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If you are talking ceramic tile, the standard answer is no (believe me I asked and asked various sources seeing if I could avoid it). There is one big issue....the subfloor that is used for vinyl is not rigid enough for ceramic so what you can end up with is either the tiles or the grout cracking or breaking over time.
Having said that, I got to cheat a bit with mine, but time will tell if that was a good idea or not, so far so good. In my bathroom I wanted tile floor but had sheet vinyl. The subfloor is something like MDF which is crap for ceramic (you can check what is there by pulling off a floor register usually). When one store realized I wanted small tile (1") they said I could cheat.
Anyway, I was to screw that floor down totally (like every 6" or so) to try and get rid of any flex. I ended up just yanking the vinyl anyway (no big deal which surprised me) and then did the screws. Then they sold me this stuff that I can only describe a similar to roofing material. It is plastic with a tar like substance on one side and fibers on the other. Heat gun gets the tar stuff to adhere to the floor, fibers help the tile adhesive hold. Then tile away.
On the John Bridge tiling forum they all said this was a very bad idea, but as I said, so far, so good and it's a very small area, maybe 6X4'. The big difference that seems to be working in my favour is that my tiles are so tiny the flex thing isn't as big an issue.
So, main criteria, is how big the floor area is and what the subfloor is so you can establish if you can use ceramic at all. Also joist spacing below has to be factored in with any floor as it can determine what size tile, what type of subfloor etc. There is a formula for that. You might want to visit [url]http://johnbridge.com/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=11[/url] and see what they say but you will soon see any problems aren't usually seen until well after contractors and such have left so if you don't do it right it can be a totally write off in a year or so.
Now if you want to use vinyl tiles or floating click tiles, no big deal at all, just lay em basically.
BTW just wanted to say welcome back. Looks like you joined a long time ago but haven't been around much lately. You sure are a good resource for knowing where to look for things .
With the right prep work, yes you can