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Can we forgive Andrea Yates?
Get PDFA common assumption in the philosophical literature on forgiveness is that one can only forgive culpable moral agents. In this paper, I will argue against this assumption. Using the notorious case of Andrea Yates, I will show one can forgive non-culpable wrongdoers. I will argue that forgiveness involves letting go of negative reactive attitudes and those attitudes arise in a wide variety of cases including accidental wrongdoing and wrongs committed by those who are mentally incompetent or insane. Responding to such wrongdoings with forgiveness is not only possible, but also often advisable
Developing a Protocol for Creating Microfluidic Devices with a 3D Printer
Get PDFMicrofluidics devices have high importance in fields such as bioanalysis because these devices have the ability to manipulate small volumes of fluid, typically ranging from microliters to picoliters. Small samples of fluids can be quickly and easily tested using reactions performed with complex microfluidic devices. Many methods have been previously developed to create these devices, including traditional nano- lithography techniques borrowed from the field of microelectronics. However, these traditional techniques are cost-prohibitive for many small-scale laboratories. This research explores a relatively low-cost technique using a 3D printed master, which is used as a template for the fabrication of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) microfluidic devices. The masters are designed using computer aided design (CAD) software and can be printed and modified relatively quickly. We have developed a protocol for creating simple microfluidic devices using a 3D printer and PDMS adhered to glass. We have also explored methods to overcome the size-limits of the 3D-printed master templates by using shrinkable polymers and modified channel geometries to create a flow-focusing channel. This relatively simple and lower-cost technique can now be scaled to more complicated device designs and applications.Faculty Sponsor: Kathryn Shir
Is Epicurus a Direct Realist?
Get PDFIn his Letter to Herodotus, Epicurus presents a controversial theory of perception according to which all perceptions are true. In this paper, I argue that Epicurus\u27 theory of perception should be interpreted as a version of direct realism. If this interpretation is correct, then Epicurus holds that typical human perceivers have direct perceptual awareness of mind-independent objects. In the first section, I present an interpretation of Epicurus\u27 theory of perception. I interpret Epicurus as subscribing to the view according to which our perceptions always provide us with entirely accurate information about the world. In the second section, I provide an outline of a version of direct realism. The version of direct realism I present here is strongly indebted to the work of Michael Huemer. In the third section, using the framework developed in the second section, I argue that Epicurus should be interpreted as a direct realist
Narrative of Difference: The Effects of Social Class on Belonging at Liberal Arts Colleges
Get PDFLow-income students have historically struggled in applying to colleges, especially liberal arts colleges. However, presently low-income students have had significantly more access to university due to changes in admission policies; the largest challenges now facing low-income students are during their time at university, where they struggle to maintain similar retention rates and comparable social and academic integration when compared to wealthier peers. In this research, I examined Grinnell College as a case study of liberal arts colleges as it is an interesting example due to no significant differences in average GPA or retention rates between social classes. I used an explanatory, sequential mixed-methods design to explore the experiences of low-incomes students at liberal arts colleges, focusing on belonging. I found that low-income students, despite claiming to belong at similar rates to wealthier peers, express narratives of difference where they have distinctly different experiences from wealthier peers. Differences included but are not limited to distinctive interpersonal relationships with faculty, staff, and peers, and low-income students’ lower participation levels in social events. However, despite these differences, low-income students often “work the system” to equalize their differences. Based on my findings, I propose a 7-point plan for improving the experiences of low-income students at liberal arts colleges. ErratumAdded Appendices 10/15/18Faculty Sponsor: Sharon Quinsaa
How Metacognitive Awareness Relates to Overconfidence in Interval Judgments
Get PDFMaking judgments is an important part of everyday life, and overconfidence in these judgments can lead to serious consequences. Two potential factors influencing overconfidence are metacognitive awareness, or the awareness of one’s own learning, and the hard-easy effect, which states that overconfidence is more prevalent in difficult tasks while underconfidence is more prevalent in easy tasks. Overall, we hypothesized that participants’ metacognitive awareness would significantly relate to their overconfidence levels. Specific hypotheses were that those participants who display higher levels of metacognitive awareness will have lower levels of overconfidence, that harder questions will elicit higher levels of overconfidence and easy questions will elicit underconfidence (congruent with the hard-easy effect), and that the lower range and upper range will on average be equal, with the exact estimate as the midpoint. Participants (N = 49) completed a questionnaire containing a set of hard and easy general knowledge questions followed by the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory. The correlation between metacognitive awareness and confidence was negative for hard questions and positive for easy questions. Furthermore, the ranges for easy questions were smaller, resulting in more overconfidence, and the ranges for the hard questions were larger, resulting in underconfidence, thus, showing the opposite of our expected hypotheses.Faculty Sponsor: Erin M. Buchana
What\u27s at Stake: Is it a Vampire or a Virus?
Get PDFVampires have been discussed for millennia, appearing in folklore throughout various cultures. From the Egyptians and the Chinese to the Slavs, there have been numerous iterations of these bloodsucking fiends, but do their characteristics have any basis in fact, perhaps predicated upon misunderstandings of certain diseases?Using medical journals to discern plausible diseases for obscure and typical vampire traits, this paper functions on two levels. On one hand, it offers a repository of medical information for researchers who may want to delve further into the interdisciplinary field of pathology and folklore, especially where vampires of Western culture are concerned. On the other hand, it offers visual popular culture sources to serve as examples for each trait/disease, seeing as pop culture is where many people, myself included, get their ideas and renderings of vampires. Technology and medicine have advanced considerably since bloody, bloated corpses were mistaken as vampires, but some traits—eye color, charisma, allure, and fangs, among others—of certain, often diseased individuals could still be traced back to a vampiric condition.Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Gregory Brow
Ekphrasis in Ecocriticism: Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts” and Bruegel’s “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus”
No full textIf ekphrasisis a literary description of a visual work of art, and ecocriticism uses literature to study nature and ecological concerns, how do the two mix? The ekphrastic poem “Musée des Beaux Arts” by W.H. Auden not only expands the understanding of the genre but also broadens the understanding of nature. Auden’s poem is quintessentially ekphrastic, yet it has never been examined in terms of how it is both informed by and informs an eco-critical reading. Auden and Pieter Bruegel, the painter of “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” upon which Auden based his poem, express nature through the imagery of animals; however, Auden enriches his poem by synthesizing ecological nature, human nature, and inner nature, all of which not only help deepen understanding of Bruegel’s painting, but also create a more complex image of nature through the reader’s eyes. By combining Auden’s lyrical beauty, as he was heavily inspired by Freud in understanding suffering as exquisite, with Bruegel’s fantastical imagery, the viewer is able to understand the mythology of Icarus and how human nature, perhaps emphasized through ecological nature, has told the tale of Icarus many times over.Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Kevin Griffit
Identifying Errors in the Ethical Narrativity Thesis
Get PDFA self-narrative ensures continuity for a conscious subject, in that the subject empathizes with the protagonist of both their remembered past and anticipated future. The ethical narrativity thesis (ENT) posits that such a narrative (or life-story) is requisite for agency and an ordered experience. Opponents of the ENT argue that one can inhabit an episodic (non-narrative) temporal schema and qualify as a rational agent. In this paper, I argue that narrative selfhood encourages cognitive distortions and inhibits a thorough etiological understanding of one’s past. I maintain that episodicity is the optimal form of self-constitution for rational, ethical decision-making