Browsing by Author "Smith, Joshua Tyler"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Disability, Love, And Limitation: A Response To The Mere-Difference View
    (Rice University, 2019) Smith, Joshua Tyler
    Elizabeth Barnes’ argues that physical disabilities have no impact on how well someone’s life goes since disabilities are not negative difference makers to one’s life. I analyze Barnes’ position and tease out three background theses she utilizes in order to argue her position. The most significant of these theses (I call T2) suggests that the kinds of goods experienced by an individual are much less important than the amount of goods in a life. As long as a disabled person can participate in some goods unrelated to a disability, their life will go well for them. I argue that certain goods, especially those an individual loves, are not consistent with this thesis. I use the analogy with romantic love to illustrate that some goods are valued not for their relative quantity but because of their unique relationship to an individual. Given this inconsistency, I suggest that Barnes’ position needs further support to justify her argument.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Wonderment: A Philosophical Analysis of Its Nature and Its Attending Virtue
    (2024-04-18) Smith, Joshua Tyler; Schroeder, Timothy; Bradford, Gwen; Fanger, Claire
    This dissertation delves into the emotion of wonderment and proposes that it serves as a foundation for a neglected virtue: openness to wonderment. I divide this work into two parts. In the initial part, Chapters 2 and 3, I present my account of wonderment and its close connection with the perception of a beautiful mystery. In order to motivate this account, I provide sketches of what beauty and mystery are and how responding to them constitutes wonderment. This account nicely captures the cognitive and emotional engagement that is recognizable in wonderment and how wonderment is both inviting and daunting. In the second part of this work, detailed in Chapters 4 and 5, I transition to consider the virtue of openness to wonderment. In this second part, I have two broad aims. First, to show that this neglected virtue is, in fact, a virtue. Second, to show that this virtue is valuable for human life. Openness to wonderment is characterized not simply by passive receptivity but also equally by active cultivation of our attention and appreciation for wonder-inducing experiences. I consider several features of familiar virtues, like being a dispositional state, involving emotion and deliberate choice, and orienting actions to a noble end and I show that openness to wonderment has all of these familiar features of virtues. I highlight that not only is this virtue’s value grounded in it being a virtue, but it is also valuable in that it enhances one's capacity for transformative contemplation of the world. I end by discussing further avenues for future research that explore its connection to contemplation and one's worldview.