By Gregory Salmieri Includes Thinking Objectively and Being an Objective Consumer of Science Thinking Objectively If you are an honest person, you are not content to hold beliefs subjectively—because of accidental features of your psychology or circumstances. You aspire to be objective—to conform all of your thinking to the facts. To do this you must be able to identify the available evidence, to determine what conclusions it supports, to check the premises you have already formed, and to integrate your conclusions into a consistent sum. This lecture discusses these skills and how to develop them. Note: Thinking Objectively is also available to view in video format at no cost on ARI's YouTube channel: link. Being an Objective Consumer of Science Much of the advantage of a division-of-labor economy comes from the division of intellectual labor: by specializing in different fields and exchanging our findings, we can know incomparably more than anyone could on his own. But since the mind is an attribute of the individual, we cannot rely uncritically on the conclusions of others. This lecture discusses how we, as non-experts, can objectively evaluate and reason about the scientific conclusions that inform so much of our life. Both of these talks were recorded at the Objectivist Summer 2014 Conference in Las Vegas, NV. (MP3 download, 324 MB)
