My article on the deep controversies over Kant, “Kant at the Masked Ball,” is now out in the academic journal Reason Papers. Thanks to editor Carrie-Ann Biondi, Ph.D., for her intelligent and efficient production of the issue. Here’s my opening: “1. Which of the Two Kants?We should grapple with the fact that two opposing traditions […]
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This unit of the Atlas Intellectuals course on Objectivity features David Kelley (Ph.D., Princeton University) on “Objectivity: Metaphysical and Epistemological”. Dr. Kelley is the founder of The Atlas Society. In this lecture, he distinguishes between objective, subjective, and intrinsic approaches to thinking and argues that objectivity is a cardinal human value. The concept of objectivity has two meanings:
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This week of the self-paced course on Objectivity features Stephen Hicks’s primer on Objective Journalism. “Objectivity means being committed to the facts and to using one’s mind as best one can to discover and interpret them. Journalistic objectivity includes being open to all the facts, doing research to discover the facts, verifying claims, and to integrating logically
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In this week of the self-paced course on Objectivity we feature Tara Smith’s “Objective Law”. Smith (Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University) is professor of philosophy at the University of Texas and author of Judicial Review in an Objective Legal System (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Our Executive Summary gives eight key points from Smith’s 13-page article. The full course
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In this unit of the Objectivity course we feature Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, in which he questions whether science is or can be an objective process based upon observational facts that makes progress toward truth. Thomas Kuhn was a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, a
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In this unit of our course on Objectivity we feature Ayn Rand’s Objectivist Ethics. Rand was world-famous as the author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged when a collection of essays entitled The Virtue of Selfishness was published in 1964. In the opening essay, Rand presents a sustained argument for her ethic of rational self-interest. The full course on Objectivity: https://www.atlassociety.org/course/objectivity.
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Richard Rorty on the consequences of having to abandon the objectivity and universality of reason: The best we can do is seek “inter-subjective agreement” among the “members of our own tribe.” Though feeling loyal to his American left-liberal roots, Rorty goes on to hope that we will be nice to the other tribes while doing
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[This is Section 36 of Nietzsche and the Nazis.] 36. Instinct, passion, and anti-reason Hitler was fond of saying, in private, “What luck that men do not think.” Another significant point of agreement exists between Nietzsche and the Nazis: Both agree that the great conflicts will not be solved rationally, through the processes of discussion,
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