Courses

Coming Attractions

Fall 2022

• The Big Questions: Introduction to Philosophy PHIL 110, Lectures T/Th 5:30 - 6:20, CL50 224

• Moral Psychology and Climate Change PHIL 403, T/Th 3:00 - 4:15 BRNG 1248 (The class will look something like the syllabus under the link, but it will be considerably updated as well.)

Course Description

There’s an old saying that if you want to change the world, you need to know which levers to pull. In this course, we’ll consider some of those levers, especially those that lie within ourselves. We’ll use research in the interdisciplinary field of moral psychology to explore the philosophic and ethical facets of climate change, and aim for a better understanding of what exactly it is about the climate crisis that makes it so difficult for us to grasp and effectively act on.

We’ll first look at state of the art research on the character of human moral psychology, drawing on work by philosophers, psychologists, biologists, economists, and anthropologists. We’ll pay particularly close attention to the psychology of cooperation, and the central roles that culture, social norms, and informal institutions play in shaping both individual and group behavior. We’ll also look at how the threats produced by climate change engage our minds, and more alarmingly, fail to engage them. It appears that the climate crisis is a "perfect storm", almost custom designed to elude the grasp of our intuitive morality. We will examine in more detail how key features of the climate crisis lie behind some of our cognitive blind spots, fail to push our emotional buttons or get a grip on our motivational apparatus, and give rise to particularly difficult forms of collective action problems. Finally, we’ll consider some ideas for how to get around these obstacles, especially ideas that attempt to harness emerging research on human moral psychology to more effectively nudge us and our institutions towards meaningful social change.

Currently Playing

Spring 2022

• Philosophy of Mind PHIL 435 T/Th 1:30 - 2:45 MJIS 1001

Back Issues

Fall 2021

• The Big Questions: Introduction to Philosophy PHIL 110

• The Normative Mind (and Its Many Uses) PHIL 535

Spring 2020

• Independent Study: Bias, Social Epistemology, and the Ethics of Algorithms PHIL 590

• The Big Questions: Introduction to Philosophy PHIL 110

Fall 2020

• Sabbatical

Spring 2020

• This semester I was honored to be a Faculty Fellow at the Purdue College of Liberal Arts Center for Humanistic Studies

Fall 2019

• Introduction to Philosophy PHIL 110

• Private Selves, Public Personae: The Philosophy of Identities and the Sciences of the Mind HONR 399

Fall 2018 and Spring 2019

• I did not teach this academic year because I was lucky enough to be living the dream as a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

Spring 2018

• Philosophy of Mind PHIL 435

• Introduction to Philosophy PHIL 110

Fall 2017

• Normativity and the Psychology of Social Norms PHIL 535

Spring 2017

• Introduction to Philosophy PHIL 110

• Dissertation Workshop Seminar PHIL 680

Fall 2016

• Moral Psychology and Climate Change PHIL 490

• Introduction to Philosophy PHIL 110

Spring 2016