For junior Eleanor Jeffers, her undergrad degree has provided an opportunity to explore life questions many of us never even think about. 

Eleanor is majoring in philosophy with a minor in ethics. Over the past year, she has spent much of her time exploring and writing about different concepts in philosophy through Honors classes, Sigma Xi, and philosophy conferences. 

Eleanor used HN 300 to develop a proposal on applying care ethics to the comatose, dead and dying. 

“Typically, care involves reciprocal relationships only,” she said, “so this is a novel contribution to the field that I’m hoping to have published in the near future. I also picked this topic because my family cared for an elderly disabled man in his last year of life, and his desire for after-death care was to be, for lack of better terms, liquified. Aquification is a controversial process that is only legal in a few states, but just like cremation or burial, it is a way to care for the wishes of the dead after they pass.” 

Eleanor was really excited about the ability to have some dedicated, personal research time where she could explore issues she was passionate about. 

“It was a nice change of pace and allowed me to focus on how I actually want to use my degree,” she said. 

Eleanor hopes to have the paper completed and submitted for publishing during the end of 2023. 

She is excited how this paper can allow for disability and care ethics can explore the application of care to unique, yet real-life, opportunities. She compares what she is trying to do to an approach taken by contemporary philosopher Scott Gelfand, who examined the intersection of care and the justice system. 

“I’d like to expand care into non-reciprocity and into relationships as they approach and continue to take place, in certain ways, after death,” she said. 

Eleanor has also recently been inducted into the Sigma Xi chapter at Whitworth. Sigma Xi is a non-profit scientific research society with chapters all around the U.S. She is excited about how Sigma Xi will allow her to combine her passion for philosophy, environmental science, and medical ethics. 

Eleanor is also grateful for the exposure Sigma Xi will give her to other STEM fields, since she mainly focuses on philosophy and interactions within that department.

“It allows me to explore bioethics with people who actually understand the biology side. In programs like Ethics Bowl, there’s a lot of misunderstanding about the scientific principles and possibilities of different cases, so Sigma Xi helps me connect with individuals who can help me better understand what is happening in fields where I do not spend most of my time.” 

While Eleanor isn’t quite sure what research she wants to do within Sigma Xi, she is considering doing some ethical and neurological research regarding individuals in vegetative or minimally-conscious states. 

Eleanor recently had a philosophy paper accepted for presentation at the University of Puget Sound undergraduate philosophy conference. Eleanor’s paper is on the metaphysics of disability. 

“I offer a revised definition of marginalized functioning as proposed originally by Katharine Jenkins and Aness Webster, where I attempt to make the concept map more coherently onto invisible or purely mental disabilities,” she said. 

“I look forward to presenting and then submitting my paper for publication,” she said. 

Eleanor is also part of Whitworth’s Ethics Bowl team, which competes against colleges and universities around the U.S. with ethical answers to real-world problems. 

Once she graduates, Eleanor hopes to attend grad school and get both a philosophy M.A. and legal J.D. Eventually, she also hopes to get a Ph.D. in philosophy. In terms of jobs, she hopes to use her education to work in ethics, but is still figuring out exactly what that will look like.