I greatly enjoy undergraduate teaching, and I see it as a way of developing and expanding my philosophical interests, as well as welcoming students into the difficult but enjoyable work of philosophical thinking (and good writing).

At Mount St. Mary's we offer a two-course sequence in philosophy that is required of all students as part of the undergraduate core curriculum: the first semester centers on ancient and medieval responses to perennial philosophical questions (I focus on Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Boethius, and Aquinas); and the second centers on modern and contemporary philosophical thought (for me this is Bacon, Descartes, and Hume, plus important texts from the Scientific Revolution). I see these courses as a way of teaching students to read carefully and critically, to think clearly and in depth, and to express themselves more effectively in speech as well as writing. To these ends, the courses are discussion-heavy and involve a number of creative assignments, including writing Platonic dialogues and conducting a week-long "disputation" in the style of the Middle Ages, where students present arguments on the first day and then compile "magisterial responses" that address the arguments brought forward by their classmates. This is a lot of fun (at least for me)!

In addition to my core curriculum teaching, I offer a regular course in epistemology for advanced undergraduates, where we take what I call a "varieties of knowledge" approach to epistemology, considering how we should understand the possibility of acquiring different kinds of knowledge -- through perception, reason, and testimony, and about one's own mind, the minds of others, and also the moral realm -- instead of treating "knowledge" as if it were a monolithic whole. Last spring, I also led a research seminar on the philosophy and psychology of action, where we read some important work in the philosophy of action -- including Anscombe's Intention -- and then considered some empirical research that related in various ways to the issues we had raised. Finally, this semester I am leading a directed study on formal logic, using Volker Halbach's excellent book The Logic Manual as our text.

For past syllabi and sample handouts and assignments from these courses, follow the links above or below.