Some last-minute changes to the schedule for the upcoming Alabamaphilosofest.
Tag Archives | Personal
Intermittency
To anyone wondering why I haven’t been reading and responding to blog comments as much lately as I usually do (or why I’m even farther behind on email than usual) – both my car and my home computer are currently malfunctioning, plus I’m teaching a course overload this semester, so my time on the computer is limited to a few hours caught between classes at the office. Hope to have at least some of that fixed soon.
Alabama Philosophers Doing Stuff
Our conference hotel in Orange Beach
The schedule for the aforementioned Alabama Philosophical Society meeting is now online. (And today’s the last day to reserve a room at the conference rate!)
Also, the Auburn student newspaper has a (somewhat typo-ridden) story about our aforementioned Philosophy Club.
Anniversaries, Happy and Otherwise
Today is the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. I haven’t got a goddamn thing new to say about them – but check out my previous comments here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Today is also the seventh anniversary of this blog, pursuant whereto I present the latest batch of Austro-Athenian Imperial Statistics. (For previous blog stats see here.) Thanks, Brandon!
Orange Beach
In addition, today is the seventh anniversary of the Molinari Institute, so it seems appropriate to announce (even though the detailed schedule won’t be posted online for another few days) that Charles Johnson and I will both be speaking on Molinarian topics at the Alabama Philosophical Society meetings in Orange Beach, 2-3 October.
Here are the abstracts:
Charles Johnson (Molinari Institute): “Can Anyone Ever Consent to the State?”
I defend a strong incompatibility claim that anything which could count as a state is conceptually incompatible with any possible consent of the governed. Not only do states necessarily operate without the unanimous consent of all the governed, but in fact, as territorial monopolies on the use of force, states preclude any subject from consenting – even those who want it, and actively try to give consent to government. If government authority is legitimate, it must derive from an account of legitimate command and subordination; any principled requirement for consent and political equality entails anarchism.Roderick T. Long (Auburn University): “Left-Libertarianism, Class Conflict, and Historical Theories of Distributive Justice”
A frequent objection to the “historical” (in Nozick’s sense) approach to distributive justice is that it serves to legitimate existing massive inequalities of wealth. I argue that, on the contrary, the historical approach, thanks to its fit with the libertarian theory of class conflict, represents a far more effective tool for challenging these inequalities than do relatively end-oriented approaches such as utilitarianism and Rawlsianism.
Caffeinated Philosophy
Gnu's Room
Auburn’s Philosophy Club undertook a foray to the external world last night, sponsoring a roundtable on Beauty and Art with three faculty members and three undergraduate majors at a local coffeehouse – specifically at the Gnu’s Room (out-of-date and uninformative website here, newer but slightly broken and still uninformative website here), a cool – and consistently improving (any Auburnites who haven’t visited it in a few years need to check it out) but also consistently imperiled – used bookstore that incidentally serves the best coffee in Auburn. We had quite a big turnout and plan to do this again next month.
Disconnected
My DSL connection at home has been on the fritz these last few days (and even dial-up won’t work there anymore – the modem claims it can’t detect the dial tone), so until it gets fixed I can only connect when I’m in the office (where competing demands tend to claim my attention).
(Yes, I’ve checked to make sure everything is plugged in.)
So expect diminished web presence from me for the next few days as I await the arrival of my tech dervish.