The mission of the UMSL Philosophy Department is to explore and advance the claims of our discipline by producing innovative research, teaching, and service. Our faculty publish their research in highly selective journals, addressing both traditional philosophical problems and diverse present-day applications. They teach courses that engage and empower traditional and non-traditional students, with an instructional menu that serves casual students, undergraduate majors and minors, and masters candidates. And they serve wider constituencies by participating in a variety of learned societies and in public conferences, forums, and colloquia, offering analysis and debate that promises deeper understanding of today's pressing issues. Together these departmental activities further our campus status as a premier public metropolitan research university.

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Theses from 2023

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Intentional Passing and Closeted Agency, Logan Bohlinger

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Can You Escape Agency by Falling Asleep? Killing Two Constitutivists’ Problems With One Stone, Henrique Cassol Leal

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Combating Systemic Racism With Truth Commissions, Katherine E. Miles

Theses from 2022

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Preservation of Autonomy in Pediatric Decision-Making, Crystal Brown

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A Relational Account of Resolutions: Resolution as Reacquaintance, Daniel Grasso

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Are Numerical Symbols Fundamental to Neural Computation?, Mirinda James

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What is Assertiveness?, Mirjana Trifunovic (Available for download on Friday, April 26, 2024)

Theses from 2021

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Self-Determination as Historical Justice, Zanyar Ahmadi (Available for download on Friday, March 30, 2221)

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Medical Expertise, Patient Expertise, and Surrogate Decision Making: The Importance of Co-deliberation in Medical Decision-Making, Lindsey Grossheim

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Warrant and Non-function: A Critique of the Sensus Divinitatis in Plantinga's Reformed Epistemology, Lukas Merrell

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Loose Connections in the Just Society, Benjamin Parviz

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Those Thrice Marked By Time: The Significance of the Last Known Survivor, Their Death, and Our Remembrance, Michael Tofte

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Representational Enactivism, Zhexi Zhang

Theses from 2020

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Telling and Testimony, Sam Filby

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Probability of Naturalism and Metanormative Realism, Curtis Howd

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Supererogation and Moral Reasons, Justin B. Yee

Theses from 2019

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On Unifying Declarative Memory, Thomas Ames

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The Limits of Sociality, Johnna B. McGovern

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A Means to an End: Adding Value to the Preference Debate, Laura Miller

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How to Distinguish Qualities and Dispositions, Seth Reed

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The Epistemic and Psychological Mechanisms Perpetuating Racism Within the Criminal Justice System, Danielle Walker

Theses from 2018

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A Conferralist Account of Individuality, Zachary Auwerda

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Constraints and Explanation, Alexander Bolano

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Knock-Knock! Whose Peer? The Epistemic Significance of Humor, Kaci Harrison

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For the Sake of the Intellect, Let Them Have Art: A Possible Reconciliation for the Value of Mimetic Arts in the 'Republic', BreAnna Liddell

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Social Media: On Tech-Caves, Virtual Panopticism, and the Science Fiction-Like State In Which We Unwittingly Find Ourselves, Michael Major

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Looking Past the Images: Art and Film as Propaganda Apparatuses, Alexander Schumm

Theses from 2017

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The Epistemic Status of Moral Conceptual Truths, Kara D. Boschert

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Public Artifacts, Empirical Vulnerability and Descriptive Metaphysics, Blake Davenport

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Justify This! The Roles of Epistemic Justification, Tamala L. Endriss

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Degrees of Altruism as Dependent Upon Degrees of Relations, Bobbi Jackson

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The Nature of God & Predestination in John Davenant's Dissertatio De Praedestinatione et Reprobatione, Jonathan Roberts

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Realist Nonideal Theory: The Intuition Critique, Reflective Equilibrium and the Role of Morality in Politics, Danny R. Underwood II

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Soldier, Officer, Citizen: Applying Just War Theory to Police Use of Force, Benjamin N. Wisniewski

Theses from 2016

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Horrendous Evils and the Problem of Representation, William Bell

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Coercion Negates Responsibility: A Case for Indirect Compelled Doxastic Coercion and Adaptive Preferences as Effects of Practical Coercion, RC Patterson

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It’s All in Your Head: A Solution to the Problem of Object Coincidence, Graham Louis Renz

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Urmson's Art, Tyler Ryan

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Heteronormativity and the Ideal Family, Ashton R. Snider

Theses from 2015

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Hate Speech and the Status of Prisoners, Logan Richard Baseley

Adaptive Preferences Are Not Irrational, Sarah Beach

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Is Natural Normativity True Normativity?, Amy Lawson Broadway

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Uncomfortable Bedfellows: Locke and the Libertarian Theory of Property, Garrett Dimond

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The Scientific and Theological Superiority of Divine Timelessness, David Christian Justice

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The Instability of "The Law of Peoples" and a Suggested Remedy, Lavender McKittrick-Sweitzer

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Four Domains of Knowledge in Education, Justin Tyler Ormsby

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Psychology's Ontology as Antinomy, Kevin Rice

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Tense and Truthmaking: Addressing the Problem of Tense After the Ontological Turn, Elliott Risch

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Two Indexical Theories of Names, Costigan Thomas

Theses from 2014

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Comparing Perspectives on Cause and Reason in Intentional Action: Elizabeth Anscombe's Intention and Donald Davidson's "Actions, Reasons and Causes", Victoria White Berger

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Rules and Habits, Andrew Ross Bramman

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Recasting the Darwinian Dilemma, Abram L. Brummett

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The Reliability and Nature of Philosophical Intuitions, Matthew Allen DeStefano

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Purloined Sperm, Victim-Blaming, and Procreative Asymmetry: A Critique of Christine Overall’s Analysis of Prospective Parent Disagreement, Jordan Gabriel Potter

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On The Necessary Connection Between Law and Ethics: The Ethical Content of Law, Michael D. Sigler

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The Sages and Philosophers: Reevaluating the Interaction Between Ancient Israel and Greece, Mike Tolliver

Theses from 2013

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The Rational Authority of Morality: Reason Internalism and Negative Duties, Kyle Stewart Barrett

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Akrasia and the Elusive Self, Frank R. Faries

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Is Theoretical Rationality Derivatively Normative?, Kevin Charles Kifer

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Toward a General Account of Improvisation, Kevin Thomas Lepore

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Concepts, Universals, and the Abstract, David Keith McGraw

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A Defense of the Kalam Cosmological Argument and the B-Theory of Time, Curtis John Metcalfe

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Sustainability and Our Current Food Production System, Jennifer Nott

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A Physicalist Account of Consciousness and the Conceivability Argument, Christopher John Owen

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The Explanatory Indispensability of Mathematics: Why Structure is 'What There Is', Nils Richards

A Dilemma for Non-descriptive Cognitivism, Ayoob Shahmoradi

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Environmental Virtue, Callicott and the Land Ethic, John Charles Simpson

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Aristotle’s Conception of Equity in Context, Andrew Sucre

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Philosophical Disagreement and Skepticism, Eric Thomas Wilcox

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Reconsidering the Battered Woman Syndrome Defense for Women Who Kill, Krista J. Wiley

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Epistemic Uniqueness, Permissiveness, and Peer Disagreement, Tung-Ying Wu

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Accommodating Species Evolution: Aristotle’s Essentialism Revisited, Yin Zhang

Theses from 2012

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Temporal Operators and (Metaphysical) Presentism, Matthew J. Bell

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Defending the Role of Unconscious Intentions: A Response to Wegner, Hannah Bondurant

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Knowing For: A New Path in Testimonial Justification, John Allan Scott Camacho

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The Emotions and Two Aesthetic Paradoxes, Nicholas James Curry

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Thomas Aquinas: Soul-Body Connection and the Afterlife, Hyde Dawn Krista

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Why We Have An Intrinsic Reason To Be Rational, Michael Lorenza Neal

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Meeting Resistance to a Policy of Cadaveric Organ Conscription: A Discussion of the Important Issues and Arguments, Daniel Ryan Sahr

Shooing the Euthyphro Gadfly in Theistic Ethics: Rethinking the “Arbitrary” Objection Presented to Theological Voluntarism, Daniel Ryan Weed

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Man Alone: An Examination of Animal Rights, Heather M. Werner

Theses from 2011

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A Simple Question: Does Friedrich Nietzsche have a Political Philosophy?, Jordan Tyler Brodzinski

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Mourning, Melancholia, and the Possibility of Transformation: Comparing Julia Kristeva's Black Sun and Judith Butler's The Psychic Life of Power, Kristina Marie Darling

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Alien Attributions and the Possibility of Missing the Mark: A Critique of Velleman's Account of Autonomy and the Constitutive Aim of Action, Matthew Todd Flummer

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Galileo's Philosophy of Science, Jason Eugene Gavin

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Against Normative Nationalism, Ashish George

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Unfree and Equal: Challenging G.A. Cohen on the Compatibility between Freedom of Occupational Choice and Equality, Richard Lee Lauer

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The "Human Mental State Multiple Realizability in Silicon Thesis" is False: An Argument Against Computational Theories of Consciousness, Matthew Stuart Piper

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Does Foot Have a Leg to Stand On?: A Dilemma for an Attempt to Ground Evaluative Judgment in Biological Teleology, Emalee Popoff

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"An Insanity Defense Should Be Available to Psychopaths", Christian Francis Richeson

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Explaining Volition in the Ta'aliqat: Avicenna's View of Free Will, Anthony Ruffus

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Illuminating Anti-Luminosity, Tudor Alexandru Seserman

The Virtue of Happiness as Affective State and its Centrality to Well-Being, Christopher Ross Summers

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On Thomson's Normativity, Michael James Vossen

Theses from 2010

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The Universalizability Criterion of Reason and the Final Value of Knowledge: A Response to Pritchard’s Analysis of the Value of Knowledge, Lisa Lynette Cagle

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Evaluating Libertarian Paternalism, Michelle Elizabeth Catalano

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Verbal Disputes and the Internalism/Externalism Debate in Epistemology, John M. Fraiser

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An Analysis of the Motto Adduced by Wittgenstein for the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Thomas Patrick Knoten

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An Attempt at Understanding Nietzsche's "On Truth and Lying in an Extra-Moral Sense", John David Lee

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Rational Action: Reasons, Causes, and Choices, David James Redmond