Teaching at UT-Mississauga

This page contains information about some of the courses I've taught as a course instructor, as well as some fun or helpful resources for students. Feel free to poke around.

Ethics and the Law [Summer 2016]
This summer I taught a 2nd year undergraduate course ethics and philosophy of law at the University of Toronto at Mississauga. Here is my syllabus. The course focused on topics at the intersection of law and morality. You'll find my lecture handouts below:

1. Hobbes on Law
2. Hart 1.0
3. Hart 2.0
4. Dworkin on Adjudication
5. Liberty
6. The Limits of the Law
7. Punishment and Desert
8. Sentencing and Restorative Justice
9. Abortion and the Law
10. Suicide and the Law

While we went through the usual heavyweights (such as Hart, Dworkin, and Berlin), we also examined fresh Canadian case law concerning the treatment of Aboriginal Canadians in sentencing. 

Issues in Philosophy of Mind [Summer 2015]
I taught a 3rd year advanced undergraduate course in philosophy of mind at the University of Toronto at Mississauga. Here is my syllabus. I covered a range of perception-related topics, all of which have received significant attention in the past fifteen years. 

1. Arguments from Illusion and Hallucination
2. Transparency and Classical Views of Perception
3. Representationalism
4. Direct Realism
5. The Reach of Perception
6. Non-Visual Perception
7. Dogmatism
8. Evaluating Dogmatism
9. Berkeley's Puzzle
10. Attention and Consciousness
11. Attention and Thought

My students wrote short 600-word papers each week on assigned passages from the readings. Here is a sample assignment. I've become a big fan of these short papers. They provide an opportunity for students to hone their skills in response to regular constructive feedback. 

Knowledge and Reality [Summer 2014]
Along with Adam Murray, a fellow PhD Candidate at Toronto, I taught Knowledge and Reality (a 2nd year introduction to epistemology and metaphysics). We split the course down the middle: I gave the lectures on the epistemological topics, while Adam taught the metaphysical half. Here is our syllabus, and below you'll find copies of my lecture handouts: 

1. Scepticism
2. Foundationalism and Coherentism
3. Nozick on Knowledge
4. Reliabilism
5. Contextualism
6. Testimonial and Mathematical Knowledge

Our course required students to develop some competence with formal methods. To help them out, Adam and I wrote a fairly detailed (perhaps too detailed) introduction to the relevant formal material. Here is a copy, for those interested. 

Writing Advice:
A few year ago, I wrote up a handy writing cheat-sheet for my undergraduates:

• Dom's Quick and Dirty Guide to Writing Philosophy Papers

Of course, those with more ambitious writing aims should consult Jim Pryor's famous guide to writing philosophy papers. 

Philosophical Fun
Some entertaining videos of philosophers:

• Gareth Evans and Sir Peter Strawson chopping wood and talking... and discussing truth.
• Bertrand Russell on How Smoking Saved His Life (perilous story, but also deeply funny)
• Michael Dummett laughing 

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