We are pleased to share a three-part video series based on Reliance College founder Marsha Familaro Enright’s paper Life is not a Machine or a Ghost: The Naturalistic Origin of Life’s Organization and Goal-Directedness, Consciousness, Free Will, and Meaning, published in the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies in July 2023.
In this series, Enright presents a compelling naturalistic framework for understanding what life truly is — drawing on the work of Aristotle, Ayn Rand, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Arthur Koestler, and Hans Jonas to address some of the deepest questions in philosophy of biology: Is life genuinely goal-directed? How does consciousness emerge from living systems? And what does this mean for our understanding of free will and human meaning?
The series is divided into three parts, each embedded below. We invite students, faculty, and anyone with an interest in philosophy, biology, or the foundations of human existence to watch and reflect.
