Former
Graduate Students
Graduate Level Courses Taught
At Rutgers
Spring 2012:
Graduate Seminar in Philosophy of Language: Contextualism and
Relativism
This course is an introduction to
the recent literature on Contextualism and Relativism - including both
metaphysical relativism, as espoused about knowledge by me, Hawthorne,
and others, and vague predicates by Graff Fara, and truth-relativism,
as espoused by figures like Andy Egan and John MacFarlane. The
goal of the seminar is to introduce people to the apparatus necessary
to evaluating contextualist, metaphysical relativist, and
truth-relativist proposals about various domains. We will focus on the
philosophy of language underpinnings to these debates.
Syllabus
First handout
(on Relevant Alternatives Theory)
Second handout
(Kamp on double-indexing for "now")
Third
handout (on "Demonstratives", and "Index, Content, and Context")
Fourth
handout (more on index theory, double indexing and on King 2003 and
Ninan's forthcoming "Propositions, Semantic Values, and Rigidity")
Spring 2009: Graduate Seminar in Epistemology
Wednesday 4:30-7:30, Davison Hall, Rutgers University
Syllabus
This course is an advanced seminar devoted to contemporary research in
epistemology. The seminar will be devoted to the
relation between knowing how and knowing that. We will begin by reading
Gilbert Ryle's The Concept
of Mind,
and will progress through to the contemporary and forthcoming
literature on the topic. Among the topics we will cover are:
knowledge-wh (as in knowledge who, knowledge what, knowledge how), the
nature of linguistic competence, and the relation between propositional
mental states and representation.
Fall 2007: Logic
and
Natural Language: Introduction to Philosophical Issues in
Quantified Modal Logic
Spring 2007: Conditionals (with Barry Loewer)
Conditionals
Course Webpage
Winter
2006: Fregean and Russellian Theories of Meaning
This is a thematic history of analytic philosophy course, centered
around the theory of meaning.
At Michigan
Winter 2004: Philosophy 530: Theory of Knowledge
The purpose of this course is to provide a survey of some recent
themes
in epistemology.
Here is a syllabus:
Epistemology
Seminar
Fall 2002: Philosophy 611. Modality
The purpose of this seminar is to provide a high-level introduction
to the discussion of the logic
and semantics of modality (in particular, quantified modal logic) in
Twentieth Century Philosophy.
Here is a syllabus:
Modality
Seminar
Fall 2001: Philosophy 597: Proseminar (with Allan Gibbard)
This is the required first year graduate seminar at Michigan. We taught
some of the history of Twentieth Century
Philosophy of language and metaphysics, including Frege, Russell,
Moore,
Ayer, Carnap, Quine, Kripke.
Class Photo
Winter 2001: Linguistics 514: Introduction to Semantic Theory.
This is the graduate introduction to formal semantics in the
linguistics
department. I used Chierchia and
McConnell-Ginet, Meaning and Grammar as the principle text,
augmented with readings from Heim and
Kratzer's Semantics in Generative Grammar and Larson and
Segal's
Knowledge
of Meaning. I think all
three textbooks are great, but for different reasons.
At Cornell
Philosophy 633: Topics in the Philosophy of Language
I taught this one twice. Here are the syllabi:
Indexicality
Seminar, 1996
Semantics-Pragmatics
Seminar,
1999
Philosophy 318: Origins of Twentieth Century Philosophy
I taught this one twice. Here is the syllabus for the first time:
Early
Analytic Philosophy,
circa 1998
I also taught, in my time at Cornell, the following graduate
courses:
Philosophy 436/Math 483: Intensional Logic
Philosophy 661: Theory of Knowledge
Philosophy 361: Metaphysics and Epistemology.
