Very slick technique.

In this speech, I tell the story of Captain Richard de Crespigny and Qantas Flight 32, and draw from it a lesson about the power of reasons. I hope you enjoy the speech and find it stimulating.

This is a video lecture on chapter 17, titled “Values in a Scientific World”, of Russ Shafer-Landau’s book, ‘Whatever Happened to Good and Evil?’ The argument that this chapter considers is one that claims that if one follow’s Occam’s Razor, then one ought to reject the reality of objective moral facts or laws. This is an argument for moral skepticism, and Shafer-Landau offers several responses to it and in defense of moral objectivism. In the end, he claims that this use of occam’s razor defeats itself. This lecture is part of an introductory level philosophy course, Introduction to Ethics.

Occam’s razor applies only to descriptive facts, not normative ones.

This is a lecture about chapter 14 of Russ Shafer-Landau’s book ‘Whatever Happened to Good and Evil?’ This chapter is about the popular argument that starts from the claim that there is persistent disagreement about moral matters to the conclusion that there are no objective moral facts or laws. Shafer-Landau is able to turn this argument against moral skepticism itself. This is a pretty long video lecture, but I spend a lot of time modifying the argument, which should be helpful in learning how to deal with arguments themselves. This is part of an introductory level philosophy course, Introduction to Ethics.

This is a lecture about chapter 11 of Russ Shafer-Landau’s book ‘Whatever Happened to Good and Evil?’ It deals with Moral Skepticism, Moral Nihilism, Moral Subjectivism, Moral Relativism, as well as the global versions of all of these views, which are self-defeating. All of the uses of “Moral” are understood as equivalent to “Ethical”. This lecture is part of an introductory-level philosophy course, Introduction to Ethics.

This is a short lecture video about a common argument that one often hears for the claim the truth of some claims are relative. The argument stems from the fact that different people have different perspectives and that those different perspectives are, in some sense, equal. All that is true, but it does not show the matters about which people have different perspectives are not factual matters regarding which some beliefs are simply truth and others simply false.