Ph. D. Requirements

Summary

Students in the Syracuse University Philosophy Ph.D. program must satisfy the following requirements:

Course requirement
Course distribution requirements
Papers
Dissertation

Students should consult the graduate handbook for the authoritative statement of current requirements, which are briefly summarized below.

Course Requirements

There are 18 courses (54 credit hours) required. At least 7 courses must be non-independent-study courses numbered 700 or higher. No more than 6 courses may be at the 500 level. As many as 2 of these courses may be outside philosophy, if approved by the department as appropriate to the student's area of study. Up to 2 courses (6 credit hours) may be replaced by work for a Syracuse University master's thesis, subject to departmental approval. Up to 8 courses (24 credit hours) credit may be granted for work at other institutions (courses and/or master's thesis), subject to departmental approval. In addition to the 54 hours of credit for courses, a Ph.D. student must enroll for at least 18 dissertation hours.

Course Distribution Requirements

Ph.D. students are required to satisfy certain course distribution requirements. Students are encouraged to satisfy many of these distribution requirements in the first two years, and are required to take three survey courses during the first year. Courses that count as survey courses are 533, 555, 565, 583, 693, 651, 687, and any other course designated by the department, during a given semester, as counting as a survey course during that semester. For a course to count as satisfying a course distribution requirement, a grade of B or better is required.

Certain courses (listed below) always count as satisfying a particular distribution requirement. The department will decide what distribution requirements are satisfied by other courses, on a semester-by-semester basis. One course may sometimes be designated as satisfying more than one requirement (either for a single student, or different requirements for different students).

Students may petition to satisfy distribution requirements by alternate means (e.g., coursework elsewhere, oral or written examination administered by the department, submission of a paper). Acceptance of such a petition will not count towards satisfying the 18 course requirement (section I).

The distribution requirements are as follows:

Five courses distributed as follows:

Metaphysics - one course (583, 840, or an approved course)
Epistemology - one course (687, 850, or an approved course)
Mind/Language - one course (533, 535, 565, 665, or an approved course)
Science/Math - one course (555, 573, 575, 673, or an approved course)
Logic - one course (551, 552, 651, or an approved course)

Two courses in value theory:

Ethics - one course (693, 860, or an approved course)
One additional course in Ethics, Aesthetics, or Political Philosophy (596, 693, 695, 860, 870, 880, or an approved course)

Four courses in the history of philosophy:

Ancient philosophy - one course (510, 710, or an approved course)
Rationalists/Empiricists - one course (730 or an approved course)
Two additional courses (505, 510, 615, 618, 700, 710, 730, or an approved course)

Alternatively, for one of these four history courses a student may substitute an oral examination on a major historical figure or work.

Papers

Each student will write one "special paper" by August 15 of the summer before the third year. This paper will be developed in consultation with a member of the faculty (chosen by the student) and approved by a committee of three faculty members chosen by the Director of Graduate Studies. Students may rewrite and resubmit papers that are not approved. Approval of a special paper before August 15 of the summer before the fourth year is required to maintain good standing in the program. It is also required in order to become ABD and have a dissertation clarification.

Students who enter our Ph.D. program with the MA degree in Philosophy (from our department or from another institution) must submit a special paper before the second year, and have a paper approved before the third year. (Ordinarily, if the student has done an MA thesis, it can be expected that a portion of that thesis would serve as the basis for a suitable submission.)

Dissertation

Supervisor:: Just before completion of pre-dissertation requirements (the course requirements and the papers), typically near the end of the third year, the student should meet with the Director of Graduate Studies to discuss dissertation plans. The Director, in consultation with the student, will appoint a dissertation supervisor. In some cases, two faculty may jointly supervise a dissertation.

At that time, the student and the supervisor should identify the topic of the dissertation (e.g., "Skepticism", "Emotions", "Free Will", "Consciousness"), and compile a reading list of the most important literature in that topic. At this time the supervisor can also suggest that the student begin work developing any additional "tools" that may be required for research in that topic.
Clarification:: When all pre-dissertation requirements have been completed, when the supervisor feels that the student's proposal is adequately developed, and when the supervisor feels that the student has done adequate background reading, the Director of Graduate Studies will appoint a committee of at least three faculty members for the Dissertation Clarification. The student will provide the members of the clarification committee with a proposal for a dissertation, including a bibliography of the major works that the student expects to cite in the dissertation. The committee will meet with the student to discuss the proposal, perhaps suggesting amendments and additional relevant literature. The committee may then accept the proposal, as amended by this discussion, or the committee may request a new written proposal and another clarification meeting.

Supervisory committee:: This committee is comprised of three faculty members who supervise your dissertation after you have clarified. You are expected to regularly share your work with each member. At the end of each semester, each member of the supervisory committee must write a report on your progress. The Director of Graduate Studies will collect these and review them with your principal supervisor.

Tools requirement:

There is no general program-wide foreign language requirement. However, a student's clarification committee has the authority to require some degree of competence to use one or more tools of research: perhaps one or more relevant foreign languages (e.g., if the student is writing a historical dissertation), some mathematics (e.g., statistics, if the student is writing about inductive logic), and so on. The dissertation supervisor will decide whether any requirements the clarification committee imposes have been satisfied.

Defense:

When the supervisor judges that the dissertation is complete, he or she will approve it for defense. The Director of Graduate Studies will then appoint a committee consisting of at least five faculty members from the Department, ordinarily including all of the members of the committee for the Dissertation Clarification. In addition, the Graduate Dean will appoint a chair from another department for the dissertation defense.

Graduate School regulations and deadlines govern the preparation of the dissertation and the scheduling of the defense. It is important to work closely with the Director of Graduate Studies and appropriate representatives of the Graduate School in preparing the dissertation and scheduling the defense. These consultations need to begin several months before the expected graduation date.