NASA’s New Online Archive Puts a Wealth of Free Science Articles Online

in Science | March 21st, 2017

Since our web­site took flight a decade ago, we’ve kept you apprised of the free offer­ings made avail­able by NASA–every­thing from col­lec­tions of pho­tog­ra­phy and space sounds, to soft­ware, ebooks, and posters. But there’s one item we missed last sum­mer (blame it on the heat!). And that’s NASA Pub­Space, an online archive that gives you free access to sci­ence jour­nal arti­cles fund­ed by the space agency. Pre­vi­ous­ly, these arti­cles were hid­den behind pay­walls. Now, “all NASA-fund­ed authors and co-authors … will be required to deposit copies of their peer-reviewed sci­en­tif­ic pub­li­ca­tions and asso­ci­at­ed data into” NASA Pub­Space.

This project grew out of the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion’s Open Sci­ence Ini­tia­tive, designed to increase pub­lic access to fed­er­al­ly fund­ed research and make it eas­i­er for sci­en­tists to build upon exist­ing research. You can search through NASA’s archive here.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via TheV­erge

Relat­ed Con­tent:

NASA Its Soft­ware Online & Makes It Free to Down­load

NASA Puts Online a Big Col­lec­tion of Space Sounds, and They’re Free to Down­load and Use

Down­load 14 Free Posters from NASA That Depict the Future of Space Trav­el in a Cap­ti­vat­ing­ly Retro Style

NASA Releas­es 3 Mil­lion Ther­mal Images of Our Plan­et Earth

Free NASA eBook The­o­rizes How We Will Com­mu­ni­cate with Aliens

NASA Archive Col­lects Great Time-Lapse Videos of our Plan­et

Great Cities at Night: Views from the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion

NASA Presents “The Earth as Art” in a Free eBook and Free iPad App

Download Animals and Ethics 101: Thinking Critically About Animal Rights (Free)

in Books, Philosophy | March 20th, 2017

FYI: Nathan Nobis, a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor at More­house Col­lege in Atlanta, recent­ly pub­lished Ani­mals and Ethics 101: Think­ing Crit­i­cal­ly About Ani­mal Rights. A well-reviewed intro­duc­tion to ani­mal ethics, the text­book (cre­at­ed to accom­pa­ny an online course on the same sub­ject) eval­u­ates the argu­ments for and against var­i­ous uses of ani­mals, includ­ing:

• Is it moral­ly wrong to exper­i­ment on ani­mals? Why or why not?
• Is it moral­ly per­mis­si­ble to eat meat? Why or why not?
• Are we moral­ly oblig­at­ed to pro­vide pets with vet­eri­nary care (and, if so, how much)? Why or why not?

You can buy the paper­back on Ama­zon for $5.99 or Kin­dle for $2.99. But Nobis has also made the text avail­able free online, under a Cre­ative Com­mons license. You can down­load it in mul­ti­ple for­mats here.

Ethics 101: Think­ing Crit­i­cal­ly About Ani­mal Rights will be added to our list of Free Text­books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Leo Tol­stoy Became a Veg­e­tar­i­an and Jump­start­ed the Veg­e­tar­i­an & Human­i­tar­i­an Move­ments in the 19th Cen­tu­ry

Watch Glass Walls, Paul McCartney’s Case for Going Veg­e­tar­i­an

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

135 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks

Chuck Berry Jams Out “Johnny B. Goode” with Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, John Lennon & Bruce Springsteen

in Music | March 20th, 2017

The King of Rock and Roll is dead, and, no, I don’t mean Elvis, but Chuck Berry, who pro­claimed him­self at every oppor­tu­ni­ty the right­ful sov­er­eign. Next to Berry (accord­ing to Berry) every oth­er hip-swivel­ing, duck-walk­ing, pom­padour-comb­ing jack­e­lope was noth­ing but a low­down pre­tender, even those who only bore the faintest resem­blance to the above. See, for exam­ple, his take on punk rock—so clear­ly deriv­a­tive of his work that he can’t help tak­ing cred­it for most of it. To peo­ple raised on The Ramones instead of the Stones his atti­tude seemed ridicu­lous. But for those who came of age at a time when rock and roll was a near syn­onym for Chuck Berry, he was right all along. We failed to appre­ci­ate the enor­mi­ty of his tal­ent, the unique­ness of his style, the genius of his licks.

I’ve wres­tled with both the dis­missal of Berry and the hagiog­ra­phy. My gen­er­a­tion’s “clas­sic rock” involved a Richards or a Clap­ton. Berry’s music may as well have been buried in Pleis­tocene stra­ta, though he lived until the iras­ci­ble age of 90, per­form­ing until just a few years ago. We knew the pio­neers, the Bop­pers, the Check­ers, the Hollys.

They could seem like car­toon char­ac­ters from our par­ents’ infan­tilized 50s child­hoods: whole­some, corny, down­right creepy. Bleh to all that. But, it’s true, out of his gen­er­a­tion of play­ers, Berry has always been spe­cial. He was the first rock and roll gui­tar hero. And if he some­times seemed salty about it, imag­ine how you’d feel to have your biggest hit—with the “12th great­est solo of all time”—stolen from you by the Beach Boys and Mar­ty McFly.

Even the most pedes­tri­an gui­tar play­ers should rec­og­nize how many licks Berry built into rock and roll’s archi­tec­tur­al vocab­u­lary from the fret­board of his Gib­son 335. Con­sid­er then the recog­ni­tion from those greats who learned to play as kids by lis­ten­ing to him on the radio. Chuck Berry may have felt under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed, or under­com­pen­sat­ed, but read an inter­view from almost any decade with Richards or Clap­ton or Har­ri­son or Page, etc. and you’ll be sur­prised if his name doesn’t come up. He was such an august Amer­i­can patri­arch at his death that the Nation­al Review called him “the found­ing father of rock,” his influ­ence “almost impos­si­ble to over­state”—sen­ti­ments echoed by near­ly every liv­ing gui­tar god to have worn the title. NRO’s Berry eulo­gy also includes a roundup of cov­ers of “John­ny B Goode,” from Jimi Hen­drix to AC/DC, the Grate­ful Dead, Prince, Judas Priest, the Sex Pis­tols…. Not all respect­ful cov­ers, but name a band, they’ve prob­a­bly done it.

But it was the lucky few gui­tar gods who got to play with Berry him­self, gaz­ing at him in awe, out of their minds with fif­teen-year-old glee. Kei­th Richards and Eric Clap­ton once trad­ed solos on an extend­ed “John­ny B. Goode” (top—the video and sound go out of sync, mak­ing for a slight­ly sur­re­al view­ing expe­ri­ence.) Berry seemed to soak it up as much as they did. Fur­ther up, see a boy­ish­ly hap­py John Lennon play “John­ny B. Goode” with Berry on The Mike Dou­glas Show in 1972. Lennon under­stood why Berry was so influ­en­tial not only as a gui­tarist but as a song­writer. He wrote “good lyrics and intel­li­gent lyrics in the 1950s when peo­ple were singing ‘Oh baby, I love you so.’ It was peo­ple like him that influ­enced our gen­er­a­tion to try and make sense out of the songs rather than just sing ‘do wa did­dy.’” Though Lennon did his share of that.

Final­ly, Bruce Spring­steen plays side­man to Berry dur­ing “John­ny B. Goode” at the con­cert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. Spring­steen paid homage to Berry fre­quent­ly, and also played in his band in the 70s, “an expe­ri­ence,” writes Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock, “that chal­lenged the young musician’s abil­i­ty to think on his feet.” You may notice Spring­steen and Berry’s “John­ny B. Goode” per­for­mance seems a “a lit­tle wob­bly.” This is because Berry decid­ed to shift the song “in gears and a key with­out talk­ing to us,” remem­bers gui­tarist Nils Lof­gren. The setlist said “Rock and Roll Music,” Berry decid­ed he’d rather play “John­ny B. Goode.” So they played “John­ny B. Goode.” (See Spring­steen repli­cate the expe­ri­ence by play­ing Berry’s “You Nev­er Can Tell” live with his band, total­ly unre­hearsed.)

All of Berry’s pro­tégés and musi­cian-admir­ers quick­ly learned what to expect when they met their idol: when they got togeth­er to jam with him, they were “going to do some Chuck Berry songs,” as Spring­steen remem­bers him say­ing dur­ing their old days togeth­er. To Berry and to much of the gen­er­a­tion that fol­lowed, the phrase was pret­ty much syn­ony­mous with rock and roll.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Chuck Berry (RIP) Reviews Punk Songs by The Ramones, Sex Pis­tols, The Clash, Talk­ing Heads & More (1980)      

Chuck Berry Takes Kei­th Richards to School, Shows Him How to Rock (1987)

Bruce Spring­steen and the E Street Band Impro­vis­es and Plays, Com­plete­ly Unre­hearsed, Chuck Berry’s “You Nev­er Can Tell,” Live Onstage (2013)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Watch 70 Movies in HD from Famed Russian Studio Mosfilm: Classic Films, Beloved Comedies, Tarkovsky, Kurosawa & More

in Film | March 20th, 2017

To most inter­na­tion­al cinephiles, the word Mos­film imme­di­ate­ly brings to mind two tow­er­ing names in Russ­ian motion pic­tures: Sergei Eisen­stein and Andrei Tarkovsky. Both direc­tors made not just impor­tant movies but took major steps to devel­op the visu­al lan­guage of film itself, and both worked for Mos­film, one of Rus­si­a’s largest and old­est film stu­dios. First estab­lished in 1923, it went on to pro­duce more than 3,000 films dur­ing the Sovi­et era, some of which now define the cin­e­ma of that peri­od. Now view­ers around the world can enjoy their aes­thet­ic lush­ness, his­tor­i­cal inter­est, and pure enter­tain­ment val­ue more eas­i­ly than ever on Mos­film’s Youtube chan­nel, which offers among its many freely view­able pic­tures a selec­tion of 70 films in high def­i­n­i­tion.

You’ll want to start, of course, with Eisen­stein and Tarkovsky. Mos­film has made avail­able in HD the for­mer’s Alexan­der Nevsky (1938) and much of the lat­ter’s fil­mog­ra­phy: Ivan’s Child­hood (1962), Andrei Rublev (1966), Solaris (1972), The Mir­ror (1975), and Stalk­er (1979).

For all their high artis­tic achieve­ment, how­ev­er, they may admit­ted­ly rein­force the West­’s Cold War-era image of Rus­sians as ter­ri­bly seri­ous peo­ple who sel­dom even crack a smile, let alone laugh. So why not fol­low those up with a dive into Mos­film’s con­sid­er­able HD selec­tion of beloved, light-heart­ed Sovi­et come­dies?

Of all Sovi­et com­e­dy direc­tors, Leonid Gaidai stands as by far the most suc­cess­ful. You can watch a fair few of his works, long and short, on Mos­film’s HD playlist, includ­ing Oper­a­tion Y and Shurik’s Oth­er Adven­tures (1965); the intrigu­ing­ly titled Kid­nap­ping, Cau­casian Style (1967); The Dia­mond Arm (1969), the most pop­u­lar soci­ety com­e­dy ever; The Twelve Chairs (1971); Ivan Vasilievich Changes Pro­fes­sion (1973), based on a play by Mikhail Bul­gakov; and It Can’t Be! (1975). It also offers sev­er­al films from Gaidai’s con­tem­po­rary Eldar Ryazanov, who worked in a more satir­i­cal vein (and showed a sur­pris­ing will­ing­ness to poke fun at the absur­di­ties of Sovi­et life): Car­ni­val Night (1956), the beloved musi­cal Hus­sar Bal­lad (1962), Beware of the Car (1966), Office Romance (1977), Sta­tion for Two (1982), and A Cru­el Romance (1984).

You may also notice the con­spic­u­ous pres­ence of a cer­tain high­ly notable non-Russ­ian film­mak­er: Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, who in 1975 worked with Mos­film to make Der­su Uza­la, an adap­ta­tion of the mem­oirs of a trap­per in Rus­si­a’s far east­ern wilder­ness. It came as just one of Mos­film’s many lit­er­ary adap­ta­tions, the most famous per­haps being Sergei Bon­darchuk’s 1969 vision of Leo Tol­stoy’s War and Peace. On Mos­film’s HD playlist you’ll also find two fea­tures draw­ing on the work of Anton Chekhov: Andrei Kon­chalovsky’s Uncle Vanya (1971), and Emil Loteanu’s My Ten­der and Affec­tion­ate Beast, or a Hunt­ing Acci­dent (1978), a fea­ture-length adap­ta­tion of A Hunt­ing Par­ty.

Mos­film’s Youtube chan­nel fea­tures not just Sovi­et-era movies, but those from more recent years as well: the mighty film stu­dio sur­vived the dis­so­lu­tion of the Sovi­et Union itself, con­tin­u­ing to con­tribute to cin­e­ma as a qua­si-pri­vate fed­er­a­tion of inde­pen­dent stu­dios. Its cur­rent Direc­tor Gen­er­al, Karen Shakhnazarov, boasts an impres­sive fil­mog­ra­phy of his own. You can get an HD taste of his work by watch­ing Jazzmen (1983), Win­ter Evening in Gagra (1985), Couri­er (1986),  Zero­grad (1989), The Assas­sin of the Tsar (1991), Dreams (1993), Poi­sons, or the World His­to­ry of Poi­son­ing (2001), and The Van­ished Empire (2008), all of which weave togeth­er the threads — the vision­ary, the his­tor­i­cal, the every­day, the absurd — run­ning through Mos­film’s long his­to­ry.

NOTE: Though many of the titles on Mos­film’s HD playlist appear only in Russ­ian, most of the films them­selves come with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles. Make sure to click the “CC” icon on the low­er right of the Youtube play­er to turn them on.

Some of the films men­tioned above will be added to our meta col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch War and Peace: The Splen­did, Epic Film Adap­ta­tion of Leo Tolstoy’s Grand Nov­el (1969)

Free Films by Andrei Tarkovsky, Sergei Eisen­stein & Oth­er Russ­ian Greats

When Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Watched Solaris with Andrei Tarkovsky: I Was “Very Hap­py to Find Myself Liv­ing on Earth”

Watch Bat­tle­ship Potemkin and Oth­er Free Sergei Eisen­stein Films

A Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to Sovi­et Mon­tage The­o­ry: A Rev­o­lu­tion in Film­mak­ing

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Hayao Miyazaki Tells Video Game Makers What He Thinks of Their Characters Made with Artificial Intelligence: “I’m Utterly Disgusted. This Is an Insult to Life Itself”

in Animation, Software, Video Games | March 20th, 2017

For a young per­son in an ani­ma­tion-based field, the oppor­tu­ni­ty to share new work with direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki must feel like a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty.

This may still hold true for Nobuo Kawaka­mi, the chair­man of Dwan­go, a Japan­ese telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and media com­pa­ny, but not for the rea­sons he like­ly antic­i­pat­ed at the start of the above video.

The sub­ject of their dis­cus­sion is a com­put­er gen­er­at­ed ani­mat­ed mod­el whose arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence caus­es it to move by squirm­ing on its head. Its cre­ators haven’t invest­ed it with any par­tic­u­lar per­son­al­i­ty traits or sto­ry­line, but its flayed appear­ance and tor­tu­ous move­ments sug­gest it’s unlike­ly to be board­ing Miyazaki’s mag­i­cal cat bus any time soon.

Even with­out an explic­it nar­ra­tive, the model’s poten­tial should be evi­dent to any­one who’s ever sat through the final-reel res­ur­rec­tion of a hor­ri­bly maimed, pre­sumed-dead ter­ror­iz­er of scant­i­ly clad young ladies.

The model’s grotesque squirm­ings could also be an asset to zom­bie video games, as Kawaka­mi excit­ed­ly points out.

Let us remem­ber that Miyazaki’s films are root­ed not in gross-out effects, but redemp­tion, a rev­er­ence for nature, and respect for chil­dren and all liv­ing things.

The mas­ter watch­es the demon­stra­tion with­out com­ment, then dis­pens­es with tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese eti­quette in favor of some strong­ly word­ed med­i­cine that leaves no doubt as to what he real­ly thought of Dwan­go’s arti­fi­cial­ly intel­li­gent wretch:

“I am utter­ly dis­gust­ed… I strong­ly feel that this is an insult to life itself.”  

(At this point, you real­ly should watch the video, to hear Miyaza­k­i’s open­ing state­ment, about a dis­abled friend for whom even a sim­ple high-five is a painful phys­i­cal exer­tion.)

Poor Kawaka­mi-san! Uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly shamed in front of his col­leagues by a nation­al trea­sure, he doesn’t push back. All he can offer is some­thing along the lines of “We didn’t mean any­thing by it”—a state­ment that seems cred­i­ble.

The Amer­i­can pres­i­dent may be into dehu­man­iz­ing those with dis­abil­i­ties, but the Dwan­go crew’s heads were like­ly occu­pied with boy­ish visions of a thrilling­ly grue­some zom­bie apoc­a­lypse.

It’s a harsh, but impor­tant mes­sage for Miyaza­ki to have got­ten across. Dwan­go is respon­si­ble for cre­at­ing a lot of online games. In oth­er words, they hold con­sid­er­able sway over impres­sion­able youth.

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li co-founder Toshio Suzu­ki grants Kawaka­mi and his col­leagues an oppor­tu­ni­ty to save face, ask­ing what the team’s goals are.

“We’d like to build a machine that can draw pic­tures like humans do,” one shell­shocked-look­ing young man responds.

What, like, Hen­ri Mail­larde­t’s automa­ton from 1810? While I can imag­ine such a con­trap­tion show­ing up in one of Miyazaki’s steam-punk-fla­vored adven­tures, the hush that greets this state­ment all but screams “wrong answer!”

What will this encounter lead to?

The release of an online game in which one scores points by hideous­ly dis­mem­ber­ing the ani­mat­ed form of direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki?

Or a new­found sen­si­tiv­i­ty, in which cool tech­no­log­i­cal advances are viewed through a lens of actu­al human expe­ri­ence?

Only time will tell.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Essence of Hayao Miyaza­ki Films: A Short Doc­u­men­tary About the Human­i­ty at the Heart of His Ani­ma­tion

Soft­ware Used by Hayao Miyazaki’s Ani­ma­tion Stu­dio Becomes Open Source & Free to Down­load

Hayao Miyaza­ki Meets Aki­ra Kuro­sawa: Watch the Titans of Japan­ese Film in Con­ver­sa­tion (1993)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

An Animated Introduction to McCarthyism: What Is It? And How Did It Happen?

in History | March 20th, 2017

Dur­ing the 1970s, a young Don­ald Trump was men­tored by Roy Cohn, a brash, take-no-pris­on­ers lawyer, who first came to promi­nence dur­ing the 1950s, when he served as the con­sigliere to Joseph McCarthy and his cam­paign to expose sus­pect­ed com­mu­nists in the Unit­ed States. In what’s known as the Sec­ond Red Scare, McCarthy led increas­ing­ly broad and para­noid inves­ti­ga­tions, try­ing to find Com­mu­nists, sym­pa­thiz­ers and spies, both inside and out­side the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. Most­ly on the basis of rumor, not fact, “thou­sands of indi­vid­u­als were aggres­sive­ly inves­ti­gat­ed and ques­tioned before gov­ern­ment pan­els.” Black­lists were cre­at­ed. Some were jailed. Careers and liveli­hoods were destroyed.

Year lat­er, play­wright Arthur Miller recalled, “Suf­fice it to say, it was a time of great–no doubt unprecedented–fear.” “The air of ter­ror was heavy.” “I was sure the whole thing would soon go away.” Even­tu­al­ly a sense of futil­i­ty gave way to anger, and Miller respond­ed by writ­ing The Cru­cible, a com­men­tary on McCarthy­ism wrapped in a dra­ma about the Salem witch tri­als of 1692/93.

Above, you can watch above a six minute primer on McCarthy­ism, pre­pared by Ellen Schreck­er, pro­fes­sor emeri­ta of Amer­i­can his­to­ry at Yeshi­va Uni­ver­si­ty. An expert on the his­to­ry of McCarthy­ism, she has been called “the dean of the anti-anti-Com­mu­nist his­to­ri­ans.” Her books on the sub­ject include: Many Are the Crimes: McCarthy­ism in Amer­i­ca and Age of McCarthy­ism: A Brief His­to­ry with Doc­u­ments.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es

Bertolt Brecht Tes­ti­fies Before the House Un-Amer­i­can Activ­i­ties Com­mit­tee (1947)

Ayn Rand Helped the FBI Iden­ti­fy It’s A Won­der­ful Life as Com­mu­nist Pro­pa­gan­da

Watch “Don’t Be a Suck­er!,” the 1947 US Gov­ern­ment Anti-Hatred Film That’s Rel­e­vant Again in 2017

How to Spot a Com­mu­nist Using Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism: A 1955 Man­u­al from the U.S. Mil­i­tary

Introduction to Indian Philosophy: A Free Online Course

in | March 19th, 2017

Taught by Prof. Satya Sun­dar Sethy, this course from the Indi­an Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy-Madras pro­vides an Intro­duc­tion to Indi­an Phi­los­o­phy, and it’s sum­ma­rized as fol­lows:

Indi­an Phi­los­o­phy (San­skrit: Bhār­tiya Dar­shan) deals with var­i­ous philo­soph­i­cal thoughts of many sev­er­al tra­di­tions those orig­i­nat­ed in the Indi­an sub­con­ti­nent, includ­ing Hin­du phi­los­o­phy, Bud­dhist phi­los­o­phy, and Jain phi­los­o­phy. The com­mon themes of all these philoso­phies are uni­ty and diver­si­ty (advai­ta and dvai­ta) in their under­stand­ing, inter­pre­ta­tion of the exis­tence of real­i­ty, and expla­na­tion of the attain­ment of lib­er­a­tion (mok­sha). The Indi­an philo­soph­i­cal sys­tems are clas­si­fied into two groups on the basis of the accep­tance of Vedas; Ortho­dox (Vaisheshi­ka, Nyāya, Sāmkhya, Yoga, Pur­va-Mimān­sā, and Uttar-Mimān­sā) and Het­ero­dox (Chār­va­ka School, Jain­ism and Bud­dhism). All these sys­tems are dis­cussed with a crit­i­cal approach to their the­o­ries in this course. Over and above, an intro­duc­to­ry note to Indi­an Phi­los­o­phy is placed at the begin­ning of the course.

All lec­tures can be viewed above, or streamed at this Youtube playlist. The course has been added to our list of Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Philosophy of Religion: A Free Online Course

in | March 19th, 2017

This is the full set of lec­tures from Matt McCormick­’s Phi­los­o­phy of Reli­gion course (Phil 131) at Cal­i­for­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty, Sacra­men­to, the syl­labus for which you can find here. Here’s the ground it cov­ers:

Reli­gion is per­haps one of the most wide­spread and famil­iar of human behav­iors. For as long as humans have been rec­og­niz­ably human, they have been reli­gious. Reli­gious claims are of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to philoso­phers because they raise so many impor­tant meta­phys­i­cal issues. That is, reli­gious claims often make asser­tions about the ulti­mate nature of real­i­ty, the exis­tence of souls, an after­life, and most impor­tant­ly, the exis­tence of a God or gods. Part of the rea­son peo­ple have such a strong inter­est in reli­gion is because of the impli­ca­tions reli­gious claims would have on our lives if they are true.

We will dis­cuss the philo­soph­i­cal, meta­phys­i­cal, and epis­te­mo­log­i­cal foun­da­tions of Chris­tian­i­ty, Islam, and Judaism. There will be some dis­cus­sion of Bud­dhism and Hin­duism, as well. At the out­set we will con­cern sev­er­al issues sur­round­ing the rela­tion­ship of reli­gion, sci­ence, and moral­i­ty. Then we will con­sid­er some of the most influ­en­tial and recent argu­ments that have been giv­en for the exis­tence of an all pow­er­ful, all know­ing, all good, per­son­al, and sin­gu­lar God. This notion is cen­tral to the pre­dom­i­nant west­ern and non-west­ern monothe­is­tic tra­di­tions. We will con­sid­er dif­fer­ent epis­te­mo­log­i­cal approach­es to reli­gious belief, argu­ments for and against the exis­tence of God, the prob­lem of evil, faith, rev­e­la­tion, mys­ti­cism, the cre­ation-evo­lu­tion debate, the attrib­ut­es of God, mir­a­cles, reli­gion and ratio­nal­i­ty, and so on. We will oper­ate with some assump­tions: 1) seri­ous ratio­nal inquiry and respect­ful dia­logue on reli­gious issues can help us learn about God, reli­gion, and our­selves, and 2) we can obtain bet­ter, more rea­son­able posi­tions regard­ing these top­ics. The per­spec­tives and con­tri­bu­tions of var­i­ous eth­nic, socio-eco­nom­ic, and reli­gious groups will be con­sid­ered in the dis­cus­sions and read­ings.

You can stream the 31 lec­tures above, or find them on YouTube here. The course has been added to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Symbolic Logic: A Free Online Course

in | March 19th, 2017

From John Sanders, Pro­fes­sor of Phi­los­o­phy at the Rochester Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, comes the course, Sym­bol­ic Log­ic. In 15 lec­tures, Sanders offers an “intro­duc­tion to sym­bol­ic, or for­mal, deduc­tive log­ic and tech­niques, such as truth tables, truth trees, and for­mal deriva­tions. The empha­sis will be on propo­si­tion­al (or sen­ten­tial) log­ic and first-order pred­i­cate log­ic.” You can stream all the lec­tures above, or find them all on this YouTube playlist.

Sym­bol­ic Log­ic will be added to our list of Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Social and Political Philosophy: A Free Online Course

in | March 18th, 2017

From John Sanders, Pro­fes­sor of Phi­los­o­phy at the Rochester Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, comes the course, Social and Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy. In 10 lec­tures, Sanders “exam­ines some of the main prob­lems of social and polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy through an analy­sis, com­par­i­son and crit­i­cal exam­i­na­tion of var­i­ous views con­cern­ing the natures of indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and soci­ety and the rela­tions between them.” Thinkers cov­ered include Aris­to­tle, Hobbes, Locke, Mills, Marx, Engels, Hayek and Rawls. You can stream all the lec­tures above, or find them all on this YouTube playlist.

Social and Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy will be added to our list of Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.