Philosophy of Mind Commons^™

Considerations For Introducing, Facilitating, And Expanding Mindfulness Training In The Workplace, Laura H. Saher

Mindfulness Studies Theses

This creative thesis is designed to further the understanding of the considerations for offering mindfulness training in the workplace and to offer mindfulness practitioners a guide for introducing and facilitating mindfulness training into their workplaces. This thesis consists of two primary components: 1) a rationale paper and 2) a creative component. The rationale paper includes a literature review that focuses on the benefits and risks of offering mindfulness training in the workplace; these form the business case for bringing mindfulness to the workforce and identify the gaps in the research that prompted the questions underlying this thesis. These gaps were …

Tracing The Past, Drawing The Present, Sixue Yang

Graduate School of Art Theses

The group of work, Rising Water, Floating Islands is inspired by traditional Chinese scroll landscape paintings. Such landscape paintings combine meticulous technique, compositional complexity, and tension between representation and abstraction to reveal an alternative universe that waits discovery amid our mundane existence. In “Rising Water, Floating Islands,” I explore the political and social ramifications of the ongoing cultural conflict between traditional and emergent contemporary values. By combining traditional Chinese elements and techniques with my own markings and gestural adaptation in my painting, I give the audience the opportunity to contemplate the implications of our present digital condition through traditional esthetic …

George Berkeley's Idealism: An Examination Of The Idealist Metaphysics And Its Connection To Philosophy Of Mind, Joshua L. Powell

Honors Theses

The prominent 18th century empirical philosopher George Berkeley espoused a philosophy known as “idealism.” This thesis aims to show that George Berkeley’s idealism is a formidable player in philosophy of mind. The present research unfolds his arguments for idealism as they appear in A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, turning at several points to The Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous for clarification. This research further explores the fundamentals of idealism in light of philosophy of mind, highlighting idealism’s intrinsic connection to this discipline. While this work is far from exhaustive, it provides the reader with essential information …

Elucidation And The Solipsism Of The Tractatus, Jacob Phillips

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

In Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (TLP) of 1921, Ludwig Wittgenstein presents his metaphysical account of the logical structure of the world and language. He aims to establish the possibility of the connection between “pictures” of the world—including linguistic constructions as sentences—and the constituent elements of the world. The account Wittgenstein promotes yields, by his own admission, a form of solipsism. Underlying the difficulties in interpreting the details of Wittgenstein’s solipsism (which he does little to explicate), there is a fundamental tension between solipsism of any sort and a metaphysical account that relies on language, something which seems essentially shared and …

An Actor's Process In Bridging The Gap Between First-Generation And Multi-Generational African-American Identities., Mutiyat Ade-Salu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis reflects my process assimilating into the role of Chelle in the production of Detroit '67 at the University of Louisville. Although there have been instances of actors crossing lines of gender, nationality, race, and even sexuality, to perform roles in contemporary theatre, discussion about generational differences is almost non-existent. Through historical research, first-hand interviews, and conventional acting methods, I explore the world of my role, searching for spirituality, authenticity, and identity. Additionally, I explain my use of The WAY Method ®, a process I began creating in 2014 to help actors be clear with who they are before …

Quarantining And Dining, Madeline Flagg

Honors Projects

Quarantining and Dining captures and reflects the many ways in which comfort is provided through food. The project content was collected through food culture research, interviews, and observation and then mediated through Instagram. The Instagram feed has a designed aesthetic architecture and branding system that makes it distinct and identifiable. The Instagram account name can be found @Quarantininganddining. Although the project is rooted in Midwestern food culture, the perspectives provided are from across the United States, as well as from numerous occupations in order to express a diverse range of perspectives. The Instagram account encourages interaction and an exchange of …

Can The Imagination View Of Dreaming Resolve The Awake-Dreaming Indistinguishability Problem?, Ka Yan Mok

Lingnan Theses (MPhil & PhD)

In his Meditations On First Philosophy, Descartes (1641/1911) points out the awakedreaming indistinguishability problem, which calls into question the reliability of our knowledge about the external world. The argument can be understood as follows:

P1) Nothing can rule out the subject being duped into believing she is in X when she is actually in Y.
P2) A person can know that she is in Y only if there is something to rule out her being duped into believing she is in X when she is actually in Y.
C) Hence, the subject cannot know that she is in Y.

The …

The Problem Of Self-Ownership, Bas Van Der Vossen, David Schmidtz

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

"It would be strange to hear people saying 'It’s my self.' The self per se isn’t normally a contested possession. By contrast, what is normal, and so familiar that most readers can probably remember asserting such a thing themselves once upon a time, is the assertion 'It’s my life.' How we live our lives can be, and often is, contested."

Toward An Agent-Agnostic Transmission Model: Synthesizing Anthropocentric And Technocentric Paradigms In Communication, Jaime Banks, Maartje M. A. De Graaf

Human-Machine Communication

Technological and social evolutions have prompted operational, phenomenological, and ontological shifts in communication processes. These shifts, we argue, trigger the need to regard human and machine roles in communication processes in a more egalitarian fashion. Integrating anthropocentric and technocentric perspectives on communication, we propose an agent-agnostic framework for human-machine communication. This framework rejects exclusive assignment of communicative roles (sender, message, channel, receiver) to traditionally held agents and instead focuses on evaluating agents according to their functions as a means for considering what roles are held in communication processes. As a first step in advancing this agent-agnostic perspective, this theoretical paper …

Continuity As Crisis: Two Traditions Of Theorizing About Animal Minds, Adam See

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Contemporary philosophers and scientists remain largely resistant to attributing humanlike capacities to non-human animals, particularly great apes, for reasons that are not based on compelling empirical or theoretical grounds. Mental faculties such as reason, agency, and theory of mind are widely seen as differing in kind from functionally analogous abilities in other extant species. This dissertation appraises the current state of the animal minds literature by means of a critical genealogy charting the development of skepticism about animal cognition throughout the history of philosophy. In doing so, this project addresses the sedimentation of epistemic, linguistic, ontological, and methodological impasses that …

Flower Unfurling: Buddhist Modernism And The Early Writing Of James Joyce, Erin Garrow

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation traces the history of the references to Buddhism in Stephen Hero, James Joyce’s first and unpublished novel, through the author’s previous writing, his sources, and his context, in order to determine how—if at all—the tradition bore upon his earliest depiction of consciousness. Acknowledging that Joyce habitually revisited and refined earlier ideas and prose, it attends to previous essays, notebooks, book reviews, conversations, letters, epiphanies, poems, and autobiographical prose; to available material, bibliographical, and biographical evidence about the specific volumes and performances to which Joyce had access; to language and paratext—including advertisements, introductions, and appended essays—in those volumes; …

Book Review On Free Will, Agency And Selfhood In Indian Philosophy (Edited By Mathew R. Dasti And Edwin F. Bryant), Prabal K. Sen

Comparative Philosophy

No abstract provided.

Reconsidering Moral Perception: The Dialectical Emergence Of Moral Perceptual Contents During Experience Via Cognitive Penetration And Oppressive Socialization’S Suppression Of Our Ability To ‘See’ Moral Reasons For Humanization And Liberation, James William Lincoln

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

Moral perceptions occur when a subject makes an immediate discernment about the moral features of an occurrent experience. This project taxonomizes theories of moral perception into the following two camps: experientialism and judgementalism. I defend a version of experientialism, Moral Perceptual Orientation, by arguing that we, in addition to making moral judgments, have genuine perceptions with moral content during occurrent experience. I then go on to advance a framework for understanding how these perceptions are curated by our background beliefs by developing a view of dialectical consciousness. I do this by synthesizing Herbert Marcuse’s perspective on the epistemic subject with …

The Ontological Significance Of Consciousness, Corydon Diamond

CMC Senior Theses

Providing a wholly physical description of consciousness in nature is an elusive process. Unlike all other physical systems, consciousness seems to be explainable only if it is considered as non-physical. However, the arguments for a materialist view of consciousness, with consciousness prioritized as a process which creates imperfect dependence relations in reality, eliminates the need for a dualist understanding of reality. Through an explanation of imperfect dependence, materialist consciousness overcomes all relevant dualist arguments, while simultaneously retaining an epistemic gap, denying the conceivability of zombies, and providing convincing explanations of seemingly dualist positions in a materialist fashion.

Cultured Meat Could Prevent The Next Pandemic, Jonathan Anomaly

Animal Sentience

Wiebers & Feigin identify intensive agriculture and trade in exotic animals as the main sources of novel zoonotic viral infections. They recommend a transition away from meat. I would add that we would do well to invest in the mass production of cultured meat, derived from stem cells, as a radical alternative to animal agriculture.

Affective Sentience And Moral Protection, Russell Powell, Irina Mikhalevich

Animal Sentience

We have structured our response according to five questions arising from the commentaries: (i) What is sentience? (ii) Is sentience a necessary or sufficient condition for moral standing? (iii) What methods should guide comparative cognitive research in general, and specifically in studying invertebrates? (iv) How should we balance scientific uncertainty and moral risk? (v) What practical strategies can help reduce biases and morally dismissive attitudes toward invertebrates?

Sentience In Evolutionary Context, Jon Mallatt, Todd E. Feinberg

Animal Sentience

We appreciate the goals of Mikhalevich & Powell (M&P) and largely agree with their conclusions but we differ on some of their definitions and terms. Affects (emotional feelings) should be part of sentience. Although the evidence presented for insect sentience is strong, we list some of the counterevidence that should be considered. Our own research supports M&P’s choice of arthropods, cephalopods, and vertebrates as the only sentient organisms with moral status.

Relationship Between Cognition And Moral Status Needs Overhaul, Carrie Figdor

Animal Sentience

I commend Mikhalevich & Powell for extending the discussion of cognition and its relation to moral status with their well researched and argued target article on invertebrate cognition. I have two small criticisms: that the scala naturae still retains its appeal to some in biology as well as psychology, and that drawing the line at invertebrates requires a bit more defense given the larger comparative cognitive-scientific context.

The Psychosomatic Journey Of Trauma And Its Healing: A Comparative Synthesis Between Scientific And Psycho-Spiritual Perspectives, Isabel Kelly

Pomona Senior Theses

The purpose of this paper is to create a comparative synthesis between scientific perspectives and spiritual perspectives of understanding the psychosomatic (mind-body) nature of trauma. In order to do so we will consider the works of Dr.Bessel van der Kolk, a world-leading psychiatrist in the field of trauma therapy who advocates for the use of body-oriented approaches to healing, and the works of Carl Jung and Donald Kalsched. Jung is considered one of the founding fathers of the field of Transpersonal Psychology, while Kalsched is a Jungian psychoanalyst who specializes in working with trauma patients. We will see that while …

Moral Treatment For All, Eric Dietrich, Tara Fox Hall

Animal Sentience

There is no way to include invertebrates within the moral sphere without being “extreme” — to use Mikhalevich & Powell’s term. This is because of the profound difficulties in correctly attributing sentience. This commentary argues that we have a moral duty to be extreme.