Arts and Humanities Commons^™

China's Lack Of Animal Welfare Legislation Increases The Risk Of Further Pandemics, Amanda Whitfort

Animal Sentience

Legislation enforcing positive animal welfare standards provides an important buffer against the spread of disease when other safeguards to promote animal health have failed. The continuing absence of animal welfare legislation in China increases the risk of future pandemics, like COVID-19, and puts animal health, and consequently public health in danger.

Rethinking Global Governance To Address Zoonotic Disease Risks: Connecting The Dots, Kelley Lee

Animal Sentience

Large-scale changes in human behaviour are urgently needed to prevent future pandemics involving zoonotic diseases such as COVID-19. However, this will not happen to the required degree, and with sufficient speed, without a major shift in how humanity collectively governs itself. Alongside a shift in focus from individual behaviours to the structural conditions underpinning the world economy that shape human behaviours, effective global governance presses us to connect more dots than ever before. The One Health approach is an important starting point but we need to go much further.

Zoonotic Realism, Computational Cognitive Science And Pandemic Prevention, Tyler Davis, Molly E. Ireland, Jason Van Allen, Darrell A. Worthy

Animal Sentience

Using animals in food and food production systems is one of many drivers of novel zoonoses. Moving toward less dependence on animal proteins is a possible avenue for reducing pandemic risk, but we think that Wiebers & Feigin’s proposed change to food policy (phasing out animal meat production) is unrealistic in its political achievability and its current capacity to feed the world in a cost-effective and sustainable manner. We suggest that improvements in communication strategies, precipitated by developments in computational cognitive neuroscience, can lead the way to a safer future and are feasible now.

Covid-19, Evolution, Brains And Psychology, Frederick Toates

Animal Sentience

Attention needs to be directed to the processes that control behavior in humans and the adaptive problems that they solved in our early evolutionary environment. The evolutionary mismatch between the current environment and the human brain can yield important insights into the problems that beset us in the context of environmental degradation and nonhuman animal welfare.

Innovative, Yes: But Is It Rewilding?, Daniel T. Blumstein, Kate E. Lynch

Animal Sentience

Baker & Winkler’s extremely stimulating proposal clearly illustrates conflicting priorities in biodiversity conservation and management that are exacerbated when human cultural resources and animal welfare are a part of the solution. We suggest that the discussion can benefit from an even more explicit unpacking of the conflicting values associated with the proposal.

Philosophy, Ecology And Elephant Equality, Rebekah Humphreys

Animal Sentience

The considerable conservation research on environmental problems and climate change tends to focus on species “biodiversity” rather than individuals. Individuals of the same species get categorized as “wild” or “captive”, with the latter often omitted from conservationists’ concerns. But wild and captive animals, although they may require different treatment, have comparable interests as individuals. Equity requires taking this into account in conservation efforts.

Compassionate Conservation And Elephant Personhood, Arian D. Wallach, Sujeewa Jasinghe, Sudarshani Fernando, Jessica Bell Rizzolo

Animal Sentience

Baker and Winkler (2020) advocate a rehabilitation program that would end the oppression of elephants — not by severing human-elephant relations, but by enabling human-bonded elephants to live a full life. We consider this program within a compassionate conservation framework, which recognises all sentient beings as persons. From this vantage point, we gaze further into the future to ask what direction just human-elephant relations could take: What could emerge from a human-elephant relation once elephants are no longer enslaved and requiring rescue? We envisage a future — beyond captivity and rewilding — of elephant sovereignty.

Elephants And Pandemics, Adrian Treves

Animal Sentience

Baker & Winkler’s critique of Asian elephant tourism and conservation in Thailand has convinced me that this was “an industry with too many victims.” Yet I fear that B&W’s proposed remedy of returning to past elephant husbandry by Karen hill-peoples has little likelihood of improving the lives of the elephants for long. Who can predict whether the Karen will live up to this hope? B&W advocate for the Karen, but not for “an abolitionist stance on elephant-human relationships.” In my view, whether we discuss elephants or the wild mammals that carry SARS-CoV-2, abolition of many human uses of animals is …

The Many Kinds Of Objects That Technoscientific Objects Are, Hugh Lacey

Philosophy Faculty Works

Technoscientific objects are penetrating ever more profoundly into the socio-ecological systems that shape the contemporary lifeworld in ways that have brought about widely celebrated benefits, and also many kinds of risks for human health, the environment and society. There are many kinds of technoscientific objects, such as physical, chemical or biological objects that are outcomes of technical/experimental/instrumental interventions made in the course of research conducted in such areas as computer science, biotechnology, nanotechnology, neurosciences, geo-engineering, synthetic biology and artificial intelligence. Moreover, every technoscientific object is itself an object of many kinds, not only an object whose genesis, functioning and effective …

The Moral Necessity Of Anger, Krista Karbowski Thomason

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

How Well Can We Measure Well-Being?, Lily X. Lu-Lerner

Honors Papers

I will define the meaning of subjective well-being that I believe is the most intrinsic normative good, explain why improving the subjective well-being of sentient individuals ought to be the highest ethical priority, and provide reasons for why finding a way to measure subjective well-being would essentially benefit decision-makers and grassroots altruists. Subjective well-being is a dauntingly nebulous property to attempt to measure with precision, but I will comment on the progress that philosophers and social scientists have made in this field. Although (1) there is no set of well-being criteria that is applicable to every sentient individual (including non-human …

Meaning In Apocalypse, Alexander Johan Metz

Honors Papers

Modernity has always contained the threat of destruction. Mostly, the threat has been shapeless. It has manifested itself in the collective psyche as a vague fear of a far-off wasteland: an unknown apocalypse. The more tense moments of history have sometimes lent the fear real shape. For many years, it seemed as if atomic destruction was just over the horizon. Indeed, the early years of atomic testing wrought significant ecological damage. In the post-Cold War era, the fear of atomic destruction, at least by full nuclear exchange between the superpowers, has receded, but the apocalyptic threat has not. Climate change, …

Fichte And Schelling, Michael Vater

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Of Elephants And Men, Helen Kopnina

Animal Sentience

Baker & Winkler’s target article is well-researched and thought-provoking, but I do have four points of contention: (1) The proposal to entrust elephants to traditional mahout culture has restricted elephants’ freedom of movement and reproduction and (ab)used them. (2) The concept of “indigenous” simultaneously reifies and denigrates the “noble savages”, privileging only human indigenous groups, ignoring nonhuman indigenes. (3) Most lifestyles have been globalized under consumer-economic and anthropocentric worldviews. (4) The fact that people (including mahouts) are part of nature does not mean they are benevolent, any more than cities, monocultures, or roads are.

Comparative Cognition And Nonhuman Individuality, Catia Correia Caeiro

Animal Sentience

Commentators Washington (2019) and Tiffin (2019) point out that the individual vs. collective dichotomy is much more complex than what is considered in the target article. This commentary will focus on why individuals are more important than collectives. Species differences in cognition and emotional processes and individuals’ feelings and experiences need to be taken into account.

From Libertine To Incel: How The "Manosphere" Has Fostered The Continuation Of Gender Violence In Western Culture, Lauren Ziolkowski

Honors Theses

In this thesis, I examine the similarities between the ideologies of the Restoration libertine and the present-day beta-male, the social and cultural forces that shape those ideologies, and the practices of flirtation and seduction shared by the libertine and beta-male. This thesis addresses the expansion of female agency and power in the mid-eighteenth century and twenty-first century, as well as how this expansion of power threatens the social, cultural, and economic privilege held by the Restoration libertine and beta-male respectively. In the eighteenth century, this expansion of power manifests in the emergence of the bourgeoisie class and the development of …

On The Question Of Thinking: A Study Of Heidegger's Later Philosophy, Shishir Budha

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the writings of the 20th-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger to understand what “thinking” is and how thinking needs to be undertaken. I examine Heidegger’s commitments to phenomenology in his early writings, his revaluation of the meaning of truth in traditional Western metaphysics, his criticism of calculative thinking and scientific rationality, his diagnosis of the human alienation and homelessness, and his evocation of the redemptive power of art and poetry through which we can find our place in the world. By questioning through all these themes, I attempt to trace Heidegger’s path towards a deeper and more original …

Babette Babich: A Nietzschean Scholar On The “Physiology Of Aesthetics”, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In pursuing the invitation to muse upon Babette Babich's scholarship on Nietzsche, I begin with a philological observation about the terms "scholar" and "scholarship." These take their origin from Greek scholé (close cousin, the Latin otium) - which designate leisure. So far as they have to do with study, research, writing, and their communication through letters, lectures, and publication, this is because, as the literate Greeks and Romans understood it, these are among the activities — along with the other artes liberales — that a person with the freedom of leisure would want to pursue. At the highest level, Aristotle …

(2020) A Comunidade Da Infância, David Kennedy

Collected Papers of David Kennedy

Este livro, A comunidade da infância, é uma forma encontrada para assegurar a presença de David Kennedy entre nós, que tanto o admiramos. Entretanto, resta algo que não se sabe dizer sobre David Kennedy. Como algo que escapa, que foge ao domínio da escrita. David parece nos alertar para algo que permanece infantilmente sem palavra na linguagem. David não se apresenta de imediato. Sua escrita, em voltas, por aproximações e distanciamentos, revela conhecimentos e saberes acerca da infância para tocar aquilo que infantilmente deixou de ser enunciado e escapa à apreensão adulta dos dizeres acadêmicos. Depois de afastar-se do que …

A Relentless War: America, Israel, And The Fight Against Terrorism, Elyse Keener

Senior Honors Theses

For Israel, terrorism has plagued the nation since its beginning. Terrorism rears its ugly head in a variety of ways and for a variety of reasons; however, in both the United States and Israel, Islamic extremism has presented itself as the largest threat. Since its birth as a nation, the United States has been involved in numerous conflicts, from the Revolutionary War to World War II and beyond. These wars were fought between nation-states and traditional powers, but since the attacks on 9/11, the United States finds itself in a new kind of conflict against a different kind of enemy. …

How To Be A Good Believer: A Multifaceted Defense Of Christian Belief, Cameron Bonsell

Honors Theses

In this paper I will argue that holding Christian beliefs is consistent with intellectual virtues. I must first clarify that holding Christian beliefs does not consist only in the affirmation of certain propositions like “God exists”. This is not to say that affirming certain doctrine is not essential to Christian belief, but this is only part of what it encompasses. When I refer to Christianity and Christian beliefs in this paper, I mean affirming basic religious propositions like “Jesus was the son of God”, but I also take certain practices to be part of Christian belief. For example, spiritual disciplines …

So What: The Justification Of Morality In Christine Korsgaard’S The Sources Of Normativity, Julian Scott

Honors Theses

Phillipa Foot once described the case of a Sudeten farm boy who, in 1944, had to choose between joining the SS and being executed (Foot 2). Perhaps it is clear that he was right to choose death rather than join such an evil organization. But if he disagreed, what are we supposed to say to him? Suppose he said that he knew the SS was evil and that joining would require him to do evil things, but when faced with the alternative of execution, why did he have to do the right thing?

This problem can be generalized: what are …

Management Strategies For Improving Construction Industry Ethics, Stacy R. Foster

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Despite the existence of ethical codes, ethical lapses continue to occur frequently in the construction industry. Ethical violations can have negative effects on society. The specific research problem was that many executive managers in construction companies may not understand what ethical strategies to implement to align practical ethical conduct in the construction industry with existing codes of ethics. The purpose of this qualitative, exploratory case study was to explore the perceptions of construction industry professionals on how to achieve alignment between industry ethical conduct and published codes of conduct. A conceptual framework based on Bandura’s concept of reciprocal determinism was …

Appealing To Human Intuitions To Reduce Animal Abuse, Yzar S. Wehbe, Todd K. Shackelford

Animal Sentience

Social scientists may be able to find ways to positively affect people’s evolved moral compasses, thereby doing the planet and its inhabitants a great kindness. They could help to shape a constituency that is increasingly opposed to animal abuse in its largest-scale manifestations, factory farming and wet markets. This would, in turn, motivate people to elect ethical leaders who view inaction with regard to animal abuse as a serious moral and medical mistake, if only indirectly due to factory farming’s exacerbation of the threats zoonoses pose to humans.

The Temple Of Athena And The Return Of The Salmon: Orientations Toward Nature And Meaning In Salishan/Sahaptin/Wakashan (Northwest American Indigenous) And Heideggerian Philosophy, RóIsíN Lally, Daniel O'Dea Bradley

Leadership Studies Faculty Scholarship

In Origin of the Work of Art, Heidegger presents an evocative claim about the way the Temple to Athena on the Acropolis, opens a world rich with meaning and resonant with significance that orients the Athenian people within reality thus allowing their relations to others and to nature to appear as meaningful and ultimately nourishing. In other words, the Temple, like all great works of art, opens a world that is also a home. This article reviews the import of Heidegger’s reflection on monumental art, but we quickly turn to the principle objection to Heidegger’s thought, which is that the …

Snowfall Impact Study For Spokane, Washington, Brian G. Henning, Levi Keesecker, David Camp, Erik Budsberg

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

Examines historical trends in snowfall for the Spokane region, future climate projections and mountain snow forecasts, and determines what these data suggests about the future of winter recreation at Spokane’s five-area ski resorts (Mt. Spokane Ski & Snowboard Park, 49 Degrees North Mountain Resort, Silver Mountain Resort, Schweitzer Mountain Resort, and Lookout Pass Ski Area).

Reply To Joshua Mugg’S ‘How Not To Reply To The Tragic Dilemma', Charles Lassiter

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Social Justice And Liturgical Practice: Engaging The Earth/ Cultivating Solidarity, Daniel O'Dea Bradley

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

In North America, across the political spectrum, we have a strong tendency to reduce religion to nothing more than a tool to promote our own socio-political views. Tis is a natural consequence of our hyper-polarized culture and our impoverished view of “religion.” It is also, however, a problem—particularly for those inspired by the call to renewal through an integration of the quest for social justice and the pursuit of the spiritual life. By focusing on the value of participating in religious liturgy, I show how a renewed respect for religion can help the proponents of social justice fulfill some of …

Pandemic Leadership Failures And Public Health, Gidon Eshel

Animal Sentience

In a plainly worded target article whose sagacity and import can hardly be overstated, Wiebers & Feigin place the recent COVID-19 crisis in historic perspective. They warn us that unless we make sweeping changes the next pandemics are all but preordained. They offer a blueprint for dramatically lowering the likelihood of future pandemics.

Harm, Earth Jurisprudence And Human/Nonhuman Relationships, Tanya Wyatt

Animal Sentience

To prevent the next pandemic and to protect the environment and non-human animals, there needs to be a clear definition of harm and a legal system grounded in Earth Jurisprudence. Drawing on evolutionary principles to redefine harm and to radically alter the legal system to be Earth-centred will help ensure that harmful actions like certain wildlife trade, wildlife trafficking, and intensive farming do not threaten the survival of any life.