Reason & Rationality 2025 Summer Program
Students in grades 8 - 12 are invited to apply. Students who attend both sessions get the full experience, priority in enrollment and tuition discount.
We are pleased to introduce the Reason & Rationality 2025 Summer Program at Princeton Theological Seminary (June 8-14) and Swarthmore College (July 27 - Aug 2).
Each week-long session will bring together students for deep conversations about the biggest ideas in Philosophy, Policy and Economics in a series of informal and convivial salons with an approximately 5:1 student-instructor ratio. Students will live in the college dorms with their instructors. The animating philosophy of Reason & Rationality is that relationship and conversation are the font of the intellectual life.
Session 1 (Princeton Theological Seminary June 8 - 14, 2025)
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The Value of a Human Life (cost benefit analysis, present value discounting, the significance of future generations)
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Utilitarianism and The Veil of Ignorance
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Basic Logic, Intellectual Virtues, Properties of Arguments
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Moral Realism and Moral Relativism
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The Trolley Problem
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Supply and Demand
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COVID Lockdowns and Ice Cream Cones (total and marginal utility, opportunity cost)
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Private Property and Prices
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Complex Systems, Emergent Properties, and the Mystery of Consciousness
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Norms Unlike our Own (primogeniture, bride price, dowries, indissoluble marriage, cousin marriage)
Session 2 (Swarthmore College July 27 - August 2, 2025)
11. Base Rates and the Base Rate Fallacy
12. Selection Bias, Social Desirability Bias
13. Preference Falsification and Self-Deception
14. Harry Frankfurt on Bullshit
15. Bayes’s Rule
16. Do You Live in a Simulation?
17. Rationality, Rationalism and Pascal’s Wager
18. The Conceptual Analysis of “Liberal” and “Conservative”
19. Science Fiction and Philosophy: Life Extension and Universal Basic Income
20. The Ethics of Selling Human Organs and Babies
Questions About the Reason & Rationality Vision for Conversation-Based Education?
Check out the frequently asked questions on our website or reach out to Reason & Rationality at info@reasonandrationality.com.