Teaching

I teach a wide range of classes at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.  I enjoy teaching most areas of philosophy, especially those areas that I want to learn more about.  Sometimes the best way to learn something is to figure out how you would teach it to someone else.

Below is a list of all the classes for which I was the primary instructor or, in the case of co-taught classes, one of the primary instructors.  Many of these classes I have taught more than once.

At the University of Notre Dame:

Philosophy 93526: Monism

Philosophy 43502.1: Topics in Metaphysics (Time, Material Constitution, Modality, Existence)

Philosophy 10101.01: Introduction to Philosophy

Philosophy 83101: Graduate Proseminar

Philosophy 13185: University Seminar

Philosophy 93526: Between Being and Non-Being, Now and Then (co-taught with Sam Newlands)

 

At Syracuse University:

HNR 100: Six Myths about the Good Life

Philosophy 109: Honors Introduction to Philosophy

Philosophy 313: British Empiricism

Philosophy 321: 20th Century Theories of Knowledge and Reality

Philosophy 341: Philosophy of Religion

Philosophy 401: Truth and Truthmakers

Philosophy 401: Topics in Metaphysics

Philosophy 401: Meta-Ethics

Philosophy 401: Metaphysics

Philosophy 402/602: History of the A Priori

Philosophy 500: Early 20th Century Philosophy

Philosophy 583: Metaphysics

Philosophy 615: Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason

Philosophy 687: Proseminar: Language, Epistemology, Mind, Metaphysics

Philosophy 700: Husserl’s Logical Investigations

Philosophy 730: Leibniz: Substance, Modality, Causation (co-taught with Kara Richardson)

Philosophy 730: Descartes’ Metaphysics (co-taught with Kara Richardson)

Philosophy 750: Parts and Wholes

Philosophy 750: The Metaphysics of Ethics (co-taught with Ben Bradley)

Philosophy 751: Hyper-Intensionality

Philosophy 751: Modality

Philosophy 840: Properties

Philosophy 840: Essence and Potentiality

Philosophy 840: Ordinary Objects: the Metaphysics of Socks

Philosophy 860: Parfit’s Reasons and Persons (co-taught with Ben Bradley)

Philosophy 860: Foundations of Analytic Ethics (co-taught with Ben Bradley)

Philosophy 860: Existence

 

At the University of Massachusetts-Amherst:

Philosophy 100: Introduction to Philosophy

Philosophy 110: Introduction to Symbolic Logic

Philosophy 160: Introduction to Ethics

Philosophy 164: Medical Ethics

Philosophy 332: Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason

Philosophy 383: Philosophy of Religion

As the list above indicates, I have taught a wide variety of metaphysics classes both at the undergraduate and graduate levels, as well as many classes in history of philosophy and ethics (including meta-ethics).

In addition to the classes I have taught, I have a “teaching bucket list”, consisting mostly of classes in the history of philosophy.  (The class on Leibniz, co-taught with Kara Richardson, and the class on Husserl’s Logical Investigations were previously on that list.)  I am very interested in late 19th century / early 20th century philosophy; I would love to teach a survey class on early figures in the phenomenological tradition (such as Brentano, Husserl, Meinong, Stein, Reinach, Twardowski, Ingarden, Scheler, Heidegger).  I’d also be interested in a survey course on “British” idealism (which would cover people like Bradley, McTaggart, Calkins, Bosanquet, Royce).  At some point, I’d like to work through Wittgenstein’s Tractatus in a graduate seminar.  Finally, at some point, I’d like to develop a course on non-western metaphysics; I’ve had some success teaching some Buddhist philosophy in my philosophy of religion courses.

I also enjoy co-teaching.  Students can see different takes on the same material play out in real time, and it’s a great way for me to learn from my colleagues. I’ve co-taught two classes in the history of philosophy with my colleague Kara Richardson (one on Descartes’s metaphysics and one on Leibniz’s), and two classes with my colleague Ben Bradley (one on Parfit, and one on the history of analytic ethics), and a proseminar on David Lewis and Saul Kripke with Kevan Edwards.