Texas Tech University

Recent Graduate Student Placement

Year Title of Thesis or Oral Exam Paper> Applied to Philosophy PhD programs? Program that the graduate attended after the Texas Tech MA program (Philosophy unless otherwise noted)

2022

The Risk of Psychologizing, Respectful Reason-Giving, and the Desire to be in Solidarity with Others

Yes (applied F23)

UNC-Chapel Hill (also offers from Pittsburgh, UCSD, Penn, Maryland, Northwestern, UIC, UCSB)

2023

Believing, Wondering and Inquiring

Yes

Maryland (also offers from UMass Amherst, Northwestern)

2023

Dualism about Normative Reasons

Yes

Georgetown (also offers from UW Madison, York, FSU, UIC, ASU)

2022

An Analysis of Doxastic Morality

Yes (applied F23)

UCSB

2023

Securing Genuine Disagreement for Humean Constructivism

Yes

FSU

2023

Color's Value and It's Place in Conscious Sensory Experience

Yes

 

2023

Justified Belief in Zetetic Instrumentality

Yes

 

2023

Carving Causation at the Joints

No

 

2023

Interpreting Silence: A Social Epistemological Perspective

No

 

2023

Conspiracy Theorists, they're just like us

No

 

2023

Diachronic Conditionalization and The Metaphysics of Time and Persistence

No

 

2022

Subject Naturalism and Normativity: Essays on Expressivism

Yes

Harvard (also offers from UNC, Arizona, Maryland, Indiana, Penn, Wisconsin, Georgetown)

2022

Risk, Expected Utility, and Pragmatic Encroachment

Yes

Maryland (also Nebraska)

2022

A Puzzle about Invariantism and Action

No

Univ. of Nebraska Law

2022

Epistemic Paternalism as Rationality-Bypassing Indoctrination

No (applied F23)

Univ. of Oklahoma

2022

Superstitious Liberalism

No

 

2022

Reformulating the Philosophy of Creativity: Expression and Generation of Non-standard Ideas within a Social Context

No

TTU History PhD Program

2021

The Problem of Experience Ownership Recognition

Yes

UCLA (also offers from Notre Dame, Arizona, Syracuse, Miami, Cincinnati, Missouri, Nebraska)

2021

Political Obligation:  Fair Play and Samaritanism

Yes

New England Law School

2021

Expanded Atheism's Implicit Doctrine of Man

Yes

 

2021

Epistemic Responsibility in Cases of Sexual Violation Accusations

No

Hofstra Law School (also offers from Rutgers Law School, University of Baltimore Law, Quinnipiac School of Law, Chicago-Kent Law, and New York School of Law)

2021

Had We but World Enough and Time:  A Critique of Hume's Test of Time

No

UT Austin Pharm.D

2021

Speech Acts in Fiction

No

 

2021

Open-mindedness as Epistemic Virtue:  Jane Austen's Wollstonecraftian Inheritance

No

 

2021

Naturalizing Propositions, Cognitive Complexity, and Animal Minds

No

 

2020

The Particularity and Objectual Unity of Visual Experience

Yes

New York University (also offers from Rutgers, Pitt, MIT, UCLA, Toronto, Columbia, CUNY, Notre Dame, UT, Brown, UCSD, WUSTL, Maryland, Rice)

2020

The Limits of Partiality in Friendship

Yes

University of Pittsburgh (also offers from Ohio State, Georgetown, Duke, UT, UC Riverside, Maryland, Nebraska, Colorado)

2020

Appropriation as Metaphor

Yes

CUNY (also offers from WUSTL, UConn, Miami, UC Davis, UCSB)

2020

Illusion of Support: Positive Illusions and Epistemic Pragmatism

Yes

University of Rochester

2020

Kripke's Thesis of Meaning Normativism in Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language

Yes

University of Iowa

2020

Why Expressivists Cannot and Should not Use Schroeder's Strategy to Solve Their Problem with Negation

Yes

Tulane University (also offers from Nebraska, Kansas)

2020

Cognitive Science of Religion and the Justification of Religious Beliefs"

Yes

 

2020

Black Fire: In Praise of the Bad

No

 

2020

Making the Link: Preliminaries of a Historical-Intentional Definition of Linked Short Story Collections

No

 

2020

Justice: The Ordinary Understanding Examined

No

TTU Law School

2019

How Gradable Adjectives Work

Yes

Rutgers University (also offers from USC, UT, UNC, Northwestern, UC Davis)

2019

Evidence, Evidentialism and Reasons

Yes

Ohio State University (also offers from Florida State and UCSB)

2019

Defending the Principle of Maximizing Expected Utility

Yes

University of Maryland (also offers from Munich, Bristol, ANU)

2019

On the Ontology of Art

No

 

2019

A Defense of Truth Conditional Accounts of Indicative Conditionals

No

 

2019

The Nature of Epistemic Reasons: Hypothetical or Categorical? A Reply to Thomas Kelly

No

 

2018

Two Conceptions of Ground and a Dilemma for Schaffer

Yes

Indiana University (also offer from Cincinnati)

2018

Nietzsche and the Virtue of Self-Knowledge Yes

University of South Florida

2018

Buddhist Ethics as Upaya No

Boston University (sociology PhD program)

2018

Privacy in Information Technology

No

University of Maine (computer science PhD program)

2018

The Conversion Theory Solution to the Paradox of Tragedy

No

 

2018

Satisfying Dowell's Demand: NFM as an Unobvious and A Priori Thesis

No

 

2018

Singer, Act-Utilitarianism, and Self-Defeat

No

 

2018

Physician Assisted Death: Taking Psychological Pain Seriously

No

Teaching secondary school in the El Paso school district

2017

Four Conceptions of Physicalism

Yes

 

2017

Descartes, Diagonal Deduction, and God: a Fictionalist Reconciliation

No

St. Andrews (MA in analytic theology)

Transferred to Notre Dame

2017

How could Altruistic Behavior Evolve?

No

Mitchell Hamline School of Law

2017

Ends That Are Also Duties

No

University of Minnesota Law School

2017

Knocking Saul Off His Horse: Unsought Religious Experiences and Ultimate Realities

No

Texas Tech University (Technical Writing MA program)

2017

Reading Law as Art: Comparing Legal and Artistic Interpretation

No

 

2017

A Defense of Agent-Based Virtue Ethics

No

 

2017

Hold the Line: Plato on Education, Virtue, and Language

No

 

2016

What are we aware of during hallucination?

Yes

Rutgers (also offers from Texas, UCSD, WUSTL, Wisconsin, Maryland, UConn, UC Davis, UCSB, Rice)

2016

A New Route to Causal Pluralism

Yes

WUSTL (also offers from Maryland, UConn, UCSB)

2016

Challenges from the Schmagent

Yes

Ohio State (also offer from UC Davis)

2016

Kantian Nonconceptualism, Priority to Thought, and Intuition

Yes

Syracuse (also offers from Nebraska and Bowling Green)

2016

A pincer problem for the DN model of scientific explanation

Yes

Arkansas

2016

The B-Derived A-Series; a Response to McTaggart

Yes

Admitted to Kansas (philosophy), Toronto (HPST), Washington State University (Environmental Science)

2016

A Definition of Art

No

 

2016

Descriptive and Normative Accounts of Rational Choice

No

 

2016

The Earthly Wager

No

Stephen F Austin (psychology MA program); now Colorado State (psychology PhD program)

 

2016

Discussion on the debate on Sobel's "would promote" statements in evolutionary biology

No

Utah

2016

On the Role and Success of Descartes' Evil Genius

No

 

2016

Optimizing Moral Character: A Virtue Ethics Training Framework for Achieving Moral Readiness In the United States Army

No

 

2015

The Origin of Empirical Concepts in Kant and the Specificity of Experience

Yes

Florida State (also offer from Missouri)

2015

Virtue Ethics and the Empirical Challenge from Social Psychology

Yes

Florida State

2015

Hybrid Expressivism and Speech Act Theories

Yes

University of Cincinnati

2015

Pragmatic Intentionalism: A New Look at Art Interpretation

Yes

Adjunct Faculty at Converse College and University of South Carolina Upstate; now Illinois at Chicago (also offers from SUNY Buffalo and Oklahoma)

2015

Edmund Burke and the Paradox of Tragedy

No

Texas Tech Philosophy Instructor

2015

Rebellion and Reasonableness

No

 

2015

Critical Pluralism and the Postulated Author

No

 

2015

Out of the Gutters: A Defense of the Hayman-Pratt Definition of Comics

No

 

2015

Crowds of Balls, Speckled Hens, & Flocks of Geese: An Examination of Visual Perception

No

 

2015

Diotima's Ladder - Material vs. Abstract Beauty

No

 

2014

Can the No-Miracles Argument Support Moral Realism

No

Texas Tech University English program

2014

Phenomenal Knowledge as Non-Theoretical Factual Knowledge

Yes

Syracuse (also offer from UIUC)

2014

Leibniz on Personal Identity and Desire

Yes

UIUC

2014

Epistemicism and Vagueness

Yes

Texas Tech MS in Computer Science (also offers from Kansas and SUNY Albany)

2014

Aesthetic Realism and the Problem of Fundamental Disagreement

Yes

Texas Tech Philosophy Instructor; now at Missouri (also offer from Rice)

 

Transferred to Rutgers

2014

Trial and Hare: An Exploration of the Experimental

No

Marine Corps Officer School

2014

Can Morality be Grounded in God? A Defense of Divine Grounded Ethics

No

 

2014

Context Sensitivity and Semantic Minimalism

No

 

2014

"With regard to politics" – Hume on Rebellion and Reform

No

 

2013

N/A

Yes

Texas

2013

Genius and the Origins of Art in Kant's Aesthetics

Yes

Kentucky (funded offer from Oklahoma)

2013

McDowellian Virtue Ethics and Individuality

Yes

Offer from Temple

2013

Revision Theory of Truth, Contextualism, and the Liar Paradox

No

 

2013

Interpreting the Pre-Socratic Poet-Philosophers

No

Virginia (PhD program in classics)

 

2012

 

A Place for Moral Theory in the Argument from Evil

 

Yes

 

Virginia (funded offers from Texas A&M, Rochester, and St. Louis)

Transferred to Texas A&M

 

2012

 

On a Fundamental Inconsistency of the Humean Theory of Motivation

 

Yes

 

Wisconsin (funded offers from Florida State, Indiana, Rochester, and Baylor)

Transferred to UT Austin

TT at U.C. Davis

 

2012

 

The Ideal Critic:  Foie Gras and Twinkies

 

No

 

Texas Tech University History PhD program

 

2012

 

The Antihero:  A Special Case for Radical Moralism

 

No

 
 

2012

 

A Phenomenological Account of Conventional Truth

 

No

 
 

2012

 

An Underdetermination Argument Against Underdetermination

 

Yes

 

University of Massachusetts (also offers from  Baylor, Syracuse,and University of Virginia)

Transferred to U.C. Berkeley (also offer from U.C. San Diego)

 

2012

 

Moral Supervenience:  The Problem and the Beginnings of a Solution

 

Yes

 

Wisconsin (also offers from Baylor, Virginia, Illinois, Rice and Purdue)

 

2012

 

A Minimalist Ethics

 

No

 
 

2012

 

Revolution, Spinoza, and Tyranny

 

No

 
 

2011

 

A Case Study on Theoretical Strength

 

Yes

 

Johns Hopkins (also offers from Rice, Illinois, and Cincinnati)

Transferred to Pitt (HPS) (also offer from Notre Dame HPS)

 

2011

 

N/A

 

Yes

 

University of Pennsylvania

 

2011

 

The Existence of Evil:  Evidence for or Against Theism

Yes

University of Tennessee (also offers from Texas A&M and Georgia)

Transferred to U.C. Riverside.

 

2011

 

Van Inwagen's Theodicy From a Moral Point of View

 

Yes

University of Missouri (also offer from Georgia)

 

2011

Art & Moral Development in Selected Works of Plato and Aristotle

 

Yes

SUNY Binghamton

2010

Interventionism, Supervenience, and Epiphenomenalism

No

University of Tennessee Pharmacy School

2010

Man Pain and Mollusc Pain; or Multiple Realizations as an Empirical Hypothesis

Yes

University of Texas

TT at University of Central Okhlahoma

2010

Expressive Meaning and Truth Conditions

Yes

University of Missouri

2010

Epistemic Contextualism as an Empirical Hypothesis

Yes

London School of Economics

Transferred to U.C. Davis

2010

A Semantic Internalist Account of Racial Epithets

Yes

University of Virginia

Transferred to University of Connecticut.

 

2010

 

Mental Illness as an Epistemic Defeater of Religious Experienced-Based Testimony

 

No

 
 

2010

 

Fiction

 

No

 
 

2010

 

Fearing the Monstrous: Redefining Horror

 

No

 

2009

An Evolutionary Account of Aesthetic Experience

Yes

Rice University (Anthropology)


2009

On Demonstrating “Everything”

Yes

Stanford University

TT at San Francisco State

2009

The Nature of Law and Judicial Decisions

No

University of California—Berkeley Law

2009

Practical Pluralism 

Yes

University of Cincinnati

 

2009

 

Rawls Law of Peoples, the Global Basic Structure and Global Poverty

 

Yes

 

University of Missouri

2009

The Tension Between Faith and Christian Mystical Practices

No

 

2008 

Expressivism and the Problem of Embedding 

Yes

University of Rochester

2008

Formative Pruning: Trimming Growth to Increase Structural Strength

No

University of Houston Law School

2008

A Value-based, Holistic Approach to Environmental Ethics 

Yes Temple University
 

2008

The Truth Goal and the New Evil Demon Problem

 

Yes

University of Washington

2008

Possibilities Self-Deception and Religious Insight

Yes

University of Rochester

2008

Kant's Respoonse to the Problem of Induction 

Yes

University of Rochester

2007

L.W. Sumner and the Perfectionist Requirement for Well-being

Yes

Duke University

2007

Norma's Knowledge

No

 

2007

An Aesthetic Theory of Art 

Yes

University of Miami

2007

Complete Radical Skepticism

Yes

Bowling Green

2007

A Critique of Cohen's Relational Theory of Color

No

 

2007

Moralism in Aesthetics

No

 

2006

The Supernatural Problem of Extended Minds

Yes

 

2006

Virtue Theory and Global Poverty

No

Teaching ethics in TTU College of Engineering

2006

Functional Reductionism

Yes

University of Illinois at Chicago

2006

Games and Dilemmas in Hobbes's State of Nature 

Yes

 

2006

The Mystery Surrounding the Identity of the Ubermensch

No

University of Georgia

2006

Photography as Readymade Art 

No

Texas Tech (fine arts PhD)

2006

The Argument from Reason

Yes

UC Santa Barbara

2006

Connectionism

No

University of Texas Law

2006

Business Ethics and Moral Psychology

No

 

2006

Physicalism and Qualia

No

University of Virginia Law

2006

An Aristotelian Account of Sensory Perception

Yes

Florida State

2006

God's Omniscience and the Problem of Free Will

No

University of Kansas

2006

Hume on the Standard of Taste

No

 

2006

A Comprehensive Study of Anatta and its Relative Truth Within Buddhism

No

Teaching math in Arlington, TX

2005

Imagination and Supposition

Yes

Cornell

2005

An Externalist Defense of the Practicality Requirement

Yes

Ohio State

2005

Content under Pressure: The Broad and Narrow of Segal's Argument against Externalism

No

 

2005

The Compatibility of Causal Determinism and Moral Responsibility

Yes

Florida State

2005

Defensible Arbitrariness: U.S. Death Penalty Jurisprudence

No

Also received a degree in law from TTU (2005)

2004

INUS Abnormalism: A Semantic Theory of Singular Causal Statements

Yes

Duke

2004

Aristotle and the Productive Class: Did Aristotle Argue in Favor of Education for All?

Yes

Catholic University Law

2004

Special Predication: A Naturalistic Account of the Special Sciences

Yes

Florida State

2004

Rejecting Riggs: Hart, Dworkin, and the Problem of Indeterminacy

No

University of Texas Law

2004

Knowledge Claims and Cross-Cultural Judgements: Internal Feminism, 'Female Circumcision', and Epistemologies of Ignorance

No

Financial Aid Advisor at TTU

2004

An Understanding of Alcibiades Speech in the Symposium

No

 

2004

Constructive Empiricism and Truthlikeness in the Context of Scientific Progress

Yes

St. Louis University

2004

Theory of Self and Self-Knowledge in Plato's Alcibiades 1

No

 

2003

Anti-Realism, Van Fraassen, Epistemology, and Metaphysics

No

 

2003

Redefining the Moving Image

No

 

2003

Education, Representation, and Liberation

No

Teaching high school in Chicago

2002

Feminist Critiques of Rawls

No

University of North Texas (library science)

2002

Exposing the Domination of Language

No

Texas A&M (sociology PhD)

2002

Color and After-Image Experiences

Yes

Ohio State

2002

 Finding Criteria for Moral Responsibility

Yes

Wisconsin

2002

A Defense of Karma 

No

Southern Illinois (anthropology PhD)

Return to Department Homepage

Department of Philosophy