Teaching

I aim courses at three main pedagogical goals. First, to teach philosophical ideas and perspectives that can help students improve themselves as people and professionals. Second, to convey that there is important unfinished philosophical work that needs their diverse backgrounds and experiences to progress. Third, to model the fruits and joy that come from effortful philosophical inquiry. I love philosophy most when students and I think through difficult problems together.

I present philosophical ideas through the lens of real social issues and the contexts in which they emerge. I also try to show their lasting applications to everyday life. I organize classes around case studies, mini-lectures, small group discussions, and class discussions. I use case studies and empirical findings to draw out students’ philosophical ideas. I then introduce theories and arguments to challenge and refine their ideas and inspire new ones. I like to mix slide presentations with board work, to keep a clear line of reasoning alongside the less-ordered ideas from class discussion on the board. For assessments, I balance philosophical staples, such as careful writing, analysis, and argumentation with more reflective and creative projects I ask students to formulate over a longer period with input from me and their peers.

Courses

Knowledge in the Digital World (Northeastern University)

This course explores how do digital technologies enhance our ability to acquire knowledge, when they may hinder our access to truth or deceive us, whether machines can machines know us, and whether we can know them. This course also searches for the sort of knowledge needed to live in an increasingly digital world and ways to improve society’s relationship with information technology. In the course, students will learn classic and contemporary theories of knowledge and use them to analyze how digital technologies shape what we think about and how we think. Students will develop their own philosophical perspectives on how to become a responsible epistemic agent and advocate for truth in an increasingly digital world.

Technology & Human Values (Northeastern University)

This course explores how technological harms arise from technological and social/systemic factors. Students learn case studies, such as the Bhopal gas tragedy, Echol Cole and Robert Walker’s tragic death, the Boeing 737MAX crashes, and the Challenger shuttle tragedy. Students then apply causal concepts and ideas about risk and safety to analyze ethical issues surrounding emerging technologies, such as autonomous vehicles, predictive policing, oppressive gig work apps, and algorithmic feed social media. In the final weeks, students workshop final projects (See Teaching Statement). Projects have included a case study of oppressive surveillance technologies in Kashmir, a critical comparison of responses to OceanGate and nautical disasters involving refugees, and an analysis of how “patching” design strategies affect product safety. (Taught Fall 2023, Spring 2024) [2024 syllabus]

Biomedical Ethics (Merrimack College)

This asynchronous online course focused on ethical issues surrounding the Tuskegee Syphilis study. It then introduced students to the main philosophical theories on ethics, including utilitarianism, deontology, Mill’s arguments for liberty, feminist approaches to ethics, as well as virtue ethics and sentimentalist views. Students applied concepts from these theories to analyze the ethical failures in Tuskegee and to think about how improved medical ethics can prevent tragic failures from occurring again. Students proposed research projects identifying a biomedical research topic and medium. [syllabus]

Introduction to Philosophy (Merrimack College)

These introductory courses focus on traditional ethical and epistemological issues and their relation to contemporary issues. The course covers Plato’s Euthyphro, Apology, and Phaedo. It continues exploring notions of certainty and God in René Descartes’ Meditations. It then challenges our understanding of human nature and what we can know by reading David Hume’s Enquiry. In some versions, I have taught students Charles Peirce’s four methods for fixing beliefs, showing how the iterative and faillibilistic nature is what makes science a more powerful source of truth but also a more trying method to follow. I have also taught students William James’s pragmatic conception of truth and his empiricist. I end the course discussing John Stuart Mill’s utility principle and how it is balanced with his liberty principle. I show students that Mill’s arguments for individual liberty have lasting significance for understanding contemporary issues, such as conspiracy theories and exploitative economic systems, as well as the importance for them to develop their individual character to live a good life. [syllabus]

Evidence (University of Calgary, Summer 2017)

This mid-level epistemology course covered works by René Descartes, David Hume, Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Philip Kitcher, Helen Longino, Sabina Leonelli, and Nancy Cartwright. I led students through a historical narrative around two epistemological poles: how a Cartesian focus on certainty leads to a need for God to guarantee knowledge, and how a rigid Humean empiricism implies much knowledge may be irrational custom. I then situated contemporary work within these poles. Students read Helen Longino to explore how ideas of truth change when framed around scientific communities, Sabina Leonelli to consider how scientific data differs from “raw” experience, and Nancy Cartwright to appreciate the challenges scientists face when projecting causal knowledge beyond experiment. This narrative showed students how philosophical inquiry can produce increasingly sophisticated ideas about truth.

Mind, Matter, and God (University of Calgary, Fall 2018)

This introductory metaphysics and epistemology course covered works by René Descartes, John Locke, George Berkeley, David Hume, Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Helen Longino, and Patricia Churchland.