I’m pleased to announce that I will be teaching two courses at Ayn Rand University for the next two quarters (16 weeks total): Logical Thinking and ITOE, starting April 17. Each class will meet twice a week for 1 hour 15 minutes (that’s the amount of time I’ve found, empirically, to be right for my teaching brain).
These are regular university courses, which can be taken either as a graded student or as an auditor. There are tuition fees. Check the ARI/ARU site for details on fees and admissions.
schedule:
Objectivist Logic: Monday and Wednesday, both run from noon to 1:15 pm ET.
ITOE: Thursday and Friday, both run from 11:30 am to 12:45 pm ET.
The logic course has no prerequisites, but ITOE (on Rand’s Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology) is an intermediate / advanced course with prerequisites.
The logic course will cover some points in Aristotelian logic but from an Objectivist perspective, and will focus on Ayn Rand’s unique contributions to logic, because this is where the most helpful part of logic is to be found. The logic course features homework assignments that give practice in the principles and techniques taught.
Here are the course descriptions:
Objectivist Logic:
Ayn Rand embraced Aristotelian logic but took it much further. This course, through lectures and homework exercises, reviews the three most important ideas of Aristotelian logic and then focuses on the new principles of proper thinking developed by Ayn Rand. Topics will include: concept-formation, axioms, the syllogism, the need for and rules of proper definition, hierarchy, context-holding, thinking in principles, thinking in examples, and logical fallacies from equivocation to the stolen concept.
April – September 2023
ITOE:
A careful, systematic study of Rand’s monograph, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (ITOE). The course goal is to get fully clear on what the theory is, why it was needed–i.e., the failure of all previous solutions to the “problem of universals”; how Rand’s theory represents a revolutionary approach to consciousness as such; and how the Objectivist view of concepts underlies the entire Objectivist philosophy. Students will be taught how to chew and digest Rand’s philosophic writing, using homework exercises and very brief writing assignments. This is an intermediate to advanced course (“300 level”) and presupposes successful completion of at least two other philosophy courses.
April – September 2023
Each course meets for a total of 40 hours and costs $1,000.
More information at: https://university.aynrand.org/courses/
