Part of a work-in-progress in philosophy of economics, here is the video of a seminar I led on “Economics as a Value Science.” Part of my argument is that there is a large, problematic gap in economic theory about the relationship between economic facts and economic values. Along the way I discuss Friedrich Hayek, David […]
Seminar on “Economics as a Value Science” Read More »
[Following up on my “Do conservatives really value economic liberty?”, on the conservatisms of Newt Gingrich, Robert Bork, and Irving Kristol.] In The New York Times, moderate conservative David Brooks reflects upon Charles Murray’s Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. Brooks agrees with Murray that Americans have divided into two polarized “tribes.” “The
Another anti-freedom conservative: David Brooks Read More »
Lectures on Philosophy of Education My Philosophy of Education course lectures on video. This fifteen-part video course covers key philosophical issues that bear directly upon education. We discuss the works of major philosophers — Plato, Locke, Kant, Dewey, Montessori, and others — who have influenced education greatly, and we compare several systems of educational philosophy
In this extended interview, philosopher Douglas B. Rasmussen responds to a series of questions (listed below) about his life and work. Dr. Rasmussen is a professor of philosophy at St. John’s University in New York. In addition to the books discussed in the interview, he is the author of articles in American Philosophical Quarterly, The
Profiles in Liberty: Douglas B. Rasmussen Read More »
Rights in Mises, Hayek, and Rand I am chairing a session and presenting a paper on the theme of “Rights in Mises, Hayek, and Rand” for the annual conference of the Association for Private Enterprise Education, to be held April 1-3, 2012 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The rationale for the session: Three giants of twentieth-century
Rights in Mises, Hayek, and Rand — APEE panelists Read More »
Links to my posts over the last three years on the causes of the crisis. This is an ongoing project, and I’ll add new items to the Financial Crisis page as they are posted. Ten posts: 1. What is the US economy? Introduction. Before blaming the economic crisis on either government regulation or free enterprise,
Collected posts on the financial crisis Read More »
Ending the year on a lighter note — my humor posts collected below and into one page: What I Have Learned about the History of Philosophy from My Students. Existentialism meets high-tech . From the Office of the Reproducer-General. Professor Walsh gives an “A” to a Jain monk. Computing’s environmental impact. The best footnote ever.
Philosophicalish Humor Read More »
The image is Raphael’s version of Hypatia, the astronomer, mathematician, and neoplatonic philosopher who was murdered by a religious mob in 415. Hypatia lived and died in Alexandria, Egypt, then a clashing hotbed of philosophical schools and rising radical religion. The rising radical religion of the time was Christianity. Hypatia’s nemesis was Cyril, Bishop of
Egypt then and now Read More »
An eyebrow raiser from George Gilder’s The Silicon Eye (W. W. Norton & Company, 2005), a history of the development of the digital camera: “Leading-edge clean rooms at companies like Intel or National Semiconductor are ‘class ten’ or even ‘class one,’ meaning that there are between zero and ten such particles, making a microchip factory
High-tech cleanliness Read More »
In this third Socratic seminar on the Best Arguments against Free-market Capitalism, we take up three arguments: a) the paternalist argument that human beings are incapable of living freely, b) the collectivist argument that wealth is a social creation (at 11 minutes), and c) the religious argument that value is not of this world (at
Three more anti-free-market arguments (UFM seminar) Read More »