Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Wright State University, 2024, Biomedical Sciences PhD

DNA replication can be perturbed by various agents that slow or stall the replication forks, causing replication stress. If undetected, stressed forks may collapse, causing mutagenic DNA damage or cell death. In response to replication stress and DNA damage, the eukaryotic cell activates the DNA replication checkpoint (DRC) and DNA damage checkpoint (DDC) pathways to promote DNA synthesis, repair, and cell survival. The two cell cycle checkpoint pathways are controlled by the protein sensor kinases Rad3 (hATR/scMec1) and Tel1 (hATM/scTel1) in fission yeast, although Tel1 plays a minimal role in checkpoint functions. Rad3 and Tel1 belong to a family of phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase-related kinases (PIKKs), whose stability is regulated by the heterotrimeric TTT (Tel2-Tti1-Tti2) complex. The current model suggests that the TTT complex works with Hsp90 and R2TP complex in the co-translational maturation of all PIKKs for their proper folding and stability. We have previously reported a tel2-C307Y mutant with a moderately reduced Rad3 protein level (~60% of wild-type cells). This mutation eliminates Rad3 mediated signaling in the DRC pathway but moderately reduces signaling in the DDC pathway. This result suggests that Tel2 of the TTT complex may specifically regulate the DRC pathway. In this study, we investigated this possibility by taking a genetic approach to analyze the functions of Tti1, the largest subunit of the TTT complex. We randomly mutated the tti1 gene and integrated the mutations at the genomic locus by pop-in and pop-out recombination strategy. As a result, 100 primary tti1 mutants were successfully screened, based on their increased sensitivities to hydroxyurea (HU) which depletes cellular dNTPs and/or the DNA damaging agent methyl methanesulfonate (MMS). Preliminary characterization of the primary Tti1 mutants, based on their relative sensitivities to HU, MMS or both agents, led us to focus on a collection of 24 mutants. Among the 24 mutants, DNA seq (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2024, Psychology/Industrial-Organizational

Work motivation and meaningful work are important organizational constructs, both predicting an array of individual and organizational outcomes and operating as a fundamental human need. The complication is that both constructs are suffering from disorganization and construct proliferation. Motivation has many frameworks and measures without an overarching framework. Meaningful work has an overarching conceptualization without standard frameworks or measures. Construct proliferation is problematic because it creates a fragmented research landscape, broadly contributing to the theory and replication crisis in psychological science. The purpose of this dissertation, therefore, is to refine the construct space of motivation and meaningful work through the introduction of an integrated, hierarchical model of motivation and meaningful work. This integrated model aims to organize the conceptual and psychometric content of the targets of motivational processes, desired end-state representations (i.e., meaningful work experiences, self-determination theory's basic psychological needs, human values at work, and goal representations including implicit motives and explicit goals), along two fundamental dimensions of psychological experience (i.e., relational and motivational orientations). This dissertation introduces the integrated model, establishes criteria for successful conceptual integration, and tests the integration with theoretical and exploratory empirical (i.e., multidimensional scaling, variable-centric, and person-centric) analyses across two independent data collections. The findings indicate that motivational end-states and meaningful work experiences may be more conceptually and empirically similar than previously thought. Specifically, results suggest that there may be conceptual and perceptual similarities across the end-state representations, but that the lived experiences of the end-states are more differentiated. Overall, it may be the cases that people ma (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2024, Philosophy (Arts and Sciences)

Should one be an antirealist about quantum mechanics? This was the fundamental philosophical disagreement between the two giants of twentieth-century physics: Niels Bohr the antirealist and Albert Einstein the realist. The prevailing orthodoxy in the physics community still favors Bohr and antirealism, but a fierce minority (including such figures as David Bohm, John Bell, and Tim Maudlin) champion Einstein and realism. The controversy continues today. This paper weighs in on the issue, by offering a critique of antirealism, in the context of an important quantum phenomenon: single-photon interference.

MA, Kent State University, 2024, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Philosophy

Amid the current climate crisis and the scientific consensus on its anthropogenic causes, one task left to the humanities and social sciences is to understand why we humans have failed to effectively act on addressing the issue. I intend to show how the work of Edmund Husserl and Bruno Latour is especially relevant to this topic, bringing their ideas to bear on questions of the climate crisis and the lack of faith in science seen in certain populations in America. I will argue that the crisis of the sciences which Husserl identifies in his last work highlights the Modernist roots of our situation where we separate ourselves from nature, which sheds light on our lack of action. I will augment this analysis with Latour's studies of science and climate change, as well as work done on the phenomenon of lack of faith in science in America, to help furnish a better understanding of the global predicament we are in.

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2023, Philosophy (Arts and Sciences)

This essay offers an examination of human dispositions and propensities for social cooperation and altruism. I argue that in previous attempts to connect evolutionary theory and moral philosophy, there has been a mistaken conclusion regarding the dispositions and propensities of moral beings which frames the human being as asocial and psychologically egoistic. I then offer a challenge to this narrative, and posit an opposing view which argues that the intersection between evolutionary theory and moral philosophy actually converge on the view that humans have a propensity for sociality and dispositions for ultimate, other-regarding, altruistic desires. I argue that (1) evolutionary theory offers support for the opposing narrative, that we are inescapably social; (2) our moral judgements of others' motivations to cooperate with others, and our value of genuineness all support the thesis that the disposition for altruism is fundamental to social cohesion. With these two points, I argue that the opposing narrative which considers the framework of human dispositions and propensities as social and psychologically altruistic seems to, at minimum, call into question previous assumptions made regarding human dispositions and propensities with the ultimate claim that the offered opposing narrative has more force as an explanation of human dispositions and propensities when considering the influences of both evolutionary theory and moral philosophy.

Doctor of Education (Educational Leadership), Youngstown State University, 2023, Department of Teacher Education and Leadership Studies

The COVID-19 pandemic created massive amounts of stress for frontline healthcare providers. The purpose of this study was to examine perspectives of respiratory therapists, student respiratory therapists, and respiratory therapy managers on trust in leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic. The United States' healthcare and government systems were not prepared for the burden caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. High levels of prolonged stress, along with significant amounts of death, can cause burnout and moral injury for frontline healthcare providers. Healthcare leaders must provide effective communication, support, and proper amounts of personal protective equipment to help diminish the effects of burnout and moral injury. This study used Q-methodology, which is a mixed-methods research design, that included 203 staff respiratory therapists, student respiratory therapists, and respiratory therapy managers in the state of Ohio who worked the frontlines, or managed respiratory therapists working the frontlines, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Five distinct groups emerged from perspectives of participants: I'll be There for You, Won't You Please, Please Help Me?, I'll Get You There, What's Going On?, and Show Must Go On. The quality of the leader has profound effect on participants' perspective of how their institution handled the COVID-19 pandemic. The more daily contact and communication with their leaders, the less guilt the participants felt during the COVID-19 pandemic. Harold Kelley's covariation model conceptualizes the entity and circumstance of the COVID-19 pandemic by sharing perceptions of frontline respiratory therapists. Though the United States government considers the COVID-19 pandemic over, frontline respiratory therapists will endure the effects of the COVID-19 virus for years to come.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, Philosophy

This dissertation is about what is called a conception of scientific explanation. A conception of scientific explanation concerns some ontological questions about scientific explanation. Two related but distinct questions have been investigated: (1) What type of entity is an explanans? (2) In virtue of what, is a thing of that type explanatory? There are two competing conceptions of scientific explanation. One is the ontic conception and the other is the non-ontic conception. A conception is ontic if it says that (a) a type of thing that explains is primarily a thing in the world that is responsible for a target of explanation (ontic explanation) and (b) a type of entity explains if and only if it is either ontic explanation or accurately represents the relevant ontic explanation (ontic determination). A conception is non-ontic if it denies either (a) or (b) or both in one way or the other. The aim of this thesis is to propose and defend a new non-ontic conception. The three chapters are designed to proceed toward the said aim. In Chapter 1, I challenge claim (a) of the ontic conception, i.e., the existence of an ontic explanation. I examine the existing reasons to believe in ontic explanations and argue against them. The conclusion of this chapter is tentative, for all it shows is that no good reason has yet been proposed to support our commitment to an ontic explanation. Still, the conclusion is strong enough to lend support to the non-ontic conception denying ontic explanations in that it is better not to posit something if not necessary for the ontological parsimony. In Chapter 2, I deal with claim (b) of the ontic conception, i.e., the ontic determination. To this end, I examine Angela Potochnik's non-ontic view, according to which whether something is explanatory is determined not only by what the relevant part of the world is like but also by some cognitive factor of those seeking an explanation. I agree with Potochnik in that some cognitive facto (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2022, Bioethics

This project is a critique of the concept of consensus and its relation to secular moral reasoning. Proponents of public deliberation argue that achieving consensus is crucial to informing moral norms in secular pluralist societies. Without a transcendental basis for morality, ascribing authority to moral norms requires a process of deliberation. Many bioethicists are concerned with formulating ways to ensure discourse is tolerant, non-coercive, mutually respectful, and grounded in intersubjective understanding. The problem is that secular discourse is fraught with varying conceptions of human rights, ethical principles, and what constitutes a morally authoritative consensus. Bioethicists acknowledge the tyranny of the majority problem, but secularism lacks a sufficient rationale to identify when a majority is wrong. Since competing visions of the good comprise bioethics and consensus does not necessarily indicate moral truth, moral uncertainty is the logical result of secular pluralism. Some moral scientists argue that science can inform moral norms, but a careful reading of their work suggests that what is being espoused is moral nihilism. From determinism to deep pragmatism, many scientists are inadvertently supporting a view of reality that obliterates the possibility of values. In secular pluralist societies, consensus is required to establish basic norms, but no account of consensus can indicate when moral truth is known. Consensus is necessary to fulfill the visions of moral scientists, but such scientists implicitly endorse nihilism. What secularists are discovering – by their own reasoning – is that moral truth is elusive, science cannot inform human values, and bioethical dilemmas are incapable of being resolved. The conclusion to this project offers an Engelhardtian solution. Not only is the principle of permission the only viable basis for secular pluralism – the principle coincides with moral scientists' own account of human nature.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, Philosophy

This dissertation is a collection of four papers on George Berkeley and the role of metaphysics in natural science. Each paper addresses a separate scientific concept and examines Berkeley's critique of the application of that concept in demonstrations within physics and the mathematical principles of physics. These concepts are quantity of matter (i.e. mass) in chapter one, percussive force (i.e. impact) in chapter two, true motion in chapter three, and the fluxions of the calculus in chapter four. In each case, Berkeley directs his attention to the ontology of that concept. This attention manifests itself primarily in two ways. First, in some cases Berkeley recognizes that certain metaphysical assumptions about the nature of the entity in question influence (oftentimes in negative ways) the way natural philosophers develop and interpret the claims of their scientific theories. Second, in some cases Berkeley argues that a proper understanding of the entity in question (based in his idealist metaphysics) can rectify errors in the way natural philosophers develop and interpret the claims of their scientific theories. On the whole, Berkeley is concerned to show not just that the physics of his time is compatible with his metaphysics of idealism, but further that physics is more fully and properly understood only when founded on his idealism.

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2022, English

This dissertation considers five novels: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler, A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki, The Overstory by Richard Powers, and Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh. It is interested in how vitalism, a term that emerges at the intersection of the work of Jane Bennett (vital materialism) and Amitav Ghosh (vitalist politics), might work to re-focus the form of the novel in a way that thoughtfully considers climate change. Vitalism is an answer to the mechanized, biopolitical, realist modes of contemporary human art and social organization. A vitalist politics reconceives of political systems and structures in a way that acknowledges the role that nonhuman agency plays in shaping human events. A vitalist politics would mean all political and economic decisions acknowledge that nonhuman entities and systems have agency. Vitalism reconceives of "nature" as not brute matter to be extracted, but a web of carefully linked systems. It differs from an animist politics in the sense that it shuns the idea of ascribing any sort of soul to an individual entity (whether human, animal, or plant) for considering all entities as linked in a collectivist, rhizomatic web. The focus of this dissertation project is on contemporary fictional texts out of which strong strains of vitalist politics and aesthetics emerge. In doing so, it considers what the shapes of novels might be in a future that is itself reorganized by climate change.

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2022, Media and Communication

This project examined traditional gendered discourses surrounding the ends and means of sexuality, the emerging role of digital sexual technologies in purported sexual empowerment, and the socio-material aspects which revolve around these technologies, sexual medias, and sexual discourses. Combining critical feminist insights with media ecology, this project explored happenings within the sociosexually violent pre- and present-COVID-19 United States ecology, documenting novel and rigorous contributions in our increasingly algorithmic world. This study of the U.S. context critiques foundational constructs created by Enlightenment decisionmakers who rationalized colonial rhetorics and logics built into each preceding iteration of capitalisms from industrialism into neoliberalism since national origin. As such, it extends critiques of mechanistic models of the human body and sexual communications and situates them within the vastly uncriminalized sexual violences, as well as insufficient sexual education standards. Theoretically, I argue that a mechanization of humans has occurred, been pushed to its extreme, and is flipping into a humanization of objects. To demonstrate this, I critical feminist rhetorically analyzed 75 biomimetic sextech advertisements from the brand Lora DiCarlo, contextualizing them in salient discourses within 428 present-COVID-19 TikTok videos, investigating: “What rhetorical themes occur within advertisements for biomimetic sexual technologies marketed to vulva-havers in the late-stage present-COVID-19 neoliberal U.S. landscape?” “How have biomimetic sexual technologies marketed to vulva-havers effected how their sexual experiences are created and maintained in the sociosexual U.S. landscape?” and “How are biomimetic sextech changing vulva-havers sexual sense-making, experiences, and relations within the sexually violent late-stage capitalist present-COVID-19 U.S. landscape?” Using a feminist eye, this brings to media ecology a contextualization (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, Philosophy

The constitutive principles approach to scientific theories attempts to identify particular principles within science that serve unique roles in justifying or making possible the success of novel theories. The three essays that make up the bulk of this dissertation attempt to approach the topic of the constitutive a priori from various, previously unexplored angles. The first chapter extends the discussion of the constitutive a priori to a new area of contemporary physics – statistical mechanics. The Past Hypothesis is the claim that the universe came into being in a very low entropy state, and this hypothesis plays a major role in nearly all contemporary philosophical accounts of statistical mechanics. This chapter argues that the Past Hypothesis is best seen as a constitutive principle of statistical mechanics, and that this identification can help shed light on how the Past Hypothesis might be justified, given well-known problems regarding its confirmation. The second chapter updates the existing literature on constitutive a priori principles with a discussion of contemporary historical work on Newton and the scientific method of the Principia. It argues that this new work puts novel constraints on theories of constitutive principles. In particular, Newton's evidential strategies in the Principia must be captured by any constitutive principles account of the laws of motion. Finally, the third chapter investigates the constitutive a priori in the context of historical epistemology, a tradition within philosophy of science focused on the role of local, historical conditions on the success of the sciences. This chapter argues that critiquing the constitutive principles approach from the perspective of historical epistemology allows us to diagnose some of the faults in existing constitutive principles approaches, and points the way to an improved, revised conception. The overarching lessons of this dissertation are three-fold. First, the constitutive princip (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2020, Bioethics

This thesis argues that the right to die should be understood as an attempt to palliate nihilism due to the encounter of an existentially impoverished ontology with death, informing clinical, ethical, and political accounts of physician aid-in-dying. Following Heidegger's critique of technology, contemporary medicine espouses a Nietzschean metaphysic predicated upon reducing its objects into `standing reserves' on call for efficient manipulation. Physicians become passive, anonymous technicians responding to technological frameworks, bodies become resources for maintenance and re-creation, and death appears an obstacle to overcome in this active nihilism. In this context, the birth of bioethics can be appreciated as a response to the hegemony of techno-logic at the end of life. I argue, however, that it has largely failed by capitulating to a similar procedural rationality, at best, and endorsing autonomy as a manifestation of the will to power at worst. After the death of God, ethics must be radically reframed as a human project resembling a cafeteria of lifestyle aesthetics where the moral good easily becomes free choice. The liberated, autonomous individual playing a leading role fits hand in glove with techno-logic. Thus, assisted suicide may appear as a personal `death-style' for fashioning the illusion of meaning and transcendence by the will, particularly in the post-Christian, generic spirituality of hospice and palliative care. Patients with existential or spiritual suffering – lives not worth living – can be relieved of the human condition within liberal politics, signifying new, deceptive rites for the end of life, an ars ad mortem. At the end of the day, however, the choice for suicide is predestined by the techno-logic critiqued in this thesis, suggesting that it may not, in fact, be the triumph of autonomy but rather of a violent nihilism and despair. This critique, then, moves towards clarity in the right to die movement regarding its quasi-religio (open full item for complete abstract)

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2020, Arts and Sciences: Philosophy

Traditional approaches to cognition take it to be a fundamentally brain-based phenomenon. On this view, the brain functions as a type of information processing center, making cognition a matter of computational processing and representational symbol manipulation. In contrast, embodied, enactive approaches to cognition emphasize the role of the body in cognition and non-representational perception-action dynamics. While the embodied and enactive paradigm has been gaining in popularity, it has yet to adequately engage with complementary approaches in biology that aim to define the organizational structure of organismal life. In this dissertation, I argue that an enactive approach to cognition in nature can be enriched by incorporating the central tenets of both developmental systems theory and extended interpretations of evolutionary biology. This framework, which I term biological enactivism, defines organisms as cognizing systems structured by both their internal dynamics and their dynamic relations with environmental features corresponding to their sensorimotor capacities, developed as a result of their coupled interactions with their environments over both developmental and, on a population scale, evolutionary time.

BA, Oberlin College, 2020, Philosophy

I will define the meaning of subjective well-being that I believe is the most intrinsic normative good, explain why improving the subjective well-being of sentient individuals ought to be the highest ethical priority, and provide reasons for why finding a way to measure subjective well-being would essentially benefit decision-makers and grassroots altruists. Subjective well-being is a dauntingly nebulous property to attempt to measure with precision, but I will comment on the progress that philosophers and social scientists have made in this field. Although (1) there is no set of well-being criteria that is applicable to every sentient individual (including non-human animals) and (2) most sentient individuals are unable to communicate with us about their level of subjective well-being use or relevant experiential factors, we may yet be able to develop an intrapersonally and interpersonally cardinal method to measure subjective well-being.

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2020, Organizational Behavior

Firms are challenged to achieve organizational goals in an environment of increasingly decentralized information. Cross-functional project teams are employed widely as a strategy to facilitate better coordination, yet projects still fail at a rate of 31% per year. Communication is a leading cause of failure. While inter-team communication has been studied extensively, less is understood about the intra-team communication of a cross-functional project team. The main finding of our study is that the success of a cross-functional team is dependent on the team's ability to inquire across multiple knowledge boundaries in a way that develops an awareness of each other's functional identity. Functional identity is defined as the norms and practices of a functional team which represent how they think about and prioritize their work. Whether or not this functional-identity knowledge-sharing process occurs determines whether a cross-functional team is able to construct a shared reality with respect to the projects' goals and priorities. Achieving a shared reality is what enables a team to perform successfully. We call the understanding of another's functional identity, constructed through a process of inquiry by the project team's members, their achievement of interpretive symmetry. Our findings are from an integrated mixed-methods study. Qualitative results from Study 1 began with the consideration that cross-functional team members live in two social worlds, that of the project team and that of their own functional team. Boundaries on a project exist both from a knowledge and a social membership perspective. Therefore, team members must engage in a process of inquiry across these boundaries. We found that successful teams have a receptive awareness that the project team does not “know” and needs to learn. This receptivity supported the team members in their open inquiry with one another and the sharing of not only functional knowledge but functional identity. Exposing t (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, Pharmaceutical Sciences

Cancer remains the second-leading cause of death and more than 1.5 million people cancer will be diagnosed with this disease in the U.S. alone in 2020, with the mortality rate projected to be above 9 million worldwide. The availability of cancer treatments is still somewhat limited and many are expensive. Therefore, more affordable treatments from sustainable resources need to be found and utilized. Compounds derived from natural sources have been major contributors to the area of cancer chemotherapy for decades. Secondary metabolites from terrestrial and marine organisms have afforded numerous purified compounds, both in their unmodified naturally occurring forms and as semi-synthetic derivatives. Such compounds have been obtained primarily from terrestrial microbes and higher plants, with some found in marine animals. The presently available natural product oncology agents exhibit a variety of cellular mechanisms of action. As part of an ongoing effort to discover anticancer drug leads from tropical plants, a large-scale collection of Glycosmis ovoidea Pierre (Rutaceae) was made at Nui Chua National Park, Dahang Village, Vietnam. This taxonomically authenticated plant material was collected by abiding to the stipulations of currently accepted international conventions. Activity-guided fractionation of the chloroform-soluble fractions led to the isolation of compounds representing two different structural classes, a flavonoid and several coumarins. The new compound 1-(7-methoxy-2-oxo-2H-chromen-8-yl)-3-methyl-1-oxobut-2-en-2-yl (S)-2-methylbutanoate (147) was characterized structurally, and is a prenylated coumarin ester. This was isolated along with nine other compounds that were previously known, namely, murracarpin (141), 5,3'-dihydroxy-3,6,7,8,4'-pentamethoxyflavone (142), 7-hydroxycoumarin (143), murrayone (144), murralongin (145), kimcuongin (146), murragatin (148), minumicrolin (149), and minutuminolate (150). In order to confirm its structure and configura (open full item for complete abstract)

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2019, Arts and Sciences: Philosophy

Scientists often gain insight into real-world phenomena indirectly, through building and manipulating models. But what accounts for the epistemic import of model-based research? Why can scientists learn about real-world systems (such as the global climate or biological populations) by interacting not with the real-world systems themselves, but with computer simulations and mathematical equations? The traditional answer is that models teach us about certain real-world phenomena because they represent those phenomena. My dissertation challenges this representationalist intuition and provides an alternative framework for making sense of scientific modeling. The philosophical debate about scientific model-based representation has, by and large, proceeded in isolation from the debate about mental representation in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Chapter one exposes and challenges this anti-psychologism. Drawing from "wide computationalist" embodied cognitive science research, I put forward an account of scientific models as socially-distributed and materially-extended mental representations. This account illustrates how views on mental representation can help advance philosophical understanding of scientific representation, while raising the question of how other views from (embodied) cognitive science might inform philosophical theorizing about scientific modeling. Chapter two argues that representationalism is untenable because it relies on ontological and epistemological assumptions that undermine one another no matter the theory of representation adopted. Views of scientific representation as mind-independent fail with the ontological claim that "models represent their targets" and thereby undermine the epistemological claim that "we learn from models because they represent their targets." On the other hand, views of scientific representation as mind-dependent support the ontological claim, but they do so in a way that also undermines the epistemolog (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, English

Although the first balloon flights in 1783 created a sensation throughout Europe, human flight had long captured the imaginations of scientific and literary authors alike. Prior histories of flight begin with balloons, but earlier centuries boasted a strange and colorful aviary that shaped thinking about flight long before the first balloon ever left the ground. Taking a cultural materialist approach informed by a broad familiarity with the development of early flight machines and a deep familiarity with the literary conventions of the period, I analyze historical materials ranging from aeronautical treatises to stage pantomimes, from newspaper advertisements to philosophical poems, from mechanical diagrams to satirical cartoons. This earlier culture possessed high hopes and anxieties about human flight. I argue that early flight was lively and varied before the invention of a successful flying machine, and that these early flights were important because they established an aerial tradition astonishingly resistant to change. Rather than revolutionizing the culture, ballooning was quickly incorporated into it. Although ballooning came to be regarded as a failure by many onlookers, the aerial tradition had long become accustomed to failure and continued unabated. Human flight has always promised tremendous and yet debatable utility, a paradox that continues into the present age.

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2019, Philosophy, Applied

In this dissertation, I construct scientifically and practically adequate moral analogues of cognitive heuristics and biases. Cognitive heuristics are reasoning “shortcuts” that are efficient but flawed. Such flaws yield systematic judgment errors, cognitive biases. For example, the availability heuristic infers an event's probability by seeing how easy it is to recall similar events. Since dramatic events like airplane crashes are disproportionately easy to recall, this heuristic explains systematic overestimations of their probability (availability bias). The research program on cognitive heuristics and biases (e.g., Daniel Kahneman's work) has been scientifically successful and has yielded useful error-prevention techniques, cognitive debiasing. I try to apply this framework to moral reasoning to yield moral heuristics and biases. For instance, a moral bias of unjustified differences in animal-species treatment might be explained by a moral heuristic that dubiously infers animals' moral status from their aesthetic features. While the basis for identifying judgments as cognitive errors is often unassailable (e.g., per violating laws of logic), identifying moral errors seemingly requires appealing to moral truth, which, I argue, is problematic within science. Such appeals can be avoided by repackaging moral theories as mere “standards-of-interest” (a la non-normative metrics of purported right-making features/properties). However, standards-of-interest do not provide authority, which is needed for effective debiasing. Nevertheless, since each person deems their own subjective morality authoritative, subjective morality (qua standard-of-interest and not moral subjectivism) satisfies both scientific and practical concerns. As such, (idealized) subjective morality grounds a moral analogue of cognitive biases, subjective moral biases (e.g., committed non-racists unconsciously discriminating). I also argue that cognitive heuristic is defined by its relation to rationa (open full item for complete abstract)