The Department of Philosophy is pleased to announce this year's department prize winners:

Bechtel Prize

• Becoming a "New Person": Decision-Making in Transformative Experiences (Undergrad) - Gabrielle Landry
• Reference to the Past (Grad) - Megan Entwistle

The Bechtel Prize in Philosophy was established through the...

Philosopy concentrator Ilana Cohen ('23) will speak about the Fossil Free Research movement on the "Shifting Academic Institutions" panel at the 2023 Philosophers for Sustainability Philosophy & the Climate Conference. The conference will be on held on Zoom on April 29 and aims to "work toward addressing the climate crisis through teaching, curriculum development, event organizing, public philosophy, and institutional advocacy and change."

For more informaiton on the conference and to register, please visit: ...

The Department of Philosophy is delighted to announce the winners of this year's Adams, Bechtel, Bowen, and Carrier Prizes, awarded annually to our undergraduate and graduate students for essays and theses/dissertations. You can read more about the history of these prizes below. Congratulations to all of these deserving students!

Adams Prize
- Byung (Joon) Lee, "Modern Machines, Modern Ghosts"
- Chandler Hatch, "The General Will: Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel"

The George Plimpton Adams Prize was established in 1974 in...

Volume XXIX of The Harvard Review of Philosophy is now available through the Philosophy Documentation Center. The Review's 29th volume, entitled "Philosophy and the Environment,"...

Senior philosophy concentrator Adelle Goldenberg has won the Harvard-Cambridge Scholarship to study at Cambridge University during the 2021-22 academic year. She will be pursuing an MPhil in Multidisciplinary Gender Studies as the Governor William Shirley Scholar at Pembroke College.

See Adelle’s full profile and learn more about the Harvard-Cambridge scholarship here....

Three Philosophy concentrators have been awarded the Hoopes Prize for the 2021-2022 academic year. Funded by the estate of Thomas T. Hoopes (Class of 1921), the Hoopes prize is awarded annually to undergraduates “on the basis of outstanding scholarly work or research... recognizing, promoting, honoring, and rewarding excellence in the work of undergraduates and their capabilities and skills in any subject, projects of research in science or the humanities, or in specific written work of the students under the instruction or supervision of the Faculty.”

The...

Three Philosophy concentrators have been awarded the Hoopes Prize for 2020-2021 academic year. Funded by the estate of Thomas T. Hoopes (Class of 1921), The Hoopes prize is awarded annually to undergraduates “on the basis of outstanding scholarly work or research... recognizing, promoting, honoring, and rewarding excellence in the work of undergraduates and their capabilities and skills in any subject, projects of research in science or the humanities, or in specific written work of the students under the instruction or supervision of the Faculty.”

The Winners are:

The Department of Philosophy is delighted to announce the winners of this year's Carrier, Adams, Bechtel, and Bowen Prizes, awarded annually to our undergraduate and graduate students for essays and theses/dissertations. You can read more about the history of these prizes below. Congratulations to all of these deserving undergraduate and graduate students!

Bechtel Prize:

• Rachael Goodyer for her essay, "How to (mis)read ‘The Human Prejudice’ ”

Bowen Prize:

• David Thorstad for his essay, “Norms of Inquiry”
...

The Department of Philosophy recently announced the winners for the Bechtel, Bowen, Carrier, and Adams awards for 2016-17.

The Bechtel Prize is funded through the generosity of Edwin Bechtel and is awarded to a graduate and undergraduate annually for the best essays on any philosophical subject. The Bowen Prize was established in 1938 by a bequest from Miss Maria Bowen as a memorial to her father, Francis Bowen, who held the Alford professorship of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity from 1853 to 1889. A graduate and undergraduate prize is conferred annually...

What is the subject of your thesis?

My thesis is situated in the areas of aesthetics and philosophy of narrative. Specifically, I explored video games as a new mode of storytelling: I argued that the ontology of video games allow us to relate to narratives in ways that radically diverge from our engagement with novels, film, and other narrative media.

How did you decide on this topic?

I've been played video games for 13 years in much the same way as people read novels: I immerse myself in their stories, interpret those stories, and so on. Once I took up philosophy in...

What is the subject of your thesis?

The subject of my thesis is Berkeley’s Immaterialism as presented primarily in his A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. The topic of the thesis is in early modern history of philosophy although its subject matter intersects with metaphysics, philosophy of mind (perception), some epistemology and philosophy of science.

How did you decide on this topic?

I decided on this thesis topic because it is the area I had taken classes in and so felt comfortable approaching based on the knowledge base and skills I...

What is the subject of your thesis?

I am writing my thesis on a topic in the history of legal philosophy. To put it as briefly as possible, I am offering a new interpretation of the debate between two of the most influential legal philosophers of the 20th century (H. L. A. Hart and John Finnis) by tracing it to its heretofore unrecognized roots in the philosophy of social science.

How did you decide on this topic?

I started reading books in “legal philosophy” a few years ago, since I already had independent academic interests in law and in philosophy. I found that the...

What is the subject of your thesis?

My thesis is about plagiarism, ownership, and copyrights in music. It overlaps between epistemology and ethics.

How did you decide on this topic?

I'm a joint concentrator with music as my primary field, and I struggled for a while with finding a topic that really interested me. Then one morning last summer I woke up with the idea to do something involving copyright law in music. The process of narrowing down my topic involved me going through various high-profile cases and figuring out which ones I disagreed with, most notably the...

What is the subject of your thesis?

I am writing about the genealogy of belief. In particular, I am addressing the question: does the fact that a belief is culturally contingent give one reason to doubt the belief.

How did you decide on this topic?

This question has always been of interest to me. In fact, it's one of the reasons I became interested in philosophy in the first place. I always wondered, for example, if I should adopt my parents' religious faith knowing that had I grown up in a different household I likely would have believed something drastically...