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A theory of linguistic universals: the cognitive order-word
May 29, 2021
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This is an excerpt from my 2021 Honors Thesis for my B.A. in Philosophy. My advisor was Prof. Laura Hengehold. I am especially proud of this section, wherein I flesh out novel synthesis of perspectives on linguistic universals. Importantly, it synthesizes the scientific (as presented by Cognitive Linguistics) and the philosophical (as presented by Deleuze and Guattari) conceptions into a unified theory. This section of my thesis is what later flourished into my current project, which incorporated Buddhism into the mix. It all circulates, I argue, around intention as the basic unit of language — a fact captured in different, yet deeply interlocking, ways by Cognitive Linguistics, Deleuzean metaphysics, and Buddhist philosophy.
North American Colonialism, Uprooting, & Eco-Anxiety: Relating & rehumanizing as decolonial action
January 21, 2021
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This was my final paper for Prof. Jeremy Bendik-Keymer’s undergraduate Ethics class. I later was invited to present it during a session of the Planetary Justice Virtual Community, organized by the Western Political Science Association. It was my first rigorous dive into philosophy as conceptual innovation. Our goal was to (a) identify an ethical problem stemming from settler colonial ethics, and (b) offer a conceptual solution to the problem. In this paper I develop “eco-anxiety” beyond a psychological concept into a philosophical one, arguing that it is an uprooting immanently correlated with extractive, colonial ways of being. In response, I offer a five-part solution.