(Click here to obtain a printable "rtf" of the complete reading list with visible URLs.)

Week 1:   Introduction to Cognitive Liberty

Readings:

Richard Glen Boire “On Cognitive Liberty” (Parts I-III)

Adina Roskies “Neuroethics for the New Millennium” (from Neuron 35:21-23, July 3, 2002).

John Stuart Mill “On Liberty” (Parts I & II)

Plato “Apology”

Martin Heidegger “What is Called Thinking?: Lecture I” (in What is Called Thinking?)

U.S. Constitution: Amendments

Aldous Huxley “Culture and the Individual”

Discussion Questions

Additional Web Resources

Week 2:   Introduction II: Philosophical Issues

Readings:

John Stuart Mill “On Liberty” (Parts III & IV)

Isaiah Berlin “Two Concepts of Liberty” (in Four Essays on Liberty). Excerpts.

H.L.A. Hart “Are there any Natural Rights?” (in Philosophical Review, 64 (1955))

Jean-Francois Lyotard “The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge” (27-32,
47-53)  

Discussion Questions

Additional Web Resources

Week 3:   Food for Thought: Input & Output

Readings:

U.S. Supreme Court: STANLEY v. GEORGIA, 394 U.S. 557 (1969)

ACLU briefing paper “Freedom of Expression”

Laurence H. Tribe, "The Constitution in Cyberspace"

John Perry Barlow, "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace"

Discussion Questions

Additional Web Resources

Week 4:   Manufacturing Content I: Freedom and the Classroom 
(Academic  and Intellectual Freedom)

Readings:

Stanley Fish “Academic Freedom: When Sauce for the Goose Isn't Sauce for the Gander”

Ronald Dworkin “We Need a New Interpretation of Academic Freedom” (in The Future of Academic Freedom. ed. L Menand, p181-198).  

American Association of University Professors “Academic Freedom Of Individual Professors And Higher Education Institutions: The Current Legal Landscape” (Excerpts). Full text.

  Discussion Questions

  Additional Web Resources

 

Week 5:   Manufacturing Content II: The Construction of Social Meaning

Readings:

Louis Althusser “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” (in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays)  

Lawrence Lessig “The Regulation of Social Meaning” (in University of Chicago Law Review Summer 1995). Excerpts.

Douglas Rushkoff “They Say” (in Coercion: Why We Listen to What ‘They’ Say)

Bernard McGrane “The Zen TV Experiment”

Discussion Questions

Additional Web Resources

Week 6:   Consuming Thoughts: The Mass Media

Readings:

Noam Chomsky “Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies” Chapter 1.

Kalle Lasn “Culture Jam” 29-41.

Ben H. Bagdikian “Democracy and the Media” (in The Media Monopoly) 

  Daniel Forbes "Prime Time Propaganda" (Salon, 13 January 2000).