Teaching

Below are descriptions for the courses that are part of my current teaching rotation (i.e. I usually teach them at least once every other year). In any class that I teach, a central goal is to get the students to engage in what today might be called #thinkmaxxing. There are also a couple of links to videos. When COVID hit in the middle of the spring 2019 semester, we switched to remote teaching and I made some videos to help set up class discussions that took place via Zoom.

PHIL 101 - Introduction to Philosophy: Big Questions
This course introduces students to some of the central topics and methods of philosophy. The course will focus on these questions: What should we do about injustice? How well do we know ourselves? Where does consciousness come from? Does God exist? The readings for the course are drawn from a bewildering variety of classic and contemporary sources.

Here is a link to a COVID-era video from this course in which I explain a particularly interesting argument for the existence of God, the fine-tuning argument: https://www.loom.com/share/9e822fe9b40c471886b64c81bb444f28 

PHIL 197 - First-Year Seminar: Heart of Darkness
History, the news, and our own experiences show us that human beings are capable of both incredible goodness and incredible evil. What are the causes of human evil? And what can be done to minimize, resist, and overcome such evil? The course will be an exploration of those two questions. We will draw on psychology, philosophy, and literature to try to arrive at answers to those questions. Along the way we’ll learn some important (and not always pleasant) facts about human nature – and therefore about ourselves. The class is about evil; it is also about you and me. 

The student newspaper did a story about this class here.

PHIL 201 - Philosophical Classics
In this course, we will carefully examine some influential works in philosophy, including Laozi’s Tao Te Ching, Plato’s Symposium, Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy, and selected readings by Gandhi and Hannah Arendt. Close readings of these texts as well as consideration of their plausibility and relevance to our own lives will be emphasized. We will consider the pros and cons of wuwei (effortless action), the nature of love, happiness, free will, God, peaceful civil disobedience, and totalitarianism. This course is designed for students with no background in philosophy. 

PHIL 209 - Free Market Capitalism and Human Nature
Traditional economics seems to assume that human beings have generally stable preferences, that we are happy to the extent that those preferences are satisfied, and that we always act so as to maximize the satisfaction of our preferences. Behavioral economists argue that this is an inaccurate (or at least incomplete) view of human nature. In this course we will first briefly examine the origins and (some of the) central principles of traditional economics. We will then consider some of the ways that, according to behavioral economists, traditional economics rests on a mistaken view of human nature. Finally, we will draw on ideas from behavioral economics to explore four interesting and important ways in which the free market and human nature interact: (1) the causes and effects of increasing economic inequality in American free-market capitalism; (2) the on-going “obesity epidemic”, (3) the impact of American-style free market capitalism on families and children, (4) the rise of “bullshit jobs”.

PHIL 209 - Puzzles of Prozac
Prozac is one of the earliest selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Typically labeled “anti-depressants”, these drugs have had a dramatic impact not only on mental healthcare but on culture, as they are widely used for many purposes beyond the treatment of major depressive disorder. Some see Prozac as a life-changing wonder drug; others see it as dangerous and not particularly effective. One indication of Prozac’s impact on culture is that it is the topic of books, films, poems, and songs. Some of the main questions we will consider are: What is the place of pleasure/freedom from anxiety in a good human life? Is it a good idea for mentally healthy people to use Prozac to improve their personalities? Is Prozac an objectionable shortcut to “artificial happiness”? Has the existence of Prozac led to overdiagnosis of depression? Is Prozac dangerous? How effective is Prozac when it comes to treating mental illness? What is the relationship between mental illness and creativity, and how does Prozac impact creativity?

PHIL 230 - Ethical Theory
This course is devoted to an examination of some of the central questions in theoretical ethics. Specifically, we will consider each of the following questions: What makes a human life good for the one who lives it? What is the nature of good (and evil) character? What makes morally right acts right? What is the relationship, if any, between living a moral life and living a life that is good for you? We will critically examine both historical and contemporary attempts to answer each of these questions. The readings include some classics of ethical philosophy by Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, Immanuel Kant, and John Stuart Mill, some works of fiction, such as Octavia Butler’s “Bloodchild” and Ursula Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”, plus a smattering of shorter pieces from philosophy and psychology. 

Here is a link to a COVID-era video from this course in which I explain Immanuel Kant's (1724-1804) foundational moral principle, the Categorical Imperative: https://www.loom.com/share/3e9806cbf79d41628473a1335a23b3fa

PHIL 363 - Philosophy of Religion
This course is devoted to a philosophical examination of the nature and existence of the Judeo-Christian God. Early in the course we will draw on Saint Anselm’s declaration that God is a being “than which none greater can be conceived” to develop a working definition of God. We will then consider some of the most discussed arguments for and against the existence of God. While we will devote some attention to important historical figures (for example, Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel Kant), the majority of the readings will be drawn from contemporary work in the philosophy of religion. We will read and discuss work from prominent contemporary Christian philosophers as well as skeptics and critics. This course is open to believers and non-believers alike; indeed, the course works best when diverse points of view are represented in class discussion.

PHIL 469 - Philosophy of Mind
In this course we will consider some central questions in contemporary philosophy of mind.  We will begin with an examination of Cartesian substance dualism, but much of the semester will be devoted to examining the works of thinkers who assume a physicalist framework according to which (i) there are no non-physical souls and (ii) every physical event that has a cause at all has a complete physical cause. We will focus on three main topics:

1. The nature of consciousness and its relationship to the physical world
2. Whether and how mental states can have a causal impact on the physical world
3. The benefits and risks of generative artificial intelligence, with a particular emphasis on increasingly-popular AI companions

By the end of the semester, you will have been exposed to some of the central questions in contemporary philosophy of mind as well as to some of the most prominent contemporary attempts to answer those questions.