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. Metaphysics addresses questions about the real nature of the things in the world. Epistemology addresses questions about what we can know and about how we can know it. On the metaphysical side, we will investigate the nature of causation and the possibility of conceiving of the world in ways that are radically different from each other. On the epistemological side, we will investigate whether we can know anything about the world by way of our senses. These investigations, which will be pursued through a close reading of some central texts in the European tradition, will enable us to articulate a conception of ourselves as rational beings in the world.

• 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)

The tradition of analytic philosophy has Gottlob Frege (1848−1925) as one of its main founders. Frege’s chief ambition is to set arithmetic upon secure foundations by showing that its truths can be derived from logical truths alone. In pursuing this project, Frege reconceives the discipline of logic and revolutionizes our understanding of both language and thought. What is more, he contributes to a profound transformation of philosophy itself. This transformation, often taken to be distinctive of the analytic tradition, is captured in the realization that we can attain philosophical understanding of a phenomenon through the investigation of the logical structure of discourse about that phenomenon. In this seminar, we will study Frege’s seminal contributions through a careful reading of some of his most influential texts, as well as through a careful consideration of the ways in which Frege’s work influenced the later work of another key figure of the analytic tradition, namely, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889−1951). We will also examine the views of Bertrand Russell (1872−1970), who shared many of Frege’s commitments.

• Problems of Philosophy (Winter 2024)

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

Nothing is more ordinary than our taking ourselves to know that there are other people and that they have thoughts.  But it is difficult to make philosophical sense of this knowledge.  For instance, we seem to know our own thoughts immediately, without observing our behaviour.  But in order to know the thoughts of others, it seems that we must rely on evidence.  How, then, could the very features that we ascribe to ourselves without any evidence be ascribed to others on the basis of evidence without seriously distorting those features?  This is one of the puzzles that we will consider in this course.  We will focus on two of the most prominent philosophers of the previous century, namely, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) and Donald Davidson (1917-2003).  They agree that the way in which we may come to know others’ states of mind is fundamentally different from the way in which we may come to know other things about the world.  They also agree that the aforementioned puzzle, and, more generally, the possibility of making sense of one’s knowledge of another mind, are to be addressed in part by reflecting on the nature of language.  We shall examine the dramatically different ways in which they elaborate on these claims, which will require that we attend to the broader philosophical picture that each of them puts forward.  We shall start by considering Wittgenstein’s so-called rule-following considerations, and we shall examine his notorious private language argument and the remarks concerning other minds following it.  We shall then investigate Davidson’s approach to questions about the nature of meaning, focusing on his triangulation argument, and we shall try to articulate the conception of the knowledge of other minds to which they lead.  We shall read both primary texts and secondary literature.

• 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)