Challenges of Civilization in the Face of Cognitive Liberty

18min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

This chapter explores the current challenges civilization encounters in debates surrounding knowledge, societal values, and cognitive liberty. It emphasizes the need to preserve societal elements enabling individual flourishing and delves into the concept of cognitive freedom as a fundamental right amid diverse beliefs. The discussion also covers the decline of civil dialogue, rise of virtue signaling, and the importance of upholding liberties and societal values in the face of controversial issues.

What happens when ideology replaces critical thinking across academia? Philosopher, author, and former professor Peter Boghossian witnessed this firsthand at Portland State University, and his school was not an anomaly. Known for his role in the “Grievance Studies Affair”, exposing the low quality scholarship published in activist-oriented journals, Peter is worried about how this strange fringe of academia has come to dominate universities. He’s now working to revitalize and advocate for what should be the core of education - critical thinking, open debate, and the rigorous pursuit of truth.

_____________________________________

Follow Peter on X (formerly Twitter): https://twitter.com/peterboghossian

Peter on Substack: https://boghossian.substack.com/

Peter on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@drpeterboghossian/featured

_____________________________________

Outline:

[0:00] Philosopher, author, and father

[2:06] How tenure corrupts academic journals

[13:50] Grievance studies and hoax papers

[21:18] Reasoning vs rationalizing

[29:56] Can ideology infect the hard sciences?

[36:50] What makes people vulnerable to dogma?