Undergraduate Courses

Senior Seminar: Scientific Theorizing  @  Columbia University   —   Spring 2024

Humans have inquiring minds. We can’t help but develop theories about what we come into contact with.  This course asks what it is to theorize scientifically.  Science is the most successful knowledge-making enterprise, delivering both practical and theoretical results: technological advancements alongside a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world.  Its success merits closer examination.  What is science up to?  We will first discuss what is distinctive about science – what differentiates it from pseudo-science.  We will next consider data and evidence and the role it plays in support of a scientific theory.  Finally, we will address the question of what, exactly, a successful theory commits us to.

(Syllabus)

Methods and Problems of Philosophical Thought  @  Columbia University   —   Fall 2023 

This is a discussion-based and writing-intensive course, providing for a wide-reaching exploration of philosophical topics and a general training in the tools and methodologies available to a philosopher.  In particular, we will engage with the following questions:

• • • How does language work? What makes meaning?                  (Philosophy of Language)
    • What is consciousness? How do I know what you’re doing?              (Philosophy of Mind)
    • What makes for good scientific inference? (Philosophy of Science)
    • Is there an objective way of carving up the world? (Metaphysics)
    • What is it to know something? What justifies belief?             (Epistemology)
    • Does moral responsibility make sense? Should I act morally?           (Ethics)

(Syllabus)

Topics in Cognitive Science and Philosophy: Causation  @  Barnard College   —   Spring 2023

Causation plays a central role in how we experience, interpret, and represent the world.  What is it about causal structure that makes it such a useful tool for success in navigating our environment to achieve our goals?  Significant questions remain open about all aspects of this process.  It’s unclear, for example, what the causal relation itself amounts to.  Is it essentially generative or productive in nature, as process theories maintain?  Or, can it be fully accounted for in terms of counterfactual dependencies?  Perhaps it should be taken as an unanalyzable primitive, as recently argued by those defending formal theories of causation in terms of structural equation models.  Running alongside this debate is the nature of our causal cognition.  In theorizing about the metaphysics of causation, key data comes from intuitive causal judgments – theories are primarily tested against how well they capture said judgments.  It matters, then, for our metaphysics how these judgments get produced.  However, the metaphysical conversation has traditionally operated in isolation. This course will bring these literatures together. We will survey both sides – the metaphysics and the psychology of causation – engaging in particular with the following questions:

• • • What’s the underlying nature of the causal relation?
    • Is the concept of cause ambiguous? Is it obsolete?
    • Can we observe causation?
    • What’s the relationship between causal and counterfactual reasoning?
    • How do we reason about possibilities?
    • In what sense, if any, is causation normative?

Student Evaluation Reports: Spring 2023

Knowledge and Reality  @  Hunter College, CUNY   —   Fall 2021 / Spring 2022

Each of us takes for granted the basic belief that there is a real, fixed world out there. And yet, it seems that our only access to that world is through our own experience, which is subjective and variable. Using such a medium, how do we succeed in grasping the true nature of reality? Is it a safe assumption that we do, in fact, succeed? This course engages with the challenge to understand how we come to know about the world and, given that we do, the nature of that reality. We will confront skeptical challenges, explore the source, nature, and kinds of knowledge available to us, ask what it means for a claim to be ‘true’ rather than ‘false’, look at foundational ways of understanding the structure of reality, and inquire into the nature of our most successful methodology for achieving knowledge – science.

Student Evaluation Reports: Fall 2021, Spring 2022

Introduction to Philosophy  @  Hunter College, CUNY   —   Fall 2021 

This course introduces the nature and subject matter of philosophical inquiry. This introduction centers around the question: who am I? I am very different in many ways today than I was when I was five. Yet, there’s a sense in which I am indeed the same person. What makes this so? In this class, we will explore several answers to this question: the memory criterion, physical criterion, psychological criterion, and narrative criterion. Along the way, we will address questions that arise in different areas of analytic philosophy:

• • • To what do I refer when I say ‘me’? What is meant by ‘person’? (Phil Language)
    • What is a person? How are persons individuated? What makes me now the same person as I was when I was five? (Metaphysics)
    • What is the nature of consciousness? Of subjective experience? (Phil Mind)
    • How can I know that I am the same person now as I was when I was five? Do I have different evidence for this fact as I do for the fact that you are the same person now as you were when you were five? (Epistemology)
    • Who counts as a person when we’re talking about rights? When is a person responsible? (Ethics)

Student Evaluation Reports: Fall 2021

Major Issues in Philosophy  @  Baruch College, CUNY   —   Spring 2019

This course introduces the student to philosophical methodology by engaging with issues of active interest in several different sub-fields of philosophy. We spend a couple weeks each on the following:

• • • Introduction: What is philosophy? How is it done?
    • Epistemology: What is it to know? How can we know?
    • Philosophy of Science: What can science tell us?
    • Philosophy of Mind: What is consciousness? What is a person?
    • Metaphysics: What is there?
    • Value Theory: What matters?

Student Evaluation Reports: Spring 2019

Global Ethics  @  Baruch College, CUNY   —   Fall 2016 /  Spring 2017 /  Spring 2018

Moral questions are timeless, complex, and pressing. This course will engage with a variety of moral questions, from meta-ethical questions – which ask after the nature of morality and moral inquiry – to applied ethics questions – which ask about the moral status of particular kinds of actions. Questions that we’ll address include, but are not limited to:

• • • What is the nature of a moral claim?
    • Are some actions universally right or wrong? Or, is it all relative?
    • What makes an action or decision right or wrong, good or bad?
    • How can we rectify free will and determinism?
    • If free will is an illusion, are we still morally responsible for our actions?
    • Is abortion morally permissible?
    • What is the meaning of life?
    • What is the moral significance of death?

Student Evaluation Reports: Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018

Logic and Moral Reasoning  @  Baruch College, CUNY    —   Fall 2017  /  Fall 2018

The study of logic is the study of logical consequence– of what follows from what. This course is an introduction into two formal methods each designed to capture logical consequence: propositional logic and predicate logic.  In Unit 1, we will familiarize ourselves with propositional logic (also called sentential logic). In Unit 2, we will look at the more expressive, but therefore more complicated, predicate logic (also called first-order logic).

Student Evaluation Reports: Fall 2017, Fall 2018