Honors Theses

Philosophy Honors Theses are the written presentations of research conducted under the guidance of Colby faculty by senior Philosophy majors. A bound copy of each thesis is kept in the Department library.
 

2007:

Elizabeth Coogan, Rawls and Health Care
Adam Marvin, Interpretation Stops Here: Judicial Politics in a Constitutional Republic
Allyson Rudolph, Collective Moral Responsibility

2006:

Emily Brostek, An Impoverished Philosophy
Gregory Lusk, Truth, Knowledge and Understanding

2005:

Megan Burd, Mysticizing Philosophy
Josh Kahn, Separating the Good from the Great:  Toward an Objective Criterion for Value in Music
Chris Surprenant, Cultivating the Good Will:  Moral Progress and the Kantian State
Alex Telis, Ethics and the Akeda:  An Existenial Exegesis of Genesis 22

2004:

Edward F. Smith, Rationality, Warrant, and Theistic Belief

2003:

Peter K. Osborn, Lost in the Woulds:  Why I am Not a Counterpart and Other Lessons from Modal Logic
Tracy E. Schloss, When Morality Builds:  An Analysis of Art, City Planning, and The Ethics of Iris Murdoch
Edwin Stone, Positivism in the Wasteland:  An Essay on the Nature of International Law

2002:

John S. Brownell, Ethical and Legal Issues of Informed Consent in Medicine
Ryan M. Wepler, Boats, Bats, and Bootstraps: A Defense of American Neopragmatism

2001:

Bryan P. Kessler, The Importance of the Ontological Relationship Between Absolute Spirit and Individual Minds in G.W.F. Hegel's Philosophy

2000:

Scott J. Bridges, Challenging the Laws of Thought

1999:

Dennis N. D'Angelo, If I'd Known Then What I Know Now
Katie Quackenbush, Literature, Drama, and Philosophy in Plato:  The Trials and Death of Socrates

1998:

John S. Brunero III, Autonomy, Authority, and Discourse:  Can Habermas and Mill Resolve Philosophical Anarchism?

1997:

Michael S. Barber (senior scholar), Reading Nietzsche, Reading Emerson:  (Con) Texts for Creative Meaning
Andrew B. Glos, The Mystic, the Heretic, and the Dame of Norwich

1996:

Paul J. Fontana, The Existence of Evil and the Problem of God
Christopher McMath (senior scholar), Medical Treatment and the Good Death

1995:

John E. Costenbader, Buddhism and the Unveiling of an Environmental Ethic
Caleb E. Mason, The Early Genealogy of the Concept of Will