William H. Koch
Assistant Professor
Academic Literacy and Linguistics
EMAIL: wkoch@bmcc.cuny.edu
Office:
Office Hours:
Phone: +1 (212) 220-8000;ext=5069
Expertise
Degrees
- Ph.D. Philosophy, University of South Florida 2010
- M.A. Philosophy, University of South Florida 2008
- B.A. Philosophy, Boston University 2003
Courses Taught
- Critical Thinking (Same as CRT 100) is designed to develop the mind and help students learn to think clearly and effectively. Through substantive readings, structured writing assignments and ongoing discussions, students will examine concrete examples from their own experience and readings and contemporary issues in the media to learn how to analyze issues, solve problems, and make informed decisions in their academic, professional, and personal lives.
- In this course, students will build and apply critical thinking skills, including making and evaluating arguments, to questions of social inequalities, especially those related to race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. Using a variety of historical, literary and theoretical texts, students will look at ways that existing power structures benefit some groups and limit or oppress others. Students will be asked to reflect on their own experiences and attitudes and consider what they can do to build a more just and equal society.
- This course develops students' abilities to reason well about scientific claims, scientific research, and the nature, value, and limits of scientific inquiry. To reason well about scientific claims, students understand and apply central scientific concepts, such as experiment, explanation, cause, effect, correlation, random sampling, testability, prediction, verification, and falsification. In addition, students evaluate instances of reasoning with such concepts by evaluating arguments for and against scientific claims and assessing the significance of possible outcomes of experiments. To reason well about the nature, value, and limits of scientific inquiry, students are introduced to central issues in the philosophy of science, such as the demarcation between science and pseudo-science, the reliability of scientific research, and the (un)reasonableness of beliefs about claims, such as moral and other normative claims, that fall outside the scope of sciences.
- This course engages students in critical inquiry through the lenses of queer theories (e.g., theories related to the LGBTQI + spectra). Emphasizing how queer theories help thinkers across disciplines engage in observing, viewing/positioning, examining, analyzing, and constructing queer subjects, this course asks students to examine how, within and between disciplines, a) thinkers' perceptions and investigations are influenced by ideologies related to queerness and b) thinkers employ queer theories to create diverse ways of seeing/thinking, constructing/creating about the body, gender, sex/sexuality/sexual identities. Particular attention will be paid to how queer subjects have been pathologized and marginalized and how ideologies about queer populations affect reception of creative, scholarly, and professional works.
- This course asks how lawyers, judges, and legislators think and reason differently from the general public, and uses the study of legal analysis to develop the mind and sharpen students’ ability to think clearly, logically, thoroughly, critically, and effectively. This course is designed to teach skills useful in analyzing the reasoning structures found in judicial decisions, and in applying those structures to the construction of new arguments. The topics we will consider focus on both deductive and inductive reasoning skills, and questions of textual interpretation. The deductive skills studied will include: the application of general principles to specific cases as found in the application of constitutional standards to specific laws, especially including the application of rights to legal questions, and the application of laws to particular cases. The inductive skills studied will include: evaluating proof based on the standards of evidence found at various levels of the legal system and the justification behind this plurality of standards; reasoning from specific cases to general principles; reasoning from analogy in the application of previous rulings to novel cases; the analysis of precedent, in general, as a unique inductive method. Finally, we will consider different processes of textual interpretation including debates between originalism, textualism, intentionalism, and pragmatism as demonstrated in the interpretation of foundational legal texts.
Prerequisite: ENG 201 and [any 100-level CRT or PHI course] - The study of philosophy helps students develop analytic skills and gain an appreciation of the general philosophical problems with which human beings have grappled throughout Western civilization. Basic philosophic problems such as free will and determinism, the criteria which justify ethical evaluations, the philosophical considerations which are relevant to belief or disbelief in God, and knowledge and illusion are examined during this course.
Research and Projects
Publications
“Style is One’s Fate: On the Character of Philosophy.” Philosophy in the Contemporary World: An International Journal, Forthcoming.
“Phenomenology and the Problem of Universals.” Studia Phaenomenologica: Romanian Journal for Phenomenology, vol. XX Phenomenology and the History of Platonism, 2020, pp. 147-166.
The Films of Lars von Trier and Philosophy: Provocations and Engagements, edited by William Koch and Jose Haro, Palgrave MacMillan, 2019.
“Hekate and the Liminality of Souls.” Otherwise Than the Binary: New Feminist Readings in Ancient Philosophy and Culture, edited by Jessica Decker, Danielle Layne, Monica Vilhauer, SUNY Press, 2022, pp. 295-312.
“Lars von Trier: Traversing the Fantasy of the Child.” The Films of Lars von Trier and Philosophy: Provocations and Engagements, edited by William Koch and Jose Haro, Palgrave MacMillan, 2019, pp. 79-90.
“Achilles and the (Sexual) History of Being” Transgressing the Limit: Borders and Liminality in Philosophy and Literature, Jessica Mayock and Dylan Winchock, ed., Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 167-186.
“Phenomenology and the Impasse of Politics” Phenomenolgoy and the Political, S. West Gurley and Geoff Pfeifer, ed., Rowan and Littlefield International, 2016, pp. 43-60.
“Phenomenology as Social Critique” Horizons of Authenticity in Phenomenology, Existentialism, and Moral Psychology: Essays in Honor of Charles Guignon, Hans Pederson, Megan Altman, ed., Springer, 2015, pp. 311-328.
“Jean Genet: A Case Study of the Artist’s Explication and Alteration of Social Practice” in Painting Mirrors: Essays on the Artist as Observer and Social Critic, Shawn Bingham, ed., Lexington Press, 2012, pp. 45-66.
“Discourses of Excess and the Excess of Discourse: On Georges Bataille’s Lasting Influence Upon Foucault.” Existentia: An International Journal of Philosophy, 2011, pp. 101-118.
