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.
Am madly interested in the topic of Kant vs. Locke on property rights in the state of nature–have been thinking about that very topic myself lately. Any chance there’s a paper draft I can look at?