The Philosophy Department participates in the college-wide honors program by allowing students to, under the advisorship of a faculty member, research a topic of interest and write a longer thesis paper to be defended to a panel of faculty and/or outside advisors. Theses are bound and stored in the library collection and a note is made on the student’s transcript following successful completion and acceptance by the panel of the thesis.
2023 Honors Theses
Monte Ebbesen
Walton and the How: Thoughtwriting and Lyric Poetry’s Formal Features
Hannah Kim, Advisor
Yuki Yokoi
The Gaze and the Other on Social Media: Reexamining Existence as Human Beings in the Digital Age
Diane Michelfelder, Advisor
2022 Honors Thesis
Yiğit Can Kahyaoğlu
Reference Without Acquaintance: Naming and Thought in Fiction and Science
Janet Folina, Advisor
2020 Honors Thesis
Ignasi Dorca
Is Egalitarianism a Conception of Justice?
Samuel Asarnow, Advisor
2018 Honors Theses
Logan Stapleton
Animals, Machines, and Moral Responsibility in a Built Environment
Diane Michelfelder, Advisor
Ziv Ben-Shahar
The Ethics and Regulation of Personalized Pricing
Samuel Asarnow, Advisor
2017 Honors Theses
Gunnar Footh
Free Will, Determinism, and Moral Responsibility: An Analysis of Event-Causal Incompatibilism
Geoffrey Gorham, Advisor
Ami H. Naff
Specters of Meaning: Deconstructing Wittgenstein and Reconstructing Ethics
Joy Laine, Advisor
2015 Honors Theses
Alexander Coppins
Wittgenstein and the Problem of Abusive Language
Joy Laine, Advisor
Brendan Rome
“The New Flesh” : The Phenomenology of Embodiment in the Digitized Lifeworld
Diane Michelfelder, Advisor
2014 Honors Theses
Samuel Henry Eklund
A Cardinal Sin: The Infinite in Spinoza’s Philosophy
Geoffrey Gorham, Advisor
Emily Rachel Wade
(Im)partiality, Compassion, and Cross-Cultural Change: Re-Envisioning Political Decision-Making and Free Expression
William Wilcox, Advisor
2012 Honors Thesis
James Patrick Weismuller
Values and Beliefs: A Pragmatist Critique of Moral Nihilism
Martin Gunderson, Advisor
2011 Honors Theses
Gerbrand Hoogvliet
Patriotic Bias and Institutional Coercion
William Wilcox, Advisor
Simon Pickus
A Defense of Public Justification
William Wilcox, Advisor
2010 Honors Thesis
Zachary John Dotray
Time and Temporality: A Heiddegerian Perspective on McTaggart’s A-series
Geoffrey Gorham, Advisor
2009 Honors Thesis
Miroslav Losonsky
On Kant’s Distinction Between Appearances and Things in Themselves
Janet Folina, Advisor
2008 Honors Thesis
Michael Bennett McNulty
The Geometry of Intuitions: Reconsidering Kantian Constructivism
Janet Folina, Advisor
2007 Honors Thesis
Gregory Page Taylor
One Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: Necessity and Normativity
Janet Folina, Advisor