Ph.D. Dissertations and 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
1912
Tugman, Eupha May Foley. Light Discrimination in the English Sparrow.
1930
Baker, Arthur Mulford. The River of God: The Source-Stream for Morals and Religion.
1935
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.
1952
Al-Faruqi, Isma'il R. On Justifying the Good.
1953
Kramer, Richard Neil. The Ontological Foundations of Negatives.
Mayfield, William Hollingsworth. Platonism and Christianity in the Work of Paul Elmer More.
1954
Carmichael, Douglas. Order and Human Value.
1956
Frye, Robert Edward. Pragmatism in Recent Non-Pragmatic Systems: Santayana, Bergson, Whitehead.
1957
Faruki, Mohamed Zuhdi Taji. The Universal Categories of Charles Sanders Peirce.
Hayes, Frank Ambrose. Platonic Elements in Spinoza's Theory of Method.
1959
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.
1960
Owsley, Richard Mills. The Moral Philosophy of Karl Jaspers.
1961
Anton, Peter Achilles. Empiriciam and Analysis.
Kleis, Sander J. Brightman's Idea of God.
Smyth, Richard A. Kant's Theory of Reference.
1962
Davis, Clarence George. Obligation and Aspiration in Ethics.
1963
Lineback, Richard H. The Place of the Imaginatiion in Hume's Epistemology.
Wisadavet, Wit. Sartre's and the Buddhist's Concept of Man.
1964
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.
1965
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.
1966
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.
1967
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.
1968
Park, Désirée. Berkeley's Theory of Notions.
1969
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.
1970
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.
1971
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.
1972
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.
1973
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.
1974
Geels, Donald Eugene. False Beliefs and Possible States of Affairs.
1975
MacCarthy, Mark Michael. On Methodological Individualism.
1976
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.
1977
Kapitan, Tomis. Foundations for a Theory of Propositional Form, Implication, Alethic Modality and Generalization.
1978
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.
1979
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.
1980
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.
1981
Laycock, Steven William. Intersubjectivity and the Divine Envisionment.
Schoenig, Richard Keith. Primary and Secondary Qualities.
1982
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.
1983
Bahlul, Raja. Sameness and Similarity and the Identity of Indiscernibles.
Cohen, Daniel H. The Logic of Conditional Assertions.
1986
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.
1987
Jetli, Priyedarshi. The Origins of a Realist Conception of Relations in Plato's Phaedo.
Katz, Sheri. Ontology and Epistemology in John Scottus Eriugena.
1989
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.
1990
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.
1991
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.
1992
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.
1993
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.
1993
Vaughan, Christopher. Pure Reflection: Self-Knowledge and Moral Understanding in the Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre.
1994
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.
1995
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.
1996
Fry, Jeffrey P. Self-Esteem, Moral Luck, and the Meaning of Grace.
Shimojima, Atsushi. On the Efficacy of Representation.
1997
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.
1998
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.
1999
Bimbó, Katalin. Substructural Logics, Combinatory Logic, and 
-Calculus.
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.
2000
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.
2001
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.
2002
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.
2003
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.
2004
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.
2005
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.
2006
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.
2007
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.
2008
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.
2009
Bassett, Gregory, Searching for Normativity.
Burkhart, Brian, Respect for Kinship: Toward an Indigenous Environmental Ethics.
2010
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.
2011
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
2012
Cheung, Kwok-Tung, Doxastic Involuntarism, Epistemic Deliberation and Agency
Gehring, Allen, Truthmaker Theory and Its Application
McAninch, Andrew, Holding Me to My Word: The Normative Avowal View of Rational Agency
Theurer, Kari, Rethinking Reductionism: From 17th Century Mechanism to Contemporary Molecular Neuroscience
Master'sTheses
1910
Llewelyn, Edgar Julius. The Forms of Stimulus which Favor the Radical and Permanent Expansion of Human Energy.
1912
Knight, Homer Guy. Psychology of Initiative.
1928
Knight, Everett Estes. The Constructive Value of Doubt with a Bibliography Appended.
1933
Horth, Dudley Shirley. An Examination of Nicolai Hartmann's Ethical Theory.
1934
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.
1935
Meloy, John Wilson. The Nature and Function of Religious Experience: A Study in the Philosophy of Religion.
1937
Mason, Robert E. A Semantic Alphabet for Philosophy.
1938
Muedeking, George Herbert. The Basis for Ethics: The Contribution of Christianity to a Theory of Ethics.
1939
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.
1942
Pitz, Sally A. The Intentional Fallacy Issue.
Van Liere, Donald Wilbur. The Relation of Virtue to Knowledge with Special Reference to Plato's Protagoras.
1943
Jeanes, Charlotte Ann. The Ontological Status of Ought, Based on a Study of the Ought Concepts of Hartmann and Urban.
1947
Parker, Francis Howard. A critical examination of Professor Kantor's interbehavioral description of thinking.
1948
Barber, Richard Leslie. A Reinterpretation of the Significance of the Calculus of Classes for Aristotelian Logic.
1949
Al-Faruqi, Isma'il R. The Ethics of Reason and the Ethics of Life (Kantian and Nietzschean Ethics).
1950
Bullock, Robert Lee. Latent Pragmatism in the Philosophy of Schopenhauer.
Burkhart, Reginald Keith. The Aristotelian Syllogism and Causation.
Kellermann, Frederick D. Socrates and Christianity.
1951
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.
1952
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.
1953
Anton, Peter. Empiricism and Solipsism.
Conger, Mary Janeway. The Erotic Bird: Platonism and Wallace Stevens.
Frye, Robert Wedard. John Locke as Rationalist.
1954
Young, Theodore A. Being and Analogy: The Role of Metaphysical Analogy in Classical Realism, Josiah Royce and R. G. Collingwood.
1955
Crimmel, Henry H. The Copernican Revolution in Philosophy.
1956
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.
1957
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.
1958
Jager, Ronald. Language, Truth and Intentional Logic.
1959
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.
1960
Galligan, Edward Michael. Towards the Understanding of Parmenides' Way of Truth.
Gavrilis, Nicholas. Non-Cognitive Ethics: An Examination of Five Contemporary Ethical Writers.
1961
Leonard, Marilyn Rosenthein. Propositions and Atomic Propositions.
Stamatakos, Bess Makris. On Being Both Red and Blue All Over at the Same Time.
1962
Lineback, Richard H. An Introduction to Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments.
1964
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.
1965
Mueller, Robert W. An Examination of the Meaning of the Socratic Paradoxes.
1967
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.
1968
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.
1969
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.
1970
Tilton, Louis. Sartre's Theory of the Group.
1972
Vári, Peter. Wittgenstein and the Problem of Relations.
1990
DiLeo, Jeffrey R. Charles S. Peirce on Proper Names and Haecceitism.
1992
Taliano, Lisa Toni. The Tragic Affirmation of Life: A Critical Analysis of Nietzsche and Van Gogh.
1993
Gottschling, David. Moral Philosophy's Double Vision: Toward a More Coherent Moral Philosophy.
