Amrit Mandzak-Heer

I’m a former professional philosopher who’s still interested in rigorously knowing the world - and along with this, in thinking about what methods produce the best knowledge - and applying that knowledge for the good.

Most recently, I was Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. I’ve taught courses in logic, ethics, and bioethics. My area of research concerned the history of different forms of logical thinking and how those different forms were conditioned by different accounts of the underlying structure of the world.

The relation between logical or formal methods of knowing and how those methods carve up the world is still at the forefront of my interests, as I now look to move into analysis, research, and data-focused work.

In my free time, I enjoy cycling, hiking, and cooking!

Research in Philosophy

My research primarily concerned the history of philosophy, focusing on German philosophy from the late 18th to early 19th century. It dealt with how different accounts of logic and logical relations conceived of the underlying relation between concepts and objects in the world. For example, for logical relations between statements to hold, there had to be some account of how concepts can possibly be related to each other. And for logical inference to be informative about the world - and not simply a mental exercise - the relations between concepts had to correspond with some real relations in objects in the world. There were different accounts for how this might all fit together, but there was also an increasing worry that ultimately these accounts of logic did not have some firm foundation.

This led to a period of great experimentation with the philosophy of logic and its connection to metaphysics (the field that concerns the fundamental nature of objects) and to empirical science. My research concerned this period of experimentation, in an attempt to ascertain different possibilities in thinking about the world.

Teaching in Philosophy

My approach to teaching was animated by the idea that students learn philosophy most effectively when they actually philosophize themselves. Taking philosophical ideas and positions to have significance only in the context of the problems which they are addressing and the care and rigor to which they respond to these problems, I believe teaching should be oriented towards to the goal of achieving in students the capacities to recognize a distinctly philosophical problem and to clarify and differentiate tensions in commitments responsive to the problem. By treating students as agents in this process, and by treating philosophical positions and texts as interlocutors in this same process, students will really philosophize themselves.

An implication of my approach is that I embody an expansive and inclusive view of philosophy itself - as a general attempt to reflectively consider recalcitrant problems in our society and in our lives. In the classroom, this approach was concretized by three principles: it is student-led, in that I began with concerns from students’ lives; it is learner-oriented, in that teaching unfolds in a way most conducive to a novice; it is cognitively multimodal, in that students engage with ideas through different cognitive means.

I have extensive teaching experience leading courses in logic, metaphysics, ethics, and bioethics.

Companies

• Visiting Assistant Professor Thomas Jefferson University (2020)
• Adjunct Professor Villanova University (2014 — 2019)
• Adjunct Professor Community College of Philadelphia (2019 — 2019)

Education

• Doctor of Philosophy - PhD Villanova University
• Master of Arts - MA York University
• Bachelor of Arts - BA University of Toronto