Student Archive

My project focuses on non-traditional jazz education. Because I do not believe that lecture style teaching adequately presents the history and legacy of this great American art form, I am attempting to develop my own teaching methods in this regard. A major part of my research included a three month internship at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. with Dr. Billy Taylor. My involvement with Dr. Taylor, one of the leading advocates of jazz performance and education, gave me insight into various non-traditional schemes in jazz education and programming.

Zombie arguments have been present in the history of philosophy of mind for some time. They have been used both to defend and refute behaviorist and functionalist view of mind. Recently, however, David Chalmers has offered a slight variation of the argument. Instead of a functional or behavioral duplicate, Chalmers asks us to conceive of a physical duplicate that is a being that is "molecule for molecule identical" to a living, conscious human being. From the coherency of this notion, Chalmers offers an argument against materialism. In my paper, I challenge the coherency of this notion of a zombie, as defined by a complete physical duplicate. In particular I argue that analysis of the concept of the physical, which is crucial to Chalmers' analysis of a zombie, cannot support the modal claims made in the argument. In part, I argue that despite his efforts to the contrary, Chalmers' analysis of the physical is ultimately a contingent analysis, contingent, that is, on current understanding of physics and physical laws. Consequently, Chalmer's notion of a zombie, as currently presented, cannot be used to support claims regarding the relationship between the physical and the mental in all possible worlds.

In his proposal, Abraham writes that his work explores his…"interests in human existence as it relates to chaos theory, spiritual belief systems and sacred geometry, and how they are perceived and interpreted in our contemporary culture. This work is informed by my own personal experiences with and investigation of the phenomenon of spirituality."