Allen Stairs

Allen Stairs

Allen Stairs writes: "I teach philosophy at the University of Maryland. Most of my work has been in foundations of quantum mechanics, but I teach philosophy of religion regularly and have a textbook (A Thinker's Guide to the Philosophy of Religion) with Christopher Bernard.

"I'm a strong believer in the need for philosophers to make their thinking accessible to non-experts, and to that end I've taught various courses in philosophy for lay audiences at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. My guilty professional secret is that I taught (twice!) a course called "Metaphysics for the Millennium," in which students actually had to buy a deck of Tarot cards. (They also had to learn some statistics and read a lot of David Hume.)"