| Atlas University: Review Us!
Won't you help us out?
The Atlas Society is launching a new video education series, the Atlas University. And we need your input as we get the first units ready for public launch. This is your chance to get an inside, first look at one of our biggest initiatives for 2012.
Atlas University is a video course series offering accessible, engaging, and enriching courses on Objectivism, the philosophy founded by Ayn Rand. Our primary target audiences for this particular course are students interested in an "Objectivism 101" course and adults interested in an introductory continuing education curriculum focused on Objectivism. If you are familiar with The Teaching Company's Great Courses (http://www.thegreatcourses.com/) imagine this as an addition to their catalog.
The first Atlas University series is going to be a 10-part course called "Reason," a survey of Objectivist epistemology. The instructors are TAS founder and chief intellectual officer David Kelley, PhD, and TAS director of programs William R Thomas, MA.
The planned ten parts of the "Reason" course are:
1. What is reason? I (Speaker: David Kelley)
2. What is reason? II The Conceptual Faculty (Speaker: William R Thomas)
3. Volitional nature of reason (Speaker: William R Thomas)
4. Objectivity I: Objective reality (Speaker: David Kelley)
5. Objectivity II: Objective Knowledge? (Speaker: David Kelley)
6. Reason and Emotion (Speaker: William R Thomas)
7. Certainty (Speaker: David Kelley)
8. Religion, God, and the supernatural (Speaker: David Kelley)
9. Reason vs. mysticism and subjectivism (Speaker: William R Thomas)
10. Conclusion: Living by Reason (Speaker: William R Thomas)
The first two 30-minute videos in this course are now ready for viewing.
In lecture 1, "What is Reason," David Kelley introduces the course by considering what reason is and what role it plays in human life and civilization. Kelley surveys the history of modern philosophical thought to offer the viewer a grasp of how reason is viewed in the culture today and what challenges a defender of reason faces.
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Lecture 2,"The Conceptual Faculty," with William R Thomas takes up the most essential of these challenges, giving the distinctively Objectivist view of reason as the human faculty that allows us to mentally grasp universal terms via abstraction from the particular existents that we experience. Thomas presents Ayn Rand's "measurement-omission" theory of concepts in an accessible, fresh manner, showing what makes it possible for our words to have objective meaning. Objective concept-formation is key to clear thinking.
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We're looking for individuals willing to preview these video programs and give us feedback on the content and the production values and general advise us on how make this course, and the Atlas University as whole, the best it can be.
Would you like to participate?
Just send an email to atlasu@atlassociety.org and enter "Atlas U" into the subject field of the email.
If you are accepted to take part, we will give you free access to these videos over a ten-day period (July 13-23).
You will be sent a link to two surveys, one relating to each video. You can use these surveys to offer your feedback. But please complete the surveys by Monday, July 24.
We will consider your feedback as we revise these two videos for full public release and as we continue creating videos in this and other Atlas University courses.
We would very much appreciate your participation. Thanks,
The Atlas Society | 
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