Desire and Practical Rationality

Many of our desires spontaneously arise within us without prior decision or deliberation. Their presence exerts an in uence on us, shaping our perspective and informing our decisions about what to do. This thesis starts by bringing a problem into view, one concerning how to explain the rational significance of such desires and the role they play in guiding rational action. It is often taken for granted that such desires can contribute to what it is rational for one to do. Yet predominant philosophical accounts of desire fail to provide a satisfying explanation of how such desires matter to practical rationality. Existing accounts of desire have centralised aspects of desire that might be enlisted to explain the rational significance of desire. These include their connection to motivation, affect and evaluation. These existing accounts, I argue, either fail to capture the contribution that such desires can make to rational agency, or threaten to leave us with a distorted and overly intellectualised account of desire. I develop an account of such desires as serving to attune us to our reasons for action. I motivate the view that our conative system is part of our overall competence to recognise and respond to normative reasons for action in virtue of their biological function. The result will be an account on which desires are part of our capacity to respond rationally to our normative reasons for action

Immunity, Sex and Parasites: Does Sex of Sand-Field Cricket (Gryllus firmus) Affect Immune Response to Eugregarine Parasites?

There is controversy about the effects gut-dwelling eugregarine parasites have on their invertebrate hosts. If crickets (Gryllus firmus) apportion resources to reproduction differently in males vs. females, then resources used to mount immune responses to parasites may also differ – especially if the parasites are pathogenic. I investigated the possible differences in immune response between male and female crickets and attempted to determine whether these differences are related to intensity of parasitic infection. To do this, pieces of nylon filament were implanted into the hemocoel of crickets which tested the immune response where hemocytes surround the filament (encapsulation). These responses were compared to intensity of parasitic infection. No statistically significant relationship between sex and melanisation, or sex and parasite load were found. I found that the duration of melanization was negatively correlated to parasite abundance and that there was a positive correlation between body size and parasite number. This result suggests the existence of a relationship between the parasite and host that could be conflicting with sexual selection theory, such as host manipulation by the parasite

The Limits and Opportunities of Using GIS as a Boundary Object to Represent Beardy’s and Okemasis First Nation (BOFN) Indigenous Knowledge in the Nisbet Provincial Forest Implementation Processes

In Canada, forest and natural resource management is guided by a paradigm that is predominately based on the understandings and values of Westernized society. As a result, the application and meaningful inclusion of other knowledges, such as Indigenous Knowledge (IK), to influence the decision-making process within these management systems is fraught with challenges. Although extensive research has been done on addressing these challenges and including Indigenous communities in a decision-making role, practical and innovative tools are still needed to focus on how IK may more effectively shape forest and natural resource management. My study assessed the limits and opportunities of using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) maps as a boundary object to represent IK in resource planning and implementation processes. Four boundary object criteria were derived from the boundary object literature and used to evaluate the limits and opportunities of GIS maps to act as boundary objects: flexibility, concreteness, joint process, and information need. The IK used in the thesis was categorized according to the Six Faces of Traditional Ecological Knowledge, a framework developed by Houde (2007). Knowledge for this study was provided from a case study community: Beardy’s and Okemasis First Nation (BOFN) of Saskatchewan, Canada. Through document analysis and semi-structured interviews, knowledge was categorized, and GIS maps were then developed to display this knowledge. I then evaluated whether and how the GIS maps were effective boundary objects using the boundary object criteria. There are four main findings from my study. First, GIS maps have the potential as boundary objects to effectively represent IK in resource planning and implementation. Second, not all of the Six Faces used to inform the GIS maps met the criteria at the time the knowledge for these Faces was collected. Third, some Faces were not suitable to include in the GIS maps, partly as a result of not meeting all the criteria and limitations due to the data that were collected. Fourth, the criteria suggested specific ways to improve on the current barriers inhibiting greater use of IK in GIS maps such that they can function as effective boundary objects. In summary, this research has helped to partially address the gap in knowledge for developing boundary objects to facilitate the use of IK in forest and natural resource management planning processes

Trophic relationships in soil communities: how abiotic stress affects biotic interactions in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica

2018 Summer.Includes bibliographical references.To view the abstract, please see the full text of the document

An Examination of South Carolina’s Institutions of Reform and Their Impact on the Self-Narratives of African American Men

In the State of South Carolina (SC), African American male adolescents disproportionately face disciplinary action in public schools and other institutions. In 2013, South Carolina’s Department of Juvenile Justice (SCDJJ) released data that listed Black male children comprising 57% of all juvenile referrals in the state. This disproportionate trend is also present in South Carolina’s correctional system. In 2013, South Carolina’s Department of Corrections (SCDOC) reported that out of 20,777 male prisoners, 13,631 were Black. For adolescents or young adults looking to continue their education, alternative programs are available. One program that captures educationally displaced children in South Carolina is “Construct, SC”1 (CSC). It is one of four affiliate programs of a national non-profit, “Construct, USA”2 (CUSA), that operates in the state. The research carried out considers the efficacy of one affiliate to deliver program outcomes and includes critical insights of the author working at that affiliate’s program site. The racial and correctional implications of school removal inform discussions on South Carolina’s institutional framework in the lives of Black adolescents and young adults today. A critical theoretical approach is employed in this paper to examine the state agencies most prevalent in the lives of Black men, in a bid to ascertain how the observed disproportionate trends developed. The paper incorporates five interviews conducted with men enrolled in CSC. The interviews outline their experiences in public school, the juvenile justice and state corrections systems. This paper argues that the structural inequalities that impact African Americans today correlate closely with those of South Carolina’s slave-holding past. Indeed this history is the basis for the state’s development and upkeep of its contemporary correctional culture and delinquency reform strategies against Black boys and men. Facilities that were established and in operation until the 1970s are understood to be at the epicenter of subsequent inter-generational societal and achievement deficits among Black men in the state

Universally Espoused Fraternal Values on College and University Campuses: Commonplace or Coincidence?

The purpose of the present study was to examine the espoused values of 75 predominately White national fraternities. This article reports values types espoused by college fraternities, as well as their classification along a well-defined and recognized continuum of universal values. Universal classification types included self-enhancement, openness to change, selftranscendence, and conservation

Do affective desires provide reasons for action?

This paper evaluates the claim that some desires provide reasons in virtue of their connection with conscious affective experiences like feelings of attraction or aversion. I clarify the nature of affective desires and several distinct ways in which affective desires might provide reasons. Against accounts proposed by Ruth Chang, Declan Smithies and Jeremy Weiss, I motivate doubts that it is the phenomenology of affective experiences that explains their normative or rational significance. I outline an alternative approach that centralises the function of such experiences

Desire and What It’s Rational to Do

ABSTRACT It is often taken for granted that our desires can contribute to what it is rational for us to do. This paper examines an account of desire—the ‘guise of the good’— that promises an explanation of this datum. I argue that extant guise-of-the-good accounts fail to provide an adequate explanation of how a class of desires—basic desires—contributes to practical rationality. I develop an alternative guise-of-the-good account on which basic desires attune us to our reasons for action in virtue of their biological function. This account emphasises the role of desire as part of our competence to recognise and respond to normative reasons

Desire and Satisfaction

Desire satisfaction has not received detailed philosophical examination. Yet intuitive judgments about the satisfaction of desires have been used as data points guiding theories of desire, desire content, and the semantics of ‘desire’. This paper examines desire satisfaction and the standard propositional view of desire. Firstly, I argue that there are several distinct concepts of satisfaction. Secondly, I argue that separating them defuses a difficulty for the standard view in accommodating desires that Derek Parfit described as ‘implicitly conditional on their own persistence’, a problem posed by Shieva Kleinschmidt, Kris McDaniel, and Ben Bradley. The solution undercuts a key motivation for rejecting the standard view in favour of more radical accounts proposed in the literature

The Necessity of 'Need'

Many philosophers have suggested that claims of need play a special normative role in ethical thought and talk. But what do such claims mean? What does this special role amount to? Progress on these questions can be made by attending to a puzzle concerning some linguistic differences between two types of 'need' sentence: one where 'need' occurs as a verb, and where it occurs as a noun. I argue that the resources developed to solve the puzzle advance our understanding of the metaphysics of need, the meaning of 'need' sentences, and the function of claims of need in ethical discourse