The call for reconciliation through education (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015a) has compelled public post-secondary institutions in Canada to engage in meaningful and sustainable acts of reconciliation through systemic transformation. While the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2015a) has brought to the forefront the urgency for reconciliation, individual and collective acts of decolonization and indigenization have been unfolding in the small corners and shadows of public post-secondary institutions in Canada since the early 1970s (...) (Pidgeon et al., 2014; Pidgeon, 2014). For decades, Indigenous student service centres have had a visible presence in public post-secondary institutions across Canada, symbolizing a cultural touchstone for Indigenous students and serving as long-standing beacons of welcome for Indigenous community members. Indigenous leaders and associated staff of the centres have been actively engaged in the decolonization and indigenization of public post-secondary institutions in Canada as a distinct community of practice, laying much of the initial groundwork for transformative reconciliation in higher education. Through the storied experience of nine Indigenous leaders of the centre, this study offers insight into their role, experiences, and perspectives on decolonization and indigenization unfolding in public post-secondary institutions across Canada, now responsive to the call for reconciliation through education (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015a). This research study is concerned with how Indigeneity as embodied presence (Meyer, 2008) gives rise to a cultural resurgent practice (Burrows & Tully, 2018; Simpson, 2017) in a neocolonial educational system poised for transformative reconciliation (Burrows & Tully, 2018). The study employs an Indigenous storytelling methodology (Kovach, 2009) reliant on the seven principles of storywork (Archibald, 2008) as an ethical framework for gathering stories, and Indigenous métissage (Donald, 2012) as a thematic analytical framework for making meaning. The study is further informed by theoretical concepts of trans-systemic space, pedagogy, and practice (Battiste, 2013; Battiste & Henderson, 2021, Henderson, 2009; Styres, 2017), the ethical space of engagement (Ermine, 2007) and ethical relationality (Donald, 2016). (shrink)

The typical account of harm, the Counterfactual Comparative Account of Harm, provides an assessment of harm as causing an individual to be “worse off” than they otherwise would have been. This account fails to correctly identify harm in a variety of cases. Non-Identity Problem cases are procreation cases where an individual is born with a disadvantage or into a poor environment, but this account cannot identify procreative harm, as the individual otherwise would not exist. Preemption Problem cases of overdetermined harm, (...) but this account cannot identify the harm, as a similar harm would otherwise occur. Omission Problem cases outline a failure to benefit, which identifies harm where it should not, as the individual is worse off without the benefit. The Counterfactual Comparative Account of Harm fails to identify or over identifies harm. An alternative account of harm, the Non-Comparative Account, avoids these problems. I advance Elizabeth Harman's account, which assesses harm on the grounds that an individual is caused to be in a "bad state". Harman's list of bad states is: "pain, mental or physical discomfort, disease, deformity, disability, or death". Harman’s account can overcome the problems facing the Counterfactual Comparative Account. However, Harman’s account requires modification to avoid perpetuating an ableist ideology based on an outdated Medical Model of Disability. I suggest, instead, adopting a Social Model of Disability, then modifying Harman’s list to include only states that are intrinsically bad and exclude those that are instrumentally bad. As such, I exclude disease, deformity, and disability from Harman’s list. (shrink)

The purpose of my thesis will be to defend Goodman’s constructivism and Kuhn’s account of scientific development. In the first chapter, I will begin by describing Goodman’s constructivism and clarifying a few key ideas that are often misunderstood. Then I will describe Kuhn’s account of scientific development and explain how it is similar to Goodman’s constructivism. In the second chapter, I will present a few key criticisms of Kuhn’s account of scientific development and describe Kuhn’s responses to them. Following this, (...) I will provide a brief analysis of Kuhn’s responses and argue that they are insufficient to respond to all of the criticisms. In the third chapter, I will put forward the same criticisms against Goodman’s constructivism and provide his responses to these criticisms. I will then compare Kuhn’s responses to Goodman’s responses to the criticisms, and argue that Goodman’s responses are much stronger. Following this, I will argue that Goodman’s responses, and his constructivism, could be used to strengthen Kuhn’s account of scientific development in a way that would enable him to adequately address the criticisms brought against his work. I will conclude my thesis by arguing that Goodman’s responses to the criticisms are stronger than Kuhn’s responses because Goodman accepts and defends the relativism in his work, while Kuhn attempts to dismiss and minimize the role that relativism plays in his account of scientific development. (shrink)

In this thesis, I explore Indigenous feminist philosophy from the ground up through a case study of Indigenous women’s political organizing through Idle No More. Specifically, I examine the ways in which Indigenous feminist resistance in INM identifies a spatiotemporal configuration of both Canadian settler state politics and decolonial alternatives. To do so, I use state, media, and public responses, rhetoric, and actions that emerged in response to the Idle No More movement, as well as the actions, rhetoric, written works, (...) and Indigenous political orders of the Idle No More protestors. These interventions illustrate that: settler colonialism constitutes the spatiotemporal configuration of Canadian politics, functioning to contain and eliminate Indigenous political life; Idle No More was configured by the spatiotemporal configuration of Indigenous political orders, which express temporal relations that span the past, present, and future, enabling them to create alternative, decolonial imaginaries with novel forms of politics and power. Drawing on Idle No More’s political interventions, I theorize new Treaty imaginaries. (shrink)

[Editor's Note: The material for this article was originally created from a few blogs Kalu published on the Fearlessness Movement ning in the last year, and from rough notes he had sent to me for a potential article he wished to co-write but wasn't going to get to it for some time, as many other life-priorities took over. I offered to put some 'musings' together playfully, and at times slightly edit things for him. He had final edit of the excerpts (...) below, and submitted them to IJFS]. (shrink)

This thesis aims to solve two metaphysical puzzles about ability. The first belongs to the free will debate: is determinism compatible with the ability to do otherwise? The second pertains to time travel: what things can a backward time traveler do in the past? By introducing two principles about an agent’s ability regarding the past, I defend the following modal principle about ability: what an agent can do must be compossible with the past. This principle generates solutions to the two (...) puzzles. (shrink)

Informed by the work of writers such as Henri Lefebvre, Paul Ricoeur and Michel de Certeau, this collection of essays examines through multiple lenses eight topics related to the contemporary urban domain. The author employs powerful geographic and literary concepts such as space, narrative, and metaphor to interpret the often-bewildering complexity of the post-modern city. Recalling key aspects of our shared intellectual heritage, Passages seeks to demystify the structure and historical development of the contemporary city in an accessible, engaging style. (...) Passages is indispensable for those examining the city from either the professional design or the cultural studies standpoint. (shrink)

This study explored eight Christian German reflections of die Schuldfrage in relation to their life histories. To do so, this study employed German philosopher Karl Jaspers' concept of metaphysische Schuld as a theoretical framework to better understand participants’ reflections of three topics: 1) die Schuldfrage as a concept in relation to key life history events that informed their reflections thereon, 2) the theological dealings required to reconcile die Schuldfrage, and 3) any observations regarding the potential relationship between die Schuldfrage and (...) Flüchtlingskriese. Participants’ life history interviews were conducted over field research in Berlin, Germany, and analyzed in two stages: I) using Amadeo Giorgi’s empirical phenomenology to bracket participants’ experiences of die Schuldfrage from their reflections of them, and II) applying Jaspers’ concept of metaphysische Schuld to stage I to identify thematic and structural overlap and disagreement. (shrink)

The primary objective of this dissertation is to disentangle and arrange a number of issues particular to the sphere of activity designated as artistic research. A bimodal conception of artistic research is proposed as a framework by which confusions in the discourse and in applications of artistic research may be avoided or resolved. Mode one indicates that artistic creation is in most instances ipso facto artistic research. A philosophical substantiation is offered for the claim. In brief, a work of art (...) is considered to be a state of affairs, to use Wittgenstein’s terminology, of the artistic kind. The creation of a state of affairs of the artistic kind and the formulation of propositional belief about that state of affairs are claimed to be necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for artistic research to occur. A state of affairs of the artistic kind provides the artistic component of artistic research; however, the state of affairs in and of itself does not normally convey propositional belief, and therefore does not satisfy the condition of research in artistic research. For artistic research to take place, propositional belief about the state of affairs of the artistic kind must be formulated. The site of the initiation of the research component of artistic research is thus located. In normal artistic practices, the class of activities commonly seen as art and the class of activities commonly seen as research exhibit significant class overlap and are inseparably intertwined in the vast majority of artistic creations. Mode two indicates delimited forms of artistic research. Mode two artistic research does not accept that the conditions of mode one are sufficient for artistic research and subsequently requires further epistemic justification or criteria. The further justification or criteria delimits the form of artistic research, usually within particular contexts for particular purposes. Clarity in the discourse of artistic research is promoted when the modes are clearly differentiated, when their purposes are stated, and when the underlying presuppositions held by their proponents are revealed. (shrink)

Dr. R. Michael Fisher came across Ken Wilber's published work in 1982 and has ever since been a learner and critic of it. In this video he shares both his love of many aspects of Wilber's work and a few critiques that particularly focus on Conflict and Fear. He invites people to respond and also ask questions, and if enough of these are offered, he'll created another video on the topic and respond to your questions and concerns. If you'd rather (...) talk directly: r.michaelfisher52 [at] g[mail].com p.s. Phobos-Thanatos is what Wilber also articulates, again based on adaptation from Plotinus, as this never got into this video; likewise, it was missed that there are post-Integral levels of consciousness as well, beyond where Wilber writes from and where I work from... so, the "spectrum" is vast, at least 9-10 levels and "Integral" is only level 7 in this schema... (shrink)

This thesis explored the topic of inclusion using Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics. Specifically, this thesis examined inclusion for students in K-12 codified as having severe emotional and behavioural disabilities in the province of Alberta, Canada. The current trend in Alberta to talk about an inclusive education system could be seen as a response to the ongoing exclusion of students with EBD over the past 100 years. The research within this thesis involved interviewing three educators who de-segregated a highly specialized class for (...) students with severe EBD to create inclusive classrooms. They implemented a co-operative teaching and inquiry based model for their year-long project. According to the educators interviewed, student’s academic skills and understanding improved and negative student behaviours diminished significantly. Themes emerged which contributed to the success of inclusion: listening and tactfully responding to questions students have about one another and curriculum topics; educators’ openness to ask questions of themselves and one another; seeing all students as capable learners; working in teams to facilitate and guide student learning; administrative support for inclusion; and inquiry based learning. (shrink)

The premise behind this paper is that "we" have a very serious Fear Problem. As a stream of inquiry in the larger In Search of Fearlessness Movement, the author pursues a long lingering question and concern about how the West has near neglected the call to examine "fearlessness" in contradistinction to the East. With the purpose to build a better understanding of fearlessness, theories about it, and how it fits into the author's most recent turn to co-developing a philosophy of (...) fearism.... (shrink)

This paper addresses, in a third of a series of works by the author on the status of Fear Education, particularly the work of the philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti. It appears little progress has been made, especially in the field of Education in terms of recognizing the unique nature and role of fear in shaping everything humans do—including the way they learn and create knowledge itself. The paper encourages others to join this mission for a better fear education for all.

Dr. R. Michael Fisher, fearologist, educator and philosopher, explores existentialist frameworks within a new and exciting imaginary that goes beyond traditional philosophical and existential pursuits--he does that by taking off with a notion of having us all acknowledge "philosophical disability" and he creatively demonstrates what that might mean, how it could be applied--albeit, this is a very preliminary sketch only of this concept--and the way this philosophical work can prepare everyone interested in it for the coming "end times" or more (...) accurately, the coming of major cascading crises that will bring and are bringing already massive suffering and extinctions on the planet. This is a teaching video for the Anthropocene era. (shrink)

This is a lively discussion between two perceptive philosophical thinkers as comfortable with vulnerable intimacy and abstract ideas as they are savvy with the aesthetics of oppression and the many neurotic loops of fear-based escape routes from the Real. With a deep concern for finding the best ways to build a healthy and sane society, their Integrating of East-West, Indigenous and ecological knowledges brings forward a synthesis of ideas to be reckoned with. Dr. Fisher, founder of The Fearology Institute and (...) Luke Barnesmoore a doctoral student in the Geography department at The University of British Columbia caress the contours of fear and fearlessness and the importance of admitting how much fear exists in most all places humans dwell in contemporary urban societies. if we are to avoid the worst catastrophe's of crises we face on the planet in the very near future, Fisher and Barnesmoore are sure that fear is going to be a major player in the outcomes. (shrink)

Recently, writer-director John Carpenter’s work has been read increasingly through a philosophical lens, as evidenced by the works of scholars such as Dylan Trigg, Anna Powell, and Eugene Thacker. However, the critical material on Prince of Darkness remains somewhat limited, especially considering the film’s explicitly philosophical narrative and themes. This project takes up Darkness’s dealings with epistemophobia, defined broadly as the fear of knowledge, before revealing more nuanced and complex meanings therein. We also consider the film’s deconstruction of human subjectivity, (...) engaging extensively with Trigg, Powell and Thacker’s work while also affording necessary space to horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, a seminal influence on Carpenter’s oeuvre. By reading Darkness within the context of both philosophy and literature, this thesis demonstrates that Carpenter’s cinema deeply interrelates with these other disciplines, necessitating acknowledgment of their connections. The concept of epistemophobia provides the project’s primary philosophical intervention: how does one extract knowledge from that which is horrifically unthinkable? (shrink)

This thesis brings together the works of Jürgen Habermas and Alasdair MacIntyre in an attempt to overcome what I have identified as problems in the normative sociological project of the former. Critiques levied against the is-ought problem implicit in the normative aspects of Habermas' theory of communicative action, and the role that the concepts of lifeworld plays in Habermas' overall theory, are overcome through a dialogue with the works of MacIntyre. In proposing MacIntyre's idea of 'traditions of inquiry' as a (...) sociologically valuable tool of investigation and understanding, the author also seeks to access some of the normatively driving ideas about human goods, communities, and flourishing from MacIntyre and bring them into dialogue with Habermas' normative project. To do this however, certain disagreements, especially about modernity, must be either overcome or shown to be not significant enough to questions at hand. In facilitating this dialogue between Habermas and MacIntyre, the MacIntyrean concept of 'translatability' is employed to judge the similarities and differences between the two theorists' ideas, and judge how debilitating the differences that exist are. All this is aimed reconceptualizing sociology as a normative exercise, not merely restricted to the description of the social world, but fruitfully engaging with questions of 'what ought we to do.'. (shrink)

Negotiation of intergenerational values in first generation immigrant families is the central focus of this study. In-depth interviews were conducted with twenty-two Korean-Canadian participants in the Greater Toronto Area, followed by data analysis using the grounded theory methods. The findings revealed four aspects by which participants effectuate values, and the activities that resolve the tensions embedded in value plurality. The negotiation process also addressed the issues of disconnect, disrespect, and disempowerment in the intergenerational relationship. The quality of parent-child relationship played (...) a meaningful role in participants’ development of values, self-efficacy, and affirmation of identities. Based on the findings of value proficiency and mutual recognition, recommendations are made for service providers to newcomer families, and for educators with particular interest in ethics, diversity and citizenship. (shrink)

Questions surrounding the evolution of cooperation, especially human cooperation, have driven research in many disciplines. Two key methodologies used to research and explain the evolution of cooperation are modeling and narrative construction. A number of scientists and philosophers have suggested that advancing research on the evolution of cooperation will require integrating models and narratives. But, relatively little has been said about what challenges exist to integrating models and narratives, how to go about integrating models and narratives, and what particular benefits (...) might be gained by accomplishing such integration. In this dissertation project, I address these questions in order to show how models and narratives can be integrated to produce better research on and explanations of the evolution of cooperation. The major challenge to integrating models and narratives concerning the evolution of cooperation that I address in this dissertation stems from the criticisms that such models and narratives lack empirical support. I answer this challenge by defending models and narratives from these criticisms. In the case of models, I argue both that at least some models of the evolution of cooperation have stronger empirical support than supposed by critics and that evolutionary robotics modeling approaches can be used to create even better models. In the case of narratives, I argue that several means of defending narratives from evidential challenges already developed by philosophers can be used to defend narratives about the evolution of cooperation as well. To show how narratives and models can be integrated to better research and explain the evolution of cooperation, I first establish an account of integration by drawing on the work of other philosophers. I then argue that models and narratives can provide certain benefits to each other via integration. Models can benefit from integration with narratives by using the narratives as sources of information as well as hypotheses to test. Indeed, as models are used to test such hypotheses, they also gain explanatory power. Narratives can benefit from integration with models by using the models as sources of support and constraint. Moreover, models can help deepen the understanding of historical contingency provided by narratives. (shrink)

The author, having studied fear as a subject for 25 years, has adopted several new conceptualizations for that study. Fearology is the discipline, fearanalysis is one of the major practices, and 'Fear' Studies is the overarching domain of valuing and containing the critical discourses and methodologies, findings and applications of a new scholarship on the topic of fear in the 21st century....

This thesis examines Patañjali’s Yogasūtra, a Sanskrit treatise on the theory and practice of yoga, in light of the philosophy of Edmund Husserl, a key figure in the 20th century philosophical movement known as phenomenology. Using Husserl’s distinction between the natural attitude and the phenomenological reduction, this thesis distinguishes between two respective hermeneutical approaches to the Yogasūtra: the natural-cosmological and the transcendental-phenomenological. While a case can be made for either approach, this thesis argues that the latter proves to be more (...) cogent and fruitful. It thereby explores the Yogasūtra’s metaphysics as an account of the principles that structure conscious experience, and it explores the Yogasūtra’s meditative praxis, particularly the meditative states known as samprajñāta samādhi and samāpatti, as the clarification of pure experience, in a spirit similar to Husserl’s phenomenological reduction. (shrink)

Isaiah Berlin was the first in a now long line of scholars to defend and provide argument for the affinity between two seemingly incompatible views, value pluralism and political liberalism. William Galston and George Crowder offer contemporary versions of the affinity argument, what I call the Berlin project. Critics of the Berlin project, including John Gray, Robert Talisse, and Matthew Moore, argue that the affinity argument is doomed to contradiction, as the incommensurable nature of values under pluralism cannot lend support (...) to any particular value or set of values, including liberal ones. I propose to avoid this problem by distinguishing between two types of moral value, personal and political. Separating personal values from political makes clear important differences in application: Personal values apply to individuals and help to shape the lives we lead, while political values apply to polities and help to shape the societies we live in. I argue that the moral upshot of pluralism is a normative demand for political diversity only, applying at the level of polities not persons. And since political values are not incommensurable with personal values, the contradiction does not arise. I argue such a move avoids central criticisms of the Berlin project and provides proponents a path forward. (shrink)

In my dissertation A Study in the Logic of Institutions I develop a logical system for reasoning about institutions and their consistency. Since my dissertation is a work in logic rather than one in socio-political philosophy, I don’t defend a particular theory of institutions. Instead, I did as Yogi Bera suggested and simply took the fork in the road. A well-developed account of institutions is given by John Searle in ; and. His account bases all social reality on language, and (...) I use his account to provide a logic for institutional norms. Briefly, social reality is constructed via language by making our intentions clear to one another. And we do this via speech acts. There is one particular type of speech act that is important to institutions: declarations. Declarations bring about new social objects and create social states of affairs. It is via declarations that social institutions are created. In so far as groups recognize an institution sustaining/making authority, that authority has the ability to generate new institutional rules via declarations. According to Vanderveken ; see also Searle and Vanderveken, speech acts have a logic. That is, performing one speech act can satisfy the conditions of having performed another speech act. A priest declaring a baby baptized will also make it so that the priest has asserted that the baby is baptized, for instance. More importantly, certain declarations will result in the declarations of some of the logical consequences of the initial declarations. I characterize the set of speech acts that stand in that relationship and develop a logical system around that characterization. The formal framework incorporates action and permits representations of complex institution-dependent relations, e.g., rights and duties. I further develop this formalism to investigate the notion of normative consistency. I show how to represent at least a minimal conception of normative inconsistency within the formal framework, and characterize its properties. I conclude by comparing my work to that of others. (shrink)

One of the many important debates in the post-secondary sector is whether scholars are fit to lead universities. Effective leadership is important in all settings but particularly at these institutions because of their size, complexity, and dynamic social, economic, and political contexts. Having a thorough understanding of this context is considered indispensable for leadership success. This qualitative study explores the leadership development experiences of 17 department chairs at one research-intensive university located in Alberta, Canada. Department chairs are key university leaders (...) who are accountable for many education, service, and research activities; they act as crucial links between institutional strategy and its implementation. Their development merits careful attention because entry into these leadership roles requires no prior training or experience, making them the least prepared leadership group at universities. The study findings revealed that leadership networks play a central role in the development of these leaders. These networks serve as valuable instruments that help them to enter and understand their role, develop new skills, and practise self-reflection. Furthermore, these networks facilitate the transformation of these scholars from researchers and teachers to academic leaders. Prior to this study, the influence of leadership networks on the development of academic chairs was largely unknown and had been only marginally described in the literature. (shrink)

In this thesis I seek to recover hidden resources from Aristotle and Hegel that allow us to think through the possibilities of embodied agency and human fulfilment. The puzzle begins with an observation that the possibilities of fulfilment seem to require an impossible trade-off for women: to be either the material self as embodied or the metaphysical self as mind, but never both. In this analysis my concern is directed towards problems related to embodied differences along the lines of sex (...) and gender and how these differences at once create unique opportunities for fulfilment and simultaneously have been used as justification for systematic oppression of women. I attempt to bring the body and mind closer together through Aristotle’s account of the psyche, here demonstrating that the body provides the mind with distinctly embodied experiences that direct the possibilities for self-constitution and inner virtue. Motherhood emerges as one such possibilities, which I argue finds a new home in Aristotle’s philosophy as a complete virtue and unique friendship in the social world, which is ultimately unrecognized. I subsequently trace the development of women, the body, and the will, throughout Hegel’s development of social worlds in order to reveal both the possibilities for fulfilment within these worlds and how these worlds failed to account for the fullness of human life. Here, I argue that Hegel’s account of marriage provides key resources for including embodied difference and subjectivity within a system of freedom, but that he ultimately fails to establish a stable and genuinely free social world for women based on his own standard of freedom. Gathering up the principles retrieved from both Aristotle and Hegel, I briefly turn to a model of embodied agency that could provide genuine possibilities for fulfillment of body and mind. (shrink)

This dissertation will use neopragmatist philosophy to examine three important concepts in entrepreneurship theorizing: entrepreneurial uncertainty, venture ideas, and entrepreneurial opportunities. Neopragmatist philosophers typically understand meaning, objectivity, correct reasoning, and knowledge in terms of social-linguistic interpretive practices. Each of these concepts are perspectival in the sense that different people will interpret others as having a different view than themselves on what is actually objective etc.. According to neopragmatists we should analyse these concepts not by trying to identify any sort of (...) criteria which distinguishes which perspectives are actually correct, but instead identify how these concepts are used when people try to interpret the perspectives of others in relation to their own. This dissolves many difficult ontological problems. I will argue that the concepts ‘entrepreneurial uncertainty’, ‘venture ideas’, and ‘entrepreneurial opportunities’ are similarly perspectival and that a neopragmatist lens allows us to fruitfully understand them in terms of how we scholars use them when interpreting the perspectives of the entrepreneurs we are studying—who are in turn interpreting the perspectives of their stakeholders. In chapter two I will argue that Knightian uncertainty seems largely irrelevant to practicing entrepreneurs, and that we should reconceptualize and study entrepreneurial uncertainty as a lack of social justificatory resources. In chapter three I argue that instead of conceptualizing venture ideas as mental representations we should instead conceptualize them in terms of their role in social justificatory practices whereby entrepreneurs have to navigate how their perspectives diverge from their stakeholders. In Chapter four I argue that when an entrepreneurship scholars says that an entrepreneur pursues an opportunity they are not only claiming that the entrepreneur perceives the course of action as favourable, but are themselves taking a stand on its favourability relative to whatever theoretical lens they are using. The question “what are entrepreneurial opportunities” ceases to be an ontological debate and becomes instead a more fruitful debate about how we scholars can bring relevant theoretical insights to the perspectives of practicing entrepreneurs. (shrink)

What is the relationship between knowledge and action? Many philosophers in recent years have proposed a very intimate connection between these two concepts. John Hawthorne and Jason Stanley­—among others—have proposed that knowledge is both a necessary and sufficient condition for rational deliberate action, citing only that an agent must use reasons that are both known and relevant in their decision making. They also argue that an agent is blameworthy and deserving of criticism for failing to adhere to this knowledge norm (...) of action. This thesis examines Hawthorne and Stanley’s norm, pulling apart concepts such as ‘relevance’ and ‘reasons’ to try and better understand what this knowledge norm of action entails. Ultimately this thesis proposes that Hawthorne and Stanley’s principles fail to adequately capture the scope of what a general norm of action should, and proposes tentative suggestions for what features a knowledge norm of action should have. (shrink)

This dissertation might be described as a philosophical biography of an idea —Nietzsche’s idea of ‘amor fati’, ‘love of fate’. First introduced in 1882, amor fati marks a renewed affirmation of life for Nietzsche, a new understanding of what it means to say yes to life. In this thesis I show how loving fate informs both Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity, and proposed replacement of traditional values with life-affirming values. For such an important idea, Nietzsche’s published references to amor fati are (...) not frequent — four occurrences in his published works. In fact, the importance of the idea to Nietzsche is highlighted, not cast into doubt, by a close look at how and when he discusses it in his published works. After he introduces the notion in 1882 as a very important new year’s resolution urging himself to love fate, he returns to it in the final three occurrences at the end of his productive life. I argue that the ambition of loving fate acted as a type of lighthouse – his beacon drawing him back from the dangerous waters of philosophical exploration and the dark clouds of personal suffering. He calls amor fati his “greatest love” and as his “formula for human greatness in a human being”. (shrink)

Michael Huemer’s phenomenal conservative theory of justification says the following: If it seems to some subject S that p, then, in the absence of any defeaters, S has at least some degree of justification for believing that p. This dissertation argues for an extension of PC into the social realm to create social phenomenal conservatism : In high-stake contexts, it must also seem to S, in the absence of any defeaters, that it seems to the supermajority of the relevant community, (...) after a genuine attempt at a process of ideal inquiry, that p in order for S to have enough justification to believe that p. In addition, it is argued that SPC satisfies two strongly access internalist intuitions and three externalist intuitions about justification. SPC is thus both an internalist and externalist theory of justification. (shrink)

Hardly a week passes without new findings emerging from evolutionary psychology regarding how our view of morality has been influenced by our biological evolution. Evolutionary ethics is a normative project built upon these scientific insights. Evolutionary ethicists fall into two groups: substantiators or skeptics. Substantiators believe moral ideas can now be scientifically proven. Skeptics believe there are no moral truths because morality is just a biological adaptation. I believe the project of evolutionary ethics is misconceived. I argue that both the (...) substantiators and the skeptics fail to show the direct relevance of biology to ethics. Moral truths can be established. But biology cannot support nor undercut these truths. I present the doctrine of moral realism as embodying the proper process of ethical inquiry, and I defend moral realism from evolutionary psychology’s skeptical conclusions. I determine that biology can indirectly inform ethics, but never guide it. The ethical realm is independent. (shrink)

This thesis inquires into what it is to be and to become an experienced teacher. Although becoming an experienced teacher in part depends upon acquiring epistemological knowledge, such as instructional strategies and content knowledge, this study explores the relational qualities of experience. Drawing on the philosophical writings of Hans-Georg Gadamer and particularly his theory of Erfahrung, this thesis journeys into the existential and ontological questions that undergird the core themes of citizenship and identity stipulated in the Alberta Social Studies Program (...) of Studies. These journeys are methodologically supported by examining inner and outer pathways including conversations, autobiographical reflections, and readings. Becoming experienced calls for teachers to embark on an existential quest with fellow travellers. This journey requires the cultivation of a pedagogical attunement that embraces the otherness of the other. Encounters with otherness may unsettle our understandings of the world and engender an inner awareness of our own historicity. Insights gained from journeys with others contribute to our capacity to responsibly respond to the particularity of the children entrusted to our care and the cultivation of discernment—ethical judgments that are reflective, intentional, and contextual. Erfahrung does not seek a fixed or final destination; rather to be and to become experienced recognizes the finitude and conditionedness of our understandings. Thus, to be and to become experienced is always on the way. Throughout this journey we are required to put our understandings at risk—honouring the vulnerability and precariousness of our factical lives. While co-venturing with others we are called upon to hear the voice of the other that occasions more fulsome understandings of others, the world and oneself. Accordingly, being an experienced teacher orients us to a radical openness, which occasions the possibility of the not yet known. This thesis culminates in five touchstones that characterize Gadamer’s theory of Erfahrung. (shrink)

The purpose of this study, which utilized a phenomenological hermeneutic methodological framework, was to gain a deeper understanding, through the lived experience of self-proclaimed overweight women, of the sense of belonging. Five middle-aged women participants participated in group gatherings as well as one-on-one interviews with the researcher, where the experience of belonging was the central focus. The data was then analyzed via an hermeneutic framework guided by Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. Findings from this research revealed that overweight women face some (...) powerful tensions as they come to terms with their growing bodies. An exploration of language and dominant discourses presented diverse and disparate meanings of specific words as well as grand ideals. Borrowing from van Manen’s work, four lived existentials are explored in a form of interpretation to gain deeper understanding of one participant’s words. Stigma and shame are explored, leading to the suggestion that living under a highly negative stigma can lead to a form of embodied shame. Heidegger’s notions of homelessness, abiding, and homecoming are considered in coming to better understand the experience of moving between belonging and not, as the participants’ bodies became factors that cast them from their familiar lives into a form of abiding homelessness, in which each participant has had to find her own way. More conversations with and between like and different individuals, I conclude, are necessary in breaking through silences and allow for deeper understanding of self and other. Additionally, this research speaks to the need to draw attention to the grand narratives, and to explore and listen to other, non-dominant, and perhaps, more meaningful discourses. (shrink)

The author believes that one of the greatest resistances to the advancement of his conception of a new branch called ‘Fear’ Studies is the problem of reductionism in people’s imaginary and thinking. It is not just a resistance they have to seeing fear is social, but that they seem to fear that it is the case. In this paper the author summarizes a brief history of his work in moving fear from the reductionistic, positivistic, individualistic, materialistic philosophies and paradigms that (...) have largely prevented a qualitative shift in how we see what Fear is about—that is, that Fear is Social. He discusses some of the social implications of this needed shift and the resistances to it that keep feeding the global Fear Problem. He links the issue of “social pathologies” with fear. (shrink)

I Am Atlas is a metafictional novel that investigates disembodiment and body politics. Set within a science fiction universe, the novel follows the story of a man whose family-tragedy unhinges his reality. The novel uses the device of metafiction to analyse the reader’s relationship with text and the displacement that occurs during the reading process. It asks the reader to question conventional notions of physiology and being, while discussing the social constructions that inform their subjectivity. The novel is prefaced by (...) an exegesis entitled “Just Filling Space: An Investigation of Disembodiment in I Am Atlas” that uses postmodernist theory to deconstruct the novel’s approach to issues of disembodiment. (shrink)

Students are often not familiar with the language of science and as a result they have great difficulty understanding scientific texts. Students tend to memorize the materials that they see in the textbook without thinking about their meaning, because they believe that language and words hold the knowledge and they need to use the same words and terms in order to show their understanding. Such students who think that knowledge in science is a body of settled facts that comes from (...) authority take a passive role in learning and become a receiver of knowledge, while those who try to make sense of the science language and construct their own understanding by questioning the knowledge presented to them are more likely to develop reasoning and critical thinking skills. The hermeneutical approach that is the basis of “Reflective Writing” encourages students to question what is presented to them and moves them from receiving knowledge to constructing their own understanding. Reflective writing was used in combination with a new style of introductory physics labs called 'Labatorials' at Mount Royal University and the impact of these pedagogical tools on student learning, and in particular on how students learn, was investigated and analyzed in this study. Interviews with students who completed the reflective writing assignments in the introductory physics labatorials as well as an analysis of students’ reflective writing assignments helped us find key aspects that make the reflective writing activity useful to the students. Interviews were also used to find out if Labatorials are helpful to the students. The disciplined-focused epistemological beliefs questionnaire developed by Hofer was used in this project to find out whether the combinations of reflective writing and labatorials can change students’ epistemology. With these related projects, we establish three main results. First, we identified the main aspects that make reflective writing an effective learning activity in introductory physics courses. Second, we have also made progress in characterizing the positive and negative aspects of labatorials. Third, we have analyzed the possible changes that the combination of reflective writing and labatorials can have on students’ beliefs about knowledge and learning. (shrink)

Walter Benjamin has rarely appeared in fiction. To adequately represent Benjamin in a creative manuscript, writers cannot resort only to the conventions of biography or historical fiction—conventions that ignore or negate Benjamin’s theses about history. The Allegorist puts into practice Benjamin’s notion of the dialectical image, in which an historian extracts a piece of text from its original context so as to place it within a new context, establishing a “constellation which [one] era has formed with a definite earlier one”. (...) Susan Buck-Morss argues that this process represents “a modern form of emblematics”. The Allegorist expounds upon Benjamin’s theory of the dialectical image in order to argue for a “hieroglyphic” experience of modernity. Using textual montage, The Allegorist explores this hieroglyphic experience while applying Benjamin’s concept of historiography to the history of his own life. (shrink)

This thesis addresses the racial ontology debate in the philosophy of race. The positions in this debate can be summarized along realist and antirealist dimensions as shown below: Realist: racial naturalism, racial constructionism Antirealist: racial skepticism I argue for racial constructionism. In particular, I argue for a Du Boisian-inspired cultural theory of race, whereby races are cultural groups. There is also a normative dimension to the racial ontology debate. There are three positions in this normative debate: conservationism, reconstructionism, and elminativism. (...) Conservationism holds that our race talk should be conserved, reconstructionism holds that it should be reconstructed to treat race as something other than what it actually is, and eliminativism holds that it should be eliminated, either entirely or in certain respects. I argue for the cultural excellence thesis, a conservationist thesis which holds that we should conserve race talk based on the cultural value of races. (shrink)

The two main purposes of this paper are: to document the history of my own philosophical thinking about fear and fearlessness in regards to existential philosophy.... to lay the groundwork for a genealogy of Fear Management System-5.

This thesis concerns our standing to epistemically blame. We have reason to think three claims hold true: we only have the standing to epistemically blame when it’s our epistemic business, other people’s epistemic errors are rarely our epistemic business, and we often have the standing to epistemically blame. These jointly inconsistent claims generate the puzzle which motivates this thesis. I begin in Chapter II by offering a novel account of epistemic blame. Chapters III and IV represent my argument against the (...) second of the above claims. I argue for two standing conditions on epistemic blame in order to demonstrate that others’ epistemic errors are often our epistemic business. Finally, in Chapter V, I examine a distinctly epistemic conception of hypocrisy to clarify one way in which we can lose the standing to epistemically blame. In sum, this thesis is meant to explain and defend our entitlement to epistemically blame. (shrink)

Tom Regan claims that all entities he calls “subjects-of-lives”, including humans, dogs, and many other non-human animals, have equal inherent value. He claims that entities have direct moral standing in virtue of having inherent value. If he is right, it suggests that all subjects-of-lives have equal direct moral standing. To say that an entity has direct moral standing is to say that there are possible circumstances in which agents morally ought to consider an entity for its own sake when deciding (...) what to do. Regan considers a lifeboat case and prescribes that a human being should be saved over a dog. This is not obviously consistent with the claim that all subjects-of-lives have equal direct moral standing. This might be resolved by citing the greater intrinsic value of human experiences. Regan also considers a second lifeboat case and prescribes that a human being should be saved over a million dogs. As a number of authors have noted, this claim seems difficult to reconcile with the claim that all subjects-of-lives have equal inherent value. In this dissertation, I consider a number of strategies that Regan might adopt to deal with this tension and assess the impact of each on his broader account. This second lifeboat case cannot be explained in the way that the first is explained, by citing the greater intrinsic value of human experiences, since the number of dog experiences is so great. An alternative strategy argues that inherent value comes in degrees, depending on the number of capacities that an entity possesses, and the degree to which they possess them. This would make human inherent value much greater than that of dogs. This strategy, however, would require that Regan abandon his claim that all subjects-of-lives have equal inherent value. Additionally, the prescription in the second lifeboat case would remain implausible, since the inherent value of the human being cannot be greater than the inherent value of one million dogs. An alternative strategy claims that the combined intrinsic value of dogs' experiences is not additive, on the grounds that the experiences lack variety. If this strategy succeeds, it might be possible to explain how the intrinsic value of a human being’s experiences is greater than the combined intrinsic value a million dogs experiences. This would explain his prescription in the second lifeboat case. It seems, however, that dog experiences are diverse enough, especially when they are possessed by different dogs, to continue to add intrinsic value to the whole of the intrinsic value of the experiences of dogs. Since these strategies fail, with no obvious alternative to justify Regan’s prescription in the second lifeboat case, I conclude that Regan’s prescription in this case is morally wrong. I conclude that while humans have significantly more inherent value than other entities, and while human experiences are significantly more intrinsically valuable, they are not immeasurably more valuable than other animals and their experiences. (shrink)

This thesis contributes to contemporary feminist philosophy by establishing a definition of postfeminism and analyzing two of its central tenets: equality and sexuality. The work’s central claim is that postfeminism is anti-feminist and functions as a façade that conceals the continuation of the structural subordination of women in our capitalist patriarchal society. This is evident in the latest instantiation of postfeminism, in which women sexually objectify men in the name of equality. The argument is that because women are objectified sexually (...) in popular culture it is only fair men be as well. In refuting postfeminist claims, I draw from and expand upon Simone de Beauvoir’s and Luce Irigaray’s feminist philosophical theories of equality and sexual difference, and I focus on specific examples from popular culture. (shrink)

The advancement of the methodology and praxis called fearanalysis by the author for the past 20 years, is a process of application, theorizing, and then refining the craft. It is becoming evident that in many ways the work of fearanalysis is in large part forensic--among its many forms of interrogation....

Beliefs seem to be more significantly constrained by some norms than others e.g. one should only believe what they have sufficient evidence for, a belief that p is correct iff p is true etc. I call these norms, doxastic norms. Constitutivism is the view that doxastic norms are a constitutive feature of belief. I argue that this view is mistaken. In making this case, I come to defend views about the semantics of doxastic norms, the nature of belief, and the (...) value of truth. Doxastic norms are naturally stated in deontic terms. In the first chapter, I consider how we should best understand these statements, given that we likely don't control our beliefs in the same way that we do our actions. In the second chapter, I consider whether the account of religious belief given by either Ludwig Wittgenstein or Søren Kierkegaard provide a counterexample to constitutivism. In the third chapter, I argue that constitutivism can't account for certain intuitions about our reasons for belief. In the fourth chapter, I defend a descriptive account of belief in terms of the appearance of truth. In the fifth chapter, I show how my view can better account for the data which is thought by some to support constitutivism. In the final chapter, I describe how our reasons for belief might arise from our goals. (shrink)

This is my first systematic publication on fearism. It is a general theoretical study but does not itself remain un-affected. Based on experience and theorizing on fearism, I am convinced it is a deeply terrifying encounter, as would be the encounter critically of any harmful violent ideology. Fearism, arguably, is the most terrifying to encounter, which no doubt explains why it has not been spoken about in human history so directly until only this last decade....

The traditional understanding of Pyrrhonism claims that the Pyrrhonist suspends judgment on all claims. This is because the arguments the Pyrrhonist uses seems to undermine the possibility of justified belief. The most famous of these arguments for the impossibility of justified belief is ‘Agrippa’s trilemma.’ This argument says that any attempt to give reasons for a claim will end in assertion, circularity, or infinite regress. However, infinite regress, arbitrary assertion, or circular reasoning cannot justify a claim, so no claim can (...) ever be justified. I want to suggest that there is a different skeptical challenge that arises from the trilemma other than the traditional one. This challenge comes out of consideration of the significance of disagreement in Sextus Empricus’ Outlines of Pyrrhonism. This new challenge says that because reasoning must end in regress, assertion, or circularity, you get rationally irresolvable disagreement. The idea is you can have two complete chains of reasons that support inconsistent claims. This is possible because one chain might bottom out in one assertion and the other chain in a different assertion; or one uses assertion, the other circularity; and so on. This results in two inconsistent claims, each following from the reasons given. If both claims follow from the reasons cited, then we have equal reason to think each of the claims is true. The Pyrrhonist thinks that when you have equal reason for two incompatible claim you ought to suspend judgment. Thus, you get a skeptical challenge from Agrippa’s trilemma, but one that is not as radical as the traditional understanding. (shrink)

In a famous interview with Larry McCaffery, David Foster Wallace emphasizes that he wants his fiction to represent “what it’s like to be a fucking human being” in millennial America. In my dissertation I examine his efforts to do so. I contend that his fascination with philosophy and logical processes drives all of his work, and that he has been able to fashion sane and sensible suggestions for thinking through an existence that grows ever more complex and confusing. He began (...) his work in the context of the postmodern recursive irony that was his heritage, but he unfailingly condemned it, even though he recognized the validity of the contemporary philosophy on which it is built. He understands that we cannot guarantee stabilized meaning in language because of its capacity for both infinite expansion and infinite regression, but in his fiction he works to call a halt to this dizzying vortex, because he believes that the consequences of failing to do so in both postmodern theory and literature has helped to produce a cultural backlash of ennui and misery in America. He thinks that both postmodernity as a cultural condition and literary postmodernism in America have direct roots in what he calls “televisual culture,” which has changed America from a nation of “do-ers and be-ers” to “an atomized mass of self-conscious watchers and appearers”. In this dissertation I am going to trace the focus of national diagnosis and therapy in Wallace’s work, right from his first published work to his last, and to describe the changes in his thinking as they are reflected in the nature of his narrative consciousness. I believe that he moved from emphasizing social critiques, in the roman à clef tradition, to an intense focus on individual worlds of consciousness, analyzing the aberrant thinking that results from the much-inflated perceptions of desire and need driven by unrestrained commercialism in millennial American culture. Like Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose work Wallace deeply admired, he comes to the conclusion that we must not only examine our language use and carefully monitor it for sense, but also that we must understand personal motivation for individual utterances. We do not know whether Wallace ever read the later works of Wittgenstein; Wallace’s archives contain none of these works, but he arrives at the same conclusion as his predecessor: individual need and desire must be considered when we are trying to understand how language meaning functions. Wallace represents this conclusion in fiction that contains dizzying levels of second-guessing conscious thought, as well as characters who have found ways to stop this process and are then able to retain their sanity. Curiously, Wallace’s final position becomes intensely individualistic, for someone who wants to better his society. This approach is social, but grass-roots and strictly personal, built on one-to-one communication and intense personal effort to focus outward. (shrink)

This thesis applies approaches from the history and philosophy of science to explore the decision-making of contemporary physicians in a common clinical scenario: the treatment of patients with acute stroke. Acute stroke decision-making during the period 1960 to 2014 therefore serves as a case study to address broader questions about how doctors make decisions. I argue that acute stroke decision-making is dependent upon a historically-determined concept of the acute stroke, in that the contemporary meaning of the disease “acute stroke” was (...) established in response to the efficacy of the drug tissue plasminogen activator as its treatment. Moreover, I propose that treatment decisions about the use of tPA for acute stroke involve simultaneous and inter-related processes of epistemic and ethical evaluation. Acute stroke decision-making can therefore be conceived as a medical, epistemic and ethical process, occurring within a historical context. This interpretation of acute stroke decision-making argues for the necessary role of the humanities — and especially of the history and philosophy of science — in the study of modern medical practice. (shrink)

The first part of this study demonstrates how contemporary debates in the philosophy of technology stumble when trying to explain how technology comes to influence human ends. The second part argues that Heidegger’s philosophy acts as a corrective on the modern debate through understanding technology as a disclosive phenomenon. That is, it reveals the world to be of a certain character, which Heidegger terms ‘standing-reserve’. World-revealing explains not only how technology can come to influence human ends but also the ontological (...) appearance of things in the world. The ontological nature of the problem demands a response to technological revealing that is ontological in character. Heidegger thinks the solution to the problem of modern technology must occur, first and foremost, at the level of authentic thought and language, which he locates in the Greek concept of TECHNE. In the third part, I argue that Heidegger’s account needs supplementation at the level of practical world-building. I forward my own novel response, which advocates for a change at the level of thought and action. I base my response on a return to the roots of TECHNE and its association with craft. (shrink)

This is the third technical paper in a five part series on "ecocriticism" as it relates to the author's work on fear and fearlessness.... focused engagement with Desh Subba's philosophy of fearism in the last three years, and with his attempting to link Subba's notion of "fearism" and the "fearist perspective" with ecocriticism....

“God created, Linnaeus organized.” This remark Linnaeus liked to say captures the common idea that the proper task of scientists in classification is to discover and systematize features of the world without being committed to individual perspectives, values, and interests. However, it is rarely the case that scientists passively read nature or carve nature at its joints. My thesis investigates how scientific classification is laden with values and explores its implication. I hope to temper the influence of the ideal of (...) value-free science on the discussion of natural kinds. Contrary to the blossoming scholarship in the values and science literature, there has been little discussion about the role of values in scientific classification. Defined as groupings that correspond to real divisions in nature, natural kinds are considered to exist independently from human values and interests. I demonstrate how the assumptions behind scientific classification endorse the idea of value-free science. Using case studies, I argue that incorporating social, moral, and political values can lead to the epistemic improvement of the category. If values are ineliminable from science, then the question arises, what or whose values, in what ways, can legitimately influence science? I critically examine recently developed criteria for proper uses of values in science. I advocate evaluating values in terms of epistemic benefits. The task of assessing epistemic benefits requires scrutinizing a research program’s social and historical context. Finally, the last part of this dissertation explores how values uniquely influence natural kind terms via social entrenchment. Many philosophers identify projectibility as a defining feature of natural kinds. I look at whether social and cultural practices influence projectibility. I investigate whether these practices affect which kind terms get socially entrenched. I argue that the projectibility of natural kind terms substantially depends on our norms and values. (shrink)

Dr. R. Michael Fisher shares thoughts on how we can all, in our own ways, more or less, make aware and educated choices to follow the philia of knowledge--that is, knowledge about fear and thy fearful self as part of the path of Fearlessness. He outlines the various forms of the spirit of Fearlessness: bravery, courageousness, fear-less, fearlessness and fearless. Errata: I should have said re: quote "Norman Vincent Peale" I should have said Philosophy is "love of wisdom" but I (...) wanted to say it more broadly and add the "love of knowledge" dimension; could have also said "love of truth". (shrink)

Energiewende is a German compound word for energy transition. This dissertation utilizes the term as a linguistic device to navigate the discourse of Germany’s energy transition and to reconstruct its dynamics, particularly in terms of associated social value systems. The concept of value is limited to monetary profit in the first innovation theory ‘entrepreneurship’ paradigm. In the subsequent technological paradigm, the value of innovation was conceived as commercial diffusion and society as a market. The recent ‘transformative change’ paradigm has shifted (...) towards social values, pursued through supranational institutions. However, recent European Commission studies fall short of investigating the social dimension of the challenges of Energiewende and remain focused on economic dimensions. This dissertation builds on alternative approaches in communication theory and anthropology to theorize value, particularly in the context of innovation. Furthermore, it builds on approaches in innovation studies drawn from structural linguistics to identify and trace the dynamics of value systems in texts. On this basis, narrative and textual analysis were employed to trace the diffusion of Energiewende, reconstruct associated value systems and their evolutionary dynamics, and assess the influence of institutional actors. Findings challenge the predictions of diffusionist innovation theories and demonstrate a case where the diffusion of an idea was supported by the social landscape. Associated value systems include economic and environmental values, which are the most diverse and the most predominant, respectively. However, it is the social values that supplement the missing dimension of the transformative change paradigm. Specifically, the evolution of values, such as decentralization, social justice and social change, challenges theoretical projections. Likewise, the engagement of institutional actors with evolution processes also challenge entrepreneurship theories. Based on findings, a short story of Energiewende has been reconstructed, summarizing the evolution of associated concepts and the role of actors. As it turns out, the diffusion of Energiewende and the evolution of its value systems have been turbulent processes, including several pivotal “turns.” Thereby, this dissertation makes theoretical and methodological contributions to the fields of energy transition, innovation and communication studies. Furthermore, a plethora of technical and historical insights provide material for further explorations. (shrink)

Mentorship is an important development process that is assumed to have individual and institutional benefits. Few postsecondary institutions offer formalized faculty mentorship programs despite the perceived benefits for women and minorities, and effective institutional leadership. My research was constructed on a conceptual framework drawing from feminist principles toward an ethic of care positioned through feminist Islamic scholars, sustainable leadership, and a personal lens. Through my unique research setting at a private, non-profit women’s university in Saudi Arabia, I posed the following (...) research questions: What are women faculty members’ perceptions of mentorship in the post secondary Saudi Arabian context? How do women’s perceptions of mentorship affect their engagement with informal and formal mentorship opportunities? The findings indicated that women faculty members’ perceptions of mentorship in the post secondary context were based on superficial and constrained ideals of mentorship. Through analysis of the findings, I was compelled to incorporate a post structuralist feminist viewpoint. Through the analysis and synthesis, I developed a nuanced recognition of the power flows invisible to each participant, but an integral aspect of their reality and survival. Their perception of mentorship affected their engagement with mentorship opportunities through a proposed concept of survival mentorship. Survival mentorship was postulated as a means to provide and gain guidance to survive the daily struggles as an academic without challenging the status quo institutional power structures. (shrink)

In current K-12 learning contexts, there is much potential for research that examines the expansion of learning beyond formal learning environments and enquiry about how digital networks can support all learners in accessing people, content and ideas that were previously inaccessible. Using a design-based research approach, this research examined how high school learners expanded their learning beyond formal learning environments as a result of the teacher implementing an open learning design intervention and designing for open educational practices. This study builds (...) upon an analysis of existing research on developing open learning practices in K-12 learning environments, describes and evaluates OEP in an existing high school classroom and evaluates the impact of OEP in a high school learning environment to inform broader K-12 OEP design and high school open learning principles. The research participants included 23 high school students and one teacher from the Building Futures high school program. The research occurred through three specific DBR phases with iterative cycles within each phase. Phase 1 included an examination of the current OEP landscape and two design prototypes called learning pathways. Phase 2 included the implementation of two prototype learning pathways. Finally, phase 3 examined and analyzed all data from the four prototype learning pathways which considered the perspectives of all open learning participants and the open learning process. All learning pathway prototypes were designed using the OLDI framework which was revised and updated throughout the research. The data collection included student, teacher and researcher reflections, classroom observations and the Visitor and Resident mapping tool. The key findings from this research suggest that high school open learning is dependent upon the opportunity for learners to co-design personally relevant learning pathways. Secondly, learners need to collaboratively and individually share their learning experiences through feedback loops and by transparently demonstrating their learning in meaningful ways that integrate curriculum and competencies. Finally, open learning occurs through stages and continuums and is a personal learning experience that transcends formal learning environments. This research expands upon current literature and distinguishes itself by emphasizing the process and pedagogical potential of high school open learning. (shrink)

Lineages are genealogical sequences of genes, cells, organisms, or other biological entities. They populate the natural world and are discussed in various fields in biology. However, they barely receive philosophical scrutiny. In this dissertation, I explore philosophical issues regarding the nature of lineages, as well as their conceptualization and representation in science. First, I offer a historical overview of lineages in biology. I describe how biologists characterize lineages in evolutionary biology, developmental biology, paleontology, and other areas. This overview reveals the (...) importance of lineages to theorization, experimentation, modeling, and other scientific practices. These diverse practices motivate the philosophical issues discussed in the following chapters. Second, I address the question of what is a lineage. Biologists and philosophers define them as genealogical sequences of biological entities. This broad definition reveals a belief that many of those scholars share: lineage is a single unified category in science or, in other words, a single type of entity in biology. I argue against this position and, instead, defend pluralism: the existence of a plurality of lineage types in biology. Third, I analyze the very concept of lineage. This concept is imprecise, and this imprecision may be harmful to scientific communication and reasoning. Similar concerns apply to the concepts of molecular gene and evolutionary novelty. I compare the concept of lineage with these concepts. While all of them play beneficial roles in scientific integration, I argue that the concept of lineage facilitates a distinctive type of integration among scientists. Finally, I discuss how biologists represent lineages and why these representations matter to science. Biologists typically represent lineages in a simplistic, idealized way. Most philosophers consider these representations important to science only insofar as they result in improved theories and representations of nature. I argue that this view is limited. Representing lineages also results in collaboration among scientists and other social, non-representational activities that are central to science. (shrink)