Philosophy Commons^™

Considering Animals’ Feelings: Précis Of Sentience And Animal Welfare (Broom 2014), Donald M. Broom

Animal Sentience

The concept of sentience concerns the capacity to have feelings. There is evidence for sophisticated cognitive concepts and for both positive and negative feelings in a wide range of nonhuman animals. All vertebrates, including fish, as well as some molluscs and decapod crustaceans have pain systems. Most people today consider that their moral obligations extend to many animal species. Moral decisions about abortion, euthanasia, and the various ways we protect animals should take into account the research findings about sentience. In addition, all animal life should be respected and studies of the welfare of even the simplest invertebrate animals should …

Animal Mourning: Précis Of How Animals Grieve (King 2013), Barbara J. King

Animal Sentience

Abstract: When an animal dies, that individual’s mate, relatives, or friends may express grief. Changes in the survivor’s patterns of social behavior, eating, sleeping, and/or of expression of affect are the key criteria for defining grief. Based on this understanding of grief, it is not only big-brained mammals like elephants, apes, and cetaceans who can be said to mourn, but also a wide variety of other animals, including domestic companions like cats, dogs, and rabbits; horses and farm animals; and some birds. With keen attention placed on seeking where grief is found to occur and where it is absent …

Death In The Family, Maria Botero

Animal Sentience

Barbara King presents grief as the result of the capacity of human and non-human animals for social and affectionate bonds. This is a novel approach that provides a context for interpreting behavioral evidence of grief. The book also offers thought-provoking insights into the relationship between emotion and the expression of emotion. The most surprising element of King’s approach is that, throughout the book, her account of non-human animal grief forces us to reassess the way we treat them.

Modulation Of Behavior In Communicating Emotion, Martin Gardiner

Animal Sentience

King discusses many examples where two animals, as they bond, behave in ways we interpret as expressing love for one another. If one of the bonded animals then dies, signs of loving are replaced by signs we interpret as expressing grief by the animal who remains. I propose a pathway for emotional communication between an animal and an observer that can have a central role in these and other observations by King and in our overall ability to interpret observed behavior in relation to emotion. This pathway provides evidence of emotion in an observed animal by communicating evidence of emotion’s …

The Object Of Grief, Clark Glymour

Animal Sentience

King’s new book is a wonderful collection of diverse anecdotes illustrating the variety of animal practices that are convincing illustrations of grief. Those who want scientific arguments for that conclusion should, however, read elsewhere.

Understanding Emotional Suffering, Barbara J. King

Animal Sentience

In responding to insightful commentaries from 7 scholars, for which I am grateful, I offer new thoughts on whether animals can conceptualize and express signs of grief. I also discuss why I included both weak and strong examples of animal mourning, and how this work may help us think about enhanced welfare for animals, including freedom from emotional suffering.

The Cognitive Implications Of Aristotelian Habituation And Intrinsic Valuation, David F. Mccaslin

CMC Senior Theses

Habituation in the Aristotelian tradition claims that we develop our moral virtues through repeated and guided practice in moral actions. His theory provides important insights for moral education and as a result many contemporary philosophers have debated how to properly interpret his writing. This thesis will explore Aristotelian habituation and the competing interpretations surrounding it, namely the cognitivist and mechanical views. It will then criticize the mechanical view and argue that the intrinsic valuation of virtuous actions evidences a cognitivist interpretation of habituation in the Aristotelian tradition.

Pleasure In Atrocity, Ladelle Mcwhorter

Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications

As Foucault says, genealogical work can be tedious and gray, but it is also pleasurable, even when the archives one delves into are filled with hatred, violence, and injustice. This article explores that pleasure, both in dangers and its possibilities, and in the process offers a partial genealogy of corporate personhood in U.S. legal history.

Why Life Now?, Ladelle Mcwhorter

Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications

As we struggle to understand and prepare ourselves for climate change, the effects of globalized neoliberal capitalism, and violence (both govenmental and extra-governmental) on a planetary scale, we also struggle to name what it is that we cherish and hope to foster and protect as well as what it is that, of itself opposes the forces that may well destroy us. One of the words that has emerged in this context is life.

Philosophers do well to pay close attention to any concept that attains such centrality and exercises such power in our thinking, which is one reason to be …

John Rawls’ Theory Of Justice And Mixed Conception With A Social Minimum Principle, Kevin Wu

CMC Senior Theses

John Rawls was a political philosopher concerned with social justice, specifically the best way that society could be structured so that individual rights and duties were fairly distributed amongst everyone and division of advantages from social cooperation were optimally determined. He believed that this conception of justice rested in principles that would be agreed upon by free, self-interested and rational persons in a starting position of equality and fairness. The principles of the theory of justice are ones that are meant to enable this group of people to cooperate with each other while recognizing that individuals in the group both …

The Public Vs. The Private, Elise "Alice" G. Roberson

Audre Lorde Prize

No abstract provided.

Nigerian Banking Governance, Leadership Style, And Performance During The 2008-2009 Financial Crisis, Adeola Oluwayemi Agbato

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The 2008-2009 global financial crisis of financial systems negatively affected about 30% of Nigerian banks, leading to profitability issues. The profitability issues led to operational challenges, downsizing, and liquidation of some banks. The purpose of this correlational study was to examine the relationship between corporate governance structure, perception of leadership style, and bank performance. This study was grounded in agency theory and used survey and archival data. Survey data were collected from 11 participants employed by commercial banks located in Nigeria, using the Multifaceted Leadership Questionnaire. Corporate governance and bank performance data were collected from annual bank reports. The model …

Effects Of Gender And Spirituality On Adults' Resilience To Daily Non-Traumatic Stressors, Lois S. Harris

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Researchers have conducted several studies of spirituality as it relates to individuals' coping strategies and resilience when facing life trauma. There is less research, however, on spirituality as it relates to adults' resiliency to daily non-traumatic stressors. The purposes of the current study were to examine the relationship between spirituality and adults' resilience to daily, non-traumatic stressors and assess whether gender has a moderating effect on this relationship. A quantitative correlational study based on Lazarus's transactional model of stress and coping using convenience sampling, an online survey (N= 94) was administered. Of the 94 participants ages 19 to 68, 66 …

Animal Groups And Social Ontology: An Argument From The Phenomenology Of Behavior, Alejandro Arango

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

Through a critical engagement with Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of the concepts of nature, life, and behavior, and with contemporary accounts of animal groups, this article argues that animal groups exhibit sociality and that sociality is a fundamental ontological condition. I situate my account in relation to the superorganism and selfish individual accounts of animal groups in recent biology and zoology. I argue that both accounts are inadequate. I propose an alternative account of animal groups and animal sociality through a Merleau-Pontian inspired definition of behavior. I criticize Merleau-Ponty’s individualistic prejudice, but show that his philosophy contains the resources necessary to overcome …

Unworking Milton: Steps To A Georgics Of The Mind, Steven Swarbrick

Publications and Research

Traditionally read as a poem about laboring subjects who gain power through abstract and abstracting forms of bodily discipline, John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667, 1674) more compellingly foregrounds the erotics of the Garden as a space where humans and nonhumans intra-act materially and sexually. Following Christopher Hill, who long ago pointed to not one but two revolutions in the history of seventeenth-century English radicalism—the first, ‘the one which succeeded[,] . . . the protestant ethic’; and the second, ‘the revolution which never happened,’ which sought ‘communal property, a far wider democracy[,] and rejected the protestant ethic’—I show how Milton’s Paradise …

Understanding The Health In Healthcare: A Closer Look At Perspectives, Treatments, And Their Effectiveness, Carlo Chiana

Whittier Scholars Program

This project is interested in defining health as more than just Western medicine, it also encompasses the social implications that can have an impact on one’s health such as environment and psychological state. This study includes both Holistic Philosophy and philosophy of reductionism. This study includes descriptions of the philosophies and their methods, explains defensive medicine, comparing the models and their methods,

A Correlative Study Of The Virtue Of Prudence In The Book Of Proverbs And Thomistic Moral Thought, Joseph Tedesco

Theses

The virtues are central to our understanding of character-based morality and in the Aristotelian and Thomistic tradition at least, prudence is considered the first of all cardinal virtues – vital and necessary to the virtuous life. Similarly, the claim of this study is that prudence is a central feature of Proverbial wisdom and, as such, the book of Proverbs is a useful biblical source to allow Scripture to enrich our understanding of the virtuous life and of prudence in particular. In this vein, this thesis engages in a correlative study between an understanding of prudence informed by Thomistic thought and …

Animal Suffering Calls For More Than A Bigger Cage, Simon R. B. Leadbeater

Animal Sentience

Ng (2016) argues for incremental welfare biology partly because it would be impossible to demonstrate conclusively that animals are sentient. He argues that low cost changes in industrial practices and working collaboratively may be more effective in advancing animal welfare than more adversarial approaches. There is merit in some of Ng’s recommendations but a number of his arguments are, in my view, misdirected. The fact that nonhuman animals feel has already been adequately demonstrated. Cruelty to animals is intrinsic to some industries, so the only way to oppose it is to oppose the industry.

The Non-Identity Problem: Finding A Narrow-Person-Affecting Solution To A Narrow-Person-Affecting Problem, Maura Duffey

Scripps Senior Theses

The non-identity problem attempts to explain the moral permissibility of certain procreative acts that determine a future individual’s existence. If we accept that this individual’s life is worth living, than we must also accept that these procreative acts are permissible. However, this is not the case. In this paper, I will argue against the permissibility of these acts and explain why our intuition, that these acts are morally wrong, is in fact correct. Because the non-identity problem affects particular persons, those whose existence is brought about, I argue in favor of a solution that explains that moral impermissibility in terms …

The Tension Between Traditional Consent And Affirmative Consent: A Kantian Solution, Marissa N. Deshon

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

In this paper I analyze the issues present in the standard form of consent in contrast to the new form of affirmative consent being implemented across college campuses. I then offer a Kantian solution to the rape myths and beliefs present in our current rape culture. This view of sexual morality can then help the new affirmative consent laws function as they aim to.