Archive | March, 2018
Upcoming Panels: Marriage and Anarchy
[cross-posted at BHL]
Two Molinari/C4SS panels are coming up at two different conferences later this week:
1. The Molinari Society will be holding its mostly-annual Pacific Symposium in conjunction with the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association in San Diego, March 28-April 1, 2018. Here’s the schedule info:
Molinari Society symposium:
Author Meets Critics: Gary Chartier’s Public Practice, Private Law: An Essay on Love, Marriage, and the State
G9C. Friday, 30 March 2018, 7:00-10:00 p.m. (or so), Westin San Diego Gaslamp Quarter, 910 Broadway Circle, San Diego CA, room TBA
chair:
Roderick T. Long (Auburn University)critics:
Jennifer Lockhart (Auburn University)
Lori Watson (New Mexico State University)
Roderick T. Long (Auburn University)author:
Gary Chartier (La Sierra University)
2. We’ve also organised a panel at the Association of Private Enterprise Education conference in Las Vegas, April 1-4, 2018. Here’s the schedule info:
Topics in Free-Market Anarchism
4.A.6.. Wednesday, 4 April 2018, 8:00-9:15 a.m., Caesars Palace, 3570 Las Vegas Blvd S., Las Vegas NV, room TBA.
chair:
Roderick T. Long (Auburn University)panelists:
Gary Chartier (La Sierra University)
Jason Lee Byas (University of Illinois)
Nathan Goodman (George Mason University)
Roderick T. Long (Auburn University)
Nathan is also on a bunch of other panels; he’ll be speaking on “Social Capital and Social Justice: Why Liberalism is Essential” (Monday at 1:10 p.m.), “Voluntary Associations as an Alternative to State Social Welfare Provision” (Monday at 2:30 p.m.), “The Political Economy of Whistleblowers” (Tuesday at 8:00 a.m.), and “Policing, Civil Society, and External Aid: A Polycentric Perspective” (Tuesday at 2:30 p.m.).
In other news, for a brief report on the recent PPE Society meeting in New Orleans, see here.
To and Fro Upon the Earth
Last week I gave a talk on Lockean vs. Kantian takes on property rights in a state of nature at the PPE Society meeting in New Orleans. The conference had loads of libertarian academics; check out the participant list. Ann Cudd gave a keynote address criticising libertarians for being social atomists who don’t believe in any positive moral obligations; she seemed genuinely surprised that the assembled libertarians took exception to this characterisation. As a culminating irony she even offered, as a supposed critique of libertarianism, an analysis of Robinson Crusoe virtually identical to Bastiat’s.
(Incidentally, for anyone visiting New Orleans I highly recommend the shrimp and grits at Café Fleur de Lis and, as always, anything at Sukho Thai.)
Upon my return, I gave a talk on the relation between philosophical thought-experiments and fantastic fiction at the Auburn Philosophy Club’s panel on Fantasy, Fiction, and Philosophy here in Auburn.
Tomorrow I leave for gigs at the Pacific APA in San Diego and the APEE in Las Vegas; see the next post for details.
Then I’ll be coming back just in time for the Auburn Philosophy department’s conference on Practical Reasoning.
Things I Learn From TV
SUPERHERO’S FRIEND: You mustn’t ever kill anyone. You can never come back from that.
SUPERHERO: I’ve already killed someone.
SUPERHERO’S FRIEND: Oh. Well – you can totally come back from that!
Disjunction Dysfunction
Here are two facts that you’ll already know if you’re a Star Trek fan. But have you put the two together before?
1. “The Cage,” Gene Roddenberry’s original Star Trek pilot episode, featured a female first officer on the Enterprise, known only as Number One. The network, skittish about having both such a prominent female character and that demonic-looking alien named Spock, told Roddenberry he had to lose one or the other. Roddenberry chose to keep Spock and dump Number One.
2. In “Lethe,” the sixth episode of the current series Star Trek: Discovery, Sarek learns that although both his half-human son Spock and his adopted human daughter Michael Burnham (who will later be first officer on the Shenzou) have qualified for the Vulcan Expeditionary Force, the leaders of the VEF are leery of Sarek’s “experiments” rearing “not-quite-Vulcans,” and so have decided that they will accept only one, not both. They leave the choice up to Sarek, who decides to let Spock rather than Michael get the post.
I just now put these two facts together for the first time. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that twice someone is forced to choose between Spock and a female first officer, and chooses Spock. I feel pretty certain that the fictional choice in Discovery was a reference to Roddenberry’s real-life choice. I haven’t see anyone else comment on this.
I Thought He Was Just Making Dog Noises
I can’t recall ever seeing as big-budget-looking an SNL skit as this one: