Philosophy

Lecture 8. The Meaning of It All In our eighth and final lecture, we explore the philosophical debate between determinism and free will, examining whether human actions are governed entirely by causal forces or whether genuine volition exists. We consider biological, environmental, and divine forms of determinism, which argue that all actions are predetermined, alongside […]

“In a country where the sole employer is the state, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.” Source: Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed (1936), Chapter 11. Pictured: The original three rulers of

Lecture 7. The Human Being In lecture seven, we study three philosophical approaches to human nature: dualism (humans as body and non-physical soul), reductive materialism (psychological phenomena as physical byproducts), and integrationism (mind as an emergent property of complex systems). We explore key arguments, including dualism’s interaction problem, materialism’s limits in explaining psychology, and integrationism’s

David Pratt’s summary article at Psychology Today has good advice for anyone, even if one does not plan on winning a Nobel Prize. 1. Find your passion. 2. Develop intellectual independence. 3. Take risks. 4. Find kindred spirits. 5. Work with passion. Lots of well-chosen examples and anecdotes. The whole book is available at Amazon.

Lecture 6. What is Faith? In Lecture Six, we consider “What is faith?” viewing it as both a noun and, more importantly, a verb. We examine six philosophical accounts of faith through parables, including Flew’s gardener (faith as hypothesis modification), Hare’s paranoid roommate (faith as reinterpreting evidence), and Mitchell’s resistance fighter (faith as personal, feeling-based

Stephen Hicks: “Many problems in the academic world have their roots in postmodernism.” Interview by Hypatia’s Dr. Astrid Elbers and published in Dutch in Doorbraak, April 2026. Un-edited English translation follows: The American-Canadian philosopher Stephen Hicks is best known as the author of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, a book in

Lecture 5. Then Conceptions In lecture five, we examine the cognitive progression from sense perception to conceptualization, exploring how we move from awareness of particulars to abstract generalizations expressed in language. We consider three philosophical views on concepts: realism (abstract universals exist independently), nominalism (only particulars exist, and concepts are names), and conceptualism (concepts are

Next month, I will be giving a four-lecture series at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. Each lecture will be followed by a discussion with professors from Belgian and Dutch universities on different aspects of postmodernism. Registration here. Our questions include: What is modernism—a cultre of naturalism, reason, individualism, technology? Is it progressing—or a disaster? What