I did not know this about Priestley’s significance to two of the great American founding fathers: “In the 165 letters that passed between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, the name Benjamin Franklin is mentioned five times, George Washington three times, Alexander Hamilton twice — and Joseph Priestley, a foreign immigrant, is cited no fewer than […]
Joseph Priestley’s significance Read More »
John Dewey was one of the top two most influential philosophers of education in the twentieth century. Maria Montessori was the other. Dewey’s influence has been most strongly felt in the American public school system. In America, Montessori’s influence has mostly been grassroots and in privately funded schools. Montessori’s approach is highly individualistic and individualized.
John Dewey on education as socialization Read More »
Episode 50 in my Open College with Dr. Stephen Hicks podcast series. Many rejections of objectivity assume from the outset an impossible standard for humans to achieve. Don’t do that. “It’s often said that we live in a ‘post-truth’ age, that nothing can be known with any certainty, and that we must give up notions
Objectivity for Actual Human Beings | Open College No. 50 | Stephen Hicks Read More »
Philosopher David Kelley (Ph.D., Princeton) is author of The Evidence of the Senses, A Realist Theory of Perception (LSU, 1986), a work on foundational issues in epistemology, and The Art of Reasoning: An Introduction to Logic (W.W. Norton, 1st edition 1990, 5th edition 2020), a widely used textbook. He has published a new essay, “Concepts
David Kelley new essay on Concepts, Propositions, and Truth Read More »
My video lecture on the Federal Communications Commission’s controversial “Fairness Doctrine,” part of the Business Ethics Cases series. Contents:1. The early days of radio and a tragedy of the commons.2. What is fairness? Two competing answers.3. The argument for the “Fairness Doctrine.”4. The argument against the “Fairness Doctrine.”5. Related issues: whether politics is special, whether
Telecommunications — the FCC’s ‘Fairness Doctrine’ [Business Ethics Cases series] Read More »
Great Books: Seven categories. Five only in each. Works that I love or learned from or influenced me or that I return to regularly. LiteratureVictor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862)Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac (1897)L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables (1908)Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead (1943)Elliott Arnold, White Falcon (1958) Historical FictionMary Renault, The Persian Boy [Alexander the
Great Books — My Recommended Reading List Read More »
The Laws is Plato’s last book. Its dialogue is set in Crete and led by an Athenian who is never identified. He converses with a citizen from Sparta and a politician from Crete. The politician has been given the authority to create laws for a new colony, so he asks the Athenian for advice, and
Plato on games and educating for rule-following Read More »
Who are the great philosophers, and what makes them great? Episodes: The full playlist. Stephen R. C. Hicks, Ph.D., is Professor of Philosophy at Rockford University, USA, and has had visiting positions at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., the University of Kasimir the Great in Poland, Oxford University’s Harris Manchester College in England, and Jagiellonian