The following tables display the placements of all students who have finished our MA program 1999-Present. The Results column indicates placement into Philosophy PhD programs with full funding unless otherwise noted.
2017
| Thesis Title | Applied to PhD Programs? | Results |
|---|---|---|
| Is it Rational to Care About the Natural Environment | Yes | Bowling Green State University |
| Making “cinnabar”: Kant on made a posteriori concepts | Yes | New York University |
| Hegel between Criticism and Romanticism: Love & Self Consciousness in the Phenomenology | Yes | University of California, Riverside |
| Reading Others Well and Being Well Read | Yes | University of Texas, Austin |
| How Conceiving Can Provide Reliable Evidence of Possibility | Yes | May re-apply next year |
| Grounding Physicalism | Yes | Rutgers University |
| Self-Colocation | Yes | University of Massachusettes, Amherst |
| Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence as Untimeliness | Yes | University of California, Santa Cruz |
| Routine Maintenance | Yes | University of California, Riverside |
| Nietzsche’s Signpost for Feminism | Yes | Fordham University (graduated in 2016) |
| Exam Option | Yes | Fordham University (graduated in 2016) |
Other schools that admitted our students in 2017: Arizona State, U-Miami, Florida State, UC-Davis, Indiana, Purdue, Oxford, Johns Hopkins, Boston U, Georgetown, UC-Irvine, UC-Los Angeles, UC-San Diego, U-Chicago, Harvard, Notre Dame, Ohio State, U-Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, U-Virginia, University of Rochester, CUNY Graduate Center, U-Southern California, UC-Santa Barbara
2016
| Thesis Title | Applied to PhD Programs? | Results |
|---|---|---|
| Earning the Right Means Paying the Costs: Metaphysical Problems for Quasi-Realism | Yes | University of California, San Diego |
| Two Contemporary Metaethical Schemes Considered | Yes | Florida State University (graduated in 2015) |
| Reformulating Modalism | Yes | Syracuse University |
| Kant on Radical Evil | Yes | University of Illinois, Chicago |
| Locutionary Disablement and Epistemic Injustice | Yes | CUNY Graduate Center |
| Attitudinal Commitments and the Scope of Rational Requirements | Yes | University of Pittsburgh |
| Nietzsche and the problem of nihilism | Yes | may re-apply next year |
| What Science Doesn’t Need to Know: Scientific Realism, Anti-Realism and the Continuum of Knowledge | Yes | may re-apply next year |
| Nietzsche’s Autonomy, Responsibility, and Will Unification | Yes | may re-apply next year |
| Decent Peoples, Political Legitimacy, and Informed Consent | Yes | University of Minnesota Law School (graduated in 2013) |
| Exam Option | No | |
| Exam Option | No | University of Texas Law School (graduated in 2015) |
Other schools that admitted our students in 2016: U Arizona, UC-Irvine, U Cinncinnati, U Illinois-Urbana, Champaign, Ohio State, U Pennsylvania, U Texas-Austin.
2015
| Thesis Title | Applied to PhD Programs? | Results |
|---|---|---|
| Constitutive Inescapability and the Search for Normative Authority | Yes | University of California, San Diego |
| Life and Agency: Constitutivism and the Source of Prescriptive Norms | Yes | University of California, Riverside |
| Berkeley and the Mind of God | Yes | University of Rochester |
| The Function of Blame | Yes | New York University (MA in Bioethics) |
| Rethinking Responding to Raymond: Re-Replying to Reproaches of Transsexualism | Yes | May re-apply next year |
| Kaplan’s Puzzle, Dynamic Senses, and Diachronically Individuated Propositions | Yes | University of Illinois, Chicago (graduated in 2014) |
Other schools that admitted our students in 2015: UC-Davis, U Minnesota (Twin Cities), Syracuse, Washington U (Seattle)
2014
| Thesis Title | Applied to PhD Programs? | Results |
|---|---|---|
| Colocated Object? A New Challenge to the Intentionalists’ Solution to the Grounding Problem | Yes | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Grounding the Free Lunch: Can Grounding Theory Escape Ontological Commitment? | Yes | University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill |
| Freedom as Morality | Yes | Northwestern University |
| Intentions and Advisorial Relations | Yes | Florida State University |
| From Self-Trust to Other-Trust: The Role of Reasons and the Theoretical Insignificance of Behavioral Inconsistency | Yes | Northwestern University |
| Two Essays On Constructivism: Lessons From Semantic Theory | Yes | Brown University |
| The Modal Status of Kant’s Postulate of God’s Existence | Yes | University of Pittsburgh |
| Solving the Problem of Resultant Luck: Extrapolating from Hegel | Yes | University of California, San Diego |
| Commitment and Temporal Mediation in Korsgaard’s Self-Constitution | Yes | University of California, Riverside (graduated in 2013) |
| The Duty of Assistance is a Liberal Duty | Yes | University of Pennsylvania (graduated in 2012) |
| A Greater Scope for Error: Judgment, Sensation, and the Material Falsity of Sensory Ideas | Yes | University of Notre Dame (HPS) (graduated in 2012) |
| Exam Option | No | — |
Other schools that admitted our students in 2014: Alberta, Boston, Calgary, UC-Santa Barbara, Georgetown, Illinois-Chicago, Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, Johns Hopkins, Kansas, Maryland, UW-Madison, New School, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh (HPS), Purdue, Rochester, Syracuse, Virginia, Western Ontario
2013
| Thesis Title | Applied to PhD Programs? | Results |
|---|---|---|
| Disagreement, Dispositions, and Higher-Order Evidence | Yes | Notre Dame |
| Second Nature in Kant’s Theory of Artistic Creativity | Yes | Columbia University |
| Hume, Skepticism, and Induction | Yes | University of California, Santa Barbara |
| How I Spent My Summer Defending-or-Defeating Anscombe: Anscombian Action Theory and the Possibility of Logically Complex Actions | Yes | University of Pittsburgh (attended one year); University of California, Los Angeles (Fall 2014) |
| How to Think About Indiscernible Particles | Yes | Ohio State University |
| The Starry Heavens Above Me and the Starmaking Power Within Me | Yes | Marquette University |
| “Just Perceiv’d & Next Door to Nothing:” An investigation of Minima in the Work of George Berkeley | Yes | Western Ontario University |
| The Supersubstantivalist Response to the Argument from Vagueness | Yes | Notre Dame |
| The Myth of Given Reasons | Yes | University of Pittsburgh |
Other schools that admitted our students in 2013: Boston, Brown, UCLA, UC-Riverside, UC-San Diego, U Chicago, Georgetown, Illinois-Chicago, U Iowa, Johns Hopkins, UMass-Amherst, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, UNC-Chapel Hill, Princeton, Rochester, St Louis U, Syracuse, Temple, Yale
2012
| Thesis Title | Applied to PhD Programs? | Results |
|---|---|---|
| Intelligibility and Reliability: A Relational Conception of the Constitutive Aim of Agency | Yes | University of California, San Diego |
| Exam Option | Yes | University of California, Riverside (graduated in 2007) |
| Who’s Counting? Cognitive Disability and Rawlsian Contractualism | Yes | May re-apply to PhD programs in the future |
| Sympathy and Causal Inference: Hume on Other Minds | No | Pepperdine Law School (attended one year); Washington University, St. Louis School of Law (Fall 2013) |
| The Moral Status of the Deceased in Kant’s Ethics | No | University of Chicago Law School (graduated in 2011) |
| Exam Option | No | — |
Other schools that admitted our students in 2012: UC-Irvine, Ohio State
2011
| Thesis Title | Applied to PhD Programs? | Results |
|---|---|---|
| Problems with Causal Reasoning in Cognitive Neuroscience | Yes | Arizona State University (HPS) |
| The Problem From Memory and Moral Responsibility | Yes | University of California, Irvine |
| Deliberating to Believe: A Critical Examination of How Truth Functions as a Normative Constraint on Belief | Yes | Northwestern |
| Essence and Modality: the alleged conflict between Actualism and Kind Essentialism | Yes | Purdue University |
| The A Priority of the Intelligible | Yes | Stanford University |
| The Prole Machine: Politics and Revolution in the Cramped Conditions of Capital | Yes | University of Massachusetts, Amherst (Political Science) |
| A Defense of Rawls’s Account of Toleration in The Law of Peoples | Yes | University of Illinois, Chicago |
| Justice for the Cognitively Disabled: Obligations to Those at the Margins of Our Moral Community | Yes | University of California, Riverside |
| Idealism in Kant and Berkeley: A Defense of Berkeley’s Concept of Objectivity | Yes | Ohio State University |
| Moral Requirements, Moral Reasoning, and the First Two Formulations of the Categorical Imperative | Yes | University of Pennsylvania (graduated in 2010) |
| Taking the “Peep-Show” Public: Intersubjectivity, Psychologism, and Conceptual Realism | Yes | Yale University (graduated in 2010) |
| The Case for Government Anti-Obesity Legislation | No | Federal Judicial Clerk |
Other schools that admitted our students in 2011: Alberta, CUNY Graduate Center, Iowa, Maryland, Miami, Michigan State, Minnesota, New School, North Texas, Notre Dame, Utah, Washington-Seattle, Vanderbilt
2010
| Thesis Title | Applied to PhD Programs? | Results |
|---|---|---|
| Quantifier Variance, Classical Logic, and Neo-Fregeanism | Yes | University of Virginia |
| Making Sense of Intelligibility: A Discussion of Velleman’s Constitutive Aim of Action | Yes | University of California, Riverside |
| Necessary Identity Statements Trivialized | Yes | University of British Columbia |
| Free Citizens and the Coercive Account of the Site of Justice | Yes | University of Arizona |
| Moral Incentive and Respect in Kant’s Ethics | Yes | University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign |
| A Dilemma for Hellman’s Modal Structuralism | Yes | University of California, Irvine |
| Autonomy, Estrangement, and External Reasons | Yes | University of Pittsburgh (graduated in 2008) |
| The Role of Emotions in Akrasia | No | Cornell Law School |
| Intimates, Self-Trust and Self-Awareness in Autonomous Decision Making | No | — |
Other schools that admitted our students in 2010: Alberta, UC-Davis, UC-Santa Barbara, Connecticut, Florida State, Illinois-Chicago, Indiana, Maryland, McGill (Political Science), Miami, SUNY-Buffalo, Purdue, Rochester, St. Louis U, Syracuse, Toronto, Washington-Seattle, Western Ontario, UW-Madison
2009
| Thesis Title | Applied to PhD Programs? | Results |
|---|---|---|
| Can We Contextualize Skepticism? | Yes | CUNY Graduate Center |
| Kant’s Derivation of the Formula of Universal Law | Yes | Harvard University |
| The Implications of Special Relativity for Persistence | Yes | Syracuse University |
| Inquiry, Attention and Relevance: An Account of Knowledge and its Role in Discourse | Yes | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Incentives and Goodness in Kant’s Ethics | Yes | University of California, Los Angeles |
| The Concept of Belief and Epistemic Rationality | Yes | University of Texas, Austin |
| Agency and the Theoretical View of Persons | Yes | University of Miami |
| Self-Deception & Culpable Ignorance | Yes | University of California, Riverside (graduated in 2008) |
| Exam Option | No | — |
| Moore, Dewey, and the Reconstruction of Ethics | No | — |
| Gibson on Perceiving Affordances Directly | No | — |
Other schools that admitted our students in 2009: Arizona State, Bowling Green, UC-San Diego, UC-Santa Barbara, Colorado-Boulder, Connecticut, Indiana, Ohio State, Michigan, Missouri, UNC-Chapel Hill, Stanford, Washington U, Yale
2008
| Thesis Title | Applied to PhD Programs? | Results |
|---|---|---|
| The Tractarian Operation N: Its Role and Expressive Capacity | Yes | University of Illinois, Chicago |
| A Pragmatic Account of the Referential Use of Definite Descriptions | Yes | University of California, Davis |
| Shame and the Self | Yes | Harvard University |
| Disagreeing About Modal Disagreement | Yes | Syracuse University |
| The Development of Kant’s Conception of Respect for the Moral Law | Yes | Stanford University |
| Agency and Morality | Yes | University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill |
| G.E. Moore on Common Sense and Analysis | Yes | Vanderbilt University (graduated in 2007) |
| Systematicity and Mental Content | Yes | Duke University (Center for Cognitive Neuroscience PhD) (graduated in 2007) |
| A Defense of Gilbert Harman’s Moral Relativism | Yes | University of Florida (graduated in 2004) |
| A Critical Analysis of John Hick’s Pluralist Hypothesis | Yes | Marquette University (graduated in 2003) |
| Boundaries of the Self: A Critical Discussion of Harry Frankfurt’s Conception of Identification | No | — |
| Metaphor, Comparison, and Aesthetic Success | No | — |
Other schools that admitted our students in 2008: Brown, Connecticut, Florida State, Fordham, Illinois-Chicago, Indiana, Loyola, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio State, Rochester, UC-Berkeley, UC-Riverside, UC-San Diego, UC-Santa Barbara
2007
| Thesis Title | Applied to PhD Programs? | Results |
|---|---|---|
| G.E. Moore and E.M. Forster | Yes | Johns Hopkins University (English PhD Program) |
| Can Humean supervenience be reconciled with the Principal Principle? | Yes | Princeton University |
| J.G.H. Feder’s Simultaneity Objection to Kant’s Claim to the Apriority of Space | Yes | University of Pennsylvania |
| Kant’s Idea of Pure Morality and Hegel’s Critique | Yes | University of California, Riverside |
| Nietzsche’s Weapon of War: the Method of Science | Yes | University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign |
| Exam Option | No | Harvard Law School |
Other schools that admitted our students in 2007: Arizona State, Bowling Green, Cincinnati, Connecticut, Cornell, Miami, Ohio State, Pittsburgh, Purdue, UC-Irvine
2006
| Thesis Title | Applied to PhD Programs? | Results |
|---|---|---|
| The Demands of Incompatibilism Upon Libertarian Theories of Free Will | Yes | Florida State University |
| The Ideas of the Kingdom of Ends and the Highest Good in Kant’s Moral Theory | Yes | Harvard University |
| Exam Option | Yes | Rice University |
| Performativity and Social Kinds: Race, Gender, and the Pursuit of Justice | Yes | Rutgers University (Women’s & Gender Studies PhD Program) |
| Can Accounts of Naturalistic Virtue Ethics Survive? | Yes | University of Missouri (non-funded) |
| Epistemic Responsibility and the Concept of Belief | Yes | University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill |
| A Look at the Conception of Care in Three Ethical Theories | Yes | University of Kentucky (graduated in 2004) |
| The Fold in the Other Night: Foucault on Desubjective Technologies of the Self | No | Lecturer at UWM |
| Justifying Morality: An Essay on the Rationality of Moral Actions | No | — |
| The Nature of Mental Existence in Anselm’s Ontological Argument | No | — |
| On Constructing an Argument Against Tyler Burge’s Preservative Theory of Memory Based on Memory Construed as an Inferential Communicative Process | No | — |
Other schools that admitted our students in 2006: Arizona, Bowling Green, Cincinnati, Georgetown, Illinois-Chicago, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota (Women’s Studies), Northwestern, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, Stanford, UC-Riverside, Wisconsin-Madison
2005
| Thesis Title | Applied to PhD Programs? | Results |
|---|---|---|
| What Does the Scientist See? Does it Matter? | Yes | Duke University |
| Is Morality a Skill? | Yes | Harvard University |
| Exam Option | Yes | Marquette University |
| Beyond the Meaning of ‘Meaning’: Rigidity and Semantic Externalism | Yes | Ohio State University |
| On the Nature of Value Properties and Judgments at the Intersection of Aesthetics and Ethics | Yes | SUNY-Buffalo |
| Saving the In-Itself World: Some Responses To Putnam’s Internal Realism | Yes | University of California, Irvine |
| The Nature of Second Nature | Yes | University of Florida |
| Three Arguments for Nonconceptual Content | Yes | University of Minnesota |
| Reconciliation & Quasi-Realist Moral Truth & Objectivity | Yes | University of Reading (UK) |
| Belief and Responsibility | Yes | University of Rochester |
| General Laws and Causal Relations: Scientific Explanation | Yes | University of Southern California |
| Propositional Attitudes, Reference, and Pragmatics | Yes | University of Southern California |
| Signs and Generality: An Examination of the Berkeleyan Alternative to Abstract Ideas | Yes | University of Toronto |
| The Philosophical Basis of Clement Greenberg’s Art Criticism: The Union between Kantian and Hegelian Aesthetics | Yes | University of Washington-Seattle |
Other schools that admitted our students in 2005: Arizona State, Birkbeck College, London (UK), British Columbia, Cincinnati, Connecticut, CUNY, Edinburgh (UK), Florida State, Illinois-Chicago, Indiana, Iowa, Loyola (Chicago), Maryland, Missouri, Northwestern, Sheffield (UK), St. Andrews (UK), Stirling (UK), Syracuse, Temple, UC-Davis, U-Mass, Western Ontario, Wisconsin-Madison
2004
| Thesis Title | Applied to PhD Programs? | Results |
|---|---|---|
| Objecting to Objectifying Desires: An Objection to the Kantian Model of Deliberation | Yes | Cornell University |
| Defense of Marx’s Scientific Socialism | Yes | Northwestern University |
| The Last Metaphysician: An Analysis of Heidegger’s Interpretation of Nietzsche | Yes | University of California, Riverside |
| Real Selves or Bust? | Yes | University of Cincinnati |
| An Analysis of Kant’s Treatment of Suicide | Yes | University of Illinois-Chicago |
| Nature, Priority and Political Animals in Aristotle’s Politics | Yes | University of Illinois-Chicago |
| A Three-Mechanism Structure of Mind to Explain Human Language and Responsibility | Yes | University of Waterloo (Canada) |
| The Problem with “Self” Competition | No | Marquette Law School; Fall ’07 – Clerkship with New Mexico Supreme Court |
Other schools that admitted our students in 2004: Bowling Green, CUNY, Maryland, Minnesota, Ohio State, Southern California, Syracuse, UC-Irvine, UC-Santa Cruz, U-Mass, Virginia, Wisconsin-Madison
2003
| Thesis Title | Applied to PhD Programs? | Results |
|---|---|---|
| The Evolution of Guilt: A Defense of Norm-Expressivism | Yes | Michigan State University |
| Desires and Practical Reasoning: Three Accounts Considered | Yes | University of California, Davis (attended 1 year); University of Wisconsin-Madison (Fall ’05) |
| The Substitutional Interpretation of the Quantifiers of Predicate Logic | Yes | University of Pittsburgh |
| A Critical Analysis of John Hick’s Pluralist Hypothesis | No | Lecturer at UWM |
| A Study of Nietzsche’s Gay Science | No | — |
2002
| Thesis Title | Applied to PhD Programs? | Results |
|---|---|---|
| Un-blocking Our Access to the Contents of Perceptual Experience | Yes | Duke University |
| An Analysis of Kierkegaard’s Notion of Personhood | Yes | Saint Louis University (attended 1 year); St. Louis University Law School (attended 1 year); Lehigh University (History PhD, Fall 05) |
| Testimonial Justification and Epistemic Individualism | Yes | University of Missouri |
| Colors, Values and the Possibility of Analogy | No | Works in the Criminal Defense division of the Wisconsin State Public Defender’s Office |
| Global Theories, Local Theories, Theories of Adjudication and Ronald Dworkin’s Law as Integrity | No | Professor at Marquette Law School |
2001
| Thesis Title | Applied to PhD Programs? | Results |
|---|---|---|
| Chardin’s Cycle | Yes | Marquette University |
| Moral Development and the Duty of Self-Perfection | Yes | Northwestern University |
| The Truth in Projectivism | Yes | Ohio State University |
| A Theistic Defense of Natural Evils | Yes | Purdue University |
| Philosophy as Therapy: An Elucidation of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Method | Yes | University of Iowa |
| Exam Option | No | Teacher in Milwaukee Public Schools |
| Vagueness | No | Works in Pharmaceutical Sales |
2000
| Thesis Title | Applied to PhD Programs? | Results |
|---|---|---|
| Taking Occasionalism Seriously | Yes | Brown University |
| The Personal Ethics of Sustainable Development: An Application of Kant’s Notion of the Categorical Imperative | Yes | CUNY |
| John Rawls, Justice as Fairness and the Failure of Froperty-Owning Democracy | Yes | Marquette University |
| Weakness of Will: Towards a Reformed Belief/Desire Account | Yes | Northwestern University |
| Exam Option | No | UWM (Urban Education/Educational Psychology PhD program) |
| Hybrid Theories of Justice: A New Foundation Based on T. M. Scanlon’s Ethics of Reasonable Rejection | No | Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Air Force Academy |
| Non-thesis project | No | — |
| Understanding Kant’s prohibition of revolution, his support of the French revolution, and our right to revolt | No | — |
1999
| Thesis Title | Applied to PhD Programs? | Results |
|---|---|---|
| The Inductive-Statistical and Deductive-Nomologicial Models of Probabilistic Explanation and the Problem of Explaining Particular Explanada | Yes | Indiana University |
| Themes in Kantian Moral Psychology: Humanity, Needs, and Autonomy | Yes | University of Florida |
| Assuring the Fair Value of the Political Liberties: The Need for an Ethos Justice | No | Attended Law Schooly |
| Ducks, Rabbits, and Dubbits: A Wittgensteinian Study of Seeing | No | NYU (Obtained Social Work MSW; Social Work PhD program) |
| Exam Option | No | UWM (Urban Studies) |
| Reference, Interpretation and Clarity | No | Harvard Law School |
Other schools that admitted our students who graduated from 1999-2003 include: Bowling Green, CUNY, Duquesne, Emory, Fordham University, Georgetown, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Loyola, Marquette, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio State, Penn, Rochester, UC-Davis, UC-Irvine, UCLA, UC-Riverside, UCSD, UC-Boulder, UI-Chicago, U Mass-Amherst, U Texas-Austin, U Utah, U Virginia, U Washington-Seattle, U Wisconsin-Madison, Vanderbilt
A partial list of the schools that admitted our students that graduated before 1999: Alberta, Bowling Green, Brown, UCLA, UC-San Diego, UC-Irvine, UC-Riverside, U of Chicago, Colorado, Columbia U., Cornell, CUNY, Emory, Georgetown, UI-Urbana-Champaign, UI-Chicago, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Marquette, Maryland, U Mass-Amherst, Minnesota, North Carolina, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Penn, Pittsburgh, Purdue, Rice, Rochester, St. Louis, Texas, Toronto, Vanderbilt, Virginia, UW-Madison, Washington U., and Yale