Teaching
I teach philosophy by asking students to slow arguments down. Students learn to reconstruct a position as strongly as they can, identify the premise or inference on which disagreement turns, and then test their own reasoning against serious objections. I use this approach across courses in logic, ethics, philosophy of science, and technology ethics. Much of my teaching is board-centered and discussion-driven: we put arguments in front of us, revise them together, and work out exactly where competing views come apart.
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
- Ethics, Science, and Technology
- Philosophy of Science
- Philosophical Classics: Ethics and Political Philosophy
- Logic and Argumentative Writing
- Metaphysics — scheduled Fall 2026
University of California, Santa Barbara — Primary Instructor
- Theory of Knowledge
- Biomedical Ethics
- Introduction to Ethics
I taught Introduction to Ethics both in person to approximately 100 students and online to approximately 300 students.
Selected Course Materials
Four-Sentence Papers
Students explain an author's argument, challenge a specific part of the reasoning, formulate the strongest objection to their own challenge, and reply. The short format lets us concentrate on fidelity to an argument and the structure of the philosophical exchange.
Emerging Technology Final Project
Students work in groups to analyze an emerging technology. They write a short ethics brief, defend a position using an ethical framework or mid-level moral principle, develop a serious objection and reply, and answer questions about their argument in a live presentation.
Philosophy of Science
The course is organized around the debate between scientific realism and anti-realism. We move from logical positivism through arguments from scientific success and explanation to underdetermination, the history of science, and constructive empiricism.
Philosophical Classics: Ethics and Political Philosophy
Students spend the quarter with Aristotle, Hume, and Mill, using their different accounts of morality to examine questions about flourishing, moral motivation, and how we ought to live.
Teaching Effectiveness
My teaching was recognized with UC Santa Barbara's 2023 Paul Wienpahl Award for Excellence in Teaching. Across eleven Cal Poly sections from Fall 2025 through Spring 2026, 125 of 327 enrolled students completed official evaluations. Their response-weighted mean for “Overall, this instructor was educationally effective” was 4.85/5.
Mentoring & Curricular Work
Undergraduate Research Mentoring
In 2026, I mentored three Mechanical Engineering students as they developed a final project from Ethics, Science, and Technology into a coauthored manuscript in neuroethics.
Critical Thinking with and about AI
I am a contributor to Cal Poly's “Critical Thinking with and about AI” project through the Artificial Intelligence Educational Innovations Challenge, for which I wrote the project's chapter on deductive logic.