Postgraduate students

Find out about the work being done by our Philosophy students at postgraduate level, including their thesis topics and supervisors.

Current students in Philosophy

Students are listed alphabetically under their respective programmes and degrees.

PhD candidates

Philosophy MA students

Philosophy PhD candidates

Snita Ahir-Knight

Thesis title

'Mental Disorder and Mental Health Interventions for Children and Youth: The Cases of Non-suicidal Self-harm and Unruly Behaviour. A Philosophical Inquiry'

Supervisors

Simon Keller and Nick Agar

About

Snita Ahir-Knight's dissertation is a contribution to the philosophy of mental disorder. Considering the cases of non-suicidal self-harm in youth, and unruly behaviour in children and youth, the thesis argues that behaviours and thoughts that are usually a passing phase and helpful for one’s development are not mental disorders; that managing life in the best way one can is not disordered; and, furthermore, that whether one has a mental disorder should not determine whether one is offered a mental health intervention.

While the dissertation will appeal to philosophers, it is hoped that youth, parents, teachers, clinicians, policy makers and similar will be interested in the contents. This is because important practical questions are asked that challenge common views, and guide policies and clinical practice to improve the welfare and service outcomes for children and youth.

Snita Ahir-Knight is a philosophy PhD student at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. She received a Degree in Social Work with first-class honors from Oxford Brookes University and a Master’s degree in Philosophy from the University of London. She has a current and established career as a social worker and child and adolescent therapist.

Richard Aragao

Thesis title

'Ontology, Existence, and Context-Dependence'

Supervisors

Cei Maslen and Stuart Brock

About

It is canonically accepted that the mere utilisation of logical quantifiers according to traditional semantics involves ontological implications. Such implications are said to be connected to the entities of the domain of quantification of our theories, languages, and discourses taken as the value of the bound variables. However, this assumed relation between ontology and quantification has many problematic implications and it also can be said to sound, if deeply analysed, extremely counter-intuitive.

My main research objective is to provide an alternative view, which I name the context-dependent interpretation and which contrasts with the canonical interpretation of the logical quantifiers. According to my view, the concept of “existence”, contrary to what Willard Van Orman Quine asserts, is not univocal and it differs from context to context. Consequently, the quantifiers of the formal logic are not meant to capture—and are not capable of capturing—such a notion.

My aims are to show that: (a) Quine’s criterion of ontological commitment is a questionable semantic approach and is connected with Quine’s prejudices regarding metaphysics; (b) Some alternative views to Quine’s criterion of ontological commitment, especially the ontological deflationist and the fictionalist approach, have difficulties of their own, compromising its usefulness to be good solutions for the problem between quantification and ontology; and finally (c) the context-dependent interpretation of the concept of existence, as I intend to propose, is an intuitive and straightforward approach not based on metaphysical prejudices that takes into consideration how the concepts of “existence”, “being”, and “ontology” are used not only in natural and formal languages but also in ordinary, scientific, ontological, and even technical contexts.

Links

Timothy Irwin

Thesis title

'A Semantics for Accounting'

Supervisors

Ed Mares and Tony van Zijl (Accounting)

Jorge Morales-Delgado

Thesis title

'Inheritance Networks and the Phenomena of Floating Conclusions'

Supervisors

Ed Mares and Sondra Bacharach

Elizabeth Olsen

Thesis title

'Teaching introductory logic'

Supervisors

Ed Mares and Max Cresswell

Eyyuphan Ozdemir

Thesis title

'Reconsidering Epistemic Gap Arguments in terms of Acquaintance Knowledge and Phenomenal Concepts'

Supervisors

Justin Sytsma and Eugen Fischer (University of East Anglia, UK)

Jonathan Pengelly

Thesis title

'Protecting the Artificial Soul'

Supervisors

Nick Agar and Ramon Das

Jordan Skrzynski

Thesis title

'Optimism in Philosophy'

Supervisors

Cei Maslen and Ed Mares

Melissa Snater

Thesis title

'A theory of injustice: coming to terms with determinism'

Supervisor

Justin Sytsma

Philosophy MA students

Billie Berry

Thesis title

'Autism Spectrum Disorders: The Personality-Psychopathology Relationship and Dimensional Classification'

Supervisor

Ed Mares and Simon Keller

Mikka Kaeser

Thesis title

TBA

Supervisor

Justin Sytsma

Ambrose Maran Muthulingam

Thesis title

TBA

Supervisor

Ed Mares

Esther Marshall

Thesis title

TBA

Supervisor

Sondra Bacharach

Eli McKeown

Thesis title

TBA

Supervisor

Simon Keller

Dan Simpson Beck

Thesis title

TBA

Supervisor

Justin Sytsma