Browsing All Posts filed under »Teaching«

Turning Bad Rubbish into Good Lessons

May 30, 2018 by

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Alternately titled: What we talk about when we talk about Jordan Peterson. I should begin by saying that all thoughts here are mine. They are not endorsed or shared by the University of Calgary, the Department of Philosophy, or any other group with which I’m affiliated, unless those folks choose to endorse or share them. […]

Failures in teaching, discipline

November 21, 2017 by

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A few notes before I get into the nitty gritty of this issue: I’m a graduate student at the University of Calgary, a member of the university’s Graduate Student Association (our union), and the president of the philosophy department’s affiliated Graduate Student Association chapter. Nothing I say in this post is made in those roles; […]

A Philosophy for Talking about Philosophy

September 19, 2017 by

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Some people become philosophers (or academics, more generally) because they want to be able to teach; they want to be experts in a subject and engage with the world and influence the beliefs and actions of others in a positive way. I think that’s a great and admirable reason to become an academic; I have […]

Teaching as a Grad Student: Logic End of Semester

May 23, 2017 by

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This is the 5th post in this series, and the third about my experience teaching for the first time (see parts one, and two). As of a couple of weeks ago, I finally managed to submit the final marks for the Logic I course I had been teaching, marking the end of my responsibilities for […]

Teaching as a Grad Student: Guest Lecturing on Logicism

April 26, 2017 by

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I was recently given the opportunity to give a lecture on Frege’s logicism and related topics for our Logic III course (cross-listed as an undergraduate and a graduate course). That class had gotten up to the point of looking at second-order Peano Arithmetic, which is a natural jumping off point for looking at the logic […]

Cognitive Dissonance and Philosophy

April 5, 2017 by

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I want to first give credit to the authors of “Mistakes Were Made (but not by me)” – Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. Their talk of cognitive dissonance and the metaphor of the ‘pyramid of choice’ has inspired my comments below. Although the ideas in this book have obvious ramifications for psychology, psychotherapy, political science, […]

Teaching as a Grad Student: Philosophy of Science

January 25, 2017 by

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Thanks to Aaron for starting this series. There are particular challenges that grad students might face as instructors, some of which I imagine are exclusive to grad students, whereas others could probably be generalized to new professors on the track. And perhaps in my case, grad students, new professors on the track, and maybe even […]

Teaching as a Grad Student: Logic Week One

January 22, 2017 by

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I have just started teaching my first course as instructor of record (i.e. I’m lecturing, not TAing), and I thought that this would be a good opportunity to start an occasional series on teaching as a graduate student. What follows are my thoughts after finishing my first (and now second) week of teaching. I plan […]

More About Forallx: Calgary Remix

January 18, 2017 by

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The Winter 2017 edition of Forallx: Calgary remix has been out for a few weeks. Indeed, I’ve started teaching from it. Richard Zach has blogged about our progress here. Later this week I’ll be posting about my experience getting ready to teach “Logic I” for the first time, so stay tuned!   (Photo credit: Richard […]

An Open Source Logic Text

October 18, 2016 by

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The Open Logic Project, initiated by my supervisor, Richard Zach, is a project to produce a comprehensive free and open source intermediate logic text. More recently, Richard and I have been putting together a Calgary remix of forallx, a free and open source text for introductory logic, originally written by PD Magnus. Below is the […]