David Nixon

Lecturer

B.A. Philosophy, University of Washington
M.A. Philosophy, University of Washington
Ph.D. Philosophy, University of Washington

Office: UW1-391
Email: mitsuo@uw.edu
Mailing Box: 358563, 18115 Campus Way NE, Bothell, WA 98011-8246

Teaching

I want to facilitate the students development as a clear thinker and an articulate communicator. I want my students to become independent thinkers who take responsibility for their own intellectual growth. I want them to be able to uncover important assumptions in their own thinking and to be able to critically evaluate them. I want them to develop a sense of intellectual integrity. I want them to be able to understand different perspectives as well as their own, and to be fair-minded and judicious in evaluating those perspectives. I want them to learn to work with and learn from others. I want them to learn to appreciate complex philosophical ideas, and to understand the reasons that motivate people to adopt different philosophical positions (especially positions that the student does not agree with). I want the student to be able to occupy an insider’s perspective, so to speak; to be gripped by the ideas of the course in the same way that the thinkers we are reading about are gripped by them. I want to get the students to learn to love ideas. I want them to enjoy their philosophy classes as opposed to walking away thinking that philosophy is stuffy, boring, and totally divorced from anything in their own lives.

Recent Courses Taught

BCUSP 107 Philosophical Explorations of Science Fiction
BISSEB 359 Ethics & Parenting
BCUSP 118 Artificial Intelligence: Facts & Fictions
CSS 143 Programming Methodologies II

Research/Scholarship

Epistemology, perception, music, aesthetics, history of music, philosophy of the mind, artificial intelligence, the meaning of life.