Seminars

2015

Spring

Language and Metaphysics

Fall

Thesis Writing

2014

Fall

Objects of Interpretation: Issues in the Philosophy of Archaeology

2013

Spring

Mind and Language: Foundations of Meaning  (co-taught with Stephen Schiffer)

2012

Fall

Proseminar  (co-taught with Iakovos Vasiliou)

Spring

Interpretive Practices in Language, Art & Law  (co-taught with Noel Carroll)

2011

Fall

Proseminar  (co-taught with Jesse Prinz)

Spring

Linguistic Pragmatism

2010

Fall

Proseminar (co-taught with David Rosenthal)

Spring

Intention and Interpretation  (co-taught with Noel Carroll)

2009

Spring

Philosophy of Language

2008

Fall

Semantics and Pragmatics  (co-taught with Stephen Schiffer)

Spring

Philosophy of Law

2007

Fall

Meaning  (co-taught with Michael Devitt)

Past Courses at Rutgers University

 

Summer 2007

Philosophy of Language

Description: Intensive two-week course for PPE students at Bifröst University, Iceland. Topics selected from: proper names; definite descriptions; indexicality; anaphora; syntax-semantics distinction; semantics-pragmatics distinction; implicature; speech acts; meaning and intention; meaning and truth; indeterminacy of translation, rule-following. (312.2.0 Heimspeki tungumálsins.)

2006

Fall

Theories of Interpretation

Description: Graduate seminar co-taught with Professor Peter Kivy. Theories of linguistic, literary, and legal interpretation. Focus on the role of intention, the nature of underspecification and indeterminacy, and explicit vs implicit content.

The Greeks

Description: Seminar in the University Honors Program. Examination of the expression of moral concepts in Greek epic, tragedy, comedy and philosophical dialogue. Besides the Greek authors themselves: Bernard Williams’ Shame and Necessity and E.R. Dodds The Greeks and the Irrational. (Admission only through Honors Program office.)

Socrates and Plato

Description: Undergraduate lecture course. Emphasis on Plato’s early dialogues, esp. Euthyphro, Apology and Crito, then on Phaedo, Republic, and Symposium. Brief comparison of Plato’s Socrates with the figures portrayed by Aristophanes and Xenophon. (01-730-301. Major credit for Philosophy, Classical Humanities, Greek, Latin, or Greek and Latin.)

Summer

Logic

Description: Intensive two-week course for PPE students at Bifröst University, Iceland. The languages of propositional logic and first-order predicate logic; methods of deduction; logical form. (302.2.0 Rökfræði)

Spring

Anaphora

Description: Graduate seminar in the Department of Linguistics, co-taught with Professor Ken Safir. The syntactic and semantic natures of cross-reference, coreference, binding, coconstrual, and ellipsis.

2005

Fall

Socrates and Plato

Description: Undergraduate lecture course. Emphasis on Plato’s early dialogues, esp. Euthyphro, Apology and Crito, then on Phaedo, Republic, and Symposium. Brief comparison of Plato’s Socrates with the figures portrayed by Aristophanes and Xenophon. (01-730-301. Major credit for Philosophy, Classical Humanities, Greek, Latin, or Greek and Latin.)

Proseminar

Description: Graduate seminar co-taught with Professor Colin McGinn. Intensive introduction to key analytic work in philosophy through the writings of Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Kripke, and Davidson. Restricted to first-year graduate students in the Department of Philosophy.

2004

Fall

Philosophy of Language

Description: Undergraduate lecture course. Topics selected from: proper names; definite descriptions; indexicality; anaphora; syntax-semantics distinction; semantics-pragmatics distinction; implicature; speech acts; meaning and intention; meaning and truth; indeterminacy of translation, rule-following. (01-730-420 Major credit for Philosophy or Linguistics.)

Meaning and Context

Description: Graduate seminar co-taught with Professor John Hawthorne. Examination of formal systems for expressing contextual paramaters, the viability of forms of contextualism, forms of relativism, and linguistic pragmatism.

Spring

Reference

Description: Graduate seminar at NYU co-taught with Professor Stephen Schiffer. Examination of different notions of reference and of the semantics of names, descriptions, indexicals, demonstratives and anaphors.

2003

Fall

The Imagination

Description: Graduate seminar co-taught with Professor Colin McGinn. Examination of imagery, dreaming, illusion, madness, and the distinction between perception and imagination. Readings by Hume, Wittgenstein, Sartre, Budd, O’Shaughnessy, Pylyshyn, and others.

2001

Fall

Philosophical Logic

Description: Graduate seminar co-taught with Professor Colin McGinn. Central problems of philosophy involving truth, existence, quantification, and necessity.

Metaphysics

Description: Undergraduate lecture course. Topics selected from: the mind-body problem; freewill and determinism; personal identity; universals; facts and events; causation; essence; natural kinds. (01-730-415)

Spring

The Semantics-Pragmatics Distinction

Description: Graduate seminar co-taught with Professor Brian Loar. Readings by Austin, Carston, Grice, Loar, Neale, Recanati, Searle, Sperber and Wilson, and Travis. Emphasis on Linguistic Pragmatism and Relevance Theory.

2000

Fall

Philosophy of Language

Description: Undergraduate lecture course. Topics selected from: proper names; definite descriptions; indexicality; anaphora; syntax-semantics distinction; semantics-pragmatics distinction; implicature; speech acts; meaning and intention; meaning and truth; indeterminacy of translation, rule-following. (01-730-210 Major credit for Philosophy or Linguistics.)

1999

Fall

The Greeks

Description: Honors Seminar. Examination of the expression of moral concepts in Greek epic, tragedy, comedy and philosophical dialogue. Besides the Greek authors themselves: Bernard Williams’ Shame and Necessity and E.R. Dodds The Greeks and the Irrational. (Admission only through Honors Program office.)

Metaphysics

Description: Undergraduate lecture course. Topics selected from: the mind-body problem; freewill and determinism; personal identity; universals; facts and events; causation; essence; natural kinds. (01-730-415)