Teaching

Photo by Kayla Bohannon

I primarily teach M&E (metaphysics and epistemology) and logic, introductory to advanced.

Our M&E series – PHI 100, 350, and 550 – involve topics concerning the fundamental nature of reality, what we know, and how we can know it. Are things the way that you think that they are? Are you looking at a screen, reading these words? Or are you just having a really boring dream? How can you tell the difference? These are just some of the questions we ask, as well as questions about personal identity, free will, metaphysics of time, puzzles of ordinary objects, persistence, and possible worlds. Students can expect the topics to get more detailed and complex in the higher course numbers.

Our logic series – PHI 120, 320, and 520 – concerns the study of what follows from what. We cover informal arguments and general reasoning in the early levels, moving to classical sentential and predicate symbolic logic in the mid-levels, and finally non-classical, modal, and non-bivalent logic at the higher levels.

WARNING: PHI 520 is probably my favorite course to teach, so students taking it should expect me to be annoyingly enthusiastic about it all semester long.

I also occasionally teach PHI 315: Philosophy and Science Fiction, which is a course that teaches a variety of philosophical topics through science fiction – short stories, novels, TV shows, movies, and video games. This class is a lot of fun and I’m usually annoyingly enthusiastic about it, too.

Another one of my teaching interests includes a novel project of combing physical movement, performance, and the circus arts with philosophical study – a project started in 2017 with the creation of PHI 193: Circus and Philosophy. Starting in 2019, I helped initiate and fund structural upgrades to a large gym space on campus that now includes 6 aerial dropline points ready for use with various aerial apparatuses – silks, trapeze, lyra, rope, etc. – as well as ground and other circus equipment. This ‘Circus Lab’ is specifically intended to be the campus hub for interdisciplinary circus-centered education and research.

Below are the courses I typically teach (or have taught). If you are interested in a syllabus, please just email and ask (meg dot wallace at uky dot edu) – I love to think about and share reading lists and course design.

  • PHI 100: Introduction to Philosophy – Knowledge and Reality
  • PHI 120: The Art of Thinking – An Introduction to Logic
  • PHI 193: Circus and Philosophy (more info)
  • PHI 315: Philosophy and Science Fiction (Honors and Non-Honors)
  • PHI 320: Symbolic Logic I
  • PHI 520: Symbolic Logic II
  • PHI 350: Problems of Knowledge and Reality (M&E I)
  • PHI 550: Problems of Knowledge and Reality (M&E II)
  • PHI 515: The Analytic Turn
  • PHI 650: Graduate Seminar – Fictionalism
  • PHI 650: Graduate Seminar – Space, Time, and Possible Worlds
  • PHI 650: Graduate Seminar – Paradoxes
  • PHI 680: Graduate Seminar – Unity
  • PHI 740: Graduate Proseminar on Teaching Methods
  • PHI 741: Graduate Proseminar on M&E