TEACHING

Harvard University

At the John F. Kennedy School of Government, I am teaching two seminars:

  • Brain Washing and Mind Control: From the Cold War to Today
  • Brain-Computer Interfaces: The Latest Threat to Human Rights?

University of Cambridge

At the University of Cambridge, I supervised undergraduate students for several of the university’s constituent colleges and postgraduate students taking the MPhil in Philosophy for the Faculty of Philosophy. For the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, I supervised dissertations and acted as assessor of both undergraduate and postgraduate work on the MPhil in History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine as well as on the MPhil in Health, Medicine and Society. I also examined essays and dissertations for the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence’s two postgraduate courses, the MPhil in Ethics of AI, Data, and Algorithms and the MSt in AI Ethics and Society. Furthermore, I supervised student projects for the Laidlaw Leadership and Research Programme and the Pembroke Cambridge International Programme. At the Department of Public Health and Primary Care, I taught students on the pre-clinical part of Cambridge’s Medicine Course in medical ethics.


I regularly supervised for the following modules:

  • Ethics: Early Modern Moral Philosophy, Helping and Harming, Moral Psychology, Normative Powers, Virtue Ethics
  • Metaphysics: Causation, Free will, Induction and Miracles, Mind and Matter, Personal Identity
  • Philosophy of Mind: Consciousness, Epistemology of Mind, Intentionality and Mental Representation, Mental Faculties
  • Political Philosophy and Ethics: Equality of Opportunity, Metaethics, Moral Psychology, Normative Ethics, Political Obligation and Authority
  • Political Philosophy: Democracy, Equality and Egalitarianism, Liberty and Liberalism, Property
  • Social and Ethical Context of Health & Illness: Professionalism in Medicine, Justice in Healthcare, Ethics in Medical Research

Technical University of Munich

For the TUM School of Medicine, I co-supervise two PhD dissertations in medical ethics:

  • E. M. Schmolke: Ethische Analyse von Leitlinien zur Verteilung knapper intensivmedizinischer Ressourcen während einer Pandemie und deren Umsetzung aus Perspektive potentieller Anwender in Deutschland
  • K. Wagner: The Ethical Appropriateness of the Current Use and Regulation of Homeopathy in Germany

University of St Andrews

For the Department of Philosophy, I taught on two modules:

  • Honours Prize Seminar Series The Metaphysics and Morality of Death (as co-lecturer)
  • Sub-Honours Module The Enlightenment (as tutor and assessor)

Modules Supervised for at the University of Cambridge

Ethics

Early Modern Moral Philosophy

  • voluntarism
  • rationalism
  • sentimentalism

Helping and Harming

  • demands of beneficence
  • aggregation
  • contractualism

Moral Psychology

  • moral motivation
  • moral learning
  • practical reasoning

Normative Powers

  • consent
  • promise

Virtue Ethics

  • doctrine of the mean
  • reason and habits
  • social psychology

Metaphysics

Causation

  • David Hume’s view of causation
  • causes and events
  • conditions and counterfactuals

Free Will

  • freedom and determinism
  • fatalism

Induction and Miracles

  • inductive inferences
  • deductive inferences
  • natural laws
  • statistical likelihood and coincidence

Mind and Matter

  • monism and dualism
  • physicalism and functionalism
  • mental states and mental causation
  • qualia

Personal Identity

  • biological and psychological views
  • synchronic and diachronic persistence
  • consciousness and memories

Philosophy of Mind

Epistemology of Mind

  • knowledge of one’s own mind
  • knowledge of other minds

Consciousness

  • varieties of consciousness
  • intentional theories of consciousness
  • the explanatory gap
  • the unity of consciousness

Intentionality and Mental Representation

  • theories of content
  • externalism and internalism
  • perception and belief

Mental Faculties

  • intention and the will
  • imagination
  • desire

Political Philosophy and Ethics

Equality of Opportunity

  • varieties of equality of opportunity
  • justifications and controversy
  • positive discrimination

Metaethics

  • fact and value
  • objectivity and subjectivity

Moral Psychology

  • egoism and altruism
  • empathy
  • cognitive and affective attitudes

Normative Ethics

  • consequentialism
  • deontology
  • virtue ethics

Political Obligation and Authority

  • classical social contract theory
  • natural duty and fair play theory
  • anarchism

Political Philosophy

Democracy

  • forms of democracy
  • justifications of democracy
  • the democratic boundary problem

Equality and Egalitarianism

  • the value of equality
  • distributive equality
  • economic justice and gender

Liberty and Liberalism

  • the concept of liberty
  • Rawlsian liberalism
  • liberal feminism

Property

  • labour, property, and theft
  • the limits of markets

Social and Ethical Context of Health & Illness

Professionalism in Medicine

  • professional standards and best practice
  • consent, confidentiality, and duty of candour
  • trust, integrity, honesty, and accountability

Justice in Healthcare

  • allocation of healthcare resources
  • local, national, and global priorities
  • social determinants of health

Ethics in Medical Research

  • trust and integrity
  • research involving children and vulnerable individuals
  • ethics-committee approval