Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Is Masculinity A Vice?, Tyler J. Zimmer

Faculty Research and Creative Activities Symposium

No abstract provided.

Bothsiderism, John P. Casey

Faculty Research and Creative Activities Symposium

No abstract provided.

The Different Kinds, And Effects, Of Stereotypes, Stacey Goguen

Faculty Research and Creative Activities Symposium

No abstract provided.

"Not A Simple Matter: Rejecting Materialism As A Solution To The Mind-Body Problem", Andrew Coyle, Steve Parchment Dr., Minh Nguyen Dr.

Posters-at-the-Capitol

"Not a Simple Matter: Rejecting Materialism as a Solution to the Mind-Body Problem"

By Andrew Coyle

Mentored by Dr. Steve Parchment and Dr. Minh Nguyen

Department of History, Philosophy, and Religious Studies Many scholars accept materialism as an adequate solution to the mind-body problem. However, acceptance of materialism creates more problems than it purports to solve. This poster provides a background to the mind-body problem. This poster explores materialism as a potential solution to the mind-body problem. After reviewing materialism, it is rejected as an adequate solution to the mind-body problem. The poster concludes by positing property dualism as an …

B-2 Same-Sex Marriage And The Apocalyptic Consciousness Of Seventh-Day Adventism, David Hamstra

Celebration of Research and Creative Scholarship

Arguments made for and against affirming same-sex marriage in Seventh-day Adventism rely on typical moral background presuppositions about immanent and transcendent goods identified by Charles Taylor in his philosophical genealogy of A Secular Age. Arguments made only in terms of marriage’s immanent goods have the potential to diminish the plausibility of a uniquely Adventist way of imagining the transcendent: apocalyptic consciousness focused on the immanent/imminent restoration of Eden by Jesus Christ following the second coming. Comparing marriage to the this-worldly and next-worldly benefits of divergent Adventist Sabbath-keeping practices foregrounds the availability of immanentized moral presuppositions to make sense of …

2018 Printed Program

Colloquium Schedules

No abstract provided.

Science, Mental Illness, And Ethics In Friedrich Dürrenmatt’S The Physicists, Niyant Vora

John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference

In 1962, as Cold War tensions approached their peak, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, a Swiss playwright, published his play The Physicists. Two of the most important topics in The Physicists are mental illness and ethical responsibility of scientists. Dürrenmatt’s three main characters: Möbius (a genius), Einstein (a Russian spy), and Newton (an American spy) are all physicists who appropriate the status of mentally ill in order to hide from society inside the Les Cerisiers Sanatorium. Their status as mentally ill acts as a cover up that reveals their different reasons for adapting that status–from Möbius attempt to escape the politics of …

The Unifying Strands: Formalism And Gestalt Theory Span Centuries Of Music Philosophy, Amanda N. Staufer

The Research and Scholarship Symposium (2013-2019)

In every age, musicians and philosophers deal with inquiries concerning musical meaning and the effect of music on the listener. Musical formalism and Gestalt theory—two theories in musical aesthetics—demonstrate that aspects of musical perception and experience are enduring and comprehensive. Musical formalism is the theory that music’s nature is innate, self-evident, able to be systematically deduced, and rational. According to formalism, musical meaning is defined by things objectively ‘there’ in the music, musical experience relies on cognition, and music is less a matter of sense than of mind. Gestalt Theory holds that music is a unified totality—the whole gives meaning …

Paradigms And Paleoartists: How Our Perception Of Dinosaurs Forms, Jordan C. Oldham

The Research and Scholarship Symposium (2013-2019)

Thomas Kuhn in his famous work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions put forth his idea about how science changes. Kuhn thought that science changed by scientific revolutions brought on by an anomaly. After the anomaly, a crisis point would ensue as more scientists would research the anomaly. While in the process of research they would abandon the old paradigm in favor of one that would explain the anomaly. Not all anomalies create a crisis, but can rather result in a paradigm shift. These shifts occur within the old paradigm, and do not led to the formation of a new paradigm. …

̶T̶H̶E̶ ̶ A Possibility For Light, Daniel Burmester

Lesley University Community of Scholars Day

How can an educator help young people feel a reverence for and connection with the world? I asked myself this three years ago as I began thinking about how, as an educator, I could better the world. I believe that harmful action on our world can occur when reverence for and connection with it erodes or has never given a chance to flourish. Researchers in cognitive psychology have suggested that experiencing the emotion awe allows people to feel greater connections with elements of our world. (Keltner, 2016; Shiota, Keltner, & Mossman, 2007) My work at Lesley focuses on the emotion …

Discovering The Current Opinions Of The Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual, Transgender, And Questioning Individuals Towards The Evangelical Protestant Churches, Joseph Dagostino

Scholar Week 2016 - present

This research addressed the current opinions held by the LGBTQ community toward Evangelical Protestant churches. As a Pastor of a church that is concerned about this subject, the researcher developed and implemented a survey instrument that attempted to discover the over-all opinions, differences among sexual orientations in opinions, factors that encouraged and discouraged LGBTQ individuals’ involvement within Evangelical Protestant churches, and various levels of involvement by the participants in Evangelical Protestant churches. The researcher used the services of Survey Gizmo to distribute the survey tool amongst those self-identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning to complete the survey instrument. …

Empathy, Asymmetrical Reciprocity, And The Ethics Of Mental Health Care, Andrew Molas

The Canadian Society for Study of Practical Ethics / Société Canadienne Pour L'étude De L'éthique Appliquée — SCEEA

I discuss Young’s “asymmetrical reciprocity” and apply it to an ethics of mental health care. Due to its emphasis on engaging with others through respectful dialogue in an inclusive manner, asymmetrical reciprocity serves as an appropriate framework for guiding caregivers to interact with their patients and to understand them in a morally responsible and appropriate manner. In Section 1, I define empathy and explain its benefits in the context of mental health care. In Section 2, I discuss two potential problems surrounding empathy: the difficulty of perspective-taking and “compassion fatigue.” In Section 3, I argue that these issues can be …

The Myth Of Progress? Critical Theory And The Debate Over Progress, John Lundy

The Canadian Society for Study of Practical Ethics / Société Canadienne Pour L'étude De L'éthique Appliquée — SCEEA

Philosophy as a discipline has generally claimed that human beings have a capacity called practical reason that allows us to address moral-practical questions. Applied to historical change, this yields an account of progress as a process of rationalization. The 20^th century has produced a long line of radical critiques of this idea of progress. My central aim is to defend contemporary critical theory’s reliance on the idea of progress as an emancipatory process of rationalization. Because she engages deeply and directly with the accounts of progress I seek to defend, my focus is on Amy Allen’s critique and an …

Genetic Discrimination, Life Insurance, And Justice As Fairness, Ozan Gurcan

The Canadian Society for Study of Practical Ethics / Société Canadienne Pour L'étude De L'éthique Appliquée — SCEEA

In this paper, I use justice as fairness (JAF) to inquire whether any issues of liberal justice are raised by the practice of genetic discrimination in society, in particular from the standpoint of life insurance pricing in Canada. I present three ways in which JAF may apply. First and foremost, Rawls’ negative thesis can be interpreted to say that one’s genetic characteristics are morally arbitrary and therefore persons do not deserve to be advantaged or disadvantaged by the basic structure of society based on these characteristics. Second, as James W. Nickel observes, Rawls’ principle of equal basic liberties …

Aboriginal Title Or Legal Personhood For Land?, Melany Banks

The Canadian Society for Study of Practical Ethics / Société Canadienne Pour L'étude De L'éthique Appliquée — SCEEA

In 1983, British Columbia granted Carrier Lumber Ltd a license to engage in industrial logging within the territory of the Tsilhqot’in Nation. The Xeni Gwet’in First Nations government (part of Tsilhqot’in Nation) sought an injunction to halt Carrier. For the Xeni Gwent’in, the proposed logging would destroy the forest in which they lived and hunted. In order to gain the power to stop the proposed logging, the Xeni Gwet’in fought for a declaration of Aboriginal Title. After a lengthy trial, the Supreme Court granted their claim. This may sound like a story about victory for the Xeni Gwet’in people. After …

Painful Virtue, Marginalisation, And Resistance, Jordan Joseph Wadden

The Canadian Society for Study of Practical Ethics / Société Canadienne Pour L'étude De L'éthique Appliquée — SCEEA

This paper argues a potentially controversial thesis in virtue ethics, i.e., in situations of oppression and marginalisation, it is better to be a person of atypical virtue, one who has struggled to resist oppressive circumstances, than it is to be a traditionally defined virtuous agent. As such, those who have been through a tragic dilemma (or several) are more important for successful resistance movements than their traditionally defined counterparts. This paper does not romanticise oppressive situations or their influence on some individuals developing virtuous actions and behaviours. Instead, it acknowledges that these are tragic circumstances that permanently affect some individuals …