<p> Conservation gardening incorporates environmentally friendly techniques into the care of urban landscapes. Prior research has demonstrated an ecological benefit of this approach to residential land management. This research was undertaken to better understand the individuals who partake in conservation gardening. A mail questionnaire was developed that included several connection to nature indicators, an outdoor recreation inventory, and demographic questions. Participants (n = 180) included individuals from three regional conservation gardening certification programs in the US. Study participants demonstrated high connection to nature across multiple indicators, and environmental concern was motivated by non-human species and other people as opposed to personal benefit. The connection to nature indicators employed in the study demonstrated high correlation with each other. Conservation gardeners were active in outdoor recreation; high participation rates were documented in the categories of bird watching, gardening, and hiking, with moderate participation rates in kayaking, and cycling. Several demographic trends were evident in the study population. Participants tended to be older, well-educated, above-average earners, pet owners, and the majority of individuals were female. Employment status of participants was divided equally among being a homemaker, working full-time or being self-employed, and being retired, and over half of the individuals in the survey were volunteers. This research established baseline data for the conservation gardening population, identified avenues for future research, and provided suggestions for reaching populations not currently represented in the conservation gardening community.</p>

The presence of parasites in a population has an impact on mate choice and has substantial evolutionary significance. A relatively unexplored aspect of this dynamic is whether or not the presence of parasites increases the likelihood of hybridization events, which also have a significant role in ecological adaptation. One explanation of increased hybridization in some areas and not others is that stress from parasites results in selection for an increase of novel genotypes. Two swordtail species Xiphophorus birchmanni and Xiphophorus malinche maintain an active hybrid zone. The patterns of hybridization are unique in that they do not match up directly with expectations. We set out to test whether or not individuals can sense, using chemical cues, whether conspecifics in their immediate vicinity have high parasite loads and also whether this has an effect on mating and association behavior toward both conspecific and hybrid mates. Our hypothesis being that females will have greater association times with hybrid/heterospecific mates if conscpecifics are heavily parasitized. We found that females exposed to parasitized males had a weaker preference for conspecific odor than those exposed to unparasitized males, both relative to a water control and relative to hybrids. The empirical investigation described above is coupled with a historical and philosophical discussion of some of the issues surrounding the acceptance and understanding of the concept of hybridization. This discussion takes as its major themes: an analysis of the role that social views have on the formation of scientific hypothesis; the lag between epochal change in the scientific community and the assimilation of the consequences into social beliefs; the survival of hierarchical and teleological thinking in our concept of species and purity; and the failures of contemporary evolutionary theory to provide satisfactory explanations about the meaning and upshot of hybridization. Two specific misconceptions about hybridization are addressed. First, that hybridization clashes with the belief in kinds/types/species having separate and pure identities. Secondly, the teleological view that reads purpose into nature and places all instances of variation on a hierarchical scale; the top and bottom of which are determined by estimated closeness to the predetermined perfection of a type. < <

In Mind and World John McDowell argues that our attempts to understand how it is that our thoughts are rationally answerable to the world are in vain. Whether one takes Cognitive Science, Evolutionary Psychology or Phenomenology to be capable of answering this question, such attempts are, he claims, merely a consequence of failing to see that they are already gripped by a picture of the world which precludes the possibility of such answers. In particular, he suggests that if we render Nature as that which is circumscribed by the intelligibility of the natural sciences, we leave no room for rationality conceived of in terms of the spontaneity and freedom that Kant associated with it. While McDowell claims to be a `quietist' who is not putting forward his own theory of mind, he is, at the very least, suggesting a theory of nature, one which he dubs `liberal' insofar as it suggests that we widen the scope of nature so that it can be hospitable to the normative features of thought. This thesis will propose a theory of mind which attempts to show how the causal, normative, and phenomenological can be seen as continuous features of the natural world. It demonstrates that a careful appraisal of causal or scientific accounts of intentionality can be made compatible with McDowell's commitment to the normativity of thought. By revealing that a biological account of the mind, suitably expanded to include an account of history as a Dynamic Ecological Milieu, generates biological interrogatives for the human organism, we can show that the normative manifests as an emergent property of the nomological. This allows second nature to retain its sui generis status while being continuous with the causal descriptions of first nature. This thesis will also draw from the Phenomenological tradition, as a means of critiquing McDowell's account of “the Myth of the Given" and his rejection of pre-conceptual content. In particular, it will follow Charles Taylor and Hubert Dreyfus in affirming that we should view experience, not in terms of that which provides epistemic foundations, but as the domain of pre-reflective embodiment. This is essential to showing how the biological sciences can inform us about the causal background which makes embodied coping so unreflectively natural. Furthermore, phenomenology has provided a means of engaging with the biological sciences in a non-reductive way, as is evidenced by Maurice Merleau-Ponty's The Structure of Behavior and the more recent neurophenomenological tradition which is largely inspired by his work. Finally, by drawing on these resources, the desideratum of this thesis is a scientifically informed understanding of what McDowell calls “second nature" and “the space of reasons" in terms of what I have called “biological interrogatives" and the “phenomenology of epistemic agency".

This thesis explores the relation between the normative structures brought to bear on the evaluation of life and the way in which the coming-into-being of living organisms is fundamentally understood. It provides a new analysis and critique of the standard concept of ‘flourishing’ in neo-Aristotelian meta-ethics, by uncovering the underlying interpretation of organismic becoming on which it relies, and showing how the turn to a ‘constructivist’ conception of development in contemporary biological theory both disrupts this underlying metaphysics, and provides resources for re-thinking flourishing on a fundamentally different basis. The central claim is that we should turn from a view in which life is given a form to fulfil, and becoming is the process of its fulfilment, to one in which living is the process of creating a way in the world, as life goes along.

No description available.

Occupational therapy (OT) has been greatly influenced by the medical model, despite its origins as an alternative to medicine. OT practice that finds its theoretical basis in a medical model is criticized as limited in therapeutic value, and as lacking boundaries distinguishing OT from other disciplines. By advancing a philosophical anthropology (Gehlen) with biological evidence from detachment theory (Moss), this project identifies and illuminates the power and unique value of occupational therapy. Occupational participation, made possible by OT, is described as a tool for structuring human lives into manageable temporal components with varying degrees of motivation and social interconnection. The value of providing opportunities for occupational participation is described as analogous to the value of instincts in animals’ lives; occupations are seen as the core elements that drive and shape human experiences. The inadequacies of current definitions of and research on addiction are reviewed and, as an alternative to current approaches, an occupational model for understanding addiction is outlined. Addiction is described as an attempt to create a manageable life—that is, as an occupation, and the concept of focused flexibility is introduced to normatively distinguish ‘addiction-occupations’ from other, potentially more ‘healthy’ occupations. Health is discussed in relation to the proposed philosophical anthropological, social, and biological situation of human beings. Finally, a qualitative study is undertaken to examine whether an occupational model of addiction accurately describes the experiences of addicts, thereby warranting further research. Findings from this preliminary study suggest addiction is experienced as an occupation, and that the concept of addiction as an occupation should be further explored.

In this thesis I present a critical examination of the role played by mechanistic ideas in shaping our understanding of living systems. I draw on a combination of historical, philosophical, and scientific resources to uncover a number of problems which I take to result from the adoption of mechanistic thinking in biology. I provide an analysis of the historical development of the conflict between mechanistic and vitalistic conceptions of life since the seventeenth century, and I argue that the basic terms of this conflict remain central to current disputes over the nature of the organism as well as the question of how far the theories, concepts, and methods of physics, chemistry, and engineering can ultimately take us in the explanation of life. I offer a detailed critique of the machine conception of the organism, which constitutes the central unifying idea of mechanistic biology. I argue that this notion, despite its undeniable heuristic value, is fundamentally inadequate as a theory of the organism due to a number of basic differences between organisms and machines. Ultimately, I suggest that the neglected vitalistic tradition in biology actually possesses the best conceptual tools for coming to terms with the nature of living systems. I also undertake a philosophical analysis of the concept of mechanism in biology. I argue that the term ‘mechanism’ is actually an umbrella term for three distinct notions, which are unfortunately conflated in philosophical discussions. I explore the relation between mechanistic biology and the new philosophical interest in the concept of mechanism and I show that these two research programs have little to do with one another because each of them understands the concept of mechanism in a different way. Finally, I draw on the historical and philosophical foundations of cell theory to propose an epistemological perspective which enables the reductionistic explanation of the organism without having to give up the distinctive features of life in the process. In this way, I show this perspective to have significant advantages over the classic physicochemical reductionism of mechanistic biology.

Biodiversity is a concept that plays a key role in both scientific theories such as the species-area law and conservation politics. Currently, however, little agreement exists on how biodiversity should be defined, let alone measured. This has led to suggestions that biodiversity is not a metaphysically robust concept, with major implications for its usefulness in formulating scientific theories and making conservation decisions. A general discussion of biodiversity is presented, highlighting its application both in scientific and conservation contexts, its relationship with environmental ethics, and existing approaches to its measurement. To overcome the limitations of existing biodiversity concepts, a new concept of biocomplexity is proposed. This concept equates the biodiversity of any biological system with its effective complexity. Biocomplexity is shown to be the only feasible measure of biodiversity that captures the essential features desired of a general biodiversity concept. In particular, it is a well-defined, measurable and strongly intrinsic property of any biological system. Finally, the practical application of biocomplexity is discussed.

<p>This dissertation proposes a new working model of reductionism for biology and a new concept of the gene based on the new reduction model. My project aims to help biologists and philosophers understand what reductionism in biology really is, or, should be. Historical debates about reductionism testify us that the classical reduction model, i.e., Ernest Nagel's bridge-law model, offers us neither an appropriate ontological reductionism nor a reductive explanation about biological phenomena. Casting doubts on the received view of the layered hierarchical model of ontology, I suggest that many interesting biological properties be construed as second-order functional properties and their first-order realizers. Providing for reduction finely-analyzed biological properties, I offer a new model for reductionism in biology - localized functional reductionism - which evolved from Jaegwon Kim's view of reductionism presented for the problems of mental causation. </p><p>My localized functional reductionism shows that a localized functional property is reduced to its base/structural property. I emphasize that researchers in biology do not deal with abstract general properties but always localized, structure-specific biological properties. A localized functional property and the structure-specific biological property as its base property are what we are interested in and this is what makes biological properties appropriate for research and meaningful for philosophical discussion. The localized functional reduction model, which is actually a case of token reduction model, integrates the fine-grained ontological hierarchies of both macro/micro-levels and higher/lower-orders, and it also synthesizes functional reductionism and token identity thesis. In my localized functional reductionism, functional biological properties are not eliminated but they exist with their own causal powers and true explanatory powers. </p><p>I also argue that the gene, construed as a second-order functional property, must be understood as gene expression network-specific. The gene, when it is realized on a given occasion, is reduced to, and is identical with, one of its genomic realizers on the given occasion, that is, the gene expression network. A new dynamic approach to the concept of the gene as the gene expression network vindicates reductionism.</p> / Dissertation

This dissertation is centered on problems within the history and philosophy of biology. The project identifies the philosophical roots of the current ecological movement and shows how a version of philosophical naturalism might be put to use within contemporary ethical issues in biology, and aid in the development of research programs. The approach is historically informed, but has application for current dilemmas. The traditions from which I primarily draw include classical American philosophy, particularly C.S. Peirce and John Dewey, as well as thinkers associated with the German Naturphilosophie movement, such as Goethe and Schopenhauer. There are deep, but often overlooked, resonances between these seemingly disparate traditions and contemporary biology that are located in the conflict between the developing organism and the ever-fluctuating environment. The dissertation makes the case for a shared description of nature among these traditions and proposes applications to burgeoning contemporary ecological interpretations of issues such as hybridization and epigenetics.