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Philosophy Theses and Dissertations

Theses/dissertations from 2023 2023.

Karl Marx on Human Flourishing and Proletarian Ethics , Sam Badger

The Ontological Grounds of Reason: Psychologism, Logicism, and Hermeneutic Phenomenology , Stanford L. Howdyshell

Theses/Dissertations from 2022 2022

Interdisciplinary Communication by Plausible Analogies: the Case of Buddhism and Artificial Intelligence , Michael Cooper

Heidegger and the Origin of Authenticity , John J. Preston

Theses/Dissertations from 2021 2021

Hegel and Schelling: The Emptiness of Emptiness and the Love of the Divine , Sean B. Gleason

Nietzsche on Criminality , Laura N. McAllister

Learning to be Human: Ren 仁, Modernity, and the Philosophers of China's Hundred Days' Reform , Lucien Mathot Monson

Nietzsche and Eternal Recurrence: Methods, Archives, History, and Genesis , William A. B. Parkhurst

Theses/Dissertations from 2020 2020

Orders of Normativity: Nietzsche, Science and Agency , Shane C. Callahan

Humanistic Climate Philosophy: Erich Fromm Revisited , Nicholas Dovellos

This, or Something like It: Socrates and the Problem of Authority , Simon Dutton

Climate Change and Liberation in Latin America , Ernesto O. Hernández

Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa as Expressions of Shame in a Post-Feminist , Emily Kearns

Nostalgia and (In)authentic Community: A Bataillean Answer to the Heidegger Controversy , Patrick Miller

Cultivating Virtue: A Thomistic Perspective on the Relationship Between Moral Motivation and Skill , Ashley Potts

Identity, Breakdown, and the Production of Knowledge: Intersectionality, Phenomenology, and the Project of Post-Marxist Standpoint Theory , Zachary James Purdue

Theses/Dissertations from 2019 2019

The Efficacy of Comedy , Mark Anthony Castricone

William of Ockham's Divine Command Theory , Matthew Dee

Heidegger's Will to Power and the Problem of Nietzsche's Nihilism , Megan Flocken

Abelard's Affective Intentionalism , Lillian M. King

Anton Wilhelm Amo's Philosophy and Reception: from the Origins through the Encyclopédie , Dwight Kenneth Lewis Jr.

"The Thought that we Hate": Regulating Race-Related Speech on College Campuses , Michael McGowan

A Historical Approach to Understanding Explanatory Proofs Based on Mathematical Practices , Erika Oshiro

From Meaningful Work to Good Work: Reexamining the Moral Foundation of the Calling Orientation , Garrett W. Potts

Reasoning of the Highest Leibniz and the Moral Quality of Reason , Ryan Quandt

Fear, Death, and Being-a-problem: Understanding and Critiquing Racial Discourse with Heidegger’s Being and Time , Jesús H. Ramírez

The Role of Skepticism in Early Modern Philosophy: A Critique of Popkin's "Sceptical Crisis" and a Study of Descartes and Hume , Raman Sachdev

How the Heart Became Muscle: From René Descartes to Nicholas Steno , Alex Benjamin Shillito

Autonomy, Suffering, and the Practice of Medicine: A Relational Approach , Michael A. Stanfield

The Case for the Green Kant: A Defense and Application of a Kantian Approach to Environmental Ethics , Zachary T. Vereb

Theses/Dissertations from 2018 2018

Augustine's Confessiones : The Battle between Two Conversions , Robert Hunter Craig

The Strategic Naturalism of Sandra Harding's Feminist Standpoint Epistemology: A Path Toward Epistemic Progress , Dahlia Guzman

Hume on the Doctrine of Infinite Divisibility: A Matter of Clarity and Absurdity , Wilson H. Underkuffler

Climate Change: Aristotelian Virtue Theory, the Aidōs Response and Proper Primility , John W. Voelpel

The Fate of Kantian Freedom: the Kant-Reinhold Controversy , John Walsh

Time, Tense, and Ontology: Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Tense, the Phenomenology of Temporality, and the Ontology of Time , Justin Brandt Wisniewski

Theses/Dissertations from 2017 2017

A Phenomenological Approach to Clinical Empathy: Rethinking Empathy Within its Intersubjective and Affective Contexts , Carter Hardy

From Object to Other: Models of Sociality after Idealism in Gadamer, Levinas, Rosenzweig, and Bonhoeffer , Christopher J. King

Humanitarian Military Intervention: A Failed Paradigm , Faruk Rahmanovic

Active Suffering: An Examination of Spinoza's Approach to Tristita , Kathleen Ketring Schenk

Cartesian Method and Experiment , Aaron Spink

An Examination of John Burton’s Method of Conflict Resolution and Its Applicability to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict , John Kenneth Steinmeyer

Speaking of the Self: Theorizing the Dialogical Dimensions of Ethical Agency , Bradley S. Warfield

Changing Changelessness: On the Genesis and Development of the Doctrine of Divine Immutability in the Ancient and Hellenic Period , Milton Wilcox

Theses/Dissertations from 2016 2016

The Statue that Houses the Temple: A Phenomenological Investigation of Western Embodiment Towards the Making of Heidegger's Missing Connection with the Greeks , Michael Arvanitopoulos

An Exploratory Analysis of Media Reporting of Police Involved Shootings in Florida , John L. Brown

Divine Temporality: Bonhoeffer's Theological Appropriation of Heidegger's Existential Analytic of Dasein , Nicholas Byle

Stoicism in Descartes, Pascal, and Spinoza: Examining Neostoicism’s Influence in the Seventeenth Century , Daniel Collette

Phenomenology and the Crisis of Contemporary Psychiatry: Contingency, Naturalism, and Classification , Anthony Vincent Fernandez

A Critique of Charitable Consciousness , Chioke Ianson

writing/trauma , Natasha Noel Liebig

Leibniz's More Fundamental Ontology: from Overshadowed Individuals to Metaphysical Atoms , Marin Lucio Mare

Violence and Disagreement: From the Commonsense View to Political Kinds of Violence and Violent Nonviolence , Gregory Richard Mccreery

Kant's Just War Theory , Steven Charles Starke

A Feminist Contestation of Ableist Assumptions: Implications for Biomedical Ethics, Disability Theory, and Phenomenology , Christine Marie Wieseler

Theses/Dissertations from 2015 2015

Heidegger and the Problem of Modern Moral Philosophy , Megan Emily Altman

The Encultured Mind: From Cognitive Science to Social Epistemology , David Alexander Eck

Weakness of Will: An Inquiry on Value , Michael Funke

Cogs in a Cosmic Machine: A Defense of Free Will Skepticism and its Ethical Implications , Sacha Greer

Thinking Nature, "Pierre Maupertuis and the Charge of Error Against Fermat and Leibniz" , Richard Samuel Lamborn

John Duns Scotus’s Metaphysics of Goodness: Adventures in 13th-Century Metaethics , Jeffrey W. Steele

A Gadamerian Analysis of Roman Catholic Hermeneutics: A Diachronic Analysis of Interpretations of Romans 1:17-2:17 , Steven Floyd Surrency

A Natural Case for Realism: Processes, Structures, and Laws , Andrew Michael Winters

Theses/Dissertations from 2014 2014

Leibniz's Theodicies , Joseph Michael Anderson

Aeschynē in Aristotle's Conception of Human Nature , Melissa Marie Coakley

Ressentiment, Violence, and Colonialism , Jose A. Haro

It's About Time: Dynamics of Inflationary Cosmology as the Source of the Asymmetry of Time , Emre Keskin

Time Wounds All Heels: Human Nature and the Rationality of Just Behavior , Timothy Glenn Slattery

Theses/Dissertations from 2013 2013

Nietzsche and Heidegger on the Cartesian Atomism of Thought , Steven Burgess

Embodying Social Practice: Dynamically Co-Constituting Social Agency , Brian W. Dunst

Subject of Conscience: On the Relation between Freedom and Discrimination in the Thought of Heidegger, Foucault, and Butler , Aret Karademir

Climate, Neo-Spinozism, and the Ecological Worldview , Nancy M. Kettle

Eschatology in a Secular Age: An Examination of the Use of Eschatology in the Philosophies of Heidegger, Berdyaev and Blumenberg , John R. Lup, Jr.

Navigation and Immersion of the American Identity in a Foreign Culture to Emergence as a Culturally Relative Ambassador , Lee H. Rosen

Theses/Dissertations from 2012 2012

A Philosophical Analysis of Intellectual Property: In Defense of Instrumentalism , Michael A. Kanning

A Commentary On Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's Discourse on Metaphysics #19 , Richard Lamborn Samuel Lamborn

Sellars in Context: An Analysis of Wilfrid Sellars's Early Works , Peter Jackson Olen

The New Materialism: Althusser, Badiou, and Zizek , Geoffrey Dennis Pfeifer

Structure and Agency: An Analysis of the Impact of Structure on Group Agents , Elizabeth Kaye Victor

Moral Friction, Moral Phenomenology, and the Improviser , Benjamin Scott Young

Theses/Dissertations from 2011 2011

The Virtuoso Human: A Virtue Ethics Model Based on Care , Frederick Joseph Bennett

The Existential Compromise in the History of the Philosophy of Death , Adam Buben

Philosophical Precursors to the Radical Enlightenment: Vignettes on the Struggle Between Philosophy and Theology From the Greeks to Leibniz With Special Emphasis on Spinoza , Anthony John Desantis

The Problem of Evil in Augustine's Confessions , Edward Matusek

The Persistence of Casuistry: a Neo-premodernist Approach to Moral Reasoning , Richard Arthur Mercadante

Theses/Dissertations from 2010 2010

Dewey's Pragmatism and the Great Community , Philip Schuyler Bishop

Unamuno's Concept of the Tragic , Ernesto O. Hernandez

Rethinking Ethical Naturalism: The Implications of Developmental Systems Theory , Jared J.. Kinggard

From Husserl and the Neo-Kantians to Art: Heidegger's Realist Historicist Answer to the Problem of the Origin of Meaning , William H. Koch

Queering Cognition: Extended Minds and Sociotechnologically Hybridized Gender , Michele Merritt

Hydric Life: A Nietzschean Reading of Postcolonial Communication , Elena F. Ruiz-Aho

Descartes' Bête Machine, the Leibnizian Correction and Religious Influence , John Voelpel

Aretē and Physics: The Lesson of Plato's Timaeus , John R. Wolfe

Theses/Dissertations from 2009 2009

Praxis and Theōria : Heidegger’s “Violent” Interpretation , Megan E. Altman

On the Concept of Evil: An Analysis of Genocide and State Sovereignty , Jason J. Campbell

The Role of Trust in Judgment , Christophe Sage Hudspeth

Truth And Judgment , Jeremy J. Kelly

The concept of action and responsibility in Heidegger's early thought , Christian Hans Pedersen

Roots and Role of the Imagination in Kant: Imagination at the Core , Michael Thompson

Theses/Dissertations from 2008 2008

Peirce on the Passions: The Role of Instinct, Emotion, and Sentiment in Inquiry and Action , Robert J. Beeson

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Dissertations.

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Home > HFA > PHILOSOPHY > PHILOSOPHY_DISS

Philosophy Department Dissertations Collection

Current students, please follow this link to submit your dissertation.

Dissertations from 2023 2023

The Dialectical Virtue of Ideological Reduction , Keehyuk Nahm, Philosophy

Dissertations from 2022 2022

A Metaphysics of Artifacts: Essence and Mind-Dependence , Tim Juvshik, Philosophy

Higher-Order Evidence and Human Evolution , Justis Koon, Philosophy

All Sortals are Phase Sortals , Justin Mooney, Philosophy

Naturalized Human Epistemology is Social Epistemology , Molly O'Rourke-Friel, Philosophy

Quantitative Character and the Composite Account of Phenomenal Content , Kimberly Soland, Philosophy

Dissertations from 2021 2021

Defending Philosophical Knowledge , Jonathan Dixon, Philosophy

Worlds without End: A Platonist Theory of Fiction , Patrick Grafton-Cardwell, Philosophy

MOVING FORWARD ON THE PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS? , Haoying Liu, Philosophy

Dissertations from 2020 2020

Continua , Lu Chen, Philosophy

Socratic Piety, Reciprocity, and the Last Elenchos of Plato's Euthyphro , Donovan Cox, Philosophy

Autonomy, Oppression, and Respect , Andrea Wilson, Philosophy

Dissertations from 2019 2019

A Defense of Hume's Dictum , Cameron Gibbs, Philosophy

The Epistemic Dimensions of Moral Responsibility and Respect , John Robison, Philosophy

Self-Knowledge, Choice Blindness, and Confabulation , Hayley F. Webster, Philosophy

Dissertations from 2018 2018

Quantification and Paradox , Edward Ferrier, Philosophy

Meaning and Modality , Jesse Fitts, Philosophy

The Mismatch Problem for Act Consequentialism , Robert Gruber, Philosophy

EXPLORING THE EASY ROAD TO NOMINALISM , Jordan Kroll, Philosophy

THE FIRST PERSON PERSPECTIVE: LANGUAGE, THOUGHT, AND ACTION , Pengbo Liu, Philosophy

The Philosophical Value of Reflective Endorsement , Rachel Robison, Philosophy

Dissertations from 2017 2017

Norms for Bayesians , Lisa Cassell, Philosophy

Applications and Extensions of Counterpart Theory , Bridgette Peterson, Philosophy

Me, Myself and I: Reflections on Self-Consciousness and Authority , jonathan rosen, Philosophy

The Concept of Intrinsic Goodness: Essays in Moorean Moral Philosophy , Miles Tucker, Philosophy

Dissertations from 2016 2016

Physical Geometry , James P. Binkoski, Philosophy

Fallibility and Normativity , Joshua DiPaolo, Philosophy

Structuring Thought: Concepts, Computational Syntax, and Cognitive Explanation , Matthew B. Gifford, Philosophy

The Path To Supersubstantivalism , Joshua D. Moulton, Philosophy

Agency and Reasons in Epistemology , Luis R.G. Oliveira, Philosophy

Understanding and Its Role in Inquiry , Benjamin T. Rancourt, Philosophy

Dissertations from 2015 2015

Variations on Some Rossian Themes , Kristian Olsen, Philosophy

Dissertations from 2014 2014

Taste Disagreements and Predicates of Personal Taste , Heidi Teres Buetow, Philosophy

Synthetic Reductionism in Moral Philosophy , Scott Hill, Philosophy

A Defense of Russellian Descriptivism , Brandt H. van der Gaast, Philosophy

Dissertations from 2013 2013

The Structure of Consciousness , Lowell Keith Friesen, Philosophy

The Plausibility of Moral Error Theories , Casey Alton Knight, Philosophy

Dissertations from 2012 2012

Self-Knowledge in a Natural World , Jeremy Cushing, Philosophy

Counterpossibles , Barak Krakauer, Philosophy

Dissertations from 2011 2011

Pyrrhonian and Naturalistic Themes in the Final Writings of Wittgenstein , Indrani Bhattacharjee, Philosophy

Identity and the Limits of Possibility , Sam Cowling, Philosophy

Dissertations from 2010 2010

On Epistemic Agency , Kristoffer Hans Ahlstrom, Philosophy

Bayesian Epistemology and Having Evidence , Jeffrey Dunn, Philosophy

Sleeping Beauty and De Nunc Updating , Namjoong Kim, Philosophy

Human Freedom in a World Full of Providence: An Ockhamist-Molinist Account of the Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Creaturely Free Will , Christopher J. Kosciuk, Philosophy

The rise of Cartesian occasionalism , Andrew Russell Platt

The Rise Of Cartesian Occasionalism , Andrew Russell Platt, Philosophy

Dissertations from 2009 2009

Composition as Identity: a Study in Ontology and Philosophical Logic , Einar Bohn, Philosophy

Being good, doing right, faring well. , Daniel, Doviak, Philosophy

On the Measurability of Pleasure and Pain , Justin Allen Klocksiem, Philosophy

Knowledge, questions and answers , Meghan B Masto

Knowledge, questions and answers. , Meghan B. Masto, Philosophy

On memory and testimony , Kirk Michaelian, Philosophy

Synthetic Ethical Naturalism , Michael Rubin, Philosophy

On the Objectivity of Welfare , Alexander F. Sarch, Philosophy

Phenomenal Acquaintance , Kelly Trogdon, Philosophy

Dissertations from 2008 2008

'Can' and consequentialism : an account of options. , Edward Lee Abrams, Philosophy

A defense of a particularist research program. , Uri D. Leibowitz, Philosophy

A tenseless account of tensed sentences and tensed belief. , Stephan V. Torre, Philosophy

Dissertations from 2007 2007

Emotional rationality and the fear of death. , Kristen A. Hine, Philosophy

Achievement, enjoyment, and the things we care about : a theory of personal well-being. , Jason R. Raibley, Philosophy

Dissertations from 2006 2006

Vagueness , Thomas J. Bell

Leibniz and Locke on the ultimate origination of things. , Marcy P. Lascano, Philosophy

Dissertations from 2005 2005

Desire-satisfaction theories of welfare. , Christopher C. Heathwood, Philosophy

Well-being and actual desires. , Mark E. Lukas, Philosophy

Brains and barns : the role of context in epistemic attribution. , Julie M. Petty, Philosophy

Dissertations from 2004 2004

Simples and gunk. , Kris, McDaniel, Philosophy

Brains and barns: The role of *context in epistemic attribution , Julie M Petty

The reconciliation of faith and reason in Thomas Aquinas. , Creighton J. Rosental, Philosophy

Forms of goodness : the nature and value of virtue in Socratic ethics. , Scott J. Senn, Philosophy

Dissertations from 2003 2003

Advancing the counterfactual analysis of causation. , Ethan R. Colton, Philosophy

Freedom and responsibility : an agent-causal view. , Meghan E. Griffith, Philosophy

Adopted knowing : claiming self-knowledge in the age of identity. , Kimberly J. Leighton, Philosophy

A priori arguments for reductionism. , Jennifer Rea Susse, Philosophy

Open questions and consequentialist conditionals : central puzzles in Moorean moral philosophy. , Jean-Paul, Vessel, Philosophy

Dissertations from 2002 2002

Autonomous machine agency. , Don, Berkich, Philosophy

The ontology of film. , Julie N. Books, Philosophy

Dissertations from 2001 2001

Ethical theory and population problems. , Kevin E. Moon, Philosophy

Dissertations from 2000 2000

The creation of the eternal truths and the nature of God in Descartes. , Daniel P. Kaufman, Philosophy

Art and psychoanalysis : a topographical, structural, and object-relational analysis illustrated by a study of Shakespeare's Hamlet. , Patricia E. Scarbrough, Philosophy

The nature of moral virtue. , Erik J. Wielenberg, Philosophy

Dissertations from 1999 1999

Transcendental arguments and Kant's Refutation of Idealism. , Adrian, Bardon, Philosophy

Species of goodness. , William Benjamin Bradley, Philosophy

Nothing personal : a defense on non-libertarian incompatibilism. , Bruce C. Galbreath, Philosophy

The speculum and the scalpel : the politics of impotent representation and non-representational terrorism. , David, Mertz, Philosophy

Pleasure, falsity, and the good in Plato's Philebus. , Ciriaco M. Sayson, Philosophy

Criteria in crisis : modernist, postmodernist, and feminist critical practices. , Mary Ann Sushinsky, Philosophy

The nation and nationalism. , Henry C. Theriault, Philosophy

Dissertations from 1998 1998

A defense of materialism against attacks based on qualia. , J. C. Beall, Philosophy

Natural-kind term reference and the discovery of essence. , Joseph F. LaPorte, Philosophy

Desert, virtue, and justice. , Eric F. Moore, Philosophy

The incompatibility of determinism and moral obligation. , Neil Schaefer, Philosophy

Hume's skepticism. , Dennis F. Thompson, Philosophy

The ethnicities of philosophy and the limits of culture. , Joseph S. Yeh, Philosophy

Dissertations from 1997 1997

Metaphysical theories of modality : properties, relations and possibilities. , David A. Denby, Philosophy

Religious belief, social establishment and autonomy. , Christopher J. Eberle, Philosophy

The state of nature and the genesis of commonwealths in Hobbes's political philosophy. , Thomas J. Fryc, Philosophy

The logic of contingent existence. , Daniel M. Kervick, Philosophy

A critique of academic nationalism. , Amie A. Macdonald, Philosophy

Richard Rorty's liberalism : a Marxist perspective. , Markar. Melkonian, Philosophy

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Home > ARTSSCI > Philosophy > dissertations

Philosophy Dissertations and Theses

The Department of Philosophy Dissertations and Theses Series is comprised of dissertations and theses authored by Marquette University's Department of Philosophy doctoral and master's students.

Theses/Dissertations from 2023 2023

Place, Attachment, and Feeling: Indigenous Dispossession and Settler Belonging , Sarah Kizuk

Nepantla and Mestizaje: A Phenomenological Analysis of the Mestizx Historical Consciousness , Jorge Alfredo Montiel

The Categories Argument for the Real Distinction Between Being and Essence: Avicenna, Aquinas, and Their Greek Sources , Nathaniel Taylor

Theses/Dissertations from 2022 2022

Modeling, Describing, and Explaining Subjective Consciousness- A Guide to (and for) the Perplexed , Peter Burgess

Looking Through Whiteness: Objectivity, Racism, Method, and Responsibility , Philip Mack

Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Maritain on the Student-Teacher Relationship in Catholic Higher Education , Timothy Rothhaar

Theses/Dissertations from 2021 2021

The Empathetic Autistic: A Phenomenological Look at the Feminine Experience , Dana Fritz

Concerning Aristotelian Animal Essences , Damon Andrew Watson

When to Trust Authoritative Testimony: Generation and Transmission of Knowledge in Saadya Gaon, Al-Ghazālī and Thomas Aquinas , Brett A. Yardley

Theses/Dissertations from 2020 2020

The Status of Irrationality: Karl Jaspers' Response to Davidson and Searle , Daniel Adsett

Cosmic City - Cosmic Teleology: A Reading of Metaphysics Λ 10 and Politics I 2 , Brandon Henrigillis

Phenomenal Consciousness: An Husserlian Approach , John Jered Janes

Al-Fārābī Metaphysics, and the Construction of Social Knowledge: Is Deception Warranted if it Leads to Happiness? , Nicholas Andrew Oschman

The Epistemology of Disagreement: Hume, Kant, and the Current Debate , Robert Kyle Whitaker

Theses/Dissertations from 2019 2019

'Our Feet are Mired In the Same Soil': Deepening Democracy with the Political Virtue of Sympathetic Inquiry , Jennifer Lynn Kiefer Fenton

Towards a Philosophy of the Musical Experience: Phenomenology, Culture, and Ethnomusicology in Conversation , J. Tyler Friedman

Humor, Power and Culture: A New Theory on the Experience and Ethics of Humor , Jennifer Marra

Care of the Sexual Self: Askesis As a Route to Sex Education , Shaun Douglas Miller

Re-Evaluating Augustinian Fatalism through the Eastern and Western Distinction between God's Essence and Energies , Stephen John Plecnik

The Fantastic Structure of Freedom: Sartre, Freud, and Lacan , Gregory A. Trotter

The Province of Conceptual Reason: Hegel's Post-Kantian Rationalism , William Clark Wolf

Theses/Dissertations from 2018 2018

Hume on Thick and Thin Causation , Alexander Bozzo

Evolution, Naturalism, and Theism: An Inconsistent Triad? , David H. Gordon

The Parable As Mirror: An Examination of the Use of Parables in the Works of Kierkegaard , Russell Hamer

Theses/Dissertations from 2017 2017

Contextualizing Aquinas's Ontology of Soul: An Analysis of His Arabic and Neoplatonic Sources , Nathan McLain Blackerby

The Social and Historical Subject in Sartre and Foucault and Its Implications for Healthcare Ethics , Kimberly Siobhan Engels

Investigations of Worth: Towards a Phenomenology of Values , Dale Hobbs Jr.

Developing Capabilities: A Feminist Discourse Ethics Approach , Chad Kleist

Hegel and the Problem of the Multiplicity of Conflicting Philosophies , Matthew M. Peters

Aquinas, Averroes, and the Human Will , Traci Ann Phillipson

Theses/Dissertations from 2016 2016

Nature, Feminism, and Flourishing: Human Nature and the Feminist Ethics of Flourishing , Celeste D. Harvey

Kierkegaard in Light of the East: A Critical Comparison of the Philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard with Orthodox Christian Philosophy and Thought , Agust Magnusson

The Secular Transformation of Pride and Humility in the Moral Philosophy of David Hume , Kirstin April Carlson McPherson

Living within the Sacred Tension: Paradox and Its Significance for Christian Existence in the Thought of Søren Kierkegaard , Matthew Thomas Nowachek

Moral Imagination and Adorno: Before and After Auschwitz , Catlyn Origitano

Essence and Necessity, and the Aristotelian Modal Syllogistic: A Historical and Analytical Study , Daniel James Vecchio

Theses/Dissertations from 2015 2015

Subversive Humor , Chris A. Kramer

Virtue, Oppression, and Resistance Struggles , Trevor William Smith

Health As Embodied Authenticity , Margaret Steele

Recognition and Political Ontology: Fichte, Hegel, and Honneth , Velimir Stojkovski

The Conceptual Priority of the Perfect , Matthew Peter Zdon

Theses/Dissertations from 2014 2014

Dangerous Knowledge? Morality And Moral Progress After Naturalism , Daniel Diederich Farmer

Nietzsche's Revaluation of All Values , Joseph Anthony Kranak

Theses/Dissertations from 2013 2013

Re-Enchanting The World: An Examination Of Ethics, Religion, And Their Relationship In The Work Of Charles Taylor , David McPherson

Thomas Aquinas on the Apprehension of Being: The Role of Judgement in Light of Thirteenth-Century Semantics , Rosa Vargas Della Casa

Theses/Dissertations from 2012 2012

Naturalized Panpsychism: An Alternative to Fundamentalist Physicalism and Supernaturalism , Earl R. Cookson

The Concept of Personhood in the Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl , Colin J. Hahn

The Humanistic, Fideistic Philosophy of Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560) , Charles William Peterson

Theses/Dissertations from 2011 2011

Knowledge and Thought in Heidegger and Foucault: Towards an Epistemology of Ruptures , Arun Anantheeswaran Iyer

William James's Undivided Self and the Possibility of Immortality , Anthony Karlin

The Poetics of Remembrance: Communal Memory and Identity in Heidegger and Ricoeur , David Leichter

The Ontological Foundations for Natural Law Theory and Contemporary Ethical Naturalism , Bernard Mauser

Sexualized Violence, Moral Disintegration and Ethical Advocacy , Melissa Mosko

Spinoza on Individuals and Individuation: Metaphysics, Morals, and Politics , Matthew David Wion

Theses/Dissertations from 2010 2010

The Paradox of Nature: Merleau-Ponty's Semi-Naturalistic Critique of Husserlian Phenomenology , Shazad Akhtar

Hume's Conception of Time and its Implications for his Theories of Causation and Induction , Daniel Esposito

Arabic Influences in Aquinas's Doctrine of Intelligible Species , Max Herrera

The Attestation of the Self as a Bridge Between Hermeneutics and Ontology in the Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur , Sebastian Kaufmann

Love's Lack: The Relationship between Poverty and Eros in Plato's Symposium , Lorelle D. Lamascus

Friendship and Fidelity: An Historical and Critical Examination , Joshua Walter Schulz

Natural Law Theory and the "Is"--"Ought" Problem: A Critique of Four Solutions , Shalina Stilley

Attending to Presence: A Study of John Duns Scotus' Account of Sense Cognition , Amy F. Whitworth

Theses/Dissertations from 2009 2009

Friendship and Self-Identity in the Thought of Paul Ricoeur , Cristina Bucur

The Finality of Religion in Aquinas' Theory of Human Acts , Francisco José Romero Carrasquillo

The finality of religion in Aquinas' theory of human acts , Francisco J Romero

Theses/Dissertations from 2008 2008

Self-Identity in Comparative Theology: The Functional lmportance of Charles Taylor's Concept of the Self for a Theology of Religions , Richard Joseph Hanson

Theses/Dissertations from 2007 2007

Husserl's Noema: A Critical Assessment of the Gestalt and Analytic Interpretations , Peter M. Chukwu

A Social Contract Analysis of Rawls and Rousseau: Supplanting the Original Position As Philosophically Most Favored , Paul Neiman

To Validate a Feeling: the Role of the Mood of Angst in Human Being , Gregory P. Schulz

The Conception and Attributes of God: A Comparison of Charles Sanders Peirce and Alfred North Whitehead , Scott W. Sinclair

John Rawls, Public Reason, and Natural Law: A Study of the Principles of Public Justification , Christopher Ward

Submissions from 2006 2006

Hans Jonas's ethic of responsibility applied to anti-aging technologies and the indefinite extension of the human life span , Jeffrey P Goins

David Hume and the Principle of Sufficient Reason , Ginger Lee

Virtue Theory in Plato's Republic , Griffin T. Nelson

The Principle of Alternate Possibilities: Finding Freedom after Frankfurt , Matthew F. Pierlott

Theses/Dissertations from 2005 2005

Is There a Future for Marxist Humanism? , Jacob M. Held

Self-Love and Morality: Beyond Egoism and Altruism , Li Jing

Eikos Logos and Eikos Muthos: A Study of the Nature of the Likely Story in Plato's Timaeus , Ryan Kenneth McBride

Hume's Conclusions on the Existence and Nature of God , Timothy S. Yoder

Submissions from 2004 2004

The foundations of the politics of difference , Peter Nathaniel Bwanali

The Foundations of the Politics of Difference , Peter Nathaniel Bwanali

The Place of Justice in the Thinking of Emmanuel Levinas , Michael H. Gillick

New Waves in Metaethics: Naturalist Realism, Naturalist Antirealism and Divine Commands , Daniel R. Kern

Reason in Hume's Moral System , John Muenzberg

Conceiving Mind: A Critique of Descartes' Dualism and Contemporary Immaterialist Views of Consciousness , Kristin P. Schaupp

Respecting Plurality in Times of Change: Hannah Arendt's Conceptions of Political, Personal, and Ethical Responsibility , Stephen Schulman

Francis Suárez on the Ontological Status of Individual Unity vis-à-vis the Aristotelian Doctrine of Primary Substance , John W. Simmons

Through a Glass Darkly: Bernard Lonergan and Richard Rorty on the Possibility of Knowing Without a God's-Eye-View , Russell Snell

Theses/Dissertations from 2003 2003

Building a Heideggerian Ethic , Kelly A. Burns

St. Thomas Aquinas and the Self-Evident Proposition: A Study of the Manifold Senses of a Medieval Concept , Michael V. Dougherty

Ricoeur's Narrative Development of Gadamer's Hermeneutics: Continuity and Discontinuity , Keith D'Souza

Beauty's Resting Place: Unity in St. Augustine's Sensible Aesthetic , Matthew J. Hayes

Empathy and Knowledge: Husserl's Introductions to Phenomenology , Kevin Hermberg

The Transactional Model: A Critical Examination of John Dewey's Philosophy of Freedom , Mark N. Lenker III

Reflection on the "good" As a Source of Freedom in Virtue Theory , John D. Morse

Theses/Dissertations from 2002 2002

An Evaluation of Alvin Plantinga's Religious Epistemology Does It Function Properly? , James Beilby

Merleau-Ponty: Embodied Subjectivity and the Foundation of Ethics , Sarah A. Fischer

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This collection contains some of the theses and dissertations produced by students in the University of Oregon Philosophy Graduate Program. Paper copies of these and other dissertations and theses are available through the UO Libraries .

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  • The Problem of Freedom and Universality: Marxian Philosophical Anthropology  Ralda, Oscar ( University of Oregon , 2024-03-25 ) This dissertation has two principal aims. First, it provides a critical reconsideration of Marx’s philosophical anthropology as it bears on the essential continuity of his emancipatory critique of political economy. Second, ...
  • Living Legality: Law and Dussel's Philosophy of Liberation  Ospina Martinez, Juan Sebastián ( University of Oregon , 2024-01-10 ) In this dissertation I examine the theoretical underpinnings necessary for a philosophy of liberationaccount of law and suggest an alternative conceptualization of the function of law and political institutions, following ...
  • Making Sense of the Practical Lesbian Past: Towards a Rethinking of Untimely Uses of History through the Temporality of Cultural Techniques  Simon, Valérie ( University of Oregon , 2024-01-10 ) This dissertation focuses on the practice of untimely uses of lesbian history, and in particular the diverse practices of engagement with lesbian activist history, all of which aim to mobilize this activist history for the ...
  • An Argument for a Cartographic Approach to Technology  McLevey, Mare ( University of Oregon , 2024-01-09 ) This dissertation develops a way to study technology and politics that is an alternative to dominant approaches particular to contemporary philosophy of technology’s empirical and ethical turns. Dominant models fix ...
  • Nietzsche, Reification, and Open Comportment  Currie, Luke ( University of Oregon , 2024-01-09 ) This work primarily discusses the “fallacy of reification” from the perspective of Nietzsche’s late philosophy (particularly in the chapter on ‘Reason’ in philosophy in his Twilight of the Idols). While reification is ...
  • Time, Capitalism, and Political Ecology: Toward and Ecosocialist Metabolic Temporality  Gamble, Cameron ( University of Oregon , 2022-10-26 ) The ecological crises that have already marked the 21st century, and which will continue to do so on an increasingly intense and destructive scale, present theory in every discipline and field of study with a number of ...
  • Demystifying Racial Monopoly  Haller, Reese ( University of Oregon , 2022-10-04 ) Through analysis of private, public, and state reactions to the Great Depression and northward black migration, this thesis demystifies four key functions of race constitutive of capitalist racial monopoly: historical ...
  • Pragmatism, Genealogy, and Moral Status  Showler, Paul ( University of Oregon , 2022-10-04 ) This dissertation draws from recent work in pragmatism and philosophical genealogy to develop and defend a new approach for thinking about the concept of moral status. My project has two main aims. First, I argue that Huw ...
  • Ethics for the Depressed: A Value Ethics of Engagement  Fitzpatrick, Devin ( University of Oregon , 2022-10-04 ) I argue that depressed persons suffer from “existential guilt,” which amounts to a two-part compulsion: 1) the compulsive assertion or sense of a vague and all-encompassing or absolute threat that disrupts action and ...
  • Soul and Polis: On Arete in Plato's Meno  Smith III, Ansel ( University of Oregon , 2022-10-04 ) In “Soul and Polis: On Arete in Plato’s Meno,” I interpret Meno as a dialogue in which the pursuit of individual arete appears intertwined with political arete. While the differentiation of these two arete is itself ...
  • Place-in-Being: A Decolonial Phenomenology of Place in Conversation with Philosophies of the Americas  Newton, Margaret ( University of Oregon , 2022-05-10 ) Our experiences of place and emplacement are so fundamental to our everyday existence that most of us rarely dedicate much time to thinking about how place and emplacement impact the various aspects of our daily lives. In ...
  • Species Trouble: From Settled Species Discourse to Ethical Species Pluralism  Sinclair, Rebekah ( University of Oregon , 2021-11-23 ) In this dissertation, I develop and defend the importance of species pluralism (the recognition and use of multiple species definitions) for both environmental and humanist ethics. I begin from the concern that, since the ...
  • The Hybris of Plants: Reinterpreting Philosophy through Vegetal Life  Kerr, Joshua ( University of Oregon , 2021-11-23 ) This dissertation reexamines the place of plants in the history of Western philosophy, drawing on the diverse philosophical approaches of Plato, Aristotle, Goethe, Hegel, and Nietzsche, among others. I suggest that a close ...
  • Decolonizing Silences: Toward a Critical Phenomenology of Deep Silences with Gloria E. Anzaldúa and Maurice Merleau-Ponty  Ferrari, Martina ( University of Oregon , 2021-11-23 ) Motivating this dissertation is a concern for how Western philosophical, cultural, and political practices tend to privilege speech and voice as emancipatory tools and reduce silence to silencing. To locate power in silence ...
  • Mere Appearance: Redressing the History of Philosophy  Zimmer, Amie ( University of Oregon , 2021-09-13 ) The principal aim of this dissertation is to seriously consider what accounts of fashion and dress can offer—have indeed already offered—to philosophy. In recounting these histories, I have two primary goals. The first is ...
  • Universal History as Global Critique: From German Critical Theory to the Anti-Colonial Tradition  Portella , Elizabeth ( University of Oregon , 2021-09-13 ) This dissertation argues for a critical reconstruction of the concept of universal history. In doing so, it draws on theoretical resources offered by a materialist philosophy of history, as it is expressed in both German ...
  • Synoptic Fusion and Dialectical Dissociation: The Entwinement of Linguistic and Experiential Pragmatisms à la Wilfrid Sellars  Naeb, Cheyenne ( University of Oregon , 2021-09-13 ) This work will attempt to examine the relationship between experiential and linguistic pragmatism through the lens of the twentieth-century Analytic philosopher, Wilfrid Sellars. I maintain that Sellars meta-linguistic ...
  • Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the Questionability of Truth  Emery, James ( University of Oregon , 2020-12-08 ) Does Nietzsche’s inquiry into the question of truth take him beyond the sense of truth as correctness found in Platonism toward a more Greek understanding of truth that brings concealment into an unsettling prominence ...
  • Feminism, Secularism, and the (Im)Possibilities of an Islamic Feminism  Akbar Akhgari, Paria ( University of Oregon , 2020-02-27 ) This project considers attempts by scholars from within as well as outside Muslim countries to analyze gender and sex equality with a new approach that brings Islam and feminism into one discourse, often called “Islamic ...
  • To Write the Body: Lost Time and the Work of Melancholy  Hayes, Shannon ( University of Oregon , 2019-09-18 ) In this dissertation I develop a philosophical account of melancholy as a productive, creative, and politically significant affect. Despite the longstanding association of melancholy with the creativity and productivity ...

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Thomistic Approaches to Welfare Theory 

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A Defense of the Moral Praiseworthiness of Anger 

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How Can Human Intelligence Collection Be Morally Justified? 

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Constructivism and the Liberal Dilemma 

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On the Efficacy of Character Education for Cultivating Virtue 

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An Examination of Thomas Hurka's Virtue Consequentialism 

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Some remarks concerning the general theory of human social praxis and its relation to ethical theory 

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Against the Linguistic Strategy for the Ontic Conception of Scientific Explanation 

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ORGANISMS AND THE EXTENDED SELF: A RE-EVALUATION 

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LIFE AND DEATH ISSUES IN BIOETHICS: ABORTION, PERSISTENT VEGETATIVE STATE, AND THE DEFINITION OF DEATH 

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The Harmony Thesis and the Problem of Continence in Contemporary Virtue Ethics 

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Does a consistent soul-theory exclude the animals? 

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Misunderstanding Davidson 

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The philosophy of Edwards 

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The Natures of Pride and Shame 

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Parmenides' Theistic Metaphysics 

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The problem of immediate knowledge in the philosophy of Mr. Bertrand Russell and Mr. Bernard Bosanquet 

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Philosophical Methodology and its Implications for Experimental Philosophy 

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The Primitive Thesis: Defending a Davidsonian Conception of Truth 

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Kant's Knowledge of Unknowable Things in Themselves: An Examination of the Doctrine of Ignorance and the Non-spatiotemporality Thesis 

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Acting From Thought About Action 

Belief and ameliorative epistemology , the commonwealth as agent: group action, the common good, and the general will , conceptualism and objectivity in locke's account of natural kinds , counsel and command: an address-dependent account of authority , dependence on persons and dependence on things in rousseau's social, psychological, and aesthetic theory , duties of rescue: a moderate account , essays on biological individuality , formal analyticity , global institutions and relations among non-co-citizens , intellectual property rights and institutions: a pluralist account , into question: an account of inquiry , kant's science of the moral world and moral objectivity , knowledge in action , loving, valuing, regretting, and being oneself , 'making people happy, not making happy people': a defense of the asymmetry intuition in population ethics , no metaphysics within physics , the normativity of structural rationality , objectivity and intersubjectivity in moral philosophy , on perception's role in aristotle’s epistemology .

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"Not the Boss of Me": Reviving the Relationship Between Political and Parental Authority

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Addiction and Responsibility

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Agent Causation and Reduction

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An Incomplete Guide to Dealing with Experts

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Anomaly and Coincidence

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Apriority for Empiricists: Making Sense of Truth by Convention

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Aristotle's Pure Forms: A Study of Some Chapters in Metaphysics Z-H

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Authoring Sex: Agency, Equality, and Respect within Sexual Interaction

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Can Machines Have Desires?

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Concepts in Bounded Rationality: Perspectives from Reinforcement Learning

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Defanging the v-Curry Paradox

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Defending a Desire-­‐Centered Compatibilist Theory of Free Will

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Emotion and Imagination in Action

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Essays on Justice and Social Structure

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ESSE PERCIPI EST CONCEPTUM?: ON CONCEPTUAL AND NONCONCEPTUAL FORMS OF PERCEPTION

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Everyday Life and the Demands of Justice

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Evidence and the Rationality of Belief

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Forms and Physics in Plato's Timaeus

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From Reference to Content: Semantic Intuitions and the Theoretical Basis for Externalism

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How Much Blameworthiness Do We Share? All-or-Nothing Principles of Proportionality in Accounts of Individual Blameworthiness for Collective Harms

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Objectification of women: new types and new measures , wisdom as responsible engagement:how to stop worrying and love epistemic goods , prescribing the mind: how norms, concepts, and language influence our understanding of mental disorder , humean constitutivism: a desire-based account of rational agency and the foundations of morality , predictive embodied concepts: an exploration of higher cognition within the predictive processing paradigm , impacts of childhood psychological maltreatment on adult mental health , epistemic fictionalism , thinking for the bound and dead: beyond man3 towards a new (truly) universal theory of human victory , function-first approach to doubt , abilities, freedom, and inputs: a time traveller's tale , concept is a container , analysing time-consciousness: a new account of the experienced present , emotion, perception, and relativism in vision , justice as a point of equipoise: an aristotelian approach to contemporary corporate ethics , asymmetric welfarism about meaning in life , mindreading in context , economic attitudes and individual difference: replication and extension , mindful love: the role of mindfulness in willingness to sacrifice in romantic relationships , embodied metacognition: how we feel our hearts to know our minds , temporal structure of the world .

philosophical dissertation

2.6 Writing Philosophy Papers

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

  • Identify and characterize the format of a philosophy paper.
  • Create thesis statements that are manageable and sufficiently specific.
  • Collect evidence and formulate arguments.
  • Organize ideas into a coherent written presentation.

This section will provide some practical advice on how to write philosophy papers. The format presented here focuses on the use of an argumentative structure in writing. Different philosophy professors may have different approaches to writing. The sections below are only intended to give some general guidelines that apply to most philosophy classes.

Identify Claims

The key element in any argumentative paper is the claim you wish to make or the position you want to defend. Therefore, take your time identifying claims , which is also called the thesis statement. What do you want to say about the topic? What do you want the reader to understand or know after reading your piece? Remember that narrow, modest claims work best. Grand claims are difficult to defend, even for philosophy professors. A good thesis statement should go beyond the mere description of another person’s argument. It should say something about the topic, connect the topic to other issues, or develop an application of some theory or position advocated by someone else. Here are some ideas for creating claims that are perfectly acceptable and easy to develop:

  • Compare two philosophical positions. What makes them similar? How are they different? What general lessons can you draw from these positions?
  • Identify a piece of evidence or argument that you think is weak or may be subject to criticism. Why is it weak? How is your criticism a problem for the philosopher’s perspective?
  • Apply a philosophical perspective to a contemporary case or issue. What makes this philosophical position applicable? How would it help us understand the case?
  • Identify another argument or piece of evidence that might strengthen a philosophical position put forward by a philosopher. Why is this a good argument or piece of evidence? How does it fit with the philosopher’s other claims and arguments?
  • Consider an implication (either positive or negative) that follows from a philosopher’s argument. How does this implication follow? Is it necessary or contingent? What lessons can you draw from this implication (if positive, it may provide additional reasons for the argument; if negative, it may provide reasons against the argument)?

Think Like a Philosopher

The following multiple-choice exercises will help you identify and write modest, clear philosophical thesis statements. A thesis statement is a declarative statement that puts forward a position or makes a claim about some topic.

  • How does Aristotle think virtue is necessary for happiness?
  • Is happiness the ultimate goal of human action?
  • Whether or not virtue is necessary for happiness.
  • Aristotle argues that happiness is the ultimate good of human action and virtue is necessary for happiness.
  • René Descartes argues that the soul or mind is the essence of the human person.
  • Descartes shows that all beliefs and memories about the external world could be false.
  • Some people think that Descartes is a skeptic, but I will show that he goes beyond skepticism.
  • In the meditations, Descartes claims that the mind and body are two different substances.
  • Descartes says that the mind is a substance that is distinct from the body, but I disagree.
  • Contemporary psychology has shown that Descartes is incorrect to think that human beings have free will and that the mind is something different from the brain.
  • Thomas Hobbes’s view of the soul is materialistic, whereas Descartes’s view of the soul is nonphysical. In this paper, I will examine the differences between these two views.
  • John Stuart Mill reasons that utilitarian judgments can be based on qualitative differences as well as the quantity of pleasure, but ultimately any qualitative difference must result in a difference in the quantity of pleasure.
  • Mill’s approach to utilitarianism differs from Bentham’s by introducing qualitative distinctions among pleasures, where Bentham only considers the quantitative aspects of pleasure.
  • J. S. Mill’s approach to utilitarianism aligns moral theory with the history of ethics because he allows qualitative differences in moral judgments.
  • Rawls’s liberty principle ensures that all people have a basic set of freedoms that are important for living a full life.
  • The US Bill of Rights is an example of Rawls’s liberty principle because it lists a set of basic freedoms that are guaranteed for all people.
  • While many people may agree that Rawls’s liberty principle applies to all citizens of a particular country, it is much more controversial to extend those same basic freedoms to immigrants, including those classified by the government as permanent residents, legal immigrants, illegal immigrants, and refugees.

[ANS: 1.d 2.c 3.c 4.a 5.c]

Write Like a Philosopher

Use the following templates to write your own thesis statement by inserting a philosopher, claim, or contemporary issue:

  • [Name of philosopher] holds that [claim], but [name of another philosopher] holds that [another claim]. In this paper, I will identify reasons for thinking [name of philosopher]’s position is more likely to be true.
  • [Name of philosopher] argues that [claim]. In this paper, I will show how this claim provides a helpful addition to [contemporary issue].
  • When [name of philosopher] argues in favor of [claim], they rely on [another claim] that is undercut by contemporary science. I will show that if we modify this claim in light of contemporary science, we will strengthen or weaken [name of philosopher]’s argument.

Collect Evidence and Build Your Case

Once you have identified your thesis statement or primary claim, collect evidence (by returning to your readings) to compose the best possible argument. As you assemble the evidence, you can think like a detective or prosecutor building a case. However, you want a case that is true, not just one that supports your position. So you should stay open to modifying your claim if it does not fit the evidence . If you need to do additional research, follow the guidelines presented earlier to locate authoritative information.

If you cannot find evidence to support your claim but still feel strongly about it, you can try to do your own philosophical thinking using any of the methods discussed in this chapter or in Chapter 1. Imagine counterexamples and thought experiments that support your claim. Use your intuitions and common sense, but remember that these can sometimes lead you astray. In general, common sense, intuitions, thought experiments, and counterexamples should support one another and support the sources you have identified from other philosophers. Think of your case as a structure: you do not want too much of the weight to rest on a single intuition or thought experiment.

Consider Counterarguments

Philosophy papers differ from typical argumentative papers in that philosophy students must spend more time and effort anticipating and responding to counterarguments when constructing their own arguments. This has two important effects: first, by developing counterarguments, you demonstrate that you have sufficiently thought through your position to identify possible weaknesses; second, you make your case stronger by taking away a potential line of attack that an opponent might use. By including counterarguments in your paper, you engage in the kind of dialectical process that philosophers use to arrive at the truth.

Accurately Represent Source Material

It is important to represent primary and secondary source material as accurately as possible. This means that you should consider the context and read the arguments using the principle of charity. Make sure that you are not strawmanning an argument you disagree with or misrepresenting a quote or paraphrase just because you need some evidence to support your argument. As always, your goal should be to find the most rationally compelling argument, which is the one most likely to be true.

Organize Your Paper

Academic philosophy papers use the same simple structure as any other paper and one you likely learned in high school or your first-year composition class.

Introduce Your Thesis

The purpose of your introduction is to provide context for your thesis. Simply tell the reader what to expect in the paper. Describe your topic, why it is important, and how it arises within the works you have been reading. You may have to provide some historical context, but avoid both broad generalizations and long-winded historical retellings. Your context or background information should not be overly long and simply needs to provide the reader with the context and motivation for your thesis. Your thesis should appear at the end of the introduction, and the reader should clearly see how the thesis follows from the introductory material you have provided. If you are writing a long paper, you may need several sentences to express your thesis, in which you delineate in broad terms the parts of your argument.

Make a Logical and Compelling Case Using the Evidence

The paragraphs that follow the introduction lay out your argument. One strategy you can use to successfully build paragraphs is to think in terms of good argument structure. You should provide adequate evidence to support the claims you want to make. Your paragraphs will consist of quotations and paraphrases from primary and secondary sources, context and interpretation, novel thoughts and ideas, examples and analogies, counterarguments, and replies to the counterarguments. The evidence should both support the thesis and build toward the conclusion. It may help to think architecturally: lay down the foundation, insert the beams of your strongest support, and then put up the walls to complete the structure. Or you might think in terms of a narrative: tell a story in which the evidence leads to an inevitable conclusion.

Connections

See the chapter on logic and reasoning for a developed account of different types of philosophical arguments.

Summarize Your Argument in the Conclusion

Conclude your paper with a short summary that recapitulates the argument. Remind the reader of your thesis and revisit the evidence that supports your argument. You may feel that the argument as written should stand on its own. But it is helpful to the reader to reinforce the argument in your conclusion with a short summary. Do not introduce any new information in the conclusion; simply summarize what you have already said.

The purpose of this chapter has been to provide you with basic tools to become a successful philosophy student. We started by developing a sophisticated picture of how the brain works, using contemporary neuroscience. The brain represents and projects a picture of the world, full of emotional significance, but this image may contain distortions that amount to a kind of illusion. Cognitive illusions produce errors in reasoning, called cognitive biases. To guard against error, we need to engage in effortful, reflective thinking, where we become aware of our biases and use logical strategies to overcome them. You will do well in your philosophy class if you apply the good habits of mind discussed in this chapter and apply the practical advice that has been provided about how to read and write about philosophy.

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How to Write a Philosophy Paper

  • Develop a Thesis
  • Formulate an Argument
  • Structure & Outline
  • Grammar & Style

Developing Your Thesis

What is a Thesis?

philosophical dissertation

The thesis is the most important part of your paper; it tells the reader what your stance is on a particular topic and offers reasons for that stance.

Since the rest of your paper will be spent defending your thesis--offering support for the thesis and reasons why criticism of the thesis may not be valid--it's crucial that you develop a strong thesis.

A strong thesis will:

philosophical dissertation

  • Answer a question;
  • Be engaging;  it can be challenged or opposed, thus also defended;
  • Pass the "so what? why should I care?" test;
  • Be supported by your paper;
  • Not be too broad nor too vague.

Source: Writing Guide for Philosophy. George Mason University.

Image source:  Sergui Bacioiu.  Ripple effect on water.  CC BY 2.0.  Wikimedia Commons.

Thesis Resources

  • Developing Your Thesis An overview of writing a thesis statement with guided questions for evaluating the quality of your statement. Everettcc.
  • How to Write a Thesis Statement Emphasizes the characteristics of a well-developed thesis statement. Indiana University.
  • Thesis Statements "...describes what a thesis statement is, how thesis statements work in your writing, and how you can discover or refine one..." University of North Carolina.
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  • Last Updated: Jan 22, 2024 10:48 AM
  • URL: https://libguides.lvc.edu/philosophypaper

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Tell Me A Story: The Normative Power of Storytelling , Zoe Cunliffe

Facing the Fringe , Laura Gradowski

Necessity, Essence and Analyticity: Toward an Analytic Essentialist Account of Necessity , Dongwoo Kim

Actual Causation: Apt Causal Models and Causal Relativism , Jennifer R. McDonald

Pervasive Nonarbitrariness: Meaning from Form in Natural Language , David J. Neely

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Dissertations from 2021 2021

Rethinking Thinking About Thinking: Against a Pedagogical Imperative to Cultivate Metacognitive Skills , Lauren R. Alpert

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Pictorial Communication , Nada Gatalo

Legal Purgatory: Why Some Animals are Neither Persons nor Property , Sharisse Kanet

Desire, Culture, and the Body , Zoey Lavallee

Cooperation: The Ethics of Shared Agency , Jules F. Salomone-Sehr

Perceiving the Body: On the Bodily Senses and the Nature of Perception , Fiona C. Schick

Essays on Communication , Shawn M. Simpson

Informed Consent: Foundations and Applications , Joanna Smolenski

Fighting Words: Slurs, Semantics, and the Law , Richard Stillman

What We Owe to Our Audience: The Hermeneutical Responsibility of Fiction Creators , Kathryn Wojtkiewicz

The Emotional Illusion of Music: Contemporary Western Musical Aesthetics in Dialogue with Ancient Eastern Philosophy , Yin Zhang

Dissertations from 2020 2020

Production, not Dependence: The Metaphysics of Causation and its Role in Explanation, Responsibility, and the Law , Yuval Abrams

Identity and Counterparthood in a Many Worlds Universe , Sophia A.M. Bishop

Logical Pluralism and Vicious Regresses , Daniel Boyd

The Police and the State , Brandon del Pozo

In and Out of Character: Socratic Mimēsis , Mateo Duque

Metaethical Intentionalism and the Intersubjectivity of Morals , Kyle Ferguson

An Eco-Political Theory of Territory , Jonathan Kwan

Ethical Validity: An Ethical Validity Claim for Discourse Ethics , Jamie B. Lindsay

Emotion in Mind , Kathryn E. Pendoley

Environmental Transformative Justice: Responding to Ecocide , Manuel Rodeiro

Continuity as Crisis: Two Traditions of Theorizing about Animal Minds , Adam See

A Modelist Proposal , Jian Shen

The Coherence of Left-Libertarianism: A New Approach to Reconciling Libertarianism and Socialism , Jesse E. Spafford

Epistemic Injustice and Sexual Violence Intervention Advocacy , Jennifer Ware

Freedom, Markets, and Equality in Eighteenth Century Philosophy , Nicole Whalen

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Mentality and Fundamentality , Christopher D. Brown

A Volitional Theory of Aesthetic Value , John Dyck

Who Needs Blame?: Answerability Without Expressed Blame , Sarah Gokhale

A Defense of Pure Connectionism , Alex B. Kiefer

The Origin of Power in the Need to Cooperate: Parallels Between Political and Economic Power , David Nagy

Quantum Uncertainty Reduction (QUR) Theory of Attended Access and Phenomenal Consciousness , Anatoly V. Nichvoloda

Some Non-Human Languages of Thought , Nicolas J. Porot

How We Act Together , Matthew Rachar

Intention and Interpretation in Law , Cosim J. Sayid

Frontiers of Conditional Logic , Yale Weiss

Basic-Acceptance Teleosemantics , Esteban Withrington

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A Philosophical Defense of Judicial Minimalism , Cory A. Evans

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Demystifying the Placebo Effect , Phoebe Friesen

The Fragmented Mind: Working Memory Cannot Implement Consciousness , Javier Gomez-Lavin

Experimental Philosophy and Feminist Epistemology: Conflicts and Complements , Amanda Huminski

The Philosophical Foundations of PLEN: A Protocol-theoretic Logic of Epistemic Norms , Ralph E. Jenkins

Morality as Social Software , Jongjin Kim

The Psychology of Plato's Republic: Taking Book 10 into Account , Daniel Mailick

Essence, Explanation, and Modal Knowledge , Antonella Mallozzi

The Syndrome of Romantic Love , Arina Pismenny

Unarticulated Constituents and Theories of Meaning , Jesse Rappaport

The Two Inexical Uses Theory of Proper Names and Frege's Puzzle , Daniel S. Shabasson

Infodynamics: A Naturalistic Psychosemantics , Daniel E. Weissglass

Scanlon's Contractualism and Its Critics , Kenneth R. Weisshaar

Theories of Perception and Recent Empirical Work , Philip Zigman

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W.E.B. Du Bois: Freedom, Race, and American Modernity , Elvira Basevich

Evil and the Ontological Disproof , Carl J. Brownson III

Scientifically Responsible Metaphysics: A Program for the Naturalization of Metaphysics , Amanda Bryant

A Normative Account of Political Representation , Kenneth R. Courtney

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Toward a Social Ontology of the Family , Laura W. Kane

Grounding, Causation and the Unity of Ontological Structure , Thomas Kivatinos

Syntax and Semantics of Perceptual Representation , James K. Quilty-Dunn

The Nature of Introspection , Adriana Renero

Aspects of Biological Explanation , Derek J. Skillings

For Narrativity: How Creating Narratives Structures Experience and Self , Natallia Stelmak Schabner

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Art as Display , Frank M. Boardman

Virtue’s Web: The Virtue of Empathic Attunement and the Need for a Relational Foundation , Georgina D. Campelia

Darwinian Debunking Reconsidered , Amanda J. Favia

Toward a Kripkean Concept of Number , Oliver R. Marshall

Seeing and Perceptual Content , Ben S. Phillips

Actions, Reasons and Self-Expression: A Defense of Subjectivist-Internalism about Reasons , Carolyn P. Plunkett

Three Essays in Intuitionistic Epistemology , Tudor Protopopescu

Consciousness, Perception, and Short-Term Memory , Henry F. Shevlin

Construing Character: Virtue as a Cognitive-Affective Processing System , Denise Vigani

The C3 Conditional: A Variably Strict Ordinary-Language Conditional , Monique L. Whitaker

Semantic Holism Revisited , Chun-Ping Yen

Moral Dilemmas and Moral Theories , Jihwan Yu

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Saving Moral Realism: Against Blackburn's Projectivism , Paul James Cummins

The Theoretical and Psychological Foundations of Care in Environmental Ethics , Rachel Fedock

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1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology

1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology

Philosophy, One Thousand Words at a Time

How to Write a Philosophical Essay

Authors: The Editors of 1000-Word Philosophy [1] Category: Student Resources Word Count: 998

If you want to convince someone of a philosophical thesis, such as that God exists , that abortion is morally acceptable , or that we have free will , you can write a philosophy essay. [2]

Philosophy essays are different from essays in many other fields, but with planning and practice, anyone can write a good one. This essay provides some basic instructions. [3]

An image of an open, blank notebook with a black pen lying on the right-side page.

1. Planning

Typically, your purpose in writing an essay will be to argue for a certain thesis, i.e., to support a conclusion about a philosophical claim, argument, or theory. [4] You may also be asked to carefully explain someone else’s essay or argument. [5]

To begin, select a topic. Most instructors will be happy to discuss your topic with you before you start writing. Sometimes instructors give specific prompts with topics to choose from.

It’s generally best to select a topic that you’re interested in; you’ll put more energy into writing it. Your topic will determine what kind of research or preparation you need to do before writing, although in undergraduate philosophy courses, you usually don’t need to do outside research. [6]

Essays that defend or attack entire theories tend to be longer, and are more difficult to write convincingly, than essays that defend or attack particular arguments or objections: narrower is usually better than broader.

After selecting a topic, complete these steps:

  • Ensure that you understand the relevant issues and arguments. Usually, it’s enough to carefully read and take notes on the assigned readings on your essay’s topic.
  • Choose an initial thesis. Generally, you should choose a thesis that’s interesting, but not extremely controversial. [7] You don’t have to choose a thesis that you agree with, but it can help. (As you plan and write, you may decide to revise your thesis. This may require revising the rest of your essay, but sometimes that’s necessary, if you realize you want to defend a different thesis than the one you initially chose.)
  • Ensure that your thesis is a philosophical thesis. Natural-scientific or social-scientific claims, such as that global warming is occurring or that people like to hang out with their friends , are not philosophical theses. [8] Philosophical theses are typically defended using careful reasoning, and not primarily by citing scientific observations.

Instructors will usually not ask you to come up with some argument that no philosopher has discovered before. But if your essay ignores what the assigned readings say, that suggests that you haven’t learned from those readings.

2. Structure

Develop an outline, rather than immediately launching into writing the whole essay; this helps with organizing the sections of your essay.

Your structure will probably look something like the following, but follow your assignment’s directions carefully. [9]

2.1. Introduction and Thesis

Write a short introductory paragraph that includes your thesis statement (e.g., “I will argue that eating meat is morally wrong”). The thesis statement is not a preview nor a plan; it’s not “I will consider whether eating meat is morally wrong.”

If your thesis statement is difficult to condense into one sentence, then it’s likely that you’re trying to argue for more than one thesis. [10]

2.2. Arguments

Include at least one paragraph that presents and explains an argument. It should be totally clear what reasons or evidence you’re offering to support your thesis.

In most essays for philosophy courses, you only need one central argument for your thesis. It’s better to present one argument and defend it well than present many arguments in superficial and incomplete ways.

2.3. Objection

Unless the essay must be extremely short, raise an objection to your argument. [11] Be clear exactly which part of the other argument (a premise, or the form) is being questioned or denied and why. [12]

It’s usually best to choose either one of the most common or one of the best objections. Imagine what a smart person who disagreed with you would say in response to your arguments, and respond to them.

Offer your own reply to any objections you considered. If you don’t have a convincing reply to the objection, you might want to go back and change your thesis to something more defensible.

2.5. Additional Objections and Replies

If you have space, you might consider and respond to the second-best or second-most-common objection to your argument, and so on.

2.6. Conclusion

To conclude, offer a paragraph summarizing what you did. Don’t include any new or controversial claims here, and don’t claim that you did more than you actually accomplished. There should be no surprises at the end of a philosophy essay.

Make your writing extremely clear and straightforward. Use simple sentences and don’t worry if they seem boring: this improves readability. [13] Every sentence should contribute in an obvious way towards supporting your thesis. If a claim might be confusing, state it in more than one way and then choose the best version.

To check for readability, you might read the essay aloud to an audience. Don’t try to make your writing entertaining: in philosophy, clear arguments are fun in themselves.

Concerning objections, treat those who disagree with you charitably. Make it seem as if you think they’re smart, careful, and nice, which is why you are responding to them.

Your readers, if they’re typical philosophers, will be looking for any possible way to object to what you say. Try to make your arguments “airtight.”

4. Citations

If your instructor tells you to use a certain citation style, use it. No citation style is universally accepted in philosophy. [14]

You usually don’t need to directly quote anyone. [15] You can paraphrase other authors; where you do, cite them.

Don’t plagiarize . [16] Most institutions impose severe penalties for academic dishonesty.

5. Conclusion

A well-written philosophy essay can help people gain a new perspective on some important issue; it might even change their minds. [17] And engaging in the process of writing a philosophical essay is one of the best ways to develop, understand, test, and sometimes change, your own philosophical views. They are well worth the time and effort.

[1] Primary author: Thomas Metcalf. Contributing authors: Chelsea Haramia, Dan Lowe, Nathan Nobis, Kristin Seemuth Whaley.

[2] You can also do some kind of oral presentation, either “live” in person or recorded on video. An effective presentation, however, requires the type of planning and preparation that’s needed to develop an effective philosophy paper: indeed, you may have to first write a paper and then use it as something like a script for your presentation. Some parts of the paper, e.g., section headings, statements of arguments, key quotes, and so on, you may want to use as visual aids in your presentation to help your audience better follow along and understand.

[3] Many of these recommendations are, however, based on the material in Horban (1993), Huemer (n.d.), Pryor (n.d.), and Rippon (2008). There is very little published research to cite about the claims in this essay, because these claims are typically justified by instructors’ experience, not, say, controlled experiments on different approaches to teaching philosophical writing. Therefore, the guidance offered here has been vetted by many professional philosophers with a collective hundreds of hours of undergraduate teaching experience and further collective hundreds of hours of taking philosophy courses. The editors of 1000-Word Philosophy also collectively have thousands of hours of experience in writing philosophy essays.

[4] For more about the areas of philosophy, see What is Philosophy? by Thomas Metcalf.

[5] For an explanation of what is meant by an “argument” in philosophy, see Arguments: Why Do You Believe What You Believe? by Thomas Metcalf.

[6] Outside research is sometimes discouraged, and even prohibited, for philosophy papers in introductory courses because a common goal of a philosophy paper is not to report on a number of views on a philosophical issue—so philosophy papers usually are not “research reports”—but to rather engage a specific argument or claim or theory, in a more narrow and focused way, and show that you understand the issue and have engaged in critically. If a paper engages in too much reporting of outside research, that can get in the way of this critical evaluation task.

[7] There are two reasons to avoid extremely controversial theses. First, such theses are usually more difficult to defend adequately. Second, you might offend your instructor, who might (fairly or not) give you a worse grade. So, for example, you might argue that abortion is usually permissible, or usually wrong, but you probably shouldn’t argue that anyone who has ever said the word ‘abortion’ should be tortured to death, and you probably shouldn’t argue that anyone who’s ever pregnant should immediately be forced to abort the pregnancy, because both of these claims are extremely implausible and so it’s very unlikely that good arguments could be developed for them. But theses that are controversial without being implausible can be interesting for both you and the instructor, depending on how you develop and defend your argument or arguments for that thesis.

[8] Whether a thesis is philosophical mostly depends on whether it is a lot like theses that have been defended in important works of philosophy. That means it would be a thesis about metaphysics, epistemology, value theory, logic, history of philosophy, or something therein. For more information, see Philosophy and Its Contrast with Science and What is Philosophy? both by Thomas Metcalf.

[9] Also, read the grading rubric, if it’s available. If your course uses an online learning environment, such as Canvas, Moodle, or Schoology, then the rubric will often be visible as attached to the assignment itself. The rubric is a breakdown of the different requirements of the essay and how each is weighted and evaluated by the instructor. So, for example, if some requirement has a relatively high weight, you should put more effort into doing a good job. Similarly, some requirement might explicitly mention some step for the assignment that you need to complete in order to get full credit.

[10] In some academic fields, a “thesis” or “thesis statement” is considered both your conclusion and a statement of the basic support you will give for that conclusion. In philosophy, your thesis is usually just that conclusion: e..g, “Eating meat is wrong,” “God exists,” “Nobody has free will,” and so on: the support given for that conclusion is the support for your thesis.

[11] To be especially clear, this should be an objection to the argument given for your thesis or conclusion, not an objection to your thesis or conclusion itself. This is because you don’t want to give an argument and then have an objection that does not engage that argument, but instead engages something else, since that won’t help your reader or audience better understand and evaluate that argument.

[12] For more information about premises, forms, and objections, see Arguments: Why do You Believe What You Believe? by Thomas Metcalf.

[13] For a philosophical argument in favor of clear philosophical writing, and guidance on producing such writing, see Fischer and Nobis (2019).

[14] The most common styles in philosophy are APA (Purdue Online Writing Lab, n.d.a) and Chicago (Purdue Online Writing Lab, n.d.b.).

[15] You might choose to directly quote someone when it’s very important that the reader know that the quoted author actually said what you claim they said. For example, if you’re discussing some author who made some startling claim, you can directly quote them to show that they really said that. You might also directly quote someone when they presented some information or argument in a very concise, well-stated way, such that paraphrasing it would take up more space than simply quoting them would.

[16] Plagiarism, in general, occurs when someone submits written or spoken work that is largely copied, in style, substance, or both, from some other author’s work, and does not attribute it to that author. However, your institution or instructor may define “plagiarism” somewhat differently, so you should check with their definitions. When in doubt, check with your instructor first.

[17] These are instructions for relatively short, introductory-level philosophy essays. For more guidance, there are many useful philosophy-writing guides online to consult, e.g.: Horban (1993); Huemer (n.d.); Pryor (n.d.); Rippon (2008); Weinberg (2019).

Fischer, Bob and Nobis, Nathan. (2019, June 4). Why writing better will make you a better person. The Chronicle of Higher Education . 

Horban, Peter. (1993). Writing a philosophy paper. Simon Fraser University Department of Philosophy . 

Huemer, Michael. (N.d.). A guide to writing. Owl232.net .

Pryor, Jim. (N.d.). Guidelines on writing a philosophy paper. Jimpryor.net .

Purdue Online Writing Lab. (N.d.a.). General format. Purdue Online Writing Lab . 

Purdue Online Writing Lab. (N.d.b.). General format. Purdue Online Writing Lab .

Rippon, Simon. (2008). A brief guide to writing the philosophy paper. Harvard College Writing Center .

Weinberg, Justin. (2019, January 15). How to write a philosophy paper: Online guides. Daily Nous .

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Philosophy dissertations

undergraduate Y4

I supervise at least one undergraduate a year. Many of the same questions come up each year. I have prepared below a set of guidelines to help when starting out on a dissertation.

Please note that this is personal advice and not to be taken as a substitute for the undergraduate handbook and marking scheme.

Do’s and Don’t’s for a dissertation

  • Have a claim. You should be able to state your claim clearly in 1–2 sentences.
  • Have claim of the right size – viz. a size you can defend (be careful not to be too ambitious here)
  • Have a rigorous argument for your claim. Your argument should be able to convince a rational person who does not already believe your claim
  • Make your dissertation clearly understandable to a philosopher who is not an expert in this area
  • Explain why your claim is important
  • Be honest if you do not conclusively establish your claim – e.g. clarify that your claim follows conditional on certain stated assumptions, list unresolved objections
  • Make clear your original contribution
  • Make use of your supervisor for feedback on drafts

Don’t:

  • Aim for this to be your magnum opus or last word on the topic
  • Try to solve a major problem (e.g. the mind-body problem, external world scepticism)
  • Cover every possible view in the field
  • Include extra material unless it advances your argument
  • Have one massive 6,000 word chapter
  • Leave it until Semester 2 to start work

How to write a dissertation

The points above give you an idea of what to aim for but they don’t provide a method for how to get there. There are many ways to write a dissertation. It may be reassuring to know that there are simple methods that can reliably produce an excellent dissertation. The algorithm below is one method:

  • Find the general area you like (e.g. phenomenal consciousness)
  • Select one article/book chapter in that area that you find fascinating (e.g. Smith (2009))
  • Summarise Smith (2009) carefully in your own words, paying attention to whether each step in the argument follows from the previous
  • Look for weaknesses in Smith (2009)’s argument
  • Which new resources do you need to draw on?
  • Which alternative conclusions follow?
  • Which objections can be raised to your proposal?
  • Draw on relevant bits of surrounding literature to support (5)

You have a first class dissertation!

Filling the dissertation with enough words

A common worry among students is whether they are able to write enough words. The longest piece of philosophical writing they may have done so far is 3,000 words. How can you write a sustained argument that lasts for 8,000 words? This turns out to be easier than you might think. Indeed, the difficulty often turns out to be not going over the word limit.

For the sake of argument, let us see how following the algorithm above might work out in terms of word count.

  • Introduction (500 words): What is your claim, the outline of your argument?
  • Chapter 1 (1,000 words): Why is your claim important? What are the pay-offs?
  • Chapter 2 (2,000 words): Careful and charitable summary of X in your own words
  • Chapter 3 (2,000 words): Your rigorous criticism of X
  • Chapter 4 (2,000 words): How X should be corrected, associated costs, consequences for views that use X, possible objections
  • Conclusion (500 words): Summary and next steps for future work

And we are done!

Milestones to aim for

Milestones depend on the specific project and you should talk to your supervisor about your workload and what would be a reasonable plan for finishing the dissertation in the year. Below is a rough plan that one might aim for.

  • End Y3: meet supervisor & agree on general topic
  • Summer vacation: background reading on topic
  • Start Y4: find 1 article/chapter to focus

Year 4, Semester 1:

  • Start: meet with supervisor & agree plan for year
  • Middle: first draft of 2 chapters
  • End: polished draft of 2 chapters

Year 4, Semester 2:

  • Start: first draft of entire dissertation
  • Middle: polished draft of entire dissertation
  • End: revisit, revise, and submit dissertation

Background reading

A dissertation in philosophy is a story … like all good stories, it only includes what is essential to the story — Robert Paul Wolff’s astute advice that applies just as well to UG dissertations as well as PhD theses

Be concise, but explain yourself fully — Jim Pryor with an excellent 3-stage plan for writing philosophy

Style is the feather in the arrow, not the feather in the cap — Peter Lipton has some wonderful and concise writing advice

Read your work aloud. … Be firm: take your prose to the gym, and keep working at it until the bones and sinews show through! — Peter Smith, previously editor of Analysis , with some fantastic advice

What is an argument? — Jim Pryor’s guide is essential reading for anyone writing philosophy; it contains a lexicon of philosophical terms and a taxonomy of good and bad arguments, which is useful for classifying the arguments you consider

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Dissertations & Theses

Ph.d. dissertations + m.a. theses.

Here, to the best of our ability to reconstruct it, is a list of all Ph.D. dissertations and master's theses ever written in our department. (For a shorter list of only more recent Ph.D. dissertations, see our page of placement information .) Note that, until 1929, the Department of Philosophy was not distinct from the Department of Psychology at Indiana University. This helps to explain some of the titles below that nowadays might be thought odd to find in a Department of Philosophy. Nevertheless, even Dr. Tugman's 1912 dissertation on the English sparrow — which is as pure a piece of empirical psychology as one could require (it even contains a discussion of how to handle the sparrows) — says it is submitted for the Ph.D. in Philosophy, not Psychology. The same goes for the pre-1929 M.A. theses listed below.

Ph.D. Dissertations

Daniel Buckley, Evidence and Epistemic Normativity

Uri Eran,  Kant's Theory of Emotion: Toward a Systematic Reconstruction

Daniel Lindquist,  Hegel's Critique of Kant's Philosophy of Biology  

Elisabeth Lloyd, 2021 Advanced Study Program Postdoctoral Fellow, National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado

Monica Morrison,  A Socio-Epistemic Theory of Climate Model Development  

Levi Tenen, From Heirlooms to Nature: An Account of Extrinsic Final Value James Andrew Smith, Jr., Science as the Pursuit of Truth: On Quine’s Naturalism

Kevin Mills, Empirical Knowledge in Normative Reasoning

Wade Munroe,  Rationality and Higher-Order Evidence

Hao Hong, Truth and Reality

Dylan Black, A Philosophical Framework for the Science of Consciousness

Emmalon Davis, Testifying Across Difference: Responsibility for Interpersonal and Structural Epistemic Injustice

Noam Hoffer, Kant’s Theoretical Conception of God

Tufan Kiymaz , Phenomenal Knowledge of Physical Facts: What Mary Didn't Know about Physicalism

Tim Perrine, Accurate Representation and Epistemic Value

Sommerlatte, Curtis, The Central Role of Cognition in Kant's Transcendental Deduction

Krista Rodkey, Hume on Sympathy: Justice, Politeness, and Beauty

Mason, Sharon, Knowledge and the First-Person Perspective

Woodward, Philip, The Emergence of Mental Content: An Essay on the Metaphysics of Mind

Saxon, Michael, Drones and Contemporary Conflict: Just War Theory and the US Drone Wars

Houser, Kevin, Suffering, Acknowledgement, and the Ehtical Space of Reasons

Blake, Susan, Mental Content and Epistemic Foundations

Jankovic, Marija, Conventional Meaning

Palmer, Elizabeth, Facts as reasons: The Role of Experience in Empirical Justification

Rings, Michael, The Aesthetic Cosmopolitan Project

Carlson, Matthew, The Structure of Logical Knowledge

Gonnerman, Chad, Concepts in psychology: Towards a better hybrid theory

Han, Gwahee, Integrity as a moral virtue

Jones, Derek, Primitive Agency

Koss, Michael, Semantic and Mathematical Foundations for Intuitionism

Cheung, Kwok-Tung, Doxastic Involuntarism, Epistemic Deliberation and Agency

Gehring, Allen, Truthmaker Theory and Its Application

Harris, Steven, Artifacts and Human Cognitive Agency

McAninch, Andrew, Holding Me to My Word: The Normative Avowal View of Rational Agency

Phillips, Luke, Aestheticism from Kant to Nietzsche

Talcott, David, Metaphysics and Religion in Plato’s Euthyphro

Theurer, Kari,   Rethinking Reductionism: From 17th Century Mechanism to Contemporary Molecular Neuroscience

Buckner, Cameron, Learning from mistakes: error-correction and the nature of cognition

Lopez, Jason, The process of defining self-deception

Wang, Ellie Hua,  Toward an Empirically Grounded Theory of Virtues for Consequentialism

Churchill, John, Mental Causation and the Problem of Causal Exclusion .

Diener, David, The Supremacy and Irrelevance of Reason: Kierkegaard’s Understanding of Authority in the Second Authorship .

Kirchner, Daniel, Sittlichkeit and the Ancient View of the Self in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit .

Lee, Jaeho, Explanation and Its Place In Metaphysical and Scientific Inquiries .

Bassett, Gregory, Searching for Normativity .

Burkhart, Brian, Respect for Kinship: Toward an Indigenous Environmental Ethics .

Aumann, Antony, Kierkegaard on the Need for Indirect Communication .

Jacobs, Jonathan, Causal Powers, A Neo-Aristotelian Metaphysic .

Im, Seungpil, A Study of Kant’s Dreams of a Spirit Seer: Kant’s Ambiguous Relation to Swedenborg.

Alexander, Joshua, Philosophical Intuitions and Experimental Philosophy .

Keele, Lisa, Theories of Continuity and Infinitesimals: Four Philosophers of the Nineteenth Century .

Theiner, Georg, From Extended Minds to Group Minds: Rethinking the Boundaries of the Mental.

Ceballes, John. Hearing the Call of Reason: Kant and Publicity.

Kimble, Kevin. The Intentional Structure of Phenomenal Awareness.

Klein, Alexander M. The Rise of Empiricism: William James, Thomas Hill Green, and the Struggle over Psychology.

McDonald, Brian E. Constraint Variational Semantics.

Seymour, Melissa. Duties of Love and Kant's Doctrine of Obligatory Ends.

Abramson, Darren. Computability and Mind.

Demir, Hilmi. Error Comes with Imagination: A Probabilistic Theory of Mental Content.

Stephen James Crowley. A Complex Story About Simple Inquiries: Micro-epistemology and Animal Cognition.

Tropman, Beth. Moral Realism and the New Intuitionism.

Murakami, Yuko. Modal Logic of Partitions.

Werner, Daniel. Myth and Philosophy in Plato's Phaedrus.

Wolsing, Jennifer. Free at Last: A Libertarian Defense of Free Will.

Conolly, Brian Francis. Studies in the Metaphysics of Dietrich von Freiberg.

Jain, Pragati. Validity and Its Epistemic Roles.

Lindland, Erik. Kierkegaard on Self-Deception.

Shaw, Joshua. Putting Ethics First: Reconsidering Emmanuel Levinas's Ethical Metaphysics.

Brown, Karen Leigh. Epistemic Possibilities and the Sources of Belief.

Dalton, Eric. Analyticity, Holism and Conceptual Role Semantics.

Farin, Ingo. Studies in Early Heidegger (1919–1923).

Gottlieb, Michah. The Ambiguity of Reason: Mendelssohn's Writings on Spinoza.

Morton, Brian P. R. Ineffability and Self-Refutation: Non-Monotonic Logic in the Thought of Pseudo-Dionysius, Sextus Empiricus, and the Astasahasrika Prajnaparamita.

Pamental, Matthew P. Naturalized Human Agency and the Emergence of Norms: Placing Dewey's Ethics on the Map.

Corry, Richard Lachlan. A Causal-Structural Theory of Empirical Knowledge.

Guldmann, Rony. Two Orientations towards Human Nature.

Kaniike, Yoichi. Carnap's Conception of Wissenshaftslogik.

Keele, Rondo Patten. Formal Ontology in the Fourteenth Century: The Chatton Principle and Ockham's Razor.

Janiak, Andrew. Kant's Newtonianism.

Kim, Hans Eung. The Problem of Indexicality.

Liang, Caleb. Toward an Understanding of Objectivity: A Study of the Realism/Antirealistm Debate and the Nature of Empirical Content.

Barceló Aspeita, Axel Arturo. Mathematics as Grammar: 'Grammar' in Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Mathematics during the Middle Period.

DiLeo, Jeffrey R. Is There a Text in Philosophy: Writing, Style, Rhetoric and Culture.

Musselman, Jack Green. Judicial Craftmanship at the Supreme Court: A Critical Legal Studies Examination of Court Crafts Informing the Hate Speech Debate (2 vols).

Pook, David Olson. Objectivity, Skepticism, and the Realistic Spirit in Ethics.

Bolyard, Charles. Knowledge, Certainty, and Propositions Per se notae: A Study of Peter Auriol.

Chemero, Anthony P. How To Be an Anti-Representationalist.

Grueso, Delfin Ig. Justice and Monirities: An Evaluation of John Rawls' Political Liberalism.

DeLancy, Craig. Emotion, Action, and Intentionality.

Edwards, James G. Justification as Intra-Personal Argumentation.

Kennedy, Thomas V. Impartiality and the Moral Domain.

Zheng, Yiwei. Bad Faith, Authenticity, and Pure Reflection in Jean-Paul Sartre's Early Philosophy.

Hardy, James Hintze. Instantial Reasoning, Arbitrary Objects, and Holey Propositions.

Kovach, Adam. A Species of Good: An Essay on Truth as a Kind of Value.

Lee, Byeong Deok. The Paradox of Belief Instability and a Revision Theory of Belief.

Ray, Carolyn. Identity and Universals: A Conceptualist Approach to Logical, Metaphysical, and Epistemological Problems of Contemporary Identity Theory.

Hogg, Charles R., Jr. Ethics secundum stoicos: An Edition, Translation, and Critical Essay.

Mattox, John Mark. Saint Augustine and the Theory of the Just War.

Miller, Pamela. The Implications of John Dewey's Ideas for Environmental Ethics.

Rosenberg, Gregg Howard. A Place for Consciousness: Probing the Deep Structure of the Natural World.

Fry, Jeffrey P. Self-Esteem, Moral Luck, and the Meaning of Grace.

Shimojima, Atsushi. On the Efficacy of Representation.

Eberle, Ruth. Diagrams and Natural Deduction: Theory and Pedagogy of Hyperproof.

Hammer, Eric. M. Diagrams, Logic and Representation.

Luengo, Isabel. Diagrams in Geometry.

Marquez, Ivan. Rorty, Reason, and Modernity's Quest for Freedom and Equality.

Schönfield, Martin. Kant's Early Philosophy of Nature: Science and Metaphysics.

Steeves, H. Peter. Toward a Phenomenological Ethic of Community.

Morado, Raymundo. Fault-Tolerant Reasoning.

Parker, Surekha Gillian. An Aesthetic Theory for Metaphor: How to Avoid Beating a Good Metaphor to Death.

Santory Jorge, Anayra O. The Moral Force of Philosophy.

Yoon, Bosuk. The Problem of Naturalizing Intentionality.

Chalmers, David John. Toward a Theory of Consciousness.

Curtis, Gary Nelson. The Concept of Logical Form.

Chapuis, André. Circularity, Truth, and the Liar Paradox.

Syverson, Paul F. Logic, Convention, and Common Knowledge.

Vaughan, Christopher. Pure Reflection: Self-Knowledge and Moral Understanding in the Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre.

Hicks, Stephen Ronald Craig. Foundationalism and the Genesis of Justification.

Ning, Yin-Bin. A Post-Philosophical Essay on Knowledge/Power: Richard Rorty, Anti-Foundationalism, and the Possibility of an Alternative Epistemology. </p

Beavers, M. Gordon. Topics in Lukasiwicz Logics.

Houng, Yu-Houng. Classicism, Connectionism, and the Concept of Level.

Lee, In Tak. A Critique of the Universalist Theory of Ethical Justification: Habermas vs. the Contextualist Point of View.

Soraj, Hongladarom. Imagination in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.

Dixon, Bobby R. The Master-Slave Dialectic in the Writings of Ralph Ellison: Toward a Neo-Hegelian Synthesis.

Favila, José Manuel. Intersubjectivity of Indexical Thoughts.

Foulks, Frank. A Phenomenal Semantic Frame for the Semiotics of Contrapuntal Theory.

Holland, Monica. Beliefs Based on Emotional Reception: Their Formation, Justification and Truth.

Mares, Edwin David. The Logic of Fictional Discourse.

Armijos, Gonzalo. Marxism, Pragmatism, and Historical Realism: An Epistemological Appraisal.

Freund, Max A. Formal Investigations of Holistic Realist Ramified Conceptualism.

Kalumba, Kibuggo M. The Common Good as a Mandate for the Official Catholic Church's Support for, And Participation in, the Various Revolutionary Movements in Latin America.

Maróstica de Gomez, Ana. Peirce's Conceptions of Truth: A Tychist Approach.

Palma, Adriano. Indexicality.

Jetli, Priyedarshi. The Origins of a Realist Conception of Relations in Plato's Phaedo.

Katz, Sheri. Ontology and Epistemology in John Scottus Eriugena.

Day, Timothy Joseph. Infinite Regress Arguments: Some Metaphysical and Epistemological Problems.

Kill, Kathleen. A Theory of Events.

Herrera, Alejandro Ibanez. Leibniz on Existence.

Landini, Gregory. Meinong Reconstructed versus Early Russell Reconstructed: A Study in the Formal Ontology of Fiction.

Morris, Robert Allan. A Complementarity Thesis for Doxastic Truth.

Orilia, Francesco. Natural Language Semantics and Guise Theory.

Bahlul, Raja. Sameness and Similarity and the Identity of Indiscernibles.

Cohen, Daniel H. The Logic of Conditional Assertions.

Etuk, Udo A. Ethical Postulates for African Development.

Gomez, Ricardo J. Kant's Pre-Transcendental Conception of Science.

Kim, Hyo-Myung. Constant Conjunction and Necessity: A Study in Hume's Theory of Causation.

Kincaid, Harold. Hegel and Holistic Explanation.

Wahl, Russell. Propositions and Facts in the Early Philosophy of Bertrand Russell.

Laycock, Steven William. Intersubjectivity and the Divine Envisionment.

Schoenig, Richard Keith. Primary and Secondary Qualities.

Lesses, Glenn. Desire and Motivation in Plato: Issues in the Psychology of the Early Dialogues and the Republic.

Macdonald, J. Ellis. On Truth and Falsehood in the Extra-Moral Sense: A Translation and Critical Study.

Pendlebury, Michael John. Believing.

Weber, Gregory Dean. Theory of Purposive Behavior, Desire, and Belief, with Applications to the Issues of Materialism and the Objectivity of Value Judgments.

Wilt, Lawrence J. M. Franz Brentano's Epistemology for Ethics.

Fleming, Roger A. A Relativist Theory of Truth and the Problem of Skepticism.

Momoh, Campbell Shittu. An African Conception of Being and the Traditional Problem of Freedom and Determinism.

Dipert, Randall R. Development and Crisis in Late Boolean Logic: The Deductive Logics of Peirce, Jevons and Schröder.

Maloney, J. Christopher. A Philosophical Theory of Perception.

Seiferth, David M. The Grounds of Moral Rightness.

Kapitan, Tomis. Foundations for a Theory of Propositional Form, Implication, Alethic Modality and Generalization.

McKinsey, Thomas Michael. The Reference of Proper Names: A Critical Essay in the Philosophy of Language.

Rapaport, William Joseph. Intentionality and the Structure of Existence.

MacCarthy, Mark Michael. On Methodological Individualism.

Geels, Donald Eugene. False Beliefs and Possible States of Affairs.

Fletcher, James John. Generalization in Art Criticism and the Role Therin of Paradigmatic Aesthetic Objects.

Freeman, James B. Algebraic Semantics for Modal and Relevant Predicate Logics.

Hunt, Walter Murray. An Examination of Some Problems about the Nature of "Moral" Situations and Their Role in Ethics.

Nute, Donald. Identification and Demonstrative Reference.

Beversluis, John. The Connection between Duty and Happiness in Kant's Moral Philosophy.

Cadwallader, Eva Hauel. Nicolai Hartmann's Twentieth-Century Value Platonism.

Williams, Clifford. 'Now', Interchangeability without a Change of Truth Value, and Time.

Williams, Thomas Raymong. The Ideal Observer Theory in Ethics.

Dreher, John Hugo. A Study of Human Action.

Heizer, Ruth Bradfute. A Critique of Karl Popper's Solution to the Problem of Induction.

Hull, Richard T. The Role of the Principle of Acquaintance in Contemporary Disputes over the Relation of Mental, Perceptual, and Physical.

Nassar, Alan George. The Ontological Argument and the Problem of God.

Barford, Robert. The Criticisms of the Theory of Forms in the First Part of Plato's Parmenides.

Marquis, Donald Bagley. Scientific Realism and the Antinomy of External Objects.

Roberts, Lawrence D. John Duns Scotus and the Concept of Human Freedom.

Samuelson, Norbert. The Problem of God's Knowledge in Gersonides: A Translation of and Commentary to Book Three of the Milhamot Adonai.

Scott, Stephen Hamilton. Universals and Ontological Analysis.

Park, Désirée. Berkeley's Theory of Notions.

Bayles, Michael D. Rule Utilitarianism and an Enlightened Moral Consciousness.

Hanke, John W. The Ontological Status of the Work of Art in the Aesthetics of Maritain.

Perreiah, Alan R. Is There a Doctrine of Supposition in the Logica Magna?

Vollrath, John. Actions and Events.

Allen, Allan J. Moral Judgment and the Concept of a Universal Imperative with Special Reference to Kant.

Clatterbaugh, Kenneth C. The Problem of Individuation.

Cooper, William F. Francesco Romero's Theory of Value.

Gram, Moltke S. Two Theories of the A Priori.

Robinsin, William S. Perception and Reference.

Galligan, Edward Michael. Plato and the Philosophy of Language.

Howard, Vernon Alfred. The Academic Compromise on Free Will in Nineteenth Century American Philosophy: A Study of Thomas C. Upham's A Philosophical and Practical Treatise on the Will (1834).

Perkins, Robert L. Kierkegaard and Hegel: The Dialectical Structure of Kierkegaard's Ethical Thought.

Peterson, John. Logical Atomism and the Realism-Nominalism Issue: A Critique of Contemporary Atomism from the Viewpoint of Classical Realism.

Dietl, Paul Joseph. Explanation and Action: An Examination of the Controversy between Hume and Some of His Contemporary Critics.

Tovo, Jerome. The Experience of Causal Efficacy in Whitehead and Hume.

Young, Theodore A. Change in Aristotle, Descartes, Human, and Whitehead: An Essay in Philosophy of Nature.

Lineback, Richard H. The Place of the Imaginatiion in Hume's Epistemology.

Wisadavet, Wit. Sartre's and the Buddhist's Concept of Man.

Davis, Clarence George. Obligation and Aspiration in Ethics.

Anton, Peter Achilles. Empiriciam and Analysis.

Kleis, Sander J. Brightman's Idea of God.

Smyth, Richard A. Kant's Theory of Reference.

Owsley, Richard Mills. The Moral Philosophy of Karl Jaspers.

Churchill, James Spencer. Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics.

Lord, Catherine. The Cognitive Import of Art, with Reference to Kant's Theory of Aesthetic Judgment.

Rukavina, Thomas. Heidegger as Critic of Western Thinking.

Faruki, Mohamed Zuhdi Taji. The Universal Categories of Charles Sanders Peirce.

Hayes, Frank Ambrose. Platonic Elements in Spinoza's Theory of Method.

Frye, Robert Edward. Pragmatism in Recent Non-Pragmatic Systems: Santayana, Bergson, Whitehead.

Carmichael, Douglas. Order and Human Value.

Kramer, Richard Neil. The Ontological Foundations of Negatives.

Mayfield, William Hollingsworth. Platonism and Christianity in the Work of Paul Elmer More.

Al-Faruqi, Isma'il R. On Justifying the Good.

Reeves, George Cooper.  The Philosophy of Tommaso Campanella with Special Reference to His Doctrine of the Sense of Things and of Magic, with a Translation of Books 1 and 2 and a Bibliography.

Baker, Arthur Mulford.  The River of God: The Source-Stream for Morals and Religion.

Tugman, Eupha May Foley.  Light Discrimination in the English Sparrow.

Master's Theses

Gottschling, David.  Moral Philosophy's Double Vision: Toward a More Coherent Moral Philosophy.

Taliano, Lisa Toni.  The Tragic Affirmation of Life: A Critical Analysis of Nietzsche and Van Gogh.

Vári, Peter.  Wittgenstein and the Problem of Relations.

DiLeo, Jeffrey R.  Charles S. Peirce on Proper Names and Haecceitism.

Tilton, Louis.  Sartre's Theory of the Group.

Dreher, John Hugo.  A Theory of Knowledge for Empiricism.

Evans, Fred J.  Whitehead's Philosophy of Mind.

Johnson, Anita Louise.  Activity, Labor, and Human Nature in Karl Marx.

Johnston, Thomas Michael.  The Process of Transition in Whitehead's Metaphysics.

Larrabee, Mary Jeanne.  Intentionality in Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger: A Comparative Study of Ideen I and Sein und Zeit.

Hamrick, William B.  Time in the Philosophies of Whitehead and Merleau-Ponty.

Hunt, Walter Murray.  The Situationism of Joseph Fletcher: An Examination of Some of Its Philosophical Bases.

Learned, Stephen Paul.  The Austin-Strawson Debate on Truth.

Moon, Donald Le Rue.  Max Scheler's Phenomenology of Religion: The Self-Givenness of the Divine and Human Consciousness.

Gale, Kenneth E.  Descartes: The Cogito, Substance, and Individuation.

Goldenbaum, Donald M.  Ambiguities in Certain Arguments for the Existence of External Objects.

Hammond, John Elwyn.  Collingwood's Theory of Presuppositions: The Road to a New Metaphysics.

Krausz, Michael.  On Method in Metaphysics: A Modular Analysis for Criticism of Philosophical Theories.

Pil'l, Anne Kimino Uemura.  Cogito, ergo sum: A Critical Analysis of Jaakko Hintikka's Interpretation.

Mueller, Robert W. An Examination of the Meaning of the Socratic Paradoxes.

Kuo, David Dah-Chuen. Kant's Method and His Deduction of the Categories.

Williams, Thomas Raymong. A Critique of the Rationalistic Ethical Theory Presented in Marcus Singer's Generalization in Ethics.

Lineback, Richard H. An Introduction to Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments.

Leonard, Marilyn Rosenthein. Propositions and Atomic Propositions.

Stamatakos, Bess Makris. On Being Both Red and Blue All Over at the Same Time.

Galligan, Edward Michael. Towards the Understanding of Parmenides' Way of Truth.

Gavrilis, Nicholas. Non-Cognitive Ethics: An Examination of Five Contemporary Ethical Writers.

D'Abbracci, Anthony Robert. Order vs. the Arbitrary: St. Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus.

Perkins, Robert L. Aesthetics and Existence: Some Kierkegaardian Themes.

Smyth, Richard A. Intuition and Concept: A Study in Kantian Logic.

Jager, Ronald. Language, Truth and Intentional Logic.

Burkhardt, Phillip Edward. Monad and Universe: Some IMplication of Leibniz' Concept.

Davis, Clarence George. Religious Experiences.

Rukavina, Thomas. Fundamental Ontology in the Philosophy of Martin Heidegger.

Ogden, Joan Barbara. The Square of Opposition: An Evaluation of the Current Controversy.

Pietersma, Henry. Freedom and Man: An Essay on Jean-Paul Sartre's View of Existential Freedom as Found in His L'Etre et le néant.

Wasserman, Irving. Realism and Historicism: A Study of the Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood.

Crimmel, Henry H. The Copernican Revolution in Philosophy.

Young, Theodore A. Being and Analogy: The Role of Metaphysical Analogy in Classical Realism, Josiah Royce and R. G. Collingwood.

Anton, Peter. Empiricism and Solipsism.

Conger, Mary Janeway. The Erotic Bird: Platonism and Wallace Stevens.

Frye, Robert Wedard. John Locke as Rationalist.

Allen, Jerome Lawson. Justice and Necessity in Plato.

Sikma, Barney. God and Man: A Comparative Study of Epictetus the Stoic and St. Paul the Apostle.

Achamma, John. An Interpretation of Gandhi's Religious Philosophy in the Light of Bergson's Two Sources of Morality and Religion.

Kramer, Richard Neil. The Nature of Causation.

Owsley, Richard Mills. The Concept of Evolutionary Progress and the Philosophies of Two Biologists.

Bullock, Robert Lee. Latent Pragmatism in the Philosophy of Schopenhauer.

Burkhart, Reginald Keith. The Aristotelian Syllogism and Causation.

Kellermann, Frederick D. Socrates and Christianity.

Al-Faruqi, Isma'il R. The Ethics of Reason and the Ethics of Life (Kantian and Nietzschean Ethics).

Barber, Richard Leslie. A Reinterpretation of the Significance of the Calculus of Classes for Aristotelian Logic.

Parker, Francis Howard. A critical examination of Professor Kantor's interbehavioral description of thinking.

Jeanes, Charlotte Ann. The Ontological Status of Ought, Based on a Study of the Ought Concepts of Hartmann and Urban.

Pitz, Sally A. The Intentional Fallacy Issue.

Van Liere, Donald Wilbur. The Relation of Virtue to Knowledge with Special Reference to Plato's Protagoras.

Harshman, Hardwick W. Immortality in Plato.

Reagan, Gordon Lober. An Analysis and Redefinition of the Concept of Organic Unisty as an Essential Property of Aesthetic Objects.

Muedeking, George Herbert. The Basis for Ethics: The Contribution of Christianity to a Theory of Ethics.

Mason, Robert E. A Semantic Alphabet for Philosophy.

Meloy, John Wilson. The Nature and Function of Religious Experience: A Study in the Philosophy of Religion.

Keller, Samuel E. Business ethics and the N.R.A. codes; an ethical analysis of business with special references to the codes prepared to comply with the requirements of the National industrial recovery act of 1933.

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My Personal Philosophy of Education

This essay about the philosophy of education highlights the transformative power of learning to shape individuals’ characters and values. It emphasizes the belief in the intrinsic potential of every student, advocating for holistic development beyond academic excellence. The essay stresses the importance of fostering a sense of community and collaboration within educational environments and recognizes education as a lifelong journey of growth and empowerment. Ultimately, it underscores the role of education as a catalyst for social change and empowerment, aiming to create a more just and inclusive society.

How it works

In the vast mosaic of human experience, education emerges as a luminescent thread weaving through the fabric of society, guiding individuals toward enlightenment and insight. As I delve into articulating my personal philosophy of education, I am struck by its profound influence not only on intellectual growth but also on the shaping of character and values. Education, to me, is not merely a conduit for the transfer of knowledge; it is a transformative odyssey that empowers individuals to navigate life’s intricate pathways with wisdom, empathy, and purpose.

At the core of my educational philosophy lies an unwavering belief in the intrinsic potential of every individual. I perceive education as the catalyst that unlocks this latent potential, nurturing talents and igniting passions. Like a gardener tending to a diverse array of plants, I see each student as a unique seedling, requiring tailored care and attention to thrive. As an educator, my role extends beyond the dissemination of facts; it involves cultivating an environment conducive to learning, where curiosity is fostered, and mistakes are celebrated as opportunities for growth.

Fundamental to my philosophy is the concept of holistic development. Education transcends the confines of textbooks and classrooms, encompassing the intellectual, emotional, and social dimensions of human existence. While academic excellence holds importance, it is equally essential to nurture qualities such as resilience, empathy, and critical thinking. A comprehensive education equips individuals not only with the skills to excel academically but also with the moral compass to navigate the complexities of life with integrity and compassion.

In fostering a holistic approach to education, I place great emphasis on fostering a sense of community and collaboration within the learning environment. Education is a communal endeavor, enriched by diverse perspectives and shared experiences. I am dedicated to creating inclusive spaces where every voice is valued, fostering a culture of mutual respect and understanding. By nurturing a sense of belonging and interconnectedness, education becomes a vehicle for personal growth and societal cohesion.

Another cornerstone of my educational philosophy is the recognition of learning as a lifelong journey. Education does not culminate with the attainment of a degree or the conclusion of formal schooling; rather, it is an ongoing voyage of discovery that extends throughout one’s lifetime. Thus, I strive to instill in my students a passion for lifelong learning, encouraging them to embrace curiosity, pursue new challenges, and continually expand their horizons.

Integral to my philosophy is the belief in education as a catalyst for social change and empowerment. Education has the power to dismantle barriers and foster social mobility, offering individuals the opportunity to transcend the constraints of circumstance and realize their full potential. As an educator, I am committed to creating equitable learning opportunities for all students, regardless of their background or socioeconomic status. By providing access to quality education, we can strive towards a more just and inclusive society, where every individual has the opportunity to thrive and contribute meaningfully to the world.

In essence, my personal philosophy of education is rooted in the belief that education is not just a journey, but a transformative odyssey of self-discovery and empowerment. It is a journey that extends beyond the confines of the classroom, encompassing the realms of intellect, emotion, and spirit. As an educator, I am committed to nurturing the minds and hearts of my students, fostering a lifelong love for learning, and empowering them to become compassionate, thoughtful, and engaged citizens of the world.

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    This essay about the philosophy of education highlights the transformative power of learning to shape individuals' characters and values. It emphasizes the belief in the intrinsic potential of every student, advocating for holistic development beyond academic excellence. The essay stresses the importance of fostering a sense of community and ...