Weird. It's almost the opposite in philosophy. It's normal to write: "I want to argue" or "I think that x is wrong for reasons y,z" - we're advised, at undergrad, to get out of the habit of saying things like "This essay states that" - it's all about YOUR thoughts, and hence, you really should be using the first person.

hmm thats a very good question, as i am writing my thesis chapter based on a paper i wrote with my supervisors and throughout the paper they have written "we" we thought x y z.

and now in my thesis, im adopting the same. and i read a collegues phd thesis that passed, and he also used "we" ... so either i say , we or , just use a past tense. and that was funny what someone said to treat the thesis like a puppet lol!!

eg he wrote in his thesis

"We then used the *** model to investigate how *** **** "

although "we" could also be considered as the royal "we" lol

My husband used "we" in his science thesis. I find it very weird as a humanities student, but he got through.

cool!