Teaching Philosophy

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.

I welcome any feedback or advice on ways to improve or enrich the syllabi I have posted below.

Traditional Courses

Introduction to Philosophy (Providence College & Merrimack College)

This course aims to introduce students to classic thinkers and work to relate their thoughts to contemporary issues. Students begin by learn the story of Socrates and his ideas about love of wisdom through careful reading and discussion of Plato’s Euthyphro, Apology, and Phaedo. The course then explores notions about doubt, certainty, and god in Descartes’ Meditations. We then read and discuss Hume’s Enquiry to challenge Platonic and Cartesian notions of knowledge, human nature, and god. Since many of my students are Catholic believers, we dwell on the relationship between empiricism and spiritual belief. I teach students William James’s ideas about how empiricism can be reconciled with religious experience and momentous beliefs as a way to show how philosophical thought progresses. I end the course discussing John Stuart Mill’s thoughts on utility and liberty. I show students how Mill’s thought can help clarify today’s challenges, such as conspiracy theories or the pressure to follow algorithmic trends, and bring together philosophical lessons from throughout the course into what Mill said was our most important life project: the development of individual character [Fall 2025 syllabus]

American Pragmatism (in development)

This course aims to introduce students to American philosophical thought. Students will begin by reading excerpts from 18th century American thinkers and briefly learn about some European philosophical thought that American thinkers were reacting towards. Then, students will carefully read and discuss Emerson’s radical thought in his Nature. With this as background, students will then read and discuss key texts from William James and Charles Sanders Peirce, and work to identify unifying themes and differences in their thought. The course will conclude with a survey of pragmatist currents in American thought during the Civil Rights era. Students will develop their own project to explore how pragmatist methodologies may help elucidate a pressing social issue today.

Technology Courses

Knowledge in the Digital World (Northeastern University)

This course explores how digital technologies change how we think and know. It explores when technologies can enhance knowledge, and when it can erode our access to truth and ability to be rational. Students learn classic epistemological ideas, then work to apply them to the technologies they use in their studies and daily lives. Throughout, the class asks what sorts of knowledge and reasoning are needed to live in an increasingly digital world and how our technologies may be remade to encourage the sorts of beliefs and thinking we would want to pursue. Students develop their own final projects based on class discussions and readings to express their own ideas about how technology shapes what we think about and how we think. [Spring 2025 syllabus]

Technology & Human Values (Northeastern University)

This course explores how technological systems cause harm and how ethical values often influence those outcomes. Students begin by learning how to think more clearly about concepts of risk and safety, applying them to better understand who is responsible and blameworthy when technology goes wrong. Later in the semester, students dive deeper into different philosophical perspectives on how technology hinders or helps the good life. Student’s learn Mill’s ideas about liberty and his concern about how modernity might homogenize society. They learn about Kierkegaard’s worries that mass communication leads to despair. They learn Weizenbaum’s concerns about the dazzling effects of technology. And they learn the Futurists ardent love for technological progress and the Luddites desire to slow automation’s effects on their livelihood. Students develop their own final projects based on class discussions and reading to express their own ideas on how technology shapes our lives for good and ill, and how technology could better serve society. [Spring 2025 syllabus]

Applied Ethics Courses

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]

Business Ethics (in development)

This course explores ethics questions surrounding business, commerce, and labor. It explores how ethical failures can lead companies to cause harms and how improved ethics canimprove corporations and their role in society. It also explores how to live a good life alongside the need to work and earn money. Using case studies alongside contemporary and classic philosophical writings, students will learn ideas and methods for analyzing ethical issues relating to business, broadly. Student will learn how clearer ethical reasoning can improve business activities and help us to live more virtuous lives in a capitalist society. [draft]