Puget Sound Philosophy major, Tad Wolcott ’26, completed a summer research project titled “Towards a Balanced Spiritual Ecopsychism”, supervised by Puget Sound Philosophy professor Justin Tiehen. His project focused on how our understanding of what consciousness is impacts the way that we interact with the environment. The project was supported by a Summer Research Grant in Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. Here below is Tad’s description of the project:

My summer research project was focused on the theory of consciousness known as cosmopsychism in connection with environmental ethics. Cosmopsychism asserts that individual consciousness, such as that of you or me, is not limited to our own heads, but exists as part of a much larger, universal consciousness. I combined this theory with an approach to human-environmental ontology known as balanced spiritual cosmopsychism to create a new view that I call balanced spiritual ecopsychism.

A common issue in the field of environmental ethics is the question of how to bring the environment into our ethical sphere of consideration, such that we might respect and treat it as if it were another human being. One way to do this is to re-imagine our human ontology through the lens of ecology in order to integrate ourselves into an environmental schema of ethical consideration. Ecology sees the relations of one organism to another, large or small, long-lasting or short-lived, as equally important to the functioning and perseverance of an ecosystem. Placing ourselves within this schema, human beings do not exist over and above the environment, but amongst it and are thus no more ethically considerable than a tree or a river. Balanced spiritual ecosystems take this ontology and add a spiritual component, asserting that (1) nature has an intuitive, emotive, or mental element of which humans are a part, and (2) that such an element is ‘balanced’ and that the general harmony amongst the parts of an ecosystem is maintained by a balance between organisms, accounted for in the cycle of death and birth and subsequent energy transfer throughout the natural world. One issue with this theory is that it might sound too esoteric for some environmentalists, so my project is essentially trying to find a way to ground that theory, with scientifically compatible ideas, in order to make it more attractive. While theories of consciousness like cosmopsychism are not confirmed, they are at the very least possible given our current neurological and phenomenal understandings of how consciousness works. Furthermore, a theory like cosmopsychism seems to be preferable, given that its combination with balanced spiritual ecosystems might give us more reason to revere and care for nature. Comsopsychism provides the much-needed grounding for balanced spiritual ecopsychism through its assertion of a universal
consciousness. The spiritual element posited by balanced spiritual ecosystems sounds a lot like a universal mental dimension, which contains the thoughts, feelings, and drives of all living things on earth.

This project didn’t start out concerned with environmental ethics, and instead was exclusively focused on cosmopsychism and its possible spiritual potential. I learned a lot about this theory, as well as its compatibility with Hindu and Buddhist spiritual tendencies, but I didn’t have a strong impulse as to where I should take this project. Earlier in the summer, I went to Copenhagen on a study abroad program and took a class on Environmental Philosophy, which introduced me to many of the ideas that provide the basis for balanced spiritual ecosystems, and while doing some independent research, I came across this approach to environmental ethics. Upon its discussion of this ecological, spiritual element, I immediately thought of cosmopsychism and proceeded to investigate the possible union of the two.

This project was a lot of fun because I got to engage with quite out there ideas about consciousness. We don’t often think of our own consciousness as being connected to something outside ourselves, so reading philosophers’ justification for thinking such was interesting. The arguments that were made for cosmopsychism are fascinating and rigorous, showing that, perhaps, our notion of consciousness as separate from other consciousnesses is not as sound as we think it is. It was also fun to apply this theory to an idea from a whole other field of philosophy, and to come out with a whole new view!

More information and application instructions for the Summer Research Grants in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences can be found here and some past summer research projects by Philosophy students can be found here (scroll down to see those from previous years.)

Puget Sound Philosophy major, Oliver Wright ’27, completed a summer research project titled “The Phenomenology of Scientific Revolutions”, supervised by professor Justin Tiehen. The project combined in-depth study of Husserl’s work at the intersection of phenomenology and philosophy of science with Thomas Kuhn’s work on scientific revolutions and the role that observation or experience plays within them. (For more information and application instructions for the Summer Research Grants in Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, look here and for more information about other summer research projects by Philosophy students, look here and scroll down for earlier projects.) Below is Oliver’s description of the project.

My summer research project is about phenomenology (the philosophical study of subjectivity) and philosophy of science. This project was originally motivated by parallels I saw between Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of Gestalt psychology and Thomas Kuhn’s discussion of the duck-rabbit illusion. Both philosophers talked extensively about how the mind constructs our world and the active role of the mind in perception, and this led me to question whether Kuhn’s philosophical project was compatible with phenomenology. This in turn led me to the main focus of my research project, Edmund Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. The final and unfinished book by German phenomenologist Edmund Husserl is one of the most influential texts in the phenomenological tradition and deals extensively with the topic of science and objectivity.

Part of this project was an act of translation. While Husserl would have been familiar with, and even taught, some of the famous founding figures of modern philosophy of science, his philosophy of science is often unconcerned with questions modern philosophers of science concern themselves with. Husserl is more interested in the possibility of objective knowledge, of which science and mathematics are just two prominent examples, rather than investigating the practice of modern science. It is then an art, walking the tight rope of interpretation, as you try to extract a view that is both true to the original while also providing a view that is understandable to a new audience, who may not be familiar with Husserl.

In my interpretation of Husserl, the parallels I saw between the works of phenomenologists and Thomas Kuhn are not incredibly deep. Husserl’s discussion of science is more dedicated to the possibility of objective knowledge about the world, leading to wide ranging discussion about mathematics and the historical origins of science. This historical investigation, while interesting from a phenomenological point of view, leaves Husserl’s philosophy of science severely lacking. For one, he is unconcerned with the actual practice of modern science or any questions about how science should be practiced. Husserl instead focuses on the complex relationship between subjective experience and objective knowledge, and, as a result of this focus, Husserl effectively seals science off from phenomenological investigation. Scientific knowledge is derivative of phenomenological experience, but it is a different kind of knowledge than what a phenomenologist studies. The phenomenologist can, like Husserl, become a historian of ideas, tracing scientific concepts back to their phenomenological origins, to establish a linkage between phenomenology and science, but that linkage is not strong enough to allow the phenomenologist to make any interesting claims about science.

Even though I found Husserl’s philosophy of science unsatisfying, I really enjoyed my project. Husserl’s Crisis is one of the most challenging and rewarding books I have ever read and it is a real mistake that I dedicated only a few months to reading this work. It was a very rewarding experience both as a student of philosophy and personally. I would also like to thank my advisor Justin Tiehen and my German Professor Kirsten Christensen who helped me on my journey of not only reading and understanding this wonderful text, but also making an argument about it.