“True philosophy entails relearning to see the world anew.”
-Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception
I approach philosophy as the disciplined effort to think about our thinking and to disclose and critically evaluate the basic presuppositions that we take for granted in forming a coherent perspective on the world and on ourselves. I think that as sense-making beings, we are always in the business of articulating a general perspective on the world and our place in it, however tentative and inchoate this perspective may be at the start. Accordingly, in my teaching, I try to show students that we are always already implicitly involved with the practice of philosophy even in our most specialized, practical, and humdrum pursuits. Ultimately, in my view, the goal of a philosophical education is to take our implicit, all-too-human concern with foundational notions that lie at the basis of all our sense-making – notions such as being, value, knowledge, and self – and to make that concern explicit and self-conscious, so that we can responsibly take charge of our own sense-making.
In my experience, a key barrier to entry for students when it comes to philosophy is the difficulty many have in seeing how the abstract and general subject matter of philosophy could be relevant to their most immediate concerns. In my teaching, I try to show students that the unresolved foundational problems of philosophy – like the problem of knowledge, or of explaining what we are – lie at the basis of the perspective on reality that they currently take to be “just obvious.” In my teaching, I approach philosophy as a practice of defamiliarizing and problematizing “the obvious.” Through this defamiliarization, I think that a philosophical education can reveal the most obvious, familiar and taken-for-granted things as sources of inexhaustible wonder. My hope is that by creating a community of practice in my classroom aimed at “relearning to see”, I can help students return to their most intimate concerns with fresh eyes.
Overall, I take my inspiration from Merleau-Ponty, who suggested that to be a philosopher is to approach life as “a perpetual beginner.” I try to show students that since we can all be “perpetual beginners”, we can establish through shared philosophical practice a common ground for serious intellectual discourse about what matters that bypasses the intellectual specialization of higher learning that otherwise separates us.
You can find a more detailed account of my teaching philosophy in the document below:
Elena Holmgren’s Teaching Philosophy
Upon request, I am happy to provide complete versions of my teaching dossier and teaching evaluations.
Teaching Award
I am the recipient of the 2024 Don Brown Award for Graduate Teaching Excellence awarded by the University of British Columbia Philosophy department.
Courses Taught
Since fall 2020, I have taught a variety of philosophy courses, both in person and online:
At University of British Columbia:
Ethics for the Sciences (PHIL 337) – Winter Term 1 2025, Online-Synchronous.
This course explored the moral dimensions and implications of science. It focused on the tight relation between science and our everyday lived experience of the social world. On the one hand, it explored how science is shaped by the social world insofar as scientific practice mirrors and amplifies social values. On the other hand, it explored how science and technology restructure the social world by shaping our shared sense of reality and agency. By understanding this tight relation between science and the social world, the course provided some tools for thinking critically about how science reflects, reinforces, and reshapes social values, thereby transforming the collective arena for moral action. The course began by investigating the interrelation between science and values. It encouraged students to make explicit and critically evaluate what usually remains implicit, namely, the subtle influence of values on scientific reasoning, representation, explanation, modelling practices, and data interpretation. It explored the role that values play in determining what gets researched, how we research it, what counts as sufficient evidence, and what counts as a satisfactory scientific account of any given phenomenon.
The course then explored the nature of scientists’ responsibilities towards human and animal research subjects, as well as towards the cultural groups they study. It explored how scientific research can be steered to curb or contribute to the spread of injustice. It also explored how we can remedy existing injustices by incorporating communities in the research process and engaging with indigenous research ethics norms. The course applied these theoretical tools to a variety of case studies, including research on vulnerable groups and climate science. It concluded with an extended case study exploring the responsibilities of researchers involved in the development of information technology and AI, given that such tools transform the very conditions of epistemic and moral agency. It explored some of the ethical risks and benefits of contributing to the creation of an algorithmically-mediated social environment which alters our understanding of what it means to be an agent, what counts as value and knowledge, and what it means for something to be real.
Ethics for the Sciences Syllabus
Introduction to Epistemology (PHIL 240) – Winter Term 1 2024, Online-Synchronous.
Through an in-depth study of classical and contemporary texts, this course explored fundamental questions in epistemology (the study of knowledge) such as: What is knowledge and what are its limits? How can we respond to skeptical arguments that deny that we have much, if any, knowledge at all? How do reason, sense perception and the testimony of others function as sources of knowledge? Can the norms we use to determine what counts as knowledge only be specified relative to social and cultural contexts (as epistemic relativism claims)? Moreover, can we understand knowledge – a norm-governed rational activity – as a natural process that can be explained by using the same basic principles we use to explain other natural processes such as digestion and crystallization (as naturalized epistemology tries to do)? To what extent can we cleanly distinguish between epistemic rationality (which is concerned with what we ought to believe) and practical rationality (which is concerned with how we ought to act in the world)?
After exploring knowledge as an individual achievement, the course explored knowledge as a social phenomenon. It did so by addressing questions such as: What, if any, is the relation between knowledge and power? How do social practices and institutions (e.g. democratic institutions and internet communities) support and hinder the production of knowledge? How can we assess the epistemic merits of technologies such as AI that are increasingly restructuring our collective epistemic environment (e.g. by creating and consolidating echo chambers, and by proliferating the flow of mis- and disinformation)? Does our increasing dependence on such technologies support or hinder the cultivation of our capacities as knowers? Moreover, do such technologies strengthen or corrode the fabric of trust that binds together our epistemic communities? Lastly, can groups (such as juries or research bodies) count as knowers in their own right? By studying knowledge as a social phenomenon, the course explored how we can apply epistemology to real-world issues.
Syllabus for Introduction to Epistemology
Student Feedback for PHIL 240: Introduction to Epistemology
Minds and Machines (PHIL 250) – Summer 2023, In Person.
A survey of dominant theories of the conscious mind, ranging from substance dualism, logical behaviourism, brain reductionism, computational functionalism, property dualism, epiphenomenalism, eliminative materialism, enactivism, and phenomenological philosophy of mind. Moreover, it assessed how adopting each of the above theories influences how we think about the possibility of artificial consciousness and how we assess the prospects of a scientific explanation of conscious experience. The course brought into dialogue and contrasted phenomenological approaches to formulating and addressing the problem of consciousness (centered around Husserl’s so-called “paradox of subjectivity”) with approaches in the Analytic tradition (centered around Chalmers’ so-called “hard problem of consciousness”).
Syllabus for Minds and Machines
At Camosun College:
Introduction to Philosophy, Classics (PHIL 100) (x12) – Fall 2025; Fall 2024; Fall and Winter 2022; Winter, Summer and Fall 2021. In Person and Online-Asynchronous sections.
The course begins by exploring the distinction between philosophical and scientific reasoning. It then charts the evolution of the idea of reason in the Western philosophical tradition, beginning with the ancient Greeks’ notion of rationality as a capacity that is cultivated in the context of a philosophical “way of life,” and culminating in Descartes’ notion of reason as a universal method. Along the way, the course explores the problem of universals, the nature and possibility of knowledge, rationalism and empiricism as responses to skepticism, the nature of the mind and its relation to matter and to ultimate reality, and arguments for the existence of God. Some years, the course also explores the possibility of artificial rationality and the distinction between human and artificial reasoning. Some semester, it also explores the different accounts of the sources of value in human life provided by distinct ethical systems, such as Kantian ethics, virtue ethics and consequentialism. These topics are explored through an in-depth study of excerpts from philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Mill and Pierre Hadot. The course is also designed to introduce the basics of argumentative essay writing.
Syllabus for Introduction to Philosophy
Student Feedback for PHIL 100: Introduction to Philosophy F21 A
Student Feedback for PHIL 100: Introduction to Philosophy F21 B
Student Feedback for PHIL 100: Introduction to Philosophy F24
Philosophy of Mind (PHIL 207) (x2) – Winter 2022, In Person and Fall 2020, Online-Asynchronous.
A survey of key theories concerning the nature of the conscious mind ranging from Cartesian dualism, behaviourism, brain reductionism, functionalism, eliminative materialism, illusionism, enactivism and embodied extended cognition, property dualism, epiphenomenalism, idealism and phenomenological philosophy of mind. These topics are explored through an in-depth study of seminal papers arguing for these views. The course is also designed to introduce the basics of argumentative essay writing.
See my CV for additional details about my teaching experience.
Sample Teaching Materials
Guide to writing a philosophy paper for my classes:
General Guide to Philosophical Writing
Professional Development in Teaching
In Spring 2023, I completed “Foundations of Pedagogy,” an eight week course on evidence-based effective pedagogical practices offered by CIRTL (Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning) at the University of British Columbia. Upon completion, I obtained a CIRTL Associate certificate.