{"id":384,"date":"2021-09-10T14:44:12","date_gmt":"2021-09-10T14:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alejandrovesga.co\/?page_id=384"},"modified":"2026-09-25T20:50:28","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T20:50:28","slug":"teaching","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/alejandrovesga.co\/?page_id=384","title":{"rendered":"Teaching"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Graduate Seminars<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Phil 6395-3<\/a> – Communication <\/strong>(Spring 2026)
Graduate Seminar – University of Houston (Syllabus<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While much of analytic philosophy of language has focused on meaning, reference, and the formal properties of language, this seminar centers on a different tradition that understands communication in terms of action, coordination, normativity, and social interaction. We will study classic and contemporary work on intention, convention, context, and signaling, as well as naturalistic and evolutionary approaches to communication, before turning to normative, political, and moral dimensions of speech. Throughout the course, we will ask how communicative acts generate commitments, authority, responsibility, harm, and power, and how these effects can outstrip what is encoded in linguistic meaning alone. Topics include conventions and contexts, naturalistic models of communication, normativity and uptake, slurs and propaganda, social meaning, insinuation, and silencing. By the end of the course, students will have the conceptual tools to analyze communication as a norm-governed social practice and to engage critically with current philosophical debates about what speech does. <\/small><\/p><\/details>

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Phil 6395-3<\/a> – Belief<\/strong> (Spring 2025)
Graduate Seminar – University of Houston (Syllabus<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk of belief has a ubiquitous and central role in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and cognitive science. Despite this ubiquity\u2014or perhaps because of it\u2014there is plenty of explicit and implicit disagreement on what belief is, and the criteria that should be used to individuate it. This theoretical heterogeneity in the various conceptions of belief has motivated a recent attempt to systematize and unify a perspective of how different conceptions of belief in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and cognitive science stand with respect to each other: Eric Mandelbaum calls it a project in \u2018doxastic cartography\u2019. This class will be an attempt to locate ourselves within and perhaps advance this project. The aim of the class will be to give an overview that is as deep as possible of the many (many!) conceptions and debates about belief mainly from a philosophical perspective but always informed by interdisciplinary cognitive science. <\/small><\/p><\/details>

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Phil <\/a>6398-3<\/a> – Existencia y Liberaci\u00f3n<\/strong> (Spanish) (Spring 2025)
Graduate Seminar – University of Houston (Syllabus<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

En este curso vamos a recorrer las distintas sendas intelectuales que rodean la denominada \u2018filosof\u00eda de la liberaci\u00f3n\u2019. Espec\u00edficamente, vamos a ver dos movimientos interrelacionados de la filosof\u00eda latinoamericana del siglo XX: El existencialismo y la filosof\u00eda de la liberaci\u00f3n latinoamericanos. La interacci\u00f3n entre estos dos polos de pensamiento iluminar\u00e1 las ideas principales de una l\u00ednea unitaria (mas no homog\u00e9nea) de dialogo en el pensamiento latinoamericano. As\u00ed, un objetivo principal de esta exploraci\u00f3n es desarrollar una posici\u00f3n cr\u00edtica respecto tanto a estas ideas, como a la ansiedad meta-filos\u00f3fica que las agrupa: \u00bfQu\u00e9 es\u2014mejor, qu\u00e9 puede ser\u2014filosof\u00eda latinoamericana? Al desarrollar esta posici\u00f3n cr\u00edtica tambi\u00e9n nos preguntaremos por las voces que faltan y por qu\u00e9 faltan tan llamativamente en una filosof\u00eda que dice ser latinoamericana. El contenido principal de este curso estar\u00e1 enmarcado en su inicio por un pre\u00e1mbulo que introduce las ideas principales de la fenomenolog\u00eda, la historiograf\u00eda, y el existencialismo continental, y al final por una lectura cr\u00edtica post colonial de las tradiciones que nos interesan ac\u00e1. <\/small><\/p><\/details>

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Upper-Level Classes<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Phil 3355<\/a> – Pragmatism <\/strong>(Fall 2026)
Upper-Level Undergraduate – University of Houston (Syllabus<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This course examines American pragmatism as a philosophical tradition centered on practice, experience, inquiry, and the reconstruction of social life. We begin with the classical pragmatists\u2014William James, Charles S. Peirce, and John Dewey\u2014whose work reorients questions of truth, belief, meaning, knowledge, value, and democracy around the consequences of ideas in lived experience. From there, we ask how pragmatist methods travel into social ethics, race, education, analytic philosophy, feminism, science studies, and political critique. A guiding theme of the course will be the relation between inquiry and transformation: if knowledge is not grounded in fixed foundations but emerges through fallible, socially situated practices, what follows for ethics, democracy, power, and struggles against injustice? The course traces pragmatism not only as a historical movement, but as an evolving set of philosophical tools for understanding and remaking the world. <\/small><\/p><\/details>

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Phil 3335<\/a> – Philosophy of Language<\/strong> (Spring 2026)
Upper-Level Undergraduate – University of Houston (Syllabus<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This course presents two complementary stories about how language works in contemporary philosophy of language. Story 1 treats language as a rule-governed representational system: beginning with Frege and Russell and culminating in contemporary formal semantics, it explains how linguistic expressions systematically receive truth-conditional meanings via compositional rules and models. Story 2 treats language as a form of social action and coordination: beginning with critiques of rule-based explanations (and continuing through speech-act theory, intention-based pragmatics, and discourse models, it explains how speakers use language to act, coordinate, and manage shared informational states. The course does not assume that these stories are fully unified or that one replaces the other; instead, it examines how they coexist, where they come into tension, and how contemporary work often draws on both. We will conclude by applying these frameworks to socially and politically significant uses of language\u2014such as generics, propaganda, pornography, and genocidal discourse\u2014to assess what our theories of meaning, action, and discourse can (and cannot) explain in high-stakes contexts. <\/small><\/p><\/details>

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Phil 3336 <\/strong>– Philosophy of Action <\/strong>(Fall 2025)
Upper-Level Undergraduate – University of Houston (Syllabus<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our body does many things, it blinks, it grows its hair, it moves its bowels, it produces noises, movements, and smells. Yet only some of these things\u2014or, better, only sometimes these things\u2014count as actions, otherwise they are reflexes, instincts, accidents, etc. Hence, at a basic level, the philosophy of action asks, \u2018what makes some of the things we do count as actions and others do not?\u2019. Moreover, action seems to entail a notion of rationality: if I want to buy lunch tomorrow, it seems irrational to spend all my money on beer today. So, the philosopher of action also asks \u2018What makes it the cases that we are subject to demands of action? What makes some actions irrational and others not\u2019. In the first two models we will delve into foundational work on these two questions: \u2018what is an action?\u2019 and \u2018what is a rational action\u2019. Then we will read work about how marginal ways of action\u2014trying and failing, procedural slips or mistakes, and reasoning under scarcity\u2014can be explained or not with these frameworks.<\/small><\/p><\/details>

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Phil 3335<\/strong><\/a> – Latin American Philosophy<\/strong> (Fall 2025)
Upper-Level Undergraduate – University of Houston (Syllabus<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is there a Latin American philosophy? In this course we will explore a possible answer by investigating how the concept of liberation is a common thread in Latin American philosophical thought. This exploration will take us from Latin American Catholic theology and the distinct philosophical humanism developed in Mexican and Chilean universities, to the manifestos of indigenous revolutionary groups, like the Mexican Zapatistas. By focusing on the concept of liberation, we will collaboratively develop the skills to produce successful academic texts that address important questions for our own political moment, like \u201cHow should we compare the search for liberty with the search for liberation?\u201d, \u201cHow can we ensure the cultural and political freedom of others?\u201d, \u201cIs individual autonomy compatible with cultural autonomy?\u201d. <\/small><\/p><\/details>

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Phil 3335 – Theory of Knowledge<\/strong> (Fall 2024)
Upper-Level Undergraduate – University of Houston (Syllabus<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This course is a mid-level introduction to epistemology as a subdiscipline of philosophy. To begin etymologically, epistemology is the study of knowledge; but more generally it is the study of our intellectual relationship with the world. How should we think of the ways our minds grasp and learn from the world. What does it take to know something, instead of believing it, or even having a rational, justified, or true belief? Can we be sure that we are not being deceived by an evil genie, or a simulation, or even our own social environment? Are the ways we know about the world inevitably marked by our social standing? Why do these questions even matter? Throughout the class we will delve into classic and contemporary debates in epistemology and its relevance to our social and political and political lives. <\/small><\/p><\/details>

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Lower-Level Classes<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Phil 1301- Introduction to Philosophy<\/strong> (Fall 2024)
Lower-Level Undergraduate -University of Houston (Syllabus<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This course is an introduction to philosophy as an academic discipline. It consists of a cursory overview of classic problems in the history of philosophy and their importance to contemporary philosophical discussions and research. We will use Descartes’ Meditations in First Philosophy to address critical questions that pertain to philosophy today. Some of these questions include: What can and do we actually know about the real world if our experiences often deceive us? What does it mean when we say that we have mental states? Are they part of our body, like stomach pains, or another thing altogether? Can the universe exist without a first cause? If not, is that cause God? What is it to say that some or other action is morally wrong? Is it a matter of cultural convention, like table manners, or an objective reality, like the greenness of tree leaves? Throughout the class we will endeavor to develop critical skills that allow us to assess and questions arguments across a variety of topics and concerns. In turn, we will aim to draw connections between these seemingly abstract concerns and today\u2019s pressing issues, like the nature of artificial intelligence, the role of social power in determining what we learn or stop learning. <\/small><\/p><\/details>

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Phil 1111 – Liberation in Latin American Philosophy<\/strong>
First-Year Writing Seminar – Cornell (Syllabus<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When philosophers talk of Latin American philosophy, they immediately face a metaphilosophical problem: what would a Latin American philosophy even be? Is it philosophy produced in Latin America or by Latin Americans? Does it have a precise set of problems that distinguish it? In this course, we will explore a possible thematic answer by investigating how the concept of liberation is a common thread in Latin American philosophical thought. This exploration will take us from Latin American Catholic theology and the distinct philosophical humanism developed in Mexican and Chilean universities to the manifestos of indigenous revolutionary groups, like the Mexican Zapatistas. By focusing on the concept of liberation, we will collaboratively develop the skills to write successful academic texts that address important questions for our own political moment, like \u201cHow should we compare the search for liberty with the search for liberation?\u201d, \u201cHow can we ensure the cultural and political freedom of others?\u201d, \u201cIs individual autonomy compatible with cultural autonomy?\u201d.<\/small><\/p><\/details>

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I have also developed sample syllabi for the job season. Here are links to them, in case they are useful. Any input is welcome!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Philosophy of Language (Syllabus<\/a>)
Social Epistemology (Syllabus<\/a>)
Socializing Speech Acts (Syllabus<\/a>)
Analytic Perspectives on Oppression (Syllabus<\/a>) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I have also served as a writing tutor for professional, graduate, and undergraduate students at the Knight Institute<\/a> at Cornell and the Centro de Espa\u00f1ol<\/a> at Los Andes. And I was an Academic Projects Manager at the Center for Applied Ethics<\/a> at Los Andes University. Working in this center, I guided workshops on applied ethics and co-designed the ‘Teaching Ethics’ course for a multidisciplinary audience of university professors.<\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>

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