Teaching

I teach a fairly wide variety of courses in theoretical philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of logic and language, philosophy of religion, philosophy of economics. I also regularly offer courses in formal logic and early modern philosophy (where I have special fondness for Descartes, Cavendish, and Hume). Before coming to Adelaide I used to teach philosophy of science, philosophy of physics, and philosophy of mathematics. Maybe one day I will again.

On this page are links to lecture notes for my current suite of courses, which I am progressively uploading as I bring them to a public form, and some information about open source logic texts I have written. I also include some documents on pedagogy:

• This piece details some of the reasons why I use anonymous grading in my courses.
• ‘Judging People, Evaluating Work, or Encouraging Virtue’, a presentation I did in 2023 at a learning and teaching event on the purpose and nature of assessment, particularly in the light of the rise of generative AI. (Note added 11-2024: I am much less sanguine about the recommendations in this document now and have become something of an advocate of including some forms of hostile assessment as a useful benchmarking activity.)
• With Elinor Pryce, I produced a handbook for new tutors/TAs at Adelaide. It is aimed principally at new teachers in the humanities, and while it synthesises material useful in many institutions, also contains much that is specific to Adelaide.

A note on slide design

You might notice my lecture notes/slides are very text-heavy, contrary to many purported principles of ‘good’ slide design. Those principles are intended for slides that are to be seen once. Following them may make for good presentations, but lead to slides that are not useful independently of the presentation. That is not the context for these teaching materials. I have designed these notes and slides with the expectation that most students (especially those who come to them via a web search) will be engaging directly with the lecture notes unsupported by an accompanying lecture.

Courses and Lecture Notes

• Metaphysics: Identity, Time, and Freedom
• Meaning and Communicating: Philosophy of Language
• God, Faith and Infinity: Philosophy of Religion
• Choices, Models and Morals: Foundations of Public Policy
• An Intensive Introduction to Logic
• Foundations of Modern Philosophy
• Logic, Truth, and Reason: The Ways of Paradox
• Epistemology: Knowledge, Truth, and Justification

Open Logic Texts

I’ve been involved with writing a couple of open source and open access logic textbooks. Everyone likes to teach logic in their own way, and so these works reflect my preferences and pedagogical judgements. I made them available open source and share them under a Creative Commons license to allow you to make use of them in your own teaching, and modify them to reflect your own preferences.

forall\(x\) Adelaide

This is my adaptation of Tim Button‘s adaptation of P.D. Magnus’ open source free introductory logic textbook. This version is available under a CC-BY 4.0 license. I’ve made pervasive changes, big and small, in content and formatting and arrangement of the material. This is the textbook for our introductory logic courses here at Adelaide.

• A pdf of the latest version can be found at forall\(x\) Adelaide.
• You can also access the source code.

Elements of Deductive Logic

I’ve also written an intermediate logic textbook called Elements of Deductive Logic. This was based on notes I used in teaching in the logic paper for Physics and Philosophy and Maths and Philosophy students at Oxford, and it reached the end of its evolution once I began working on forall\(x\) Adelaide. I have made the book freely available, open source, and repurposable under the terms of the Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 license. You can find the pdf and the source code at the book’s GitHub repository.