • Richard Swinburne's Arguments for Substance Dualism
    Richard Swinburne’s arguments for substance dualism. MA by Research in Theology and Religion David Horner September 2018 Richard Swinburne’s arguments for substance dualism. Submitted by David Horner to the University of Exeter as a dissertation for the degree of MA by Research in Theology and Religion in September 2018 This dissertation is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the dissertation may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this dissertation which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. 1 Acknowledgements. I would like to thank my supervisors, Dr Jonathan Hill and Dr Joel Krueger for their support and encouragement in the writing of this dissertation and for their patience in trying to keep me on the straight and narrow. I want to acknowledge the many conversations, on this and other topics, I have had with my friend and philosopher, Dr Chris Boyne, who sadly died in June of this year. I thank all my other chums at The Bull, Ditchling, for listening to my metaphysical ramblings. And finally, I thank my wife, Linda, for once more putting up with this kind of thing. 2 Abstract This dissertation is a contribution to debates in the philosophy of mind and of personal identity. It presents a critical account of arguments for substance dualism to be found in Richard Swinburne’s Mind, Brain, and Free Will (2013).
    [Show full text]
  • The Dignity of Persons
    --from Persons: Human and Divine, Peter van Inwagen and Dean Zimmerman, eds. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007): 261-278. Persons and the Natural Order Lynne Rudder Baker University of Massachusetts Amherst We human persons have an abiding interest in understanding what kind of beings we are. However, it is not obvious how to attain such an understanding. Traditional analytic metaphysicians start with a priori accounts of the most general, abstract features of the world— e.g., accounts of properties and particulars—features that, they claim, in no way depend upon us or our activity.1 Such accounts are formulated in abstraction from what is already known about persons and other things, and are used as constraints on metaphysical investigation of everything else. So, if we accept traditional metaphysics, we should be prepared to yield to abstruse pronouncements—either by giving up our most secure beliefs about the world that we encounter or by abandoning our conception of what those beliefs are really about. In contrast to traditional metaphysics, a more pragmatic metaphysics does not hold the empirical world in abeyance until we have thoroughgoing accounts of properties and the other topics of traditional metaphysics.2 Rather, a more pragmatic approach to 1 For example, see the work of David Lewis, David Armstrong, and Peter van Inwagen. For more recent examples, see Timothy O’Connor and Jonathan D. Jacobs, “Emergent Individuals,” The Philosophical Quarterly 53 (2003): 540-555, and John Heil, From an Ontological Point of View (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003). 2 From a pragmatic point of view, traditional metaphysics has no standards of adequacy other than what is, in Peirce’s words, “agreeable to reason”—what we find ourselves inclined to believe.
    [Show full text]
  • What Are You?
    Human Being or Human Brain? Animalism and the Problem of Thinking Brains Ida Anderalm Master’s Thesis in Philosophy, 30 credits Spring 2016 Supervisor: Pär Sundström Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies Abstract Animalismens huvudargument säger att du är det tänkande objektet som sitter i din stol, och enligt animalisterna själva innebär detta att du är identisk med ett mänskligt djur. Argumentet är dock problematiskt då det inte tycks utesluta eventuella tänkande delar hos det mänskliga djuret, som till exempel dess hjärna. Detta beror på att hjärnor också kan beskrivas som tänkande, samt att även de befinner sig inom det spatiella område som upptas av det mänskliga djuret. I den här uppsatsen argumenterar jag för att tänkande hjärnor är ett problem för animalismen och att tesen att vi är identiska med hjärnor är ett verkligt hot mot den animalistiska teorin om personlig identitet. Olika argument som lagts fram mot tesen att vi är hjärnor avhandlas, som till exempel att hjärnor inte existerar och att hjärnor inte tänker. Jag diskuterar även två argument som tidigare använts för att visa att vi är personer snarare än mänskliga djur (the Transplant Intuition och the Remnant Person Problem), men i det här sammanhanget bedöms de utifrån deras förmåga att stödja hjärnteorin. Contents 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1 1.1 Personal Identity ..............................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Nousletter 2015
    Department of Philosophy Noûsletter Number 21 - Summer 2015 No. 21 · Summer 2015 noûsletter Page 2 Table of Contents Peter Hare Outstanding Assistant Awards .............. 45 Letter from the Chair ................................................................... 3 Hare Award for Best Overall Essay .............................. 46 From the Director of Undergraduate Education ........... 7 Hourani Award for Outstanding Essay in Ethics .. 46 Faculty of the Department of Philosophy ......................... 7 Perry Awards for Best Dissertation ............................. 46 In Remembrance ............................................................................ 8 Steinberg Essay Prize Winners ...................................... 46 William Baumer (1932 —2014) ....................................... 8 Whitman Scholarship Winner ........................................ 46 Newton Garver (1928 – 2014) .......................................... 9 Confucian Institute Dissertation Fellowship .......... 46 Anthony Fay (1979-2015) ................................................ 11 The People Who Make It Possible ..................................... 47 Faculty Updates ........................................................................... 12 The Peter Hare Award ........................................................ 47 Introducing Alexandra King ............................................. 12 The Hourani Lectures ......................................................... 47 Introducing Nicolas Bommarito ...................................
    [Show full text]
  • Rationality and Synchronic Identity
    Rationality and Synchronic Identity Brian Hedden Abstract Many requirements of rationality rely for their application on facts about identity at a time. Take the requirement not to have contradictory beliefs. It is irrational if a single agent believes P and believes :P , but it is not irrational if one agent believes P and another believes :P . There are puzzle cases, however, in which it is unclear whether we have a single agent, or instead two or more. I consider and reject possible criteria of identity at a time before proposing a pluralist alternative on which there are vastly more agents than we might have thought. This pluralist thesis is analogous to mereological universalism, on which there are all sorts of strange disconnected objects we don't usually take note of. I conclude by giving a pragmatic account of which of these rational agents it makes sense to attend to by appealing the purposes we have in employing rationally evaluative language. 1 Introduction If a single person believes both P and :P , then that person is irrational. But if one person believes P while another believes :P , then neither need be irrational. In this way, the norm against having contradictory beliefs relies on a notion of personal identity at a time, or synchronic identity, to distinguish between cases where we have a single person at a given time from ones where we have two or more. Many other requirements of rationality are like this. The requirement that one's beliefs be proportioned to one's evidence presupposes that there is a fact of the matter whether a given 1 set of beliefs and a given body of evidence belong to the same person.
    [Show full text]
  • Winter 2011 Department of Philosophy
    Department of Philosophy Noûsletter Number 19 - Winter 2011 No. 19 · Fall 2011 noûsletter Page 2 Table of Contents IGERT Fellowship Work .................................................... 21 Letter from the Chair .............................................................. 3 Perry Awards for Best Dissertation ............................. 21 Letter from the Director of Graduate Studies ............ 5 2011 Steinberg Essay Prize Winners .......................... 22 In Remembrance ............................................................................ 6 2011 Whitman Scholarship Winner ............................ 22 Peter Hewitt Hare (1935-2008) ....................................... 6 People Who Made It Possible ............................................... 22 Kenneth Barber (1940-2008) ............................................ 7 The Peter Hare Award ........................................................ 22 Kenneth K. Inada (1924-2011) ......................................... 7 The Hourani Lectures ......................................................... 23 Faculty Updates .............................................................................. 8 The Steinberg Award........................................................... 25 Introducing David Braun ...................................................... 8 The Romanell Award ........................................................... 25 Introducing Richard Cohen ................................................. 8 The Perry Award ..................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • The Moral Status of Animals: a Critical Analysis and a Gradualist Proposal*
    559 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XX, 2018, 3, pp. 559-570. ISSN: 1825-5167 THE MORAL STATUS OF ANIMALS: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS AND A * GRADUALIST PROPOSAL FRANCESCO ALLEGRI Università di Siena Dipartimento di Scienze storiche e dei beni culturali [email protected] ABSTRACT In this essay the author, after having distinguished and analyzed four options on the moral status of animals, argues in favour of the third, for which animals undergo an unjustifiable harm not only from the suffering caused to them by many human practises, but also from a death induced in advance. Finally, he defends the principle of the equal consideration of the interests and suggests that the value of life of sentient beings is directly proportional to their cognitive, emotional and social complexity. KEYWORDS Moral status, animal ethics, equal consideration of interests, gradualist approach 1. INTRODUCTION: FOUR OPTIONS FOR THE MORAL STATUS OF ANIMALS The question of the moral status of animals is nowadays hard to avoid for anyone who deals with practical ethics, and more generally with moral philosophy, given the enormous interest it arouses in the public opinion. It is sufficient to see the amount of websites in favour of vegetarianism or veganism and against vivisection and * This text is a reworking of the paper presented at the Eleventh International Conference of the Italian Society for Analytic Philosophy (S.I.F.A.), entitled “Philosophy, Analysis and Public Engagement”, held at the Department of Human Sciences of the University of L’Aquila, from 3 to 5 september 2014. A similar version was read on 29 november 2017 at the Bioethics seminar organized by the University of Turin, where I was invited by Maurizio Mori.
    [Show full text]
  • Philosophy- Key Themes
    Philosophy: Key Themes Also by Julian Baggini and Gareth Southwell PHILOSOPHY: Key Texts Also by Julian Baggini THE EGO TRICK SHOULD YOU JUDGE THIS BOOK BY ITS COVER? COMPLAINT DO THEY THINK YOU’RE STUPID? WELCOME TO EVERYTOWN THE PIG THAT WANTS TO BE EATEN WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT? ATHEISM: A Very Short Introduction MAKING SENSE: Philosophy Behind The Headlines Also by Gareth Southwell A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO DESCARTES’S MEDITATIONS A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO NIETZSCHE’S BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL WORDS OF WISDOM: Philosophy’s Most Important Quotations and Their Meanings Philosophy: Key Themes Second edition Julian Baggini and Gareth Southwell © Julian Baggini 2002 © Julian Baggini and Gareth Southwell 2012 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 2nd edition 2012 978-0-230-29663-3 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First edition published 2002 Second revised edition published 2012 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
    [Show full text]
  • APA Eastern Division 2018 Meeting Program
    The American Philosophical Association EASTERN DIVISION ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING PROGRAM SAVANNAH CONVENTION CENTER SAVANNAH, GEORGIA JANUARY 3 – 6, 2018 Visit our table at APA Eastern. Offering a 20% pb / 40% hc discount with free shipping to the contiguous U.S. for orders www.sunypress.edu placed at the conference. Lessing and the Enlightenment Failing Desire His Philosophy of Religion Karmen MacKendrick and Its Relation to Eighteenth- Century Thought Unmaking The Making of Americans Henry E. Allison Toward an Aesthetic Ontology E. L. McCallum Satan and Apocalypse And Other Essays in Political The Symbolic Order of the Mother Theology Luisa Muraro Thomas J. J. Altizer Translated by Francesca Novello Edited and with an Introduction Aristotle on God’s Life-Generating by Timothy S. Murphy Power and on Pneuma as Its Vehicle Foreword by Alison Stone Abraham P. Bos Defining Religion Having a Word with Angus Graham Essays in Philosophy of Religion At Twenty-Five Years into His Robert Cummings Neville Immortality The Last Fortress of Metaphysics Carine Defoort and Roger T. Ames, Jacques Derrida and the editors Deconstruction of Architecture March 2018 Francesco Vitale Inheritance in Psychoanalysis Translated by Mauro Senatore Joel Goldbach and James A. Godley, editors Author Meets Critics Session Mystery 101 Friday, January 8th, An Introduction to the 7:00 – 10:00 pm Big Questions and the Limits The Good Is One, of Human Knowledge Its Manifestations Many Richard H. Jones Confucian Essays on Metaphysics, Morals, For Foucault Rituals, Institutions, Against Normative and Genders Political Theory Robert Cummings Neville Mark G. E. Kelly IMPORTANT NOTICES FOR MEETING ATTENDEES SESSION LOCATIONS Please note: this online version of the program does not include session locations.
    [Show full text]
  • The Mirrors of Naturalism: Stephen Crane's Pragmatic Determinism
    The Mirrors of Naturalism: Stephen Crane’s Pragmatic Determinism Anthony Manganaro A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2017 Reading Committee: Robert Abrams, chair Monika Kaup Mark Patterson Program Authorized to Offer Degree: English © 2017 Anthony Manganaro University of Washington Abstract The Mirrors of Naturalism: Stephen Crane’s Pragmatic Determinism Anthony Manganaro Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Robert Abrams English My dissertation contributes to current scholarship on nineteenth-century American naturalism by arguing that the emergent theories of determinism and pragmatism were antithetical to, and yet dependent upon, one another. On the one hand, Stephen Crane’s fiction reveals determinism’s heavy weight upon the naturalist genre (the sense that humans cannot affect their worlds), yet unlike Frank Norris or Jack London, for instance, Crane innovatively employs pragmatic elements that work against the very deterministic frameworks that structure his stories. By tracing the dialectic between these theories, I demonstrate how Crane’s fiction not only reveals the destructive relationship between nature and humanity but also, in his pragmatic suspicion of static concepts, the failure of language to accurately interpret the world of the fin de siècle. My lens provides for more complex interpretations of Crane in addition to Theodore Dreiser in ways that highlight how the deterministic yet pluralistic character of naturalism serves
    [Show full text]