Philosophy

DECONSTRUCTION AND POWER: MICHEL FOUCAULT and JACQUES DERRIDA. Lecture 6 of Postmodern Philosophy [Peterson Academy course]

Lecture Six: Do claims to knowledge and morality merely mask power? Foucault argues that sex rhetoric has “a tactical role to play in a transformation into discourse, a technology of power.” And Derrida asserts that “the revolution against reason can be made only within it.” Themes: Power as substrate. Structuralism and Post-structuralism. Dekonstruction. Postmodernism. Alexis […]

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Talk on entrepreneurism at Campbell University, North Carolina

On Thursday, November 17, I’ll be at Campbell University in North Carolina to give a talk at the Lundy-Fetterman School of Business on being the entrepreneur of one’s life. Here’s the talk description: You Are the Entrepreneur of Your Life: Business, Ethics, Politics: How do you educate yourself for jobs that don’t exist yet? Education is

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*What is the Philadelphia Declaration?* — with David Kelley and Stephen Hicks 

On Wednesday at 5 pm Eastern, Dr. David Kelley and I will discuss the Philadelphia Declaration of the a new 2024 venture, which seeks to mind the common cultural ground among key religious and secular groups. Its four-point mission and value statement is here: The Philadelphia Declaration For Freedom and Responsibility July 13, 2024 Preamble

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Current champion in Philosophy’s Longest Sentences contest — Kierkegaard

Reviving this contest for readers: What is the longest sentence ever written by a philosopher? I mean the kind of sentence that, as you are reading it through — trying to hold the context and decipher the meaning — flows majestically onwards, or meanders along deceptively, with occasional side streams (and parenthetical remarks), until your cerebrum

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ON THE OBJECTIVITY OF SCIENCE: KARL POPPER and THOMAS KUHN. Lecture 5 of Postmodern Philosophy [Peterson Academy course]

Lecture Five: Science and technology have accomplished wonders since the Enlightenment. But, as Karl Popper asks, how do we “distinguish between science and pseudo–science“? Thomas Kuhn suggests that scientists are less-than-objective and more “like the typical character of Orwell’s 1984.” Themes:  Logical Positivism and Analytic philosophy’s aspirations and travails. Scientific method. Science and pseudo-science. Falsifiability.

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The Enlightenment Vision — Flowchart

The Enlightenment of the long 18th century was an era of awesome intellectual and cultural transformation. My Enlightenment Vision flowchart [pdf] is pitched at a high level of abstraction, showing schematically how the philosophical revolution of the 17th century led to the 18th-century revolutions in science, technology, politics, and economics — which in turn led

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