| Type | Title | Author | Date |
| Cultural Calendar | The Doctor as Lockean | Roger Donway | 9/1/2004 |
| Description: Thomas Sydenham, follower of Francis Bacon's methodology and close friend of John Locke, brought an intense empiricism to seventeenth-century medicine. As a result, the age of the Enlightenment dubbed him "the English Hippocrates." |
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| Review | What Does Science Say about the Mind? | Robert Campbell | 6/1/2004 |
| Description: Owen Flanagan, author of The Problem of the Soul, has his heart in the right place. He wants to reject the religious view of the mind as an immaterial substance. But the scientific view, Flanagan insists, is a physicalist view and every experience is just a physical event. Despite that, Flanagan says that he believes mental processes are real. What does that mean for a physicalist? And what does it mean for free will? |
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| FAQ | Why is Objectivism atheistic rather than agnostic? | Damian Moskovitz | 5/5/2004 |
| Description: Agnosticism, in the philosophical sense, holds that we should not reject anything that we have not disproved (particularly the claim that God exists). Because agnosticism refuses to reject arbitrary propositions, agnosticism is false. Agnosticism is wrong about how to approach claims that lack evidence. A proposition that is not supported by any evidence at all should be rejected not as false, but as arbitrary, and should not even be entertained as a hypothesis. The proposition that God exists is an example of an arbitrary proposition (see David Kelley, ''Is Objectivism Compatible with Religion?''). The burden of proof is on he who advances a claim—it is not the atheist’s responsibility to disprove the existence of God, whether or not it is possible to do so. |
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| FAQ | What Is the Objectivist View of Free Will? | William Thomas | 12/1/2003 |
| Description: Thomas explains Objectivism's understanding that volition resides in the exercise of reason, demonstrates that our knowledge of volition's existence has axiomatic status in the hierarchy of knowledge, and shows that any attempt to deny the existence of free will is therefore self-refuting. |
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| Review | The Dogmatic Determinism of Daniel Dennett | Eyal Mozes | 12/1/2003 |
| Description: In Freedom Evolves, philosopher Daniel C. Dennett defends the view called "compatibilism," the idea that freedom of the will should be redefined so that it is compatible with determinism. Yet his entire project is motivated by one assumption that he refuses to give up: the assumption that causality is a relation between events. |
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| Center News | Advanced Seminar Studies Mind and Knowledge | | 9/1/2003 |
| Description: The 2003 Advanced Seminar in Objectivist Studies was held June 25-27 at Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts. The theme of the seminar was mind and knowledge. |
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| Article | Objectivity as a Weapon | William Thomas | 5/31/2003 |
| Description: Embedding reporters with American military units served the cause of truth--and the goals of the United States. |
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| Perspectives | The Enlightenment Spirit of Edward Jenner | Roger Donway | 5/31/2003 |
| Description: Celebrating the life-saving medical discovery (smallpox vaccine) of the scientist Edward Jenner |
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| Review | How the Mind's Bureaucracy Works | Walter Donway | 10/1/2002 |
| Description: "You effortlessly delegate most of your thinking and decision making to the masses of cognitive workers busily at work in your mind's basement,' writes David G. Myers in his new book, Intuition. "Only the really important mental tasks reach the executive desk, where your mind works." But that process of bureaucratization has drawbacks as well as advantages. |
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| FAQ | FAQ: What is the Objectivist Theory of Knowledge (Epistemology)? | William Thomas | 3/15/2002 |
| Description: Objectivism holds that all human knowledge is reached through reason, the human mental faculty of understanding the world abstractly and logically. Aristotle called man "the rational animal" because it is the faculty of reason that most distinguishes humans from other creatures. But we do not reason automatically. We are beings of free will and we are fallible. This is why we need the science of knowledge—epistemology—to teach us what knowledge is and how to achieve it. |
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| FAQ | FAQ: What is the Objectivist View of Reality (Metaphysics)? | William Thomas | 3/15/2002 |
| Description: Objectivism holds that there is one reality, the one in which we live. It is self-evident that reality exists and is what it is: our job is to discover it. Objectivism stands against all forms of metaphysical relativism or idealism. It holds it as undeniable that humans have free will, and opposes metaphysical determinism or fatalism. More generally, it holds that there is no fundamental contradiction between the free, abstract character of mental life and the physical body in which it resides. And so it denies the existence of any "supernatural" or ineffable dimension for spirits or souls. |
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| Article | Rand and Objectivity | David Kelley | 10/1/1999 |
| Description: An essay by David Kelley presenting Ayn Rand's ideas on objectivity. |
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| Center News | Livingston Publishes on Measurement Omission | | 5/1/1998 |
| Description: Ken Livingston, who is director
of the program in cognitive science at Vassar College, describes the research paper he has
just published--and why it lends support to Rand's theory regarding the omission of
measurements in concept formation. |
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| Excerpt | Concept Formation and the Fiction of Ayn Rand | Kirsti Minsaas | 11/1/1995 |
| Description: An excerpt from a lecture given by Kirsti Minsaas at the 1995 IOS Summer Seminar on the Rand used her theory of concept-formation in her literary theory. |
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| Study Guide | Foundations Study Guide: Epistemology | David Kelley | |
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| Audio | The Epistemology of Perception | David Kelley | |
Description: Audio Excerpt.Dr. Kelley answers the critics who have challenged the reliability of the senses and tackles the important distinction between sensation and perception.
Buy the Foundations of Knowledge audiotapes at The Objectivism Store |
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| Study Guide | Foundations Study Guide: Philosophy of Mathematics | David Ross | |
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