Philosophy Commons^™

With Love, ; An Interdisciplinary And Intersectional Look At Why Creativity Is Essential, Theo Starr Gardner

Whittier Scholars Program

My Whittier Scholars Program self-designed major, Teaching Creativity, is a mixture of Art, Literature, and Education classes. My research and praxis classes have been focused on the ‘how?’s and 'why?’s of creativity, so it felt only right that my project should be a constructivist, generative project. The project I have been working on throughout my time at Whittier, and that has just fully come to fruition on April 11th, 2024, was a solo art gallery/open mic event entitled ‘With Love,’. With Love, was conceptually inspired by the research I’ve conducted on creativity and creative arts education over the past few …

Rhetorics Of Species Revivalism And Biotechnology – A Roundtable Dialogue, Eva Kasprzycka, Charlotte Wrigley, Adam Searle, Richard Twine

Animal Studies Journal

This informal dialogue contextualises and explores contemporary practices of nonhuman animal gene-modification in de-extinction projects. Looking at recent developments in biotechnology’s role in de-extinction sciences and industries, these interdisciplinary scholars scrutinise the neoliberal impetus driving ‘species revivalism’ in the wake of the Capitalocene. Critical examinations of species integrity, cryo-preservation, techno-optimism, rewilding initiatives and projects aimed at restoring extinct animals such as the woolly mammoth and bucardo are used to map some of the necessary restructuring of conservation policies and enterprises that could secure viably sustainable – and just – futures for nonhuman animals at risk of extinction. The authors question …

Unraveling Dna And Identity: A Humanistic Perspective On Epistemologies And Ethics Of Genetic Ancestry Testing., Eve Carlisle Polley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The advent of DNA ancestry testing motivated a burst of human activities that constitute a scientific-technological-industrial-personal-social movement of immense scale, infused with epistemological and ethical questions of great and important variety. This movement has motivated many discourses in the social sciences, with study subjects ranging from the language usage of geneticists, to moral conundrums faced by test-takers, to potential ramifications in global structures of political power. At the same time, and especially in recent decades, the discourses of the comparative humanities have included with increasing frequency and urgency research and theorization about concepts and consequences of human social identities, alongside …

Informed Consent: Foundations And Applications, Joanna Smolenski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since its advent in the 20th century, informed consent has become a cornerstone of ethical healthcare, and obtaining it a core obligation in medical contexts. In my dissertation, I aim to examine the theoretical underpinnings of informed consent and identify what values it is taken to protect. I will suggest that the fundamental motivation behind informed consent rests in something I’ll call bodily self-sovereignty, which I argue involves a coupling of two groups of values: autonomy and non-domination on the one hand, and self-ownership and personal integrity on the other. I will then go on to consider two 'case …

Welcoming The Game Changer Of Human Society: A Defense Of The Moral Permissibility And Obligations Of Human Genetic Engineering, Yongkang Li

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In 2018, a Chinese scientist, Jiankun He, announced the birth of two HIV-resistant babies through his experiment of human genetic engineering. This incidence has soon shocked the entire scientific community and invoked public outrage towards He’s corrupt moral integrity.

However, this event should also act as a harbinger to the human society that the technique of human genetic engineering is rapidly approaching maturity. In that case, how should we respond?

This thesis focuses on the moral issues surrounding human genetic engineering and advertises an accepting moral attitude to this booming technology. This thesis will first discuss the types of human …

The Dna Cloud: Is It Alive?, Theodoros Bargiotas

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this analysis, I will firstly be presenting the current knowledge concerning the materiality of the internet based Cloud, which I will henceforth be referring to as simply the Cloud. For organisation purposes I have created two umbrella categories under which I place the ongoing research in the field. Scholars have been addressing the issue of Cloud materiality through broadly two prisms: sociological materiality and geopolitical materiality. The literature of course deals with the intricacies of the Cloud based on its present ferromagnetic storage functionality. However, developments in synthetic biology have caused private tech companies and University spin-offs to flirt …

The Law Of Black Mirror - Syllabus, Yafit Lev-Aretz, Nizan Packin

Open Educational Resources

Using episodes from the show Black Mirror as a study tool - a show that features tales that explore techno-paranoia - the course analyzes legal and policy considerations of futuristic or hypothetical case studies. The case studies tap into the collective unease about the modern world and bring up a variety of fascinating key philosophical, legal, and economic-based questions.

Lab Practicum For Bias In Algorithms, Ameet Soni, Krista Karbowski Thomason

Digital Humanities Curricular Development

This is a course assignment to demonstrate potential biases encoded in algorithms (this can be linked more specifically to natural language processing, machine learning, or artificial intelligence) using the Word Embedding Association Test. In lab, students will work with programs that demonstrate the usefulness of word embedding algorithms in finding relationships between words. Then, students will use an implementation of the algorithm in "Semantics derived automatically from language corpora contain human-like biases" by Caliskan et al. to detect gender and racial bias encoded in word embeddings. The assignment has students design and run an experiment using the WEAT algorithm to …

Fys: Ethics And Technology (Phil 07/Cpsc 15) Syllabus, Ameet Soni, Krista Karbowski Thomason

Digital Humanities Curricular Development

There has been an accelerated shift in the influence of computing technology and the use of algorithms in our daily lives. With this technology comes serious ethical questions. Philosophers are often well-equipped to wrestle with ethical questions, but less well-equipped to wrestle with questions of technology itself. Computer scientists are well-equipped to deal with the problems and challenges of technology, but less well-equipped to deal with the ethical problems and challenges that technology can pose. In this co-taught course, we bring together the two fields to address ethical questions involving social media, data mining, self-driving cars, artificial intelligence, and other …

Human-Nonhuman Chimeras, Ontology, And Dignity: A Constructivist Approach To The Ethics Of Conducting Research On Cross-Species Hybrids, Jonathan M. Vajda

The Hilltop Review

Developments in biological technology in the last few decades highlight the surprising and ever-expanding practical benefits of stem cells. With this progress, the possibility of combining human and nonhuman organisms is a reality, with ethical boundaries that are not readily obvious. These inter-species hybrids are of a larger class of biological entities called “chimeras.” As the concept of a human-nonhuman creature is conjured in our minds, either incredulous wonder or grotesque horror is likely to follow. This paper seeks to mitigate those worries and demotivate reasonable concerns raised against chimera research, all the while pressing current ethical positions toward their …

Turn Me On Or Off: A Study On Epigenetics And Merleau-Ponty In Angela Carter’S “The Lady Of The House Of Love”, Solsiree Lynn Skarlinsky

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study aims to trace points of intersection between the too often divorced disciplines of literature, continental philosophy, and the hard sciences in Angela Carter’s “The Lady of the House of Love.” In short, this thesis will not only explore how such conversations surface within the short story, but will also serve as an explication of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of body and space, and the theory of epigenetics. Through these explications, the thesis itself will also gear one discipline towards the other as both theories intimately bind the environment with the body, and the body with the environment. Thus, …

Staffan Müller-Wille And Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, A Cultural History Of Heredity, Charles H. Pence

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Following The Trail Of Ants: An Examination Of The Work Of E.O. Wilson, Samantha Kee

Writing Across the Curriculum

No abstract provided.

Consuming Direct-To-Consumer Genetic Tests: The Role Of Genetic Literacy And Knowledge Calibration, Yvette E. Pearson, Yuping Liu-Thompkins

Philosophy Faculty Publications

As direct-to-consumer marketing of medical genetic tests grows in popularity, there is an increasing need to better understand the ethical and public policy implications of such products. The complexity of genetic tests raises serious concerns about whether consumers possess the knowledge to make sound decisions about their use. This research examines the effects of educational intervention and feedback on consumers' genetic literacy and calibration -- the gap between consumers' actual knowledge and how much they think they know. The authors find that consumers' genetic knowledge was generally low and that people tended to underestimate their knowledge level. Furthermore, consumers' perceived …

Identifying Modular Function Via Edge Annotation In Gene Correlation Networks Using Gene Ontology Search, Kathryn Dempsey Cooper, Ishwor Thapa, Dhundy Raj Bastola, Hesham Ali

Interdisciplinary Informatics Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

Correlation networks provide a powerful tool for analyzing large sets of biological information. This method of high-throughput data modeling has important implications in uncovering novel knowledge of cellular function. Previous studies on other types of network modeling (protein-protein interaction networks, metabolomes, etc.) have demonstrated the presence of relationships between network structures and organization of cellular function. Studies with correlation network further confirm the existence of such network structure and biological function relationship. However, correlation networks are typically noisy and the identified network structures, such as clusters, must be further investigated to verify actual cellular function. This is traditionally done using …

A Novel Correlation Networks Approach For The Identification Of Gene Targets, Kathryn Dempsey Cooper, Stephen Bonasera, Dhundy Raj Bastola, Hesham Ali

Interdisciplinary Informatics Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

Correlation networks are emerging as a powerful tool for modeling temporal mechanisms within the cell. Particularly useful in examining coexpression within microarray data, studies have determined that correlation networks follow a power law degree distribution and thus manifest properties such as the existence of “hub” nodes and semicliques that potentially correspond to critical cellular structures. Difficulty lies in filtering coincidental relationships from causative structures in these large, noise-heavy networks. As such, computational expenses and algorithm availability limit accurate comparison, making it difficult to identify changes between networks. In this vein, we present our work identifying temporal relationships from microarray data …

Proactive Procreation : Ethical Implications Of New Genetic Technologies For Parental Obligations To Future Offspring, L Syd M. Johnson

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation examines the ethical implications of recent genetic innovations, particularly preimplantation genetic diagnosis, for the obligations and duties of parents to future children. I critique common but uncompelling objections to the use of genetic information, diagnosis, and technology to influence the characteristics of future offspring, and conclude that genetic selection and enhancement are not different in kind or degree from other means of selection, direction, and enhancement that parents engage in to shape the lives of their children. Procreation is morally risky -- it risks imposing substantial burdens on persons who would not otherwise have to bear those burdens, …

Strokes Of Existence: The Connection Of All Things, Mari Gorman

Graduate Student Publications and Research

Acted or real—and all life is real whether one is acting or not—the common denominator and consistent, ubiquitous reality of life and all behavior is that it manifests in the form of relationships on all scales. But what is a relationship? Until now, the answer to this question has not been sufficiently known. As a result of many years of empirical research that began with the aim of discovering what is going on in a gifted actor when s/he is playing a character that can be observed and experienced as a living, intuitive being, and based on the knowledge that …

Addiction, Genetics, And Criminal Responsibility, Stephen J. Morse

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Community Consent For Genetic Research, Charles Weijer

Charles Weijer

No abstract provided.

Genetic Biotechnology And Evolutionary Theory: Some Unsolicited Advice, David Depew

David J Depew

In his book The Biotech Century Jeremy Rifkin makes arguments about the dangers of market-driven genetic biotechnology in medical and agricultural contexts. Believing that Darwinism is too compromised by a competitive ethic to resist capitalist depredations of the “genetic commons,” and perhaps hoping to pick up anti-Darwinian allies, he turns for support to unorthodox non-Darwinian views of evolution. The Darwinian tradition, more closely examined, contains resources that might better serve his argument. The robust tradition associated with Theodosius Dobzhansky, Ernst Mayr, and others provides an alternative, scientifically sound basis for challenging the rhetoric of genetic reductionism.

Genetic Testing, Nature, And Trust, Anita L. Allen

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Review Of: The Genetic Frontier: Ethics, Law, And Policy (Mark S. Frankel & Albert Teich Eds., American Association For The Advancement Of Science 1994), Suzanne A. Sprunger

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)

Review of: The Genetic Frontier: Ethics, Law, and Policy (Mark S. Frankel & Albert Teich eds., American Association for the Advancement of Science 1994). Acknowledgments, appendix, contributors, figures, index, introduction, notes, references, tables. LC 93-37230, ISBN 0-87168-526-4. [260 pp. Paper $22.95. 1333 H St., NW, Washington DC 20005.]