Current PhD Students - Philosophy | Trinity College Dublin

Haktan Akcin

Research

My work is in the area of naturalized metaphysics, structural realism and metaphysical modality.

In my PhD thesis, I defend naturalized metaphysics against traditional alternatives as the latter lost contact with cutting-edge science. On the other hand, since the empirical results of science bear on how metaphysics should be conducted according to naturalized metaphysics, the immediate worry is the status of naturalized metaphysics when the scientific ontology it is constructed upon is jettisoned in future science.

Thus, I try to find out the best version of naturalized metaphysics for those taking the results of ontological discontinuity due to theory change in science seriously.

Supervisor | Professor Alison Ferdandes

Website | philpeople.org/profiles/haktan-akcin

Weihao Chen

Research

My primary research interests are in phenomenology and philosophy of mind, especially the intersection of them.

My thesis title is Encountering Others: A Phenomenological Approach.

It will be a study of the problem of other minds from the perspective of phenomenology, Husserlian phenomenology in particular.

Supervisor | Professor Lilian Alweiss

Educational Background
MA in Philosophy | Peking University

Didi Dong

Research

My research project is titled 'Erōs (love) and Self-Formation: A Platonic Approach'. The project aims to investigate and develop our philosophical understanding of self-formation, and the key potential it has for our interpersonal relationship and communal well-being, through Plato’s treatment of the role or function of erōs (love) in regard to moral character-formation and human happiness.

Supervisor | Professor Vasilis Politis

Educational Background
MA in Philosophy | Tsinghua University
Visiting Research Fellow | Stanford University | 2018 - 2019.

Darius Hockel

Research

My research interests are in the philosophy of religion and metaethics. I have interests in arguments for and against theism, and more generally the debate between naturalists and theists.

I also focus on Thomism in the contemporary philosophy of religion. Here, I am focused on the Thomistic conception of God and divine attributes.

In metaethics, I am interested in arguments surrounding anti-realism, especially error theory.

Supervisor | Professor Paul O'Grady

Educational Background
Master’s Degree | San Francisco State University

Simone Nota

Research

I hold research interests in (meta) metaphysics, philosophy of language, early analytic philosophy, and ethics. Specifically, my PhD research focuses on the problem of the possibility of (transcendental) metaphysics in Kant and the early Wittgenstein.

Overall, I argue that one may be a transcendental philosopher without being a transcendental idealist. As a result, engagement in transcendental philosophy may bring us to an understanding of metaphysics, which is not a metaphysical understanding. Insofar as the sources of Metaphysics lie within us, a similar understanding may have ethical implications for our idea of humanity.

My thesis title is Is Transcendental Metaphysics Possible? Transcendentalism, Idealism, and Perspectivism in Kant and the early Wittgenstein.

Supervisor | Professor James Levine

Educational Background
MA in Philosophy | University of Pavia
I have further spent visiting research periods at the University of Cambridge (Corpus Christi College), UCL, the University of Leipzig (FAGI), and the Italian Institute for Philosophical Studies.

Website | www.simonenota.weebly.com

Michael O`Gorman

Research

My research interests primarily include Thomas Aquinas, and his views on omnipotence, free will, the relationship between theology and philosophy, omniscience, time, the efficacy of prayer, and logical possibility.

My current research project concerns how Aquinas’s views on time and omnipotence interact with Richard Swinburne’s account of the same.

Supervisor | Professor Paul O'Grady

Educational Background
Masters by Research in Theology | Mary Immaculate College, Limerick | 2018
My thesis was entitled "An Investigation of Divine Freedom within the Philosophical Theology St Thomas Aquinas", and was supervised by Dr Rik Van Nieuwenhove

Enda Russell

Research

My primary research interests are in the philosophy of modality (necessity, possibility, contingency, the counterfactual conditional), and secondarily in general philosophy of science and the philosophy of Immanuel Kant.

My PhD thesis is entitled Quinean Appropriations of the Lewisian Modal Philosophy, which studies aspects of the philosophy of David Lewis (namely, the ontological theory of modal realism and the semantic theory of counterparts) from the point of view of the philosophy of W.V. Quine.

Specifically, I study the critique of quantified modal logic in Quine’s work and the resources available for accommodating that critique in Lewis’s philosophy.

Supervisor | Professor John Divers

Educational Background
MPhil. Philosophy | Trinity College Dublin | 2022

Jack Ryan

Research

I am interested in the philosophical status of the Laws of Nature, specifically from an Essentialist interpretation of Plato.

The focus of my research is on a defence of such an interpretation as providing a basis for the Laws of Nature, particularly in the context of more recent realist perspectives, with specific reference to Armstrong`s theory of the Laws of Nature as relations between universals.

Supervisor | Professor Vasilis Politis

Educational Background
MPhil in Philosophy | Trinity College Dublin |2022-2023

Eduardo Torres

Research

My work is in the areas of the philosophy of language, metaphysics, and the history of analytic philosophy. In particular: reference, metasemantics, and metapragmatics; metametaphysics and social ontology; and Peter Strawson and the Ordinary Language Philosophy tradition, respectively.

I'm also interested in aesthetics, specifically, the ontology of music, the philosophy of literature, and the philosophy of horror.

My thesis is (tentatively) titled Against Revision: Reconsidering the Work and Legacy of Peter Strawson where I offer a critical re-appraisal of Strawson's philosophy and method regarding metaphysics and the philosophy of language in connection with more contemporary debates in these areas.

Supervisor | Professor James Levine

Educational Background
MA in Philosophy | University of Tartu |2018-2020

Robert Toth

Research

My areas of research interest cover mostly metaphysics, ethics and the philosophy of education.

In Metaphysics, I focus on Plato’s essentialism and Theory of Forms; Aristotle’s First Mover; and Thomistic existentialism – with a special focus on its reception in the works of Jacques Maritain and Étienne Gilson. I am also interested in the problem of relation between philosophy and theology, as developed by these scholars.

In Ethics, I study Aristotelian-Thomistic virtue ethics (and ethics in general) and the concept of Beatitude; and Thomistic philosophical anthropology (especially as related to the Philosophy of Education).

In the Philosophy of Education, I focus on the contemporary problems of liberal arts. I study works of John Henry Newman, Josef Pieper, Jaroslav Pelikan and Jacques Maritain – their critique of utility in university teaching and their understanding of the university as instilling universal and utility-free knowledge.

My thesis is titled The Structure of Forms in Plato’s Theory of Forms

Supervisor | Professor Vasilis Politis

Educational Background
I received my first Master’s degree from Brno University of Technology (Czech Republic), where I specialised in intelligent systems. My thesis Approximate string matching in pre-processed documents has been recognised as outstanding and I have received a Dean’s award for it.

Having at the same time finished my study of philosophy and the history of western civilisation and its cultural heritage at Collegium of Anton Neuwirth (Slovakia), I decided to start my career in philosophy. I studied in Universitas Tyrnaviensis (Slovakia), KU Leuven (Belgium) and obtained my Master’s degree at University of St Andrews (with merit). There I focused on Aristotle’s metaphysics, especially the problem of the First Mover, on which I wrote my master’s thesis.