SAMUEL P. HART
Furman University
8433159768
hartsa6@furman.edu • samuelhart2613@gmail.com
EDUCATION
Furman University - Bachelor of Arts,* Spring 2026
Majors: Philosophy and Neuroscience
Minor: Linguistics
Philosophy Thesis Advisor: Darren Hudson Hick
Neuroscience Thesis Advisors: David Hollis, Onarae Rice, Paulina Clara Dagnino, & Gustavo Deco
Linguistics Thesis Advisors: Stephanie Knouse & Michele Speitz
WORKS IN PROGRESS
In my senior thesis with the Department of Philosophy I put forth an epistemic framework which I believe to be novel and useful. Filters, I argue, are the various biological, psychological, social, cultural, philosophical, and material structures and methods we use to discriminate which phenomena are worth our attention, consideration, belief, and confidence in—and, which are not. In my thesis, I argue that filters which are rigid or absolutist (like Popperian Falsification, Positivist Verificationism, or 'The Scientific Method') are bad for science and society at large. I then support the use of 'particular' filters--modeled by the Latin-American mate straw: the bombilla--by examining the historico-philosophical analyses performed by philosophers Paul Feyerabend and Thomas Kuhn. In sum, any methodological law cannot be universally applied to all scientific investigations.
In my senior thesis with the Department of Neuroscience I will develop the work I did at the Center for Brain and Cognition at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain. There, I studied differences in whole-brain dynamics between meditators and non-meditators while meditating or at rest. Mainly, I looked at how support vector machines (SVM) can be used to investigate whole-brain fMRI-BOLD data.
In my senior thesis with the minor program in Linguistics I am examining 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade ESL students, Ukrainian Immigrants, at a school in Upstate South Carolina. These children speak Ukrainian at home, but have only learned English at school; they have never learned to read or write in the Ukrainian Cyrillic alphabet. Thus, when they write to each other in their native Ukrainian they are also creating a naturally emergent transcription system. I will quantitatively analyze the differences between their 'system' and more established ones (i.e., the Ukrainian Latin Alphabet).
CONFERENCES
Posters
2025, Spring. “From Prescription to Description: A Gitaic Response to Hegelianism,” South Carolina Society for Philosophy, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC.
2025, Spring. “Developing a Novel Measure of Social Evaluation and Rejection,” Furman Engaged, Furman University, Greenville, SC.
2024, Summer. “Developing a Novel Measure of Social Evaluation and Rejection,” 17th Psychology and Neuroscience Summer Research Conference, Furman University, Greenville, SC.
2024, Spring. “Justification of Effort in Pigeons,” Furman Engaged, Furman University, Greenville, SC.
Presentations
2024, Fall. “Developing a Novel Measure of Social Evaluation and Rejection,” Southeastern Society for Social Psychology, Memphis, TN.
MEMBERSHIPS
2025, Fall–2026, Spring. President, Furman University Philosophy Club.
2025, Fall–2026, Spring. Research Coordinator, Collaborative Neuroscience Society.
2024, Fall–2025, Spring. Vice President & Treasurer, Furman University Philosophy Club.
2023, Fall–2025, Spring. Member, Greenbelt Engaged Living Community.
FELLOWSHIPS
2025, Summer. Internship at Universitat Pompeu Fabra’s Center for Brain and Cognition, Summer Internship Fellowship, Furman University, $3,500.
2024, Summer. Developing a measure of chronic exposure to social evaluative threat, Summer Internship Fellowship, Furman University, $3,500.
2023, Summer. Internship at Coastal Carolina University’s Comparative Cognition Laboratory, Summer Internship Fellowship, Furman University, $3,500.
SCHOLARSHIPS
2022-2026. Palmetto Fellows, South Carolina Department of Education, $30,000.
2022-2026. John D. Hollingsworth Scholarship, Furman University, $144,000.
PUBLICATIONS
Poetry
2023. “Imagining My Death”. The Tower.