Philosophy of Mind Commons^™

Convergent Evolution Of Sentience?, Culum Brown Prof.

Animal Sentience

Mikhalevich & Powell make a compelling case that some invertebrates may be sentient and that our moral obligations in the context of welfare should hence extend to them. Although the case is similar to that made for fishes, there is one obvious difference in that examples of invertebrate sentience probably arose independently from vertebrate sentience. We have unequivocal proof that complex cognition arose multiple times over evolutionary history. Given that cognition is our best tool for indirectly quantifying sentience, it seems highly likely that this multiple polygenesis may also have occurred for sentience. In acknowledging this, we must accept that …

When Down Looks Like Up: Self-Deceptive Self-Handicapping, Kyle T. Hallam

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I present a novel example of intentional self-deception as embodied in self-handicapping behavior. Self-handicapping is the proactive construction or acquisition of some obstacle to success in some domain, and is employed by individuals primarily as a means of deflecting blame for a failure or negative outcome. I argue that this behavior stands in a mutual, symbiotic relationship to self-deception. On the one hand, self-handicapping is the behavioral instantiation of the biased evidence manipulation which facilitates self-deception; while on the other hand, self-handicapping effectively functions to bias judgments in this way only in case concurrent self-deception sustains the …

Does Expectation Influence Relationship? A Mixed Methods Investigation Of Parental Expectation And Parent-Child Relationship Among Chinese Family Groups 期望是否會影響關係？華裔家庭中父母的期望對親子關係的影響之研究, Sharon Chiang, Sharon Chiang, Sharon Chiang

Education Dissertations

Abstract

Parental expectation, particularly among Chinese family groups, is understood to be formative upon their children’s identity, behavior in family relationships, educational success and decisions in career choices. China's long history of traditionalism in its social values, heavily based on Confucian philosophy of the family, bears this out. Significant social changes have happened in recent years due to political shifts, modernization, capitalization, immigration, and government population control policies. However, expectation is an element on which both academic study and educational research are rather limited. Current study has touched on the topic of parental expectation and raised some awareness, but the …

Empty Time As Traumatic Duration: Towards A Cinematic Aevum, Kelli Fuery

Film and Media Arts Faculty Articles and Research

Frank Kermode uses the term aevum to question the links between origin, order, and time, associating experience with spatial form. Without end or beginning, aevum identifies an intersubjective order of time where we participate in the “relation between the fictions by which we order our world and the increasing complexity of what we take to be the ‘real’ history of that world”; being “in-between” time is a primary quality of the aevum. Regarding cinema, aevum identifies this third duration as emotional experience, occuring as traumatic time. It facilitates thinking beyond lived temporal experience of everyday life to a philosophy …

Being In The Place Of Possibility, Laura Domencic

MFA in Visual Arts Theses

This paper explores my art practice as a phenomenological search for understanding how to be in the world. It begins with a description of my practice as a way to access the place of possibility that exists between faith and doubt. I examine materiality in art making to encourage consideration of both the physical and temporal nature of experience and to find balance with the increasingly incorporeal experience of the digital world. I discuss the materials and processes of drawing, sewing, and printmaking within their historical contexts. This paper connects my practice with artists who consider the act of perception …

A Modelist Proposal, Jian Shen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Many philosophers of mind regard "What is representation?" as a question of paramount importance. In ask this question they overlook the possibility—what I argue is in fact the correct answer—that there is simply nothing specifically representational about representational systems. "Representation" is a label we somehow feel compelled to stick to some systems but not to others, but it fails to pick out an explanatorily relevant kind. This is most clearly seen when we look at representational systems through the lens of formal models—in particular, the sender-receiver model as developed by David Lewis, Brian Skyrms, and others. I offer a cosmetically …

Art Therapy In Public Education, Sophie Edelman

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

This literature review explores the history of art therapy in education. By understanding the history it is clear that art therapy has always been a positive force for students. By learning from the successes and challenges in our history we are better able to plan for future programing and expansion of art therapy programs. Because art therapy was developed in part by educators, the history of art therapy itself is linked with the history of art therapy in schools. In today’s application of art therapy in education there are three models most typically used. The research discusses the strengths and …

Mental Associations And Music Therapy: Including The History Of Associationism And The Neurology Of Associations, Dianna Rose

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Associations are formed in our minds based upon three elements: sensory experience, emotions, and memories. These associations, unique to each individual, dictate thoughts, beliefs, behaviors, and actions. Some are necessary and supportive, while others can be maladaptive. Established associations can be changed, and new associations can be formed, to align with a client’s goals. The literature presents a strong history of associationism, as well as a body of research that demonstrates the neurological processes of how mental associations are formed. There are also studies showing how music activates the brain. However, there is a lack of research which draws direct …

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 …

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; …

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 …

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.

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.

St. Augustine And St. Thomas Aquinas On The Mind, Body, And Life After Death, Christopher Choma

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Historical and philosophical investigation of the thoughts of two of philosophy's most innovative Christian thinkers. The thesis primarily deals with the relationship between the mind and the body through the lenses of St. Augustine of Hippo and St. Thomas Aquinas. Thesis also includes theological discussions of life after death, and how one can be certain that the soul survives the corruption of the body.

Mechanisms Of Value-Biased Prioritization In Fast Sensorimotor Decision Making, Kivilcim Afacan-Seref

Dissertations and Theses

In dynamic environments, split-second sensorimotor decisions must be prioritized according to potential payoffs to maximize overall rewards. The impact of relative value on deliberative perceptual judgments has been examined extensively, but relatively little is known about value-biasing mechanisms in the common situation where physical evidence is strong but the time to act is severely limited. This research examines the behavioral and electrophysiological indices of how value biases split-second perceptual decisions and the possible mechanisms underlying the process. In prominent decision models, a noisy but statistically stationary representation of sensory evidence is integrated over time to an action-triggering bound, and value-biases …

Cognitivism, Feelings, And The Background Structures Of Emotion, David R. Willard

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this thesis is to call attention to some of the shortcomings of a cognitivist theory’s incorporation of feeling into a philosophy of emotion. There has been a tendency within the cognitivist theories to assume as irreducible the intentional structures through which these theories operate. A consequence of this tendency often sees feelings compartmentalized through internal and external distinctions, such as bodily feelings and world-directed feelings. What appears to be ignored is the notion that prior to all emotional experience we have already found ourselves belonging to a world, and attempts at a phenomenological understanding of a category …

It Might Not Matter Very Much Whether Insects Are Conscious, Neil Levy

Animal Sentience

In common with most other authors, Mikhalevich & Powell assume that phenomenal consciousness is a “precondition” of moral standing. Although the evidence they present makes it much more likely than usually thought that arthropods are phenomenally conscious, scepticism in the face of this evidence remains intellectually respectable. I suggest that we best make progress here by rejecting the notion that phenomenal consciousness is necessary for moral standing. Mental states that may lack phenomenal properties can do a lot of work in grounding moral standing, and there is less room for scepticism about these mental states than about phenomenal consciousness.

I See God Everywhere, Jason Wright

Theses and Dissertations

I would like to share with you how I was able to shed my suffering skin for a life beyond my wildest dreams. My work is about the letting go, my work is about altering perception, my work is about exploring the depths of one’s psyche. My experience is there in every atom of my output and is there for the taking.

Blaise Pascal said “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” I am not well-read in the works of Pascal, I became aware of this quote through HBO’s hit period drama …

Exploring Eight-Armed Intelligence Through Film, Tierney M. Thys

Animal Sentience

Mather (2019) provides a rich overview of the elements underlying octopus cognition and behavioral flexibility. Recently, two remarkable natural history films, My Octopus Teacher and The Octopus in My House have explored intimate human-octopus relationships with a wild (Octopus vulgaris) and a captive octopus (Octopus cyanea) respectively. Both films show rare behaviors that offer observations to test new hypotheses as well as a novel perspective on our own human relationships and place within the natural world. An interview with filmmaker Craig Foster from My Octopus Teacher reveals the profound and transformative power of forming a trusting …