•  138
    Movie review of: The Cartel
    Liberty 44-45. 2010.
    This essay is my review of Bob Bowden’s excellent documentary The Cartel. It is a powerful indictment of public schools and public school teachers’ unions. In a crucial part of the film, we see minority parents at a charter school lottery. Charter schools, like voucher private schools, give parents school choice—although charter schools are public schools technically, but run fairly independently. They are so popular, and the school districts allow so few of them, that parents must apply by lott…Read more
  •  13
    Hedging as a Fallacy of Language
    Informal Logic 10 (3). 1988.
  •  131
  •  193
    The Market for Body Parts
    Liberty (October): 33-36. 2007.
  •  6
    Philosophic Thoughts: Essays on Logic and Philosophy
    Peter Lang Publishers (American University Studies). 2013.
    This book is a collection of essays on logic and philosophy. In the first section, the essays address issues in informal logic, including whether fallacies are common, and the nature of the ad baculum and ad hominem fallacies. The section also includes essays on formal dialogue logic and its applications in computer science. The second section contains articles on epistemology and philosophy of science, including issues surrounding induction, the role of error in computer science, the relation b…Read more
  •  302
    The role of error in computer science
    Philosophia 19 (4): 403-416. 1989.
  •  476
    This essay is my review of Philip Booth’s ...and the Pursuit of Happiness: Wellbeing and the Role of Government. The book is an anthology of original articles by eminent researchers in modern happiness economics, such as: Booth himself; Paul Omerod; David Sacks, Betsey Stephenson, and Justin Wolfers; Christopher Snowden; J. R. Shackleton; Christian Bjornskov; Peter Boettke and Christopher Coyne; and Pedro Schwartz. I conclude by offering several criticisms of the work.
  •  125
    Movie review of: Good
    Liberty 11. 2010.
    In this essay, I review the movie Good. Good tells the story of the moral corruption of its protagonist, a writer, who is seduced by blandishments and material rewards given to him by the Nazi regime. It is a nice illustration of corruption—the degradation of character wrought by the desire for wealth and fame—what Aristotle would call “pleonexia.”
  •  279
    Notes tow Ard a formal conversation theory
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 10 (1): 119-140. 1980.
    Dialectic, as commonly approached, is not an analytic study, as the notion is defined in the paper. Where it is analytically approached (as, for example, by Grice and Hamblin), the result is pragmatic in nature, as well as syntactic and semantic. This paper lays the foundations of a purely formal (nonpragmatic) analysis of conversations. This study is accordingly called "Conversation Theory". The key notions of "conversation", "dialogue", "conversation game", "rules of response", "epistemic comm…Read more
  •  2
    Philosophy lecturer and essayist Gary Jason tackles timely issues from education reform to the Arab Spring in his new anthology Disturbing Thoughts: Unorthodox Writings on Timely Issues. Disturbing Thoughts collects more than 160 political and social commentary essays published between 2010 and 2012. Among the many topics addressed are environmentalism, public employee pensions, education, and political reform. Today's headlines are filled with discussion on the growing dysfunction of unfunded p…Read more
  •  183
    The Case for Free Trade
    Liberty 33-41. 2010.
  •  1885
    In this essay, I look at more or less sympathetic portrayals of egoists in film. I start by explaining some basic concepts: psychological egoism; ethical egoism; default egoism; rational egoism; egotism; cynicism; narcissism; and psychopathy. I then review in-depth two excellent WWII films, Stalag 17 and The Bridge on the River Kwai. I note that the key protagonist in both pictures is the same type of character—both played by the same fine actor, William Holden. The main protagonist in both is a…Read more
  •  252
  •  428
    This is a review of the biopic of the great mathematician Ramanujan, 'The Man Who Knew Infinity'(2016).
  •  204
    Is there a case for ad hominem arguments?
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 62 (2). 1984.
    This Article does not have an abstract
  •  221
    Conflicts of Loyalty in War Movies
    Liberty (September): 1-8. 2011.
    In this essay, I use four war movies to explore conflicts of loyalty and how they are resolved, all to illustrate W.D. Ross’ multiple rule deontologism. The films are all fine WWII movies: The Enemy Below; Decision Before Dawn; John Rabe; and The Bridge on the River Kwai. In my analysis of each, I show how the protagonists face conflicts of their loyalty to themselves, their countrymen, their friends, and humanity in general, and resolve them in the face of changing factual backgrounds.
  •  244
    Deontologism and dialectic
    Journal of Value Inquiry 17 (2): 119-131. 1983.
  •  192
    In this essay, I look at some extraordinary actors who never got their due—actors who had distinguished careers, but never won an Academy Award for acting. I review the work of: Joseph Cotten; Orson Welles; Edward G. Robinson; Cary Grant; James Mason; Richard Burton; Claude Rains; Alan Ladd: Robert Mitchum; and Fred MacMurray. In each case, I explore the actor’s best work, what made his acting outstanding, and offer possible explanations why he was not so honored.
  •  91
    Book review of: Can Modern War be Just? (review)
    Chronicles of Culture (June). 1985.
  •  1610
    This essay is my critical review of Al Gini and Alexei Marcoux’s fine text, The Ethics of Business. Unlike most business ethics texts, Gini/Marcoux recognize that most businesses are small, and that business is not inherently immoral and always in need of reform. And they put their focus on using ethical theory to find action-guiding principles to help guide business behavior. Moreover, they adopt the Schumpeterian view that business is an entrepreneurial activity—one that not merely executes tr…Read more