I Post My Lectures on YouTube
They have received over 18 million of views. How crazy is that? For philosophy lectures!
My first viral video:
What is Philosophy, Anyway?
Whole Courses:
Introduction to Ethics
What is the morally right thing to do? Is there some moral law that applies to everyone, or is morality relative in some way? And what’s so good about morality anyway? To answer these questions, we read Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Hume, Bentham, Nietzsche, Singer, O’Neill and others. This is an introductory level philosophy course. Students do not need any prior experience with philosophy.
Descartes’ Meditations
Published in Latin in 1641, René Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy is widely-accepted to be the foundational work of Early Modern European Philosophy. This work is divided into six chapters (called “Meditations”). Descartes presents proofs for the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, among other things. In these lectures, I walk through each of the six Meditations in order.
How to Do Well in College
This series of video lectures for incoming college students about how to succeed in college. It covers topics such as: How to Read a Syllabus, How to Defeat Procrastination, How to Memorize, How to Take Notes, and Interacting with Professors (Office Hours, Email Etiquette, Letters of Recommendation, etc.).
The Mind-Body Problem
Dualism is the theory of mind that says that the mind and the body distinct, fundamentally different sorts of things. If this view is true, then it is possible for the human mind, or soul, to survive the bodily death. But there are problems for Dualism, beginning with one presented by Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia in a famous letter to René Descartes in the spring of 1643. This course begins with that problem, and then moves through 20th century philosophy of mind, considering various attempts to develop Physicalism, the theory of mind that says that the mind is part of the physical world.
Philosophy of Law
This course is an introduction to the philosophy of law, which, if it were being taught in a law school—and this course is excellent preparation for law school, by the way—might also be called “jurisprudence” or “legal theory.” We will discuss the following questions, considering canonical answers to them and developing answers of our own. What is law? What does a society have to have in order to have a legal system? What is important about law? What is the relationship between law and morality? Are immoral laws really laws? The readings for this course include both works of philosophy and landmark U.S. legal cases.