Philosophy Commons^™

Animal Personality And Sentience As Distinct Concepts, Mark Briffa

Animal Sentience

Owens et al (2024) discuss how knowledge of both animal personality and sentience in target populations can be leveraged to enhance wildlife conservation programmes. In this commentary I expand on the distinction between these two concepts. Behavioural differences should be considered broadly across conservation programmes, not just those involving species deemed sentient.

Two Decades Of Gender Troubles In Iceland: The Translation Of Gender, Differences, And The Uncertainty Of Meaning, Katrín Harðardóttir

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

When “gender” was translated to Icelandic in 1998 as kyngervi, the notion of performative gender had been circulating in Icelandic academia for a little over a year. The introduction and dissemination of the term inside academia then became quite rapid, with the help of diverse professional fields such as art, literary, history and gender studies, but criticism on the translation did not appear until well into the second decade of the twenty-first century, when it was pointed out that the translated term conveys a difference between “sex” and “gender,” with the possible consequence of perpetuating this dichotomy although it …

The Philosophy Behind The Vatican's Approach To Relations With China, John Ogilvie

Theses

The Vatican has always played a significant role in global politics, and it continues to do so in the contemporary World. The Vatican’s relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have drawn considerable attention in recent years, especially following the signing of the 2018 Vatican-China Agreement. Some scholars and commentators suggest that the 2018 Agreement and its terms represent a significant deviation from the norm in Vatican diplomacy. In light of that controversy, the present thesis provides an introductory examination of the philosophy that possibly guides the Vatican’s relations with the PRC and the implications this holds for an …

Ernst Jünger’S Epistemology And Metaphysics, Angus Baird

Theses

Jünger is typically interpreted in the philosophical literature according to a Heideggerian reading to be a metaphysical Nietzschean who took the will to power to be the essence of reality. This is especially so for Jünger's “Gestalt of the worker.” Yet Jünger likened his Gestalt to Goethe’s “Urpflanze,” a phenomenological, not metaphysical, conception. And Jünger's uses of "will to power" and "eternal return" are inconsistent with cosmological readings of Nietzsche.

This thesis will argue that the core of Jünger’s epistemology is an account of “intuitive perceptions.” Through these intuitive perceptions Jünger thought he grasped metaphysical reality. Through this grasping Jünger …

Digital Health Care: Time For A New Standard?, Z K. Winkelmann

Clinical Practice in Athletic Training

Introduction: The rapid influx of digitalization in healthcare has presented opportunities for innovative engagement, delivery, and outcomes for patient care. However, it also presents with several barriers and challenges that require teaching and learning opportunities to prepare future athletic trainers for these tasks. Currently, the CAATE curricular content standards integrate digital health care through Standard 64 on health informatics and Standard 87 on biometrics. However, the art and science of digital healthcare are expansive, including various skills such as digital literacy, computer skills, online communication, and privacy and security standards. Methods: The presentation will provide an overview of current digital …

Out Of The Fires (2023) By Carrie Lara, Peter Shea

Middle Grades Books

After a fire destroys his home and neighborhood, a young boy must learn what it means to be resilient. Things may never be "normal" again, but he discovers that he is strong―even when hard things happen. The book, written as a journal, includes drawings, news clippings, and coping strategies to help children cultivate resilience after a natural disaster.

Leak (2021) By Kate Reed Petty, Maughn Rollins Gregory, Megan Jane Laverty

Middle Grades Books

Aspiring 12-year-old journalist Ruth is looking for her next big story when she and her friend Jonathan discover dead fish and strange black slime at the lake near their town. Through a frustrating, risky, and sometimes funny journey, she learns about scientific and journalistic objectivity and the importance of both - and of community support - in environmental activism.

Wolves Of Yellowstone (2022) By Catherine Barr, Samantha Piede

Middle Grades Books

When wolves were eliminated from Yellowstone National Park in the early 20th century, the park's ecosystem began to deteriorate, leading to elk overpopulation, overgrazing, and environmental collapse. The degradation of the park spawned a rewilding project, in which wolves from Canadian packs were reintroduced to the park. The process and effects of this rewilding is captured in Catherine Barr's The Wolves of Yellowstone, which takes on the philosophical complexity of not only ecological interconnection, but the ethical complications involved trying to restore a species that is not universally lauded by locals.

Donald Griffin: A Visionary In Science And Consciousness, Charles Foster

Animal Sentience

Carolyn Ristau’s (2024) timely biography reviews Donald Griffin’s pioneering ideas with depth and historical perspective, describing Griffin’s approach to science, his openness to interdisciplinary insights, and his bold stance on consciousness. Ristau’s work highlights Griffin’s relevance to contemporary debates on consciousness and natural selection.

Don Griffin And The Early Days Of Cognitive Ethology, Gordon M. Burghardt

Animal Sentience

Carolyn Ristau’s trilogy provides a comprehensive account of Donald Griffin’s life and work, with the third volume focusing on cognitive ethology. This commentary focuses primarily on my own interactions with Don, particularly during my sabbatical at Rockefeller University when his campaign for cognitive ethology was gaining momentum. I recount my research on reptile behavior and cognition, my collaboration with Don and others at RU, and my role in advancing his ideas while contextualizing them within 19th-century comparative psychology. I also discuss developments in cognitive ethology, including critical anthropomorphism, the challenges of integrating subjective experience into behavioral science, and Griffin’s lasting …

Other Perspectives On Animals, Their Sentience And Cognition, Joyce M. D'Silva Mrs

Animal Sentience

For those of us who work to achieve legal recognition that animals are sentient beings, and should in many cases be allotted personhood, Donald Griffin is indeed an inspiration and a true game-changer. He put paid to the narrow behaviourist interpretation of animals’ lives promoted by Skinner et al. He became a real heir to Darwin’s belief in animal emotions. He enabled campaigners for animal welfare and indeed animal rights to quote his work as a distinguished scientist to give gravitas to their calls for legal recognition and protection of animals.

An Individuals-Oriented Approach To Conservation, Kristy M. Ferraro

Animal Sentience

Individual cognitive and emotional differences in personality among animals, along with differences in their behavioral traits, are increasingly important in conservation efforts. It is not only more effective but more ethical to take both collective and individual perspectives into account in both research and practice.

Wildlife Conservation And Adaptation To Humans, Valeria Mazza Phd, Claudio Carere

Animal Sentience

For many animal species, the ability to adapt to coexistence with the human species and to the environmental changes that humans cause is a biological imperative. This adaptive capacity varies not only between species, but within species. Studying individual differences in animals’ behavioral, cognitive and physiological adaptability is important for integrating ethology and conservation. Findings about animal cognitive capacities, including learning, need to be applied in conservation—but humans need to be educated about ethology, coexistence and conservation too.

A More Modern Prometheus: What Frankenstein Tells Us About Genetic Modification, Allison M. Ambrose

Honors College Theses

Mary Shelley’s famous novel, Frankenstein, is often hailed as the first true science fiction novel. In my thesis, I use the premonitive lens towards creation of life provided in Frankenstein to evaluate the morality of genetic modification of children. CRISPR-Cas9 is quickly emerging as the most important development in reprogenetic technology of our time, and many argue for its merits as a method of designing our children. I argue against this trend of “designer babies,” specifically raising questions about the soundness of modifying non-disease traits in future children and encouraging a more cautious attitude in both the scientific and philosophical …

(2024) Justus Buchler And The Community Of Query., Maughn Rollins Gregory

Collected Papers of Maughn Rollins Gregory

Before he originated the field of philosophy for children, Matthew Lipman spent nearly twenty years teaching at Columbia University and its affiliated colleges under the tutelage of the American philosopher Justus Buchler. In those years Lipman’s scholarship focused on Buchler’s naturalist metaphysics, which was informed by Buchler’s scholarship on the philosophy of Charles Peirce. In this essay I relate Lipman’s relationship with Buchler, summarise Buchler’s theory of human judgement, and indicate key parts of that theory that influenced Lipman’s own theory of judgement and multidimensional thinking. I then discuss the pedagogical turn Buchler made with his theory, including his conception …

State Politics And Stress Amongst Lgbtq+ Students At Florida’S Private Colleges: A Psychological And Normative Analysis, Alise Fortune

Honors Program Theses

The recent wave of anti-LGBTQ+ politics and policies in Florida pose potential risks to the mental health and well-being of Florida’s LGBTQ+ students. The present study surveyed LGBTQ+ students attending private colleges in Florida to measure their self-reported stress levels in comparison to non-LGBTQ+ students, the level at which they believed specific sources of stress contributed to their stress levels, their level of distress upon experiencing discrimination, their sense of sexual identity distress, and their awareness of and involvement in advocacy against Florida’s anti-LGBTQ+ bills. Survey results suggested that anti-LGBTQ+ politics in Florida and the personal lives (social and family …

Readings In Western Philosophy For Louisiana Learners, Jeff Mclaughlin, Marco Altamarino (Editor), Ryland Johnson (Editor), Peter Klubek (Editor), Michael Martin (Editor)

Open Educational Resources

It is important for students not only to get an appreciation and understanding of philosophy but also to be exposed to the very words and ideas of those who have shaped our thinking over the centuries. Accordingly, the title of this collection hints at the facts that these readings are from the original sources and that these philosophers were the originators of many of the issues we still discuss today.

Major areas of philosophy covered here are Ethics, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Religion, Ethics, Sociopolitical Philosophy, and finally, Aesthetics.

Shame And History, Bennett B. Gilbert

University Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

If history—our past, the sum of our thoughts, passions, and deeds—is so pervasive, influential, and meaningful, why then do we lose sight of it? Why do we not gain good values from it? And if it is part of our existential core, why then do we so often fail to ravel it into our deliberations?

I propose that very often and to a great degree it is shame that separates us from history. Shame: garrulous, compulsive, intense, omnivorous. A shamed person pushes away the experiences that shame her, thus cutting off the past.

Does Earth Feel? (2021) By Marc Majewski, Alaina Gostomski

Picture Books

With spare prose and evocative paintings, author-illustrator Marc Majewski asks fourteen critical questions -- including Does Earth feel calm? Does Earth feel curious? Does Earth feel hurt? Does Earth feel heard? -- to encourage active thinking and discussion about our planet.

Encyclopedia Of Gardening For Colored Children (2024) By Jamaica Kincaid, Maughn Rollins Gregory

Picture Books

In relating the origins, biological features, and uses of several familiar and unfamiliar plants, this Encyclopedia simultaneously offers a primer on colonialism, slavery, and genocide. Adults sharing this book with children should be led by children’s curiosity, but should also help them cultivate a vocabulary and historical understanding of oppression.

Gibberish (2022) By Young Vo, Peter Shea

Picture Books

Everyone sometimes doesn’t understand what is going on, can’t find a way in, and everyone in that situation has impulses to retreat and to growl. Gibberish takes the point of view of the newcomer, the non-native speaker. One of the virtues of this presentation is that many people will say: yes, that’s what it was like – when I started school; the first day of my new job; when I first opened the chemistry book; when I landed in Vienna; as the first person in my family to go to college; when I started playing violin. And that common topic …

Cat Way (2024) By Sara Lundberg, Maughn Rollins Gregory

Picture Books

When a human gives her cat a turn to lead the way on their daily walk, they encounter the unexpected. The philosophical quandaries this story raises – When do routines become too confining? How do domestic habits prevent us from experiencing the natural world? Can humans and pets have genuinely inter-species relationships? – can be discussed and experimented with by people of most ages.

Simone (2024) By Viet Thanh Nguyen, Peter Shea

Picture Books

When Simone is awakened by her mom as a wildfire threatens their home, it is the beginning of a life-changing journey. Coziness and comfort disappear in an instant, without much warning, as wildfires threaten peaceful neighborhoods and families seek makeshift shelters, with little hope of going back to normal. Joined by other children sheltering in the gym, Simone, a budding artist, encourages everyone to draw as a way to process their situation.

Hurricane (2021) By John Rocco, Peter Shea

Picture Books

This book pictures the devastation of today's powerful storms. The hurricane wrecks things and drives people from their homes. The boy in the story finds his beloved dock broken up, where he used to swim and fish. The story centers on cooperation and neighborhood resilience: people can get through disasters if they work together.

Something, Someday (2023) By Amanda Gorman, Maughn Rollins Gregory

Picture Books

When children think philosophically they inevitably will, and unquestionably should engage in social criticism. In this picture book by the first U.S. National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman, a Black child in an urban apartment complex surrounded by garbage cleans it up and plants a vegetable and flower garden, enlisting the help of others and overcoming some setbacks. Gorman's text warns children that some adults may say they're too small, or that it’s none of their business, or that what they're trying won’t work, but she reassures them that sometimes it’s OK to ignore those people.

I'M Trying To Love Spiders (2019) By Bethany Barton, Peter Shea

Picture Books

This is one member of a series of books about trying to love things. In funny and engaging prose, it explores this important, usually neglected, action several ways, not all of which are successful for the narrator, whose 'natural' response to spiders is squashing. It opens lots of questions about getting beyond our first impulses.

Blizzard (2014) By John Rocco, Peter Shea

Picture Books

Based on the author’s childhood experience, this book tells the story of a boy seeing his neighborhood transformed into an alien landscape by a superstorm and finding ways to get around in it when adults cannot. The book invites readers to re-see “normal” lives and to reconsider what is possible.

We Are Water Protectors (2020) By Carole Lindstrom, Peter Shea

Picture Books

We Are Water Protectors is a beautiful and partisan book, and the teacher or parent who wants to help children to think better could not find a better place to start, giving the child of whatever age the opportunity to feel the force of this plea, and then to recognize the need to understand the political context within which this issue arises, and the honest differences of opinion about policy that arise in an already disrupted world.

Breathing Nietzsche’S Atmospheres, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

This essay contextualizes the themes of breath and atmosphere in Nietzsche’s thinking, reading them in relation to certain contemporary crises and theories. Climate change and airborne pandemic challenge the tendency to position breath and atmosphere as life’s unthought background. Luce Irigaray’s phenomenological-feminist claim that Western philosophy has forgotten breath and James Nestor’s comprehensive investigation of medical, scientific, and disciplinary respiratory research programs provide contrasting frameworks for clarifying Nietzsche’s emphasis on breath as crucial to embodied human life. Atmospheric surround – taken in a spectrum of interrelated senses, meteorological to affective – is breath’s correlative. Nietzsche’s insistence on life’s irreducible atmospheric …

Trust And Knowing In Nineteenth-Century American Literature: Fictional Genres And Metacognitive Disruptions, Jessica Marie Van Gilder

Theses and Dissertations--English

This dissertation investigates how constructions of trust can be undermined or reinforced by examining trust’s entanglement with our compulsive and subjective desire to know in nineteenth-century American literature. Specifically, I analyze how different fictional genres – satire, historical romance, fantastic, and gothic – respond to our desire to know through the types of trust fictional texts feature and construct with the reader. In doing so, I demonstrate how genres of fiction in nineteenth-century America function as dynamic social contracts that amplify and undermine the reader’s trust in larger sociopolitical systems (e.g., national identity) and the epistemologies that underpin those systems …