Graduate Placement

Graduate Placement

The table below provides a record of placement outcomes for graduate students (only) in the MA program. Data are for any/all students who have applied—whether successful or not—for further academic study based on their MA degree. Students that opted not to pursue further academic study are not listed. Data are complete from the present back to 2008. Each placement prior to 2008 is verified; however, unsuccessful applicants are unknown. A note about placement from 1988–2008 follows. For additional information, see our Alumni page.

Graduation Year Thesis Title or Writing Sample Placement
2022–2023 Impossibly Immoral Fictions and How to Understand Them PhD, Saint Louis University [Philosophy]
2022–2023 Color as Form: Segmentation as the Primary Role of Color Vision Lecturer, Cal State Long Beach [Philosophy]
2022–2023 Comprehensive Exams  
2021–2022 Defining and Refining Naturalist Realism PhD, University of Pennsylvania [Philosophy]
2021–2022 Moral Objections to Moral Realism PhD, University of Texas Austin [Philosophy]
2021–2022 Berkeley on God’s Knowledge of Sensible Objects PhD, University of California Riverside [Philosophy]
2021–2022 Mind, Perception, Phenomenology RA, Center for International Trade and Transportation
2020–2021 Casting Light on the Search for Engrams: The Reductionism-Mechanism Debate PhD, University of Pittsburgh [History & Philosophy of Science]
2020–2021 On Multi-Dimensional Gradability: A Refutation of the False Dichotomy in Knowing How PhD, University of California Irvine [Philosophy]
2020–2021 Exploring the Differences between Moral and Nonmoral Testimony PhD, University of Memphis [Philosophy]; transferred to PhD, Purdue University [Literature & Philosophy]
2020–2021 al-Ghazali on Occasionalism, Natural Science, and Miracles PhD, admitted but declined offer [Religion/Interdisciplinary]
2019–2020 Relevant Features that Could Qualify Artificial Intelligence Systems as Persons with Moral Standing PhD, University of Wisconsin [Philosophy]
2018–2019 Language, Nature, and Meaning in Life PhD, University of Cincinnati [Philosophy]
2017–2018 The Basis of Moral Values PhD, University of Connecticut [Philosophy]
2016–2017 An Empirical Look at the Transparency of Perceptual Experience PhD, University of California San Diego [Philosophy]
2016–2017 Scientific Realism and the Geometric Structure of Physical Theories PhD, University of Minnesota [Philosophy]
2016–2017 Absence Causation in Mechanistic Explanation PhD, University of Colorado [Philosophy]
2014–2015 Overcoming the Present Lecturer, Cal State San Bernardino [Philosophy]
2014–2015 Tracing and Offloading: A Neo-Lockean Reply to Johnston PhD, University of Kansas [Philosophy]
2013–2014 Comprehensive Exams Lecturer, Long Beach City College [Social Sciences]
2013–2014 The Doxastic Conception of Delusion PhD, University of Wisconsin [Philosophy]
2012–2013 Comprehensive Exams JD, Loyola Marymount [Law]
2012–2013 O’Connor’s Agent-Causation Theory of Free Will PhD, University of California Davis [Philosophy]
2011–2012 Manipulation and Moral Responsibility PhD, Purdue University [Philosophy]
2011–2012 Dirty Hands, Virtue Ethics, and Consequentialism PhD, Syracuse University [Philosophy]
2010–2011 The Role of Intuition in Philosophical Theory Construction PhD, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign [Psychology]
2010–2011 Nietzsche as Cultural Physician JD, University of Southern California [Law]
2009–2010 A Defense of Mackie’s Error Theory PhD, University of Western Ontario [Philosophy]
2008–2009 A Defense of Davidson’s Dissolution to the Problem of Global Skepticism PhD, University of Utah [Philosophy]
2007–2008 Worldmaking and Exemplification in Theater-to-Film Adaptations PhD, University of California Los Angeles [Cinema Studies]
2007–2008 Back to the Future: A Modern Natural Law Understanding of the Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789 PhD, University of California Irvine [Philosophy]
2006–2007 Pyrrhonian Skepticism and the Problem of the Criterion PhD, University of California Irvine [Philosophy]
2005–2006 Comprehensive Exams PhD, Cal State Long Beach [Education]
2005–2006 The Supervenience Interpretation of Biological Fitness and Scientific Understanding PhD, York University [Philosophy]
2005–2006 New Foundations for Philosophy of Mind PhD, Florida State University [Philosophy]
2005–2006 Explanation in Biology PhD, University of Minnesota [Philosophy]
2004–2005 Musical Ontology and the Epistemological Turn PhD, Indiana University Bloomington [Philosophy]
2004–2005 Comprehensive Exams PhD, University of Southampton
2002–2003 A Philosophical Defense of Bilingual Education PhD, University of California Irvine
2002–2003 Trouble in Paradise: The Factual Problem of Minority Rights Justification in Normative Political Theory PhD, University of California Irvine
2002–2003 Two Studies of Paul Churchland’s Eliminative Materialism PhD, Florida State University
2002–2003 On Plantinga’s Case Against Naturalism PhD, Purdue University
2001–2002 The Fool in Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan PhD, University of Southern California
2001–2002 Knowledge of the Mind: A Defense of Descartes against Malebranche PhD, University of California Irvine
2001–2002 Martin Heidegger: Dwelling and its Ethical Import PhD, University of Texas Austin [Architecture]
2001–2002 Critical Social Theory: Essays on Power, Knowledge, and Consciousness PhD, University of California Irvine [History]
2000–2001 Locke, Nozick, the Descriptive Model of Rights, and the Limits of Private Property MA, University of California Davis [Political Science]
2000–2001 Becoming Responsible for Emotion-Motivated Action PhD, State University of New York Albany
1999–2000 The Logic and Rationality of Paraconsistency PhD, University of South Africa Pretoria
1999–2000 Plantinga and Warranted Belief PhD, Purdue University
1999–2000 Using the Will to Power to Shape Authentic Selves PhD, University of California Riverside
1999–2000 Vagueness in Language and Law: Blurring the Semantics-Pragmatics Distinction PhD, University of Ottawa
1999–2000 The Realism-Antirealism Debate and the Big Bang Model in Cosmology PhD, University of California San Diego
1999–2000 Three Treatments of Scientific Explanation PhD, University of Southern California
1998–1999 Putnam’s Puzzle: An Attempted Exorcism in the Philosophy of Language PhD, University of California Santa Barbara
1998–1999 The Realism Debate: Two Interpretations of Quantum Theory PhD, University of Southern California
1997–1998 Seeing Our Way through Relativism PhD, Washington University St. Louis
1996–1997 Toward a Phenomenology of Obligation PhD, Boston College [Philosophy]
1996–1997 When Seeing is Believing: Bas van Fraassen and the Observable/Unobservable Distinction PhD, University of Toronto
1996–1997 Distanciation and Appropriation: Paul Ricoeur’s Hermeneutic Phenomenology and the Challenge of Evil PhD, Fordham University [Philosophy]
1995–1996 The Role of Cumulative Case Arguments in Theistic and Naturalistic Explanations PhD, University of California Irvine
1994–1995 Chaos, Complexity Theory, and the Free Will/Determinism Debate PhD, University of Maryland

 

A review showed that 127 MA degrees were awarded during the period 1988–2008. Although data are incomplete, a (conservative) review revealed the following results:

  • 58 of the 127 graduates chose to apply to doctoral programs.
  • 53 (or 91%) of these 58 were admitted to a doctoral program.
  • 45 of these 53 were admitted to a PhD program in Philosophy, and 7 were admitted to doctoral programs in other disciplines (e.g., Law, Education, Film Studies).
  • 30 of the 45 admitted to a PhD program in Philosophy (67%) were admitted to one (or more) of the top-fifty PhD programs in the United States (as ranked by The Philosophical Gourmet Report).
  • Of the 69 graduates that chose not to apply to PhD programs, at least 21 (or more than 30%) went on to teach Philosophy as Full- or Part-time Adjunct Professors or Lecturers at various universities and community colleges around the United States and Canada.