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Dan Robinson came to philosophy by way of the brain sciences, earning a doctorate in Neuropsychology in 1965. His early publications were based on research addressed to information-processing in the visual system and, more generally, in the central nervous system. This background from the outset raised persistent questions ordinarily addressed in philosophy of mind, action theory, philosophy of science and metaphysics. Over the years, Professor Robinson has contributed to the literature in all these areas. Issues of determinism and responsibility are considered at length in his Wild Beasts and Idle Humours: The Insanity Defense from Antiquity to the Present (Harvard, 1996) and Praise and Blame (Princeton, 2002). His arguments against reductionism appear in a number of publications and at book-length in Consciousness and Mental Life (Columbia, 2008). His close study of Kant’s metaphysics is given in his How Is Nature Possible: The Project of Kant’s First Critique (Continuum, 2012). He has received two lifetime achievement awards from the American Psychological Association and in 2011 was selected for the Josephy Gittler Award for significant contributions to the philosophical foundations of Psychology. The award carries an honorarium of $10,000 and was previously given to Jerome Bruner and Daniel Kahneman.
| # | Episode Title | Description | People | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17 | From Locke on Toleration to the First Amendment | Professor Dan Robinson gives a talk on the First Amendment in the US Constitution and the philosophy of John Locke. | Dan Robinson | 14 Oct 2016 | |
| 16 | Creative Commons | Reid on the Principles of Morals | The final part of Professor Dan Robinson's series on Reid's critique of David Hume. | Dan Robinson | 14 May 2014 |
| 15 | Creative Commons | Hume’s “Sentimentalist” Theory of Morals | The seventh part of Professor Dan Robinson's series on Reid's critique of David Hume. | Dan Robinson | 14 May 2014 |
| 14 | Creative Commons | Reid on Personal Identity | The sixth part of Professor Dan Robinson's series on Reid's critique of David Hume. | Dan Robinson | 14 May 2014 |
| 13 | Creative Commons | Hume on Personal Identity | The fifth part of Professor Dan Robinson's series on Reid's critique of David Hume. | Dan Robinson | 14 May 2014 |
| 12 | Creative Commons | Reid on Causation and Active Powers | The fourth part of Professor Dan Robinson's series examining Reid's critique of David Hume. | Dan Robinson | 14 May 2014 |
| 11 | Creative Commons | Hume on Causation | The third part of Professor Dan Robinson's series examining Reid's critique of David Hume. | Dan Robinson | 14 May 2014 |
| 10 | Creative Commons | Reid and Common Sense Realism | Part two of Professor Dan Robinson's examination of Reid's critique of David Hume. | Dan Robinson | 14 May 2014 |
| 9 | Creative Commons | The “representational” theory of knowledge | Professor Dan Robinson, Oxford University, delivers the first part of his series examining Reid's Critique of Hume. | Dan Robinson | 14 May 2014 |
| 8 | Creative Commons | The discipline of reason: The paralogisms and Antinomies of Pure Reason. | Lecture 8/8. Reason, properly disciplined, draws permissible inferences from the resulting concepts of the understanding. The outcome is knowledge. | Dan Robinson | 16 Mar 2011 |
| 7 | Creative Commons | The "Self" and the Synthetic Unity of Apperception | Lecture 7/8. Kant argues that: "The synthetic unity of consciousness is... an objective condition of all knowledge. | Dan Robinson | 16 Mar 2011 |
| 6 | Creative Commons | Concepts, judgement and the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories | Lecture 6/8. Empiricists have no explanation for how we move from "mere forms of thought" to objective concepts. The conditions necessary for the knowledge of an object require a priori categories as the enabling conditions of all human understanding. | Dan Robinson | 16 Mar 2011 |
| 5 | Creative Commons | Idealisms and their refutations | Lecture 5/8. The very possibility of self-awareness (an "inner sense" with content) requires an awareness of an external world by way of "outer sense". Only through awareness of stable elements in the external world is self-consciousness possible. | Dan Robinson | 16 Mar 2011 |
| 4 | Creative Commons | How are a priori synthetic judgements possible? | Lecture 4/8. Kant claims that, "our sense representation is not a representation of things in themselves, but of the way in which they appear to us. | Dan Robinson | 16 Mar 2011 |
| 3 | Creative Commons | Space, time and the "Analogies of Experiences" | Lecture 3/8. Kant's so-called "Copernican" revolution in metaphysics begins with the recognition of the observer's contribution to the observation. | Dan Robinson | 16 Mar 2011 |
| 2 | Creative Commons | The broader philosophical context | Lecture 2/8. The significant advances in physics in the 17th century stood in vivid contrast to the stagnation of traditional metaphysics, but why should metaphysics be conceived as a "science" in the first place? | Dan Robinson | 16 Mar 2011 |
| 1 | Creative Commons | Just what is Kant's "project"? | Lecture 1/8. Both sense and reason are limited. Kant must identify the proper mission and domain of each, as well as the manner in which their separate functions come to be integrated in what is finally the inter-subjectively settled knowledge of science. | Dan Robinson | 16 Mar 2011 |