HAVERFORD COLLEGE

• Hume (Spring 2026)

This course is an introduction to the philosophy of the Scottish philosopher David Hume through a close reading of some of his most influential texts. We will address questions about Hume’s epistemology and philosophy of mind, as well as questions about his moral psychology and moral philosophy. We will also examine Hume’s ambition to provide a fully naturalistic conception of human nature.

• Mind and World (Spring 2026)

This course is an introduction to metaphysics and epistemology through a close reading of some central texts in the European tradition.

• Analytic Philosophy of Language (Fall 2025)

“Of all human affairs, communication is the most wonderful”, wrote John Dewey. It is a genuine wonder, he thought, that we can reveal things to one another, examine natural events together, talk about things that do not exist, and transcend our local and temporal contexts. These feats (along with many others) are made possible by language, marks and sounds that carry meaning. What is language? What is the nature of linguistic meaning? And how do words hook up to reality in the first place? 

Even though the concern with language is likely as old as philosophical reflection itself, around the end of the nineteenth century, through the work of the German philosopher Gottlob Frege (1848-1925), a novel and distinctive approach to questions about language emerges. This leads to a profound transformation of the philosophical understanding of meaning. In this class, we will investigate various strands of this tradition, partly by trying to understand how it enables us to address the questions above. We will examine the connection between words and the minds of speakers, as well as the connection between words and reality; we will reflect on the role that communicative intentions play in determining what our words mean; and we will investigate the relationship between our linguistic capacity and our social nature. In addition to discussing various theories of meaning, we will also reflect on what can be expected of a philosophical theory of meaning in general.

• Topics in Logic and Language: Kripke and Wittgenstein on Rule-Following (Fall 2025)

What is it to follow a rule? How might a philosophical investigation of the phenomenon of rule-following enable us to address questions about the nature of language and thought? And what can be expected of a philosophical account of meaning? This course is an investigation of these questions. We will focus on two influential thinkers, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), who wrote Philosophical Investigations, which he describes as concerned with “many subjects: the concepts of meaning, of understanding, of a proposition and sentence, of logic…”, and Saul Kripke (1940-2022), who, inspired by Wittgenstein, articulated, in Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, a novel form of scepticism, which he describes as “the most radical and original sceptical problem that philosophy has seen to date”. But we will not consider the texts in the order in which they were written. Instead, we will begin with a careful examination of Kripke’s sceptical challenge, which targets the possibility of meaning. Then, we will examine some portions of Wittgenstein’s text partly through the lens of Kripke’s interpretation of it. We will also engage with some of the most illuminating commentaries on these topics that have been produced.

CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY

• Origins of Analytic Philosophy: Frege (Fall 2024)

• Problems of Philosophy (Winter 2024)

• Selected Topics in Epistemology: Knowledge of Other Minds (Fall 2023)

• Introduction to Epistemology (Fall 2023)

• Deductive Logic (Winter 2023, Fall 2024)

• Early Modern Philosophy: The Eighteenth Century (Winter 2023, Winter 2024, Winter 2025)

• Introduction to Metaphysics (Fall 2022)

• Early Modern Philosophy: The Seventeenth Century (Fall 2022)

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

• The Philosophy of Donald Davidson (Winter 2022)

• Core Curriculum classes:

  • Philosophical Perspectives I: Virtue and the Good Life (Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2021)

  • Philosophical Perspectives II: Epistemology and Metaphysics in the Modern Period (Winter 2020, Winter 2021, Winter 2022)

  • Philosophical Perspectives III: Morality and Agency (Spring 2020, Spring 2021)

YORK UNIVERSITY

• Philosophy of Language (Winter 2016)