W&L Dept. of Philosophy
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According to the 2010-2011 Washington and Lee University Catalog (undergraduate), all "honors programs require an honors thesis during the senior year, involving six credits (no more, no less) of independent work, such as a significant report based upon field or laboratory research, a creative accomplishment in the arts, or a comparable scholarly undertaking, demonstrating more than simply a mastery of subject matter." This site provides access to honors theses the University Library has included in a digitization project beginning in 2010. In many cases, these records include online access to the complete contents of theses, but, at the authors' wishes, some of these records limit online access to current W&L researchers. For similar reasons, some records allow no online access at all.
This material is made available for use in research, teaching, and private study, pursuant to U.S. Copyright law. The user assumes full responsibility for any use of the materials, including but not limited to, infringement of copyright and publication rights of reproduced materials. Any materials used should be fully credited with the source. Permission for publication of this material, in part or in full, must be secured with the Head of Special Collections and Archives.
Preferred citation: [Identification of item], Student Papers, Record Group 38, Special Collections and Archives, Leyburn Library, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA
In some cases the citation format may vary. Please contact the staff of Special Collections and Archives to verify the appropriate format.
Recent Submissions
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How to Meet People: Rehabilitating Particularity and Reciprocity Below Levinas, Heidegger, and Augustine (thesis)
(2019)To be clear, my main goal here is to highlight the transcendence in each thinker's work, and to highlight how, consequently, that transcendence distracts attention from a relationship with the concrete other person and ... -
An Empathy Based Account of Rational Sentimentalism (thesis)
(2019)This project is an attempt to argue two things: first, that the Social Intuitionist Model can be used to advance forward a rational sentimentalist framework, and second, that empathy is necessary for both the existence and ... -
Freedom and Moral Responsibility in a Deterministic Universe: Perspectives from Buddhism and Clinical Psychology (thesis)
(2019)I will be arguing that the concept of an ultimately free agent who takes final responsibility for his actions and desires is inherently incompatible with the dominant western paradigm of materialism and universal causation. ... -
Please Vote Responsibly: An argument for why we have an ethical responsibility to inform ourselves before voting (thesis)
(2017). . . Given the fact that citizens living in a free and democratic state have the right to vote, this entails a civic responsibility to sufficiently inform themselves before voting or before engaging in other politically ... -
Nietzsche's Forgotten Spirit: Woman in Nietzsche's Philosophy (thesis)
(2016)In this thesis, I will attempt first to show how some major themes in Nietzsche's philosophy such as the rejection of dualisms and capital-T truths make room for an interpretation that suggests many of the same ideas that ... -
Mathematical Ontology and Epistemology: An Analysis of Quine's and Maddy's Unique Arguments (thesis)
(2016)This thesis is concerned with the existence and knowledge of mathematical objects within a naturalistic philosophy. I will begin with a brief explanation of what constitutes a mathematical object and will then define and ... -
The Moral Permissibility of Torture in a Terrorized World and The Problem of Dirty Hands (thesis)
(2016)In this paper, I will argue that despite philosophers' and legal theorists' attempts to justify the use of torture in certain situations, torture has always been and will always be universally morally impermissible. [From ... -
To Live Gratefully: The Grateful Response to the Gift of Life (thesis)
(2016)To evaluate the proper response to receiving the gift of life, we must ask what constitutes proper gratitude. I claim that there are two fundamental parts to gratitude: the mental state and the return. While this return ... -
Vocabulary Pedagogy: A Wittgensteinian Approach (thesis)
(2014)My claim in this thesis is that we do not need to rely solely on studying dictionary definitions as the exclusive means of learning new words. Rather, there are far more powerful ways to increase students’ vocabularies — ... -
Improving Science -- Insights from Feminist Standpoint and Coherence Theory (thesis)
(2014)I will begin with a brief exploration of what science is commonly thought to be, and provide a philosophical schema for choosing between scientific theories. This discussion will introduce the complex nature of scientific ... -
Beyond just the words (thesis)
(2013)I divide this paper into 5 sections. In section 1, I present viewpoints of prominent scholars like Rene Descartes, Daniel Dennett, Jerry Fodor, and Paul Churchland on the issue of language, representation, and thought. ... -
The Interwoven Fabric Of Humanity: A Merleau-Pontian Ethics (thesis)
(2013)Given this phenomenological approach to metaphysics, we return to the overriding question of this paper: Based on Merleau-Ponty’s account of humanity, how are human beings obligated to act towards one another? I will ... -
Implicit Imagination in Pathology: Phenomenology in the Abnormal World (thesis)
(2013)After briefly elucidating, in more detail, the nature of phenomenology and its use in providing a description of the ‘normal’ individual’s being-in-the-world, my aims in this project are threefold: (1) To illuminate the ... -
Enlightened Anthropocentrism and its Environmental Policy Implications (thesis)
(2013). . . I will now provide a quick roadmap of my thesis. In the first section, I will begin by explaining the notion of anthropocentrism and noting why environmentalists have felt the need to respond by proposing increasingly ... -
Knowledge through Participation: The Epistemic Status of Religious Belief (thesis)
(2013)Critical philosophy has severely restricted the role of philosophy of religion. A hallmark of the critical approach is an acceptance of Locke's epistemological ethics: belief ought not to go beyond what explicit data or ... -
Aristotle's theory of just exchange (thesis)
(2012)In this paper, I provide an explanation of marginal and equilibrium analysis, analytic techniques from modern economics, and then defend an interpretation of the passage as meaning that an exchange is just when the value ... -
A de dicto solution to the non-identity problem : why what we do to future people matters morally (thesis)
(2011)When faced with non-identity cases, we intuitively begin to think of our obligation to future individuals in the de dicto sense; yet, these individuals, when considered from a de re perspective, are not harmed due to facts ... -
The reality of fiction : an inquiry into the ontology and logic of fiction (thesis)
(2011)This paper will begin by outlining and explaining David Lewis's argument for the existence of possible worlds. In Lewis's extreme form of modal realism, all worlds are equally as real as the actual world. I will then address ... -
Transcendental idealism : an original interpretation (thesis)
(2011)As Paul Guyer and Allen Wood note in the preface to their translation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, "within a few years of the publication of his Critique of Pure Reason in 1781, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was recognized ... -
Nietzsche's metaethics : a eudaimonistic theory : an investigation into Nietzsche's theory of value (thesis)
(2011)In this paper, I will first outline how modern philosophers typically make the distinction between non-moral and moral value. The rest of the paper will be divided into three parts: first Brian Leiter's interpretation of ...
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