Colin Patrick

Colin Patrick

Visiting Assistant Professor

John R. Howard Hall 232, MSC: 45

In my view philosophy is not only a body of written work but primarily the practice of carefully, honestly, and systematically interrogating settled assumptions about ourselves, our history, and our natural and social world. I think the value of these things is often overlooked and even downplayed in our information-saturated culture, leaving us feeling overwhelmed and somewhat hesitant and disempowered to do our own thinking, encouraged to trust what we hear and read from those with the biggest platforms or loudest voices, and otherwise leave critical thinking to the “experts.”

In my courses I seek more than anything to empower students to push back against this, to be confident in their capacity to recognize arguments and inferences when they come across them, to build confidence in their ability to critically appraise them, to be able to draw out the logical implications of viewpoints and arguments - especially those that they’re under any kind of pressure to accept as “common sense,” and to construct inferences and arguments of their own.

 

Academic Credentials

BA from Wesleyan University, 1998
PhD from the University of Chicago, 2012

Teaching

Spring 2023 Courses:

PHIL 101: Logic
MWF 10:20am-11:20am

Analyses of arguments with an emphasis on formal analysis. Propositional and predicate calculus, deductive techniques, and translation into symbolic notation.

Prerequisites: None

PHIL 310: Metaphysics
MWF 9:10am-10:10am

Personal identity, time, free will, composition, persistence, universals, particulars, possibility, necessity, realism, antirealism.

Prerequisites: PHIL 101. PHIL 250. PHIL 102 or one course in the history of philosophy sequence (PHIL 301 through PHIL 307) recommended.

Restrictions: Sophomore standing required. 

Research

My research and teaching interests are in ethical theory, applied ethics, practical reason, deductive and inductive logic, Hegelian dialectics, Marx, philosophy of history, philosophy of technology, and philosophy of film.

Location: J.R. Howard Hall