Teaching Tools & Materials

I grade student papers anonymously using an online tool I built, Paper Grader.

I create interactive practice problems for my logic students at deductivelogic.org, a tool I originally built in coordination with Ned Hall, for his introductory logic course at Harvard.

I use handouts to provide an easily-navigable ‘map’ of the issues under discussion, and to help guide student attention. Some sample handouts of mine:

Courses Taught as Primary Instructor

Minds and Machines ・ MIT ・ Spring 2020

An introduction to the central questions in philosophy of mind, divided into three parts: 1) Historical Foundations, 2) Consciousness, 3) Cognition and Representation. What kinds of things are mental states (e.g. thoughts, beliefs, desires, sensations, feelings)? Is the mind just the brain? (What else could it be?!) Can a science of the brain answer all of our questions about the mind? What is consciousness, and how is it related to the physical world? How is the mind able to represent the world and reason about it?

Courses Taught as GSI

History of Modern Philosophy (NYU) ・ Tim Maudlin ・ Spring 2019

Descartes’ Meditations, Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Leibniz’s Monadology and Discourse on Metaphysics, Berkeley’s Three Dialogues, Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Kant’s Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics.

The Nature of Mind ・ John Campbell ・ Spring 2018

Imaginative understanding vs. causal explanation (the first-personal vs. the third-personal); functionalism; imaginative understanding and personal identity; agency and free will.

Metaphysics ・ Geoffrey Lee ・ Fall 2016

The fine-tuning argument, modality & possible worlds, time (A-theory vs. B-theory), space (relationism vs substantivalism), universal properties, laws of nature, mereological composition.

Modern Philosophy ・ Hannah Ginsborg ・ Spring 2016

Descartes’ Meditations, Spinoza’s Ethics, Berkeley’s Three Dialogues, Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.

Philosophical Methods ・ Barry Stroud ・ Fall 2015

An intensive writing course for philosophy majors, involving weekly one-on-one meetings to discuss a short writing assignment. Readings focused on free will.

The Nature of Mind ・ Umrao Sethi ・ Summer 2015

Cartesian dualism, logical behaviorism, identity theory, functionalism; qualia & ‘the hard problem’; personal identity.

Knowledge & Its Limits ・ John Perry ・ Spring 2015

Cartesian skepticism, Berkeley’s idealism, Humean skepticism, the existence of God, personal identity.

Theory of Knowledge ・ Barry Stroud ・ Fall 2014

A close investigation of three kinds of problems in epistemology: the problem of the external world, the problem of induction, the problem of other minds.

Introduction to Logic ・ Daniel Warren ・ Spring 2014

The basics of deductive logic: translation, validity, implication, and equivalence in truth-functional and quantificational logic; systems of deduction, and their soundness and completeness.

The Nature of Mind ・ John Campbell ・ Fall 2013

Cartesian dualism, logical behaviorism, functionalism; qualia & epiphenomenalism; personal identity; folk psychology & reductionism.

Philosophy of Mind ・ Paul Skokowski ・ Summer 2013

Cartesian dualism, logical behaviorism, identity theory, functionalism; qualia & physicalism; naturalistic reduction.