Philosophy Commons^™

Nietzsche’S Post-Human Imperative: On The “All-Too-Human” Dream Of Transhumanism, Babette Babich

Babette Babich

No abstract provided.

A Healthy Mania For The Macabre, Stephen Asma

Stephen T Asma

The article discusses the fascination with death in art in response to several exhibits which display preserved human bodies, such as the "Body Worlds" traveling exhibit which features human bodies preserved with silicon after an acetone bath, a technique discovered by medical scientist Gunther von Hagens. The author looks at human curiosity with morbidity and artists such as Damien Hirst that use it as the focus of their work. Topics include comments by Richard Harris, creator of "Morbid Curiosity" exhibition in Chicago, Illinois, art historian Paul Koudounaris, and the beauty of death and morbidity according to New York artist and …

Natural Selection And Moral Sentiment: Evolutionary Biology's Challenge To Moral Philosophy, Charles W. Wright

Headwaters

No abstract provided.

Integration Of Nutrition Education Classes Into English As Second Language Classes For Refugees, Sarah Gunnell

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Each year approximately 73,000 refugees are resettled into the United States because it is unsafe for them to return to their country of origin. Resettlement agencies help refugees learn about their new environment and provide assistance with housing, food, English classes, and job skills training. The goal of resettlement programs is to help refugees become self-sufficient as quickly as possible.

Recently resettled refugees face many challenges that make it difficult to eat healthy food. Transportation, English skills, and conflicting work hours are some of the barriers to receiving nutrition education. This research evaluated the integration of nutrition lessons into English …

Social Organization And Decision Making In North American Bison: Implications For Management, Ryan A. Shaw

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Social organization varies widely among herbivores, and the level of social organization in bison is widely debated. I hypothesized that when mother-daughter relationships are allowed to develop, bison form long-term associations. In my study, 25 treatment mothers were selected from a free-ranging herd and kept together with their calves, while 25 control females had their calves forcefully removed. Treatment mothers and offspring had by far the greatest number of associations with a greater percentage of individuals with a half weight index (HWI) > 0.50. The strongest associations (HWI > 0.31) were among treatment mothers and their offspring. Moreover, these associations persisted over …

Use Of Rumen Modifiers To Manipulate Ruminal Fermentation And Improve Nutrient Utilization And Lactational Performance Of Dairy Cows, Christopher M. Dschaak

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

A series of lactation studies reported in this dissertation hypothesized that supplementing different rumen modifiers would have consistent responses on ruminal fermentation and lactational performance under optimal rumen conditions.

The first experiment investigated the influence of magnesium exchanged zeolite on ruminal fermentation and lactational performance. Intake of dry matter (DM), milk yield, milk fat, and feed efficiency were not affected. Milk protein concentration tended (P = 0.15) to be higher for cows fed the zeolite. Ruminal pH tended to increase (P = 0.11) by feeding the sodium bicarbonate or the zeolite.

A second lactation experiment determined …

The Mirage Of A Space Between Nature And Nurture By Evelyn Fox Keller (Review), David Depew

David J Depew

No abstract provided.

Clay Fabric And Mass Physical Properties Of Surficial Marine Sediment Near The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, Andrew Head, Richard H. Bennett, Jessica R. Douglas, Kenneth J. Curry

Kenneth J. Curry

Surficial sediment was obtained on the RV Cape Hatteras Cruise (2010) from the seafloor at a water depth of 1570 meters located at latitude 28°44'20.16"N and longitude 88°20'24.96"W in close proximity to the Deepwater Horizon well, Gulf of Mexico. Preliminary clay nano- and microfabric observation using a transmission electron microscope (TEM) depicted a sediment rich in clays and organic matter (OM) especially in the upper 2 cm subbottom. Initial analysis of TEM micrographs depicted a high porosity clay sediment. Initial study of the mass physical properties revealed water content ωt = 67.32 – 67.28% (percent total mass), porosity n= 84.1 …

The Chicken Challenge – What Contemporary Studies Of Fowl Mean For Science And Ethics, Carolynn L. Smith, Jane Johnson

Between the Species

Studies with captive fowl have revealed that they possess greater cognitive capacities than previously thought. We now know that fowl have sophisticated cognitive and communicative skills, which had hitherto been associated only with certain primates. Several theories have been advanced to explain the evolution of such complex behavior. Central to these theories is the enlargement of the brain in species with greater mental capacities. Fowl present us with a conundrum, however, because they show the behaviors anticipated by the theories but do not have the expected changes in the brain. Consequently fowl present two challenges of interest to us here. …

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

Writing Across the Curriculum

No abstract provided.

Oyun: A New, Free Program For Iterated Prisoner’S Dilemma Tournaments In The Classroom, Charles H. Pence, Lara Buchak

Faculty Publications

Evolutionary applications of game theory present one of the most pedagogically accessible varieties of genuine, contemporary theoretical biology. We present here Oyun (oy-oon, http://charlespence.net/oyun), a program designed to run iterated prisoner's dilemma tournaments, competitions between prisoner's dilemma strategies developed by the students themselves. Using this software, students are able to readily design and tweak their own strategies, and to see how they fare both in round-robin tournaments and in “evolutionary” tournaments, where the scores in a given “generation” directly determine contribution to the population in the next generation. Oyun is freely available, runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux computers, …

The Evolved Apprentice. How Evolution Made Humans Unique, Mirko Farina

Mirko Farina

No abstract provided.

Perception, Action, And Consciousness: Sensorimotor Dynamics And Two Visual Systems, Mirko Farina

Mirko Farina

No abstract provided.

Do Ssds Extend The Conscious Mind?, Mirko Farina, Julian Kiverstein

Mirko Farina

Is the brain the biological substrate of consciousness? Most naturalistic philosophers of mind have supposed that the answer must obviously be «yes » to this question. However, a growing number of philosophers working in 4e (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive) cognitive science have begun to challenge this assumption, arguing instead that consciousness supervenes on the whole embodied animal in dynamic interaction with the environment. We call views that share this claim dynamic sensorimotor theories of consciousness (DSM). Clark (2009), a founder and leading proponent of the hypothesis of the extended mind, demurs, arguing that as matter of fact the biology of …

Scholars Day Program Of Events 2012, Carl Goodson Honors Program

Scholars Day

The 2012 Scholars Day Program of Events lists the presenters and their papers, posters, recitals, theatre scenes, art shows, or theses.

The Possible Connection Of Gamma Oscillation And 3-D Object Representation, Thien N. Vu

Summer Research

We process and encode for different features of a particular object (shape, color, texture, etc.) in distinct areas of the brain. How we bind these attributes together into a unified perception of an object is unknown. Past research suggests that synchronized activity between brain areas, particularly induced gamma activity (~ 40 Hz), may account for this binding process and the basis of our conscious perceptual experience, specifically through object representation. In this study, participants were asked to look at a series of 2-D pictures of cars from distinctive rotations (0⁰, 90⁰, 180⁰) and were …

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 …

Volume 04, Matt Szemborski, Phillip Van Ness, Sarah Croughwell, Sarah Mayfield, Alyssa Strackbein, Marley Kimmel, Stephanie Skipp, Jamie Yurasits, Katherine Taggart, Alex Leonhart, Kristen Rawls, Andrew Armes, Amanda Haymens, Allison Paqlowski, Erica May, Stephanie Lane, Luke Acree, Cassandra L. Wilson, Stephanie Pishock, Erica Hopson, K. Juston Osborne, Katheryn Grayson, Kyle Fowlkes, Jessica Cox, Kaity Byrum, John-Harwood Scott, Ashley Johnson, Samantha Hockman, Emily Staskiel, Nancy Macdonald, R. Kruger Bressin, Benjamin P. Bilodeau, Andrea Irby, Kristin Macquarrie, Sarah Bietsch, Elizabeth Bednar

Incite: The Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship

Please note that part of pages 92-95 are redacted, in the digital copy, due to a misprint of the original printed article.

Introduction from Dean Dr. Charles Ross

The Internal Other: Transculturation and Postcolonial Magical Realism in Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children by Matt Szemborski

Photography by Phillip Van Ness

Photography “Waterfall” by Sarah Croughwell

Romancing the Bite: Statistical Analysis of Young Adult Vampire Novels by Sarah Mayfield

Photography by Alyssa Strackbein

Photography by Marley Kimmel

Wine and Society in the Viceroyalty of Peru by Stephanie Skipp

Analysis of Claud Monet’s Impression, Sunrise by Jamie Yurasits

Exploring Meaning: The Lindisfarne Gospels by …

Biological Autonomy, A. Grandpierre, Menas Kafatos

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

We argue that genuine biological autonomy, or described at human level as free will, requires taking into account quantum vacuum processes in the context of biological teleology. One faces at least three basic problems of genuine biological autonomy: (1) if biological autonomy is not physical, where does it come from? (2) Is there a room for biological causes? And (3) how to obtain a workable model of biological teleology? It is shown here that the solution of all these three problems is related to the quantum vacuum. We present a short review of how this basic aspect of the fundamentals …

Affective Neuroscience And The Philosophy Of Self, Stephen Asma

Stephen T Asma

The nature of self awareness and the origin and persistence of personal identity still loom large in contemporary philosophy of mind. Many philosophers have been wooed by the computational approach to consciousness, and they attempt to find the self amidst the phenomenon of neocortical information processing. Affective neuroscience offers another pathway to understanding the evolution and nature of self. This paper explores how affective neuroscience acts as a positive game-changer in the philosophical pursuit of self. In particular, we focus on connecting 'mammalian agency' to (a) subjective awareness, and (b) identity through time.