PeopleMaria del Pilar Botero J, PhDPost Doctoral Researcher About Me I originally started as a Biology major but quickly moved into Philosophy. This change is reflected in the kind of philosophical work I have done since the beginning of my career. I have focused on interdisciplinary work that merges questions about science, mind and living organisms. I am currently finishing my PhD in Philosophy at York Universityhttp://www.arts.yorku.ca/phil/. Through both coursework and participation in research groups, my PhD at York has focused on interdisciplinary research on the mind. A growing interest in the ways in which Philosophy can collaborate with different disciplines to understand the mind led to my final dissertation research. Though trained as a Philosophy major, I was also prepared to conduct studies in Primatology. With the support of the Jane Goodall Institute http://www.discoverchimpanzees.org/and the Milton and Ethel Harris Research Initiative (MEHRI) http://www.mehri.ca. I designed and conducted a study of six mother-infant chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) pairs from the Kasakela community at Gombe National Park, Tanzania. This unique opportunity allowed me to look closely at the methods used in Primatology and at the same time to enrich my philosophical analysis of central aspects of the mind, such as communication and the developing mind. Research Jane Goodall claimed that apes have different “personalities;” that is, each individual has a differentiated behavior. The origin of these differences lies in the emotional development that each individual undergoes as a result of individual biological differences and caregiver styles. Goodall’s hypothesis corresponds closely to what Shanker and Greenspan hypothesize about emotional development in The First Idea. Shanker and Greenspan claim that human infants also go through an emotional transformation that depends on their biological individualities and their interactions with their caregivers. What I am looking at in my thesis is how Goodall and Shanker & Greenspan, arrive at the same conclusion from two different perspectives. I am trying to show that emotional development is a phenomenon found in both chimpanzees and humans and that this phenomenon originated in a common ancestor. I focus on a developmental explanation of Primary Emotions (Anger, Fear, Happiness, Surprise, Curiosity), showing that even basic emotions have a strong developmental element that can be present in both chimpanzees and humans. This forces us to think in a different way about the nature and development of emotions; in the West for the past 300 years, the developmental aspect of Primary Emotions has been largely neglected. Other Links: Pictures of Field Work at Gombe National Park
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