Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes biblical scholar Bart Ehrman for a discussion of his intellectual odyssey with a focus on how the Bible explains the problem of human suffering. The conversation includes a discussion of the challenges of biblical interpretation when confronting this age old problem of the human condition. Included are topics such as the contribution of the prophets, a comparison of the old and new testaments, the book of Job, and the emergence of apocalyptic writers. (57 minutes)

Philosopher and education theorist Joseph Tussman talks about the nature of learning, teaching, and political discourse. (56 min)

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Father J. Brian Hehir for a discussion of the role of religion in framing ethical issues in a nuclear age. (56 min)

Tim White, Professor of Integrative Biology at UC Berkeley, joins host Harry Kreisler for a discussion of how science is changing our understanding of mankind's origins. (53 min)

Conversations with History and Host Harry Kreisler welcome UC Berkeley Professor of Philosophy John R. Searle who talks about the work of a philosopher, critical thinking, and lessons of the Free Speech Movement. (58 min)

Classicist and columnist Victor Davis Hanson talks with UC Berkeley's Harry Kreisler about the classics, war, and what we stand for in the post-9/11 world. (56 min)

Conversations Host Harry Kreisler welcomes philosopher Martha Nussbaum for a discussion of women and human development, religious freedom, and liberal education. (55 min)

Are you confident you can reason clearly? Are you able to convince others of your point of view? Are you able to give plausible reasons for believing what you believe? Do you sometimes read arguments in the newspapers, hear them on the television, or in the pub and wish you knew how to confidently evaluate them? In this six-part course, you will learn all about arguments, how to identify them, how to evaluate them, and how not to mistake bad arguments for good. Such skills are invaluable if you are concerned about the truth of your beliefs, and the cogency of your arguments.

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It is our hope that the successful student who completes a class using all or some of this text will have improved skills with application inside the discipline of philosophy, but also with application to work in other disciplines within academia. Our ultimate goal, however, is to help people develop techniques which support curiosity, open-mindedness, and an ability to collaborate successfully with others, across differences of experiences and background. Our dream is to help people “put their heads together.”

Thinking critically is a complicated but important endeavour that involves learning how to think clearly, acquiring problem-solving skills, and applying these skills in real life contexts. This text offers students an introduction to critical thinking methods, principles, and applied examples. It engages the reader to question their attitude and approach to critical thinking and provides a detailed introduction to the role of belief in critical thinking. It outlines the use of argument forms for validity, definitions and classification, syllogistic reasoning, categorical logic, and the method of informal fallacy identification. With up-to-date examples, current issues, links to videos, exercises and answer keys, a glossary, quick charts, and key takeaways, this resource is engaging and designed for students’ success.

Christian Kock’s essays show the essential interconnectedness of practical reasoning, rhetoric and deliberative democracy. They constitute a unique contribution to argumentation theory that draws on – and criticizes – the work of philosophers, rhetoricians, political scientists and other argumentation theorists. It puts rhetoric in the service of modern democracies by drawing attention to the obligations of politicians to articulate arguments and objections that citizens can weigh against each other in their deliberations about possible courses of action.

Democracy in difference: Debating key terms of gender, sexuality, race and identity focuses on concepts and analytical frames we use when discussing how marginalised identities navigate their place in an assumed common culture.

This ebook offers a path for exploring how we might build a shared vocabulary when working through the muddle of public debates like identity politics, political correctness, pronouns and what constitutes racism. Democracy in Difference is an unconventional interdisciplinary guide to key concepts, which borrows from decolonial methodologies, Marxism, feminism, queer theory and deconstruction.

Key terms are illustrated through written text, La Trobe Art Institute artworks (centering Indigenous artists), poetry, comedy and song, and customised animations which make difficult terms accessible.

This text is published by the La Trobe eBureau.

Professor Matt Zwolinski of the explains philosopher Peter Singer's drowning child thought experiment and explains why its moral may not be as clear cut as it appears.

Looking for engaging content for your economics courses? The Institute for Humane Studies has curated this collection of educational resources to help economics professors enrich their curriculum. Find videos, interactive games, reading lists, and more on everything from opportunity costs to trade policy. This collection is updated frequently with new content, so watch this space!

This subject offers a broad survey of texts (both literary and philosophical) drawn from the Western tradition and selected to trace the growth of ideas about nature and the natural environment of mankind. The term nature in this context has to do with the varying ways in which the physical world has been conceived as the habitation of mankind, a source of imperatives for the collective organization and conduct of human life. In this sense, nature is less the object of complex scientific investigation than the object of individual experience and direct observation. Using the term “nature” in this sense, we can say that modern reference to “the environment” owes much to three ideas about the relation of mankind to nature. In the first of these, which harks back to ancient medical theories and notions about weather, geographical nature was seen as a neutral agency affecting or transforming agent of mankind’s character and institutions. In the second, which derives from religious and classical sources in the Western tradition, the earth was designed as a fit environment for mankind or, at the least, as adequately suited for its abode, and civic or political life was taken to be consonant with the natural world. In the third, which also makes its appearance in the ancient world but becomes important only much later, nature and mankind are regarded as antagonists, and one must conquer the other or be subjugated by it.

This course introduces the theory and the practice of engineering ethics using a multi-disciplinary and cross-cultural approach. Theory includes ethics and philosophy of engineering. Historical cases are taken primarily from the scholarly literatures on engineering ethics, and hypothetical cases are written by students. Each student will write a story by selecting an ancestor or mythic hero as a substitute for a character in a historical case. Students will compare these cases and recommend action.

Philosophers across many different ideologies argue that equality is an important human ideal. But what type of equality should we strive for? In this lecture, Professor Mark LeBar of Florida State University reviews four different kinds of equality and the obstacles in achieving them.

"Ethical Explorations: Moral Dilemmas in a Universe of Possibilities" by Brendan Shea is an open access textbook that provides a comprehensive study of ethical philosophy. The text features relatable narratives, clear explanations of core concepts, thought-provoking questions, and handy glossaries to help readers grasp the subject matter. Among the topics, you'll find the principles of utilitarianism through the adventures of a princess, an exploration of duty via a story about a golem, and a look at natural law theory through an engaging science-fiction tale. Contemporary themes also make an appearance, including discussions on Marxism, Nietzsche's radical ideas, Simone de Beauvoir's intersection of feminism and existentialism, and racial theories from W.E.B. Du Bois and Martin Luther King. As an open access (CC-BY) textbook, "Ethical Explorations" is freely available to everyone, making the study of moral philosophy accessible to all. It's a tool that gives its readers the means to wrestle with ethical questions in an ever-changing world.

This will be a seminar on classic and contemporary work on central topics in ethics. The first third of the course will focus on metaethics: we will examine the meaning of moral claims and ask whether there is any sense in which moral principles are objectively valid. The second third of the course will focus on normative ethics: what makes our lives worth living, what makes our actions right or wrong, and what do we owe to others? The final third of the course will focus on moral character: what is virtue, and how important is it? Can we be held responsible for what we do? When and why?