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Existential Music, Decolonization, And Voice Care: A Conversation, Ashwani Kumar, Zaira Manila

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This article presents a reflective and dialogical exploration of music, meditation, and holistic well-being. It draws on the authors’ distinct musical backgrounds and personal experiences to explore structure and free flow in music, the impact of Western thought and colonialism on perceptions of Indian classical music (ICM), and the challenges in promoting ICM to younger audiences. Key points discussed include decolonization and cultural heritage, the journey from seeing ICM as “boring” to spiritual, viewing fusion as a respectful blend of musical forms, and the notion of existential music as music that exists within, waiting to be expressed. The dialogue format …

“It Is The ,,I,, I Write About”: José Garcia Villa’S Conceptualization Of The Poet In “A ,,Composition,,”, Nathan Timothy Y. Chan

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

The poems of José Garcia Villa are eccentric, and it would seem that it is on account of this eccentricity that most scholarship on Villa has thus sharply turned, instead, to Villa’s critical essays on Philippine literature in English so as to excavate from that rich reservoir of thought some small Villean insight capable of furthering a politics-centered reading of Villa’s works. Thus, critics of Villa’s works unintentionally neglect a serious discussion of the themes of Villa’s poetry. Because of this facet of Villean scholarship, this article responds by, first, demonstrating that Villa’s critical essays can be read as philosophical …

Use Of The Well-Star Model And Well-Star Graphic In Healthcare, Fidan Korkut-Owen, Zubeyde Akpakir, Dean W. Owen

Journal of Wellness

No abstract provided.

From Linguistic Domination To Counter-Power: The Weaponisation And Reappropriation Of Language In Shakespeare's Drama, Md. Abu Bakkar

Journal of Language, Literature, and Arts

Studies of language and power in Shakespeare usually treat colonial, psychological, political, and familial domination as separate problems belonging to separate plays. This article asks what happens when the target of linguistic domination takes up, repeats, or withholds the discourse through which domination is exercised. It proposes linguistic counter-power as a comparative analytical concept: a change in who can define, command, or be believed within the dramatic world that outlasts and exceeds the speaker’s own act of resistance. The concept is distinguished from discursive resistance, linguistic agency, counter-discourse, and resignification, and is operationalised through three tests: uptake, durability, and structural …

Multiple Insights Into Affective Sentience, Jon Mallatt, Todd E. Feinberg

Animal Sentience

We discuss some of the many valuable insights into affective sentience from Birch’s The Edge of Sentience, such as its eight criteria for determining which entities have sentience (e.g., emotions) and its insights into the difficulty of testing whether an Artificial Intelligence system has attained sentience. We add our own perspectives on why the eight criteria are valid, on the difficulty of using behavioral trade-offs to determine whether an animal has sentience, and why evolutionary theory says consciousness is not an epiphenomenon.

A Narrative-Driven, Socratic Instructional Framework For Teaching Adversarial Cognition In Cybersecurity, Joshua K. Goossen

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

The Socratic method has demonstrated, in studies across law, medicine, and nursing, that dialectic structured questioning improves expert reasoning. Cybersecurity currently teaches tools and techniques but lacks Socratic dialogic leaving graduates underprepared for novel scenarios requiring cross-domain reasoning. Because law, medicine and nursing cultivate similar reasoning as security there is principled reason to expect reasoning benefits could transfer to security students. This paper argues that the correspondence warrants investigation. Investigation requires a named, teachable reasoning target analogous to clinical reasoning and we specify that target as adversarial cognition, a framework integrating adversary features, system architecture, implementation logic, governance structure, human …

Stepping Toward The Edge, Rony Hirschhorn, Niccolò Negro, Liad Mudrik

Animal Sentience

The Edge of Sentience asks us to shift from asking whether an entity is sentient to whether it is a sentience candidate. Candidacy then motivates a debate about proportionate precautions, which Birch argues should be settled by citizens’ panels. This raises the question of what citizens bring to such a debate: what they attribute to entities, how they treat those entities, and how these vary depending on both the attributor and the entity in question. We report survey findings bearing on each question and ask what follows for the composition of the panels entrusted with these judgments.

Morality And Me: An Investigation Of A Moral Framework For College Students, Jillian Lee Meyer '23, Ted Bitner

Student Research

How do college students explain their choices when everyday situations raise moral questions? This study examined the reasoning of 136 U.S. undergraduates across ten dilemmas involving friendships, coursework, employment, and social life. Participants chose a course of action and briefly explained why. Their written explanations were coded using six moral dimensions developed by the Prindle Institute for Ethics: consequences, intentions and motivations, principles and rights, care and relationships, virtues, and fairness. Across dilemmas, students most often emphasized consequences, followed by intentions and motivations. Other dimensions became more prominent in particular contexts: legal questions drew attention to principles and rights, while …

Artificial Sentience: From Computational Functionalism To Behaviourism?, Wanja Wiese

Animal Sentience

I critically examine Jonathan Birch’s account of how brain emulations might create artificial sentience candidates, arguing that his account risks collapsing into a behaviourist account, unless the specific computational processes realised by such emulations are carefully considered. Drawing on examples from computational neuroscience, I show that similar behaviours can arise from vastly different computational processes, thereby undermining the suggestion to focus on behaviourial profiles to determine whether a brain emulation of a sentience candidate is itself a sentience candidate.

Eternity, Leah R. Sisk

Journal of Religion & Film

This film review of Eternity was developed from an essay on how the film demonstrates the nature of choice, including William James's notion of a leap of faith.  The original essay was submitted for an undergraduate Philosophy and Religion class on American Pragmatism at Western Carolina University.

Moving On: Purgatorial Seriality And Unanswered Prayer In Lost’S “Ab Aeterno”, Christian Wilken

Journal of Religion & Film

“Ab Aeterno” (Lost, 6.09) distills the series’ religious logic with unusual explicitness by staging theodicy not as doctrine but as narrative procedure. This article argues that the episode converts Catholic sacramental form (confession, absolution, and penitential address) into a serial ethics of endurance in which closure is structurally deferred. Richard Alpert’s confession establishes a subject who seeks an authorized word that would stabilize suffering, yet the priest’s refusal (“I can’t”) installs a theology of unanswered prayer that becomes the template for Richard’s long durée of waiting. Jacob’s “cork” parable then supplies a katechontic justification of restraint: evil is not abolished …

A Metaphorical Passage To God: Simone Weil And Robert Bresson, V. G. Voigt Hogg Phd

Journal of Religion & Film

VOIGT HOGG_Abstract (REVISED)_Journal of Religion & Film_30 April 2026

This article contrasts the metaphysical and religious philosopher Simone Weil’s concepts of attachment and detachment with auteur director Robert Bresson’s method of subtraction. It argues for a commonality in their philosophy and cinema, that guides the reader or viewer respectively, to perceive a metaphorical passage to God through the lived experience of suffering. The article considers by what means does Weil and Bresson share a mutual commitment to understanding the state of the soul in affliction, while also acknowledging an opposition in the interpretation of detachment in relation to suicide. The …

Sacred Loss And Moral Authority: Religious Leadership And Identity Reconstruction In Post-Conflict Societies, Kimberly C. Kennedy

Interdisciplinary Journal of Leadership Studies

This paper examines how religious leaders shape narratives of identity formation and reconciliation in post-civil conflict societies where violence, defeat, or political transition produces moral injury and crises of meaning. By drawing on themes of justice, forgiveness, and accountability, religious leadership can wield moral authority to influence public perception, guide healing processes, and support transitions from active conflict to more stable forms of peace. The paper explores how religious leaders reframe narratives of defeat, particularly in cases where a community’s cause was endowed with sacred meaning, creating a crisis of faith. It argues that this work is best understood as …

The Algorithmic Narcissus: Ai Validation And The Atrophy Of The 'Athletic' Social Self, Ilham Phalosa Reswara, Anggi Mayangsari

Jurnal Psikologi Sosial

Artificial intelligence systems designed around continuous affirmation and minimal friction are becoming increasingly prominent as social and relational partners in everyday life. This article examines how sustained interaction with such frictionless AI systems may reshape the developmental conditions under which social selfhood forms and is maintained. Drawing on Cooley's (1902) looking glass self, Kohut's (1971) concept of optimal frustration, and the developmental literature on social competence, the article argues that frictionless AI may distort the social mirror through which identity forms, remove the manageable frustration that appears necessary for psychological growth, weaken empathic capacity, and erode the social stakes that …

A New Understanding Of The Tension Between Evil And Divine Greatness: An Application Of Existential Ontology To Christian Apologetics, William A. Blea

Masters Theses

This thesis is an examination of the potential integration of existential ontology into classical Christian apologetics. Pulling from philosophers like Nietache, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger to construct a framework that understands greatness as the overcoming of a being's context and evil as the relational, moral, and cosmic opposition to the order established by the divine Logos. This framework then allows for an identification of Christus Victor as God’s decisive response to evil. This thesis argues that a properly integrated framework may work to collapse the problem of evil from its metaphysical foundation: the contradiction between God's greatness and the existence of …

Moral Ecology In Shakespeare's Tragedies: Nature, Animals, And Conscience As Ethical Agents In Hamlet, Macbeth, And King Lear, Md. Abu Bakkar

Journal of Language, Literature, and Arts

Shakespeare's tragedies repeatedly dramatize a universe in which moral transgression produces consequences that extend beyond individual psychology to affect society, nature, and the non-human world. This study examines how Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear construct a system of moral ecology, understood as a framework of ethical causality in which human actions generate interconnected consequences across psychological, social, and natural orders. Using qualitative close reading informed by moral criticism, ecocriticism, animal studies, and early modern cosmology, the study analyzes selected passages representing natural disturbance, animal imagery, and conscience as forms of ethical response. The findings show that the three …

Editor's Introduction, Brent H. Otto S.J.

Journal of Global Catholicism

No abstract provided.

Protective Factors Among African American Offspring Of Teen Parents, Janelle Ewing

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Adolescent pregnancy remains a major public health and social issue, but research has primarily focused on risk factors and not the protective factors that contribute to resilience among those who successfully break the cycle. This qualitative study explored protective factors that African American adult offspring of teenage parents identified as supporting them in avoiding teenage pregnancy and parenthood. The study was theoretically grounded in Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory, which was used to explore the role of influence across environmental systems in participants’ developmental outcomes. The primary research question was “How do African American adult offspring of teenage parents describe the …

Ai-Supported Analysis Of Jury Deliberation Impact Factors, Jennifer Siciliani Phd

Generative AI Teaching Activities

Students conduct a controlled, two-run generative AI jury simulation to examine how a single socio-legal variable affects simulated jury deliberation. They compare and manually code the AI-generated outcomes against peer-reviewed human jury research to evaluate the model’s accuracy, limitations, and potential biases.

Allyship And Affect: Qualitative Investigations Into Social Transformation, Michael Lucinda Jane Greer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Allies have faced several critiques in feminist philosophy. Some have argued that they lack the requisite political interests to be motivated to dismantle the social structures from which they stand to benefit. Others have argued that the epistemic limitations resulting from their social privilege are insurmountable. Yet others have argued that allyship is too individualistic a concept, preferring a more collectivist concept like solidarity. However, there remain privileged individuals who understand themselves as complicit in perpetuating oppressive forms of life, and who wish to transform themselves and work in coalition across difference to dismantle structural oppression. How ought these individuals …

Curated Spaces: Cognition By Design, Sydney Harvey

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Curated Spaces: Cognition by Design” is a dissertation that considers the connection between designed spaces and cognition. This work combines philosophy of mind and aesthetics. The dissertation introduces the term “Curated Cognition”, which builds on the concept of situated cognition ( Brooks, 1991; Odling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman,  2003;  Sterelny, 2010; Krueger, 2015; Colombetti, 2020 ). The dissertation argues that the environment is essential to cognition, and all environments are curated; therefore, the way we think, feel, and act is curated as well. Some non-human animals may inhabit worlds that are not curated. For example, an octopus may find shelter in …

Modeling Large Language Model Cognition, Eleni Angelou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project builds three core directions in a philosophy of cognitive science for large language models (LLMs): 1) interpreting LLM behavior, 2) analyzing the system in terms of Marr’s three levels, and 3) mapping the correspondence between behavioral outputs and the internals of the system. It consists of the following three chapters accordingly:

Dennettian Stances and Large Language Models

The aim of this chapter is to argue that there are convincing grounds for applying Dennett’s framework of stances to LLMs against worries that doing so produces “counterfeit people”. After introducing the intentional and design stances, I take sycophancy as a …

Transmutation Of Psychological Phenomena (Academic Burnout And Fomo) Into Cyanotype Art Creation, Zulfan Ali Mujtaba, Adi Kuntoro

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

The pressure of hustle culture and the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) in the digital era have triggered an escalation of academic burnout among students, demanding alternative psychological recovery interventions beyond verbal clinical approaches. This research aims to explore the creation of alternative Cyanotype photography as a medium for catharsis and resistance against toxic productivity. Utilizing a Practice-Based Research methodology with an autoethnographic approach, data were extracted from the researcher's subjective experiences and transmuted into a visual artifact titled "Metamorfosis yang Lelah". The cultural studies approach and wabi-sabi aesthetics are specifically applied to analyze visual elements in the Prussian Blue …

Fashion, Lifestyle, And Symbolic Capital: Identity And Resistance In Eka Kurniawan’S Beauty Is A Wound, Dewi Meyrasyawati, Cysakaren Diva Pratiwi, Nisar Ul-Haq

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

This study examines how fashion culture and lifestyle, understood as modes of self presentation, social performance, and everyday practice, operate as tools of identity construction and resistance in Eka Kurniawan’s Beauty Is a Wound. The objective is to reveal how beauty, personal choices, and public perception function as symbolic capital in negotiating gendered power relations, class hierarchies, and political constraints. Using close textual analysis, the research explores how female characters, particularly Dewi Ayu, mobilize appearance, behavior, and life decisions to challenge dominant ideologies and redefine their roles in society. The findings show that fashion culture in the novel extends beyond …

Truly Blown Away — Humanistic Lens Looking At Glassblowers’ Creative Thinking: A Qualitative Case Study, Yugant Patra

The Qualitative Report

This study examines how emotional and cognitive engagement shape glassblowing artists’ decision-making and artistic outcomes throughout the creative process. Using a qualitative case study methodology, the study examines how glassblowing artists conceptualize, execute, and refine their work by balancing their artistic vision with the medium's technical demands through a humanistic lens. Five themes emerge, which are discussed: the identification with self – confronting the demons, I belong here, claiming the molten as my own, the reign of glass and from it fractures rising anew, and having a conversation with glass. The study closes with the need for continued research on …

From Insect Cognition To Sentience: Exploring The Edge, Catherine Macri, Martin Giurfa

Animal Sentience

What does The Edge of Sentience tell us about insect sentience and consciousness? In this commentary, we reflect on Jonathan Birch’s framework for defining and scientifically investigating sentience in animals. We discuss the methodological challenges of studying subjective experience in evolutionary distant species, and consider trace conditioning, affective states, and neural architectures as potential windows into consciousness in insects. We argue that uncertainty, whether concerning definitions or methodology, should not prevent experimental investigation; rather it should motivate new approaches and experimental designs for exploring the diversity of conscious experience.

Beyond Better Conditions: Seaweed Farming And The Number Of Sentient Animals In Aquaculture, Shrilaxmi Patil, Matthew Unerman, Wasseem Emam

Animal Sentience

Oldfield & Bonano (2024) (O&B) document how far  fish welfare research lags behind welfare research in other animals. We share O&B’s feelings-based concept of welfare and agree that aquaculture seeded this field; but research volume has not scaled with animal numbers: Welfare attention per farmed fish or decapod remains negligible. Along the lines of preceding commentaries (Maia 2024, Mather 2024), we treat farmed aquatic animals as individuals rather than tonnage. We then raise a point so far absent from the commentary on O&B so far: reducing the number of sentient animals entering intensive systems. Coastal seaweed farming, which cultivates non-sentient …

Exploring Active Shooter Patterns In Schools: Baseline Typologies For Strategic Preparedness Using A Qualitative Lens, Francis Miskelly

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This qualitative study investigatesd the temporal patterns of active shooter incidents on elementary and middle school campuses across urban, suburban, and rural areas in the southeastern United States, specifically in North Carolina. It examined how the timing of these incidents varies across school settings and how law enforcement and School Resource Officers (SROs) perceive the impact of timing on the nature and response to such events. While existing literature largely focuses on psychological profiles, sociocultural factors, and immediate response strategies, few studies address how timing affects the occurrence, characteristics, and outcomes of incidents across school levels. Current research often generalizes …

Wille Zum Wald: Nietzsche’S Discovery Of Forest Bathing, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In the fourth part of our “The Forest as a Living Foundation” series, the distinguished American Nietzsche scholar Gary Shapiro investigates new angles on Nietzsche’s bonds to the woods: the philosopher’s personal enthusiasm for what is increasingly called “forest bathing,” the science behind how this practice benefits body, mind, and spirit, and the sheer pleasure of breathing fresh air, in woodland and wherever else we can find it. Shapiro’s essay showcases why this particular Lebensraum matters, not just for our individual well-being, but for the health of the entire planet.

Boss Up/Bake Bread, Jess Flanigan

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Taylor Swift’s “Wi$h Li$t” describes people who “want it all.” There, she declares that, in contrast to those who want it all, she dreams about living a quiet life with a driveway and a basketball hoop. This chapter argues that dreaming about a driveway with a basketball hoop while staying married to the hustle is still a form of wanting it all. Like Swift, and me, many other women today enjoy a degree of autonomy and material abundance that our grandmothers could only dream about. We’re free to boss up or settle down. But still, we have to make trade-offs. …