Instructor Bio
Ben Bayer is an instructor and fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. He brings to ARI more than a decade of experience in teaching a wide range of philosophy courses at colleges and universities around the United States. He was a visiting assistant professor at Loyola University New Orleans for seven years, and previously taught at Metropolitan State University of Denver, Colorado College, Loyola University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
In his time as a professor, Dr. Bayer’s research focused on epistemology and metaphysics (especially, free will and determinism). He has published scholarly articles in American Philosophical Quarterly, Synthese, Philosophia, and Acta Analytica, among others. He has also contributed essays to Concepts and Their Role in Knowledge: Reflections on Objectivist Epistemologyand Essays on Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead.”
Dr. Bayer was one of the two co-founders of the student publication The Undercurrent, for which he served as an editor and contributor between 2005 and 2016. He edited checkyourpremises.org, the blog of the Ayn Rand Society (a professional association affiliated with the American Philosophical Association), from 2016 to 2017.
Dr. Bayer received his Ph.D in philosophy from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 2007. He also completed the program of coursework in ARI’s Objectivist Graduate Center, a forerunner of the Objectivist Academic Center.
Books and Articles
Courses Taught
The Atlas Project
Experience
Fellow
- Ayn Rand Institute2017 – present
Visiting Assistant Professor
- Loyola University New Orleans2010 – 2017
- Colorado College2008 – 2009
Lecturer
- Metropolitan State University of DenverSpring 2010
- Loyola University Chicago2007 – 2008
Selected Work
Book Chapters
- “Keeping Up Appearances: Reflections on the Debate over Perceptual Infallibilism” in Concepts and Their Role in Knowledge: Reflections on Objectivist Epistemology , University of Pittsburgh Press 2013
- “The Fountainhead and the Spirit of Youth” in Essays on Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead” (ed. Robert Mayhew), Rowman and Littlefield 2007
Events
- Panel on Free Will and Neuroscience, Ayn Rand Student Conference October 2016
Talks & Lectures
- “A Positive Evidentialist Account of Epistemic Possibility” at the Southern Epistemology Conference, Department of Philosophy, Loyola New Orleans, October 2015, and at Science and Certainty: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, Department of Philosophy, UC San Diego, May 2015
- “Belief Ownership Without Belief Authorship: Agent Reliabilists’ Unlucky Gambit Against Reflective Luck.” Presented at the American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division, Vancouver, BC, April 2015
- “Believing at Will and the Will to Believe the Truth.” Presented at the American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division, Atlanta, GA, December 2012
- “Freedom for the Self-Made Soul,” The Undercurrent Student Conference, Washington DC, October 2014
- “History of the Concept of Free Will,” OCON, Chicago, IL, July 2013
- “Spreading Objectivism by Living It,” OCON, Las Vegas, NV, July 2014
- “Why Internalists Need an Enriched Theory of Perceptual and Conceptual Awareness to Escape from Bergmann’s Dilemma.” Presented at the 9th International Symposium of Cognition, Logic and Communication, University of Latvia, Riga, Latvia, May 2013
- “How Understanding the Nature of Perception Helps Solve Central Problems in Epistemology,” Seminar, Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey, February 21, 2010 [Invited]
- “Understanding Twentieth-Century Philosophy: The Case of Quine,” OCON, Boston, MA, July 2006
Courses
- Philosophical Themes in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged
- Epistemology (Advanced)
- Free Will and Determinism
- Philosophy of Knowledge
- Free Will in Thought and Action (Advanced)
- Making Moral Decisions
- History of Analytic Philosophy
- History of Modern Philosophy
- Philosophy of Language
- Practical Logic
- Formal Logic
Blog Posts
- Teaching Philosophy with Atlas Shrugged: Francisco vs. Hume on Reason and Emotion October 01, 2017 April 2, 2016
- Recent Work on Epistemic Possibility and the Burden of Proof October 01, 2017 February 22, 2016
- Response to Cummins on Rand at PBS February 16, 2016
- Teaching Philosophy with Atlas Shrugged: Aristotle and Francisco on Ultimate Ends February 9, 2016
- Updates to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on Ayn Rand October 01, 2017 January 24, 2016
- The History of Objectivity in Light of Rand’s Epistemology and Ethics September 16, 2010 January 9, 2016
