Hard-wired to Choose
August 8, 2011
Seems like “the debate” is often structured so one has to either believe in some “exception” to cause and effect, or that that our preference for a Belgian triple ale with tonight’s dinner is merely fall-out from the big bang. I’m in the “hard-wired to choose” camp.
(Shawn P. Wilbur)
(University of Texas at Austin philosophy professor David Sosa talking in his office in the movie Waking Life)
Transcript (click here if you want to skip to the rest of the post): Read the rest of this entry »
Mutualism in a Nutshell
May 18, 2010
Alex Strekal (Brainpolice) asks, “What is Mutualism?”
Charles T. Sprading’s 1930 Mutual Service and Cooperation provides what I think is a pretty useful answer (HT Shawn Wilbur). Read the rest of this entry »
The Progress of Philosophy
May 26, 2009
Is the world ready for Corvus Distribution?
The world better get ready.
The Unfinished Business of Liberty
April 4, 2009
Please check out the first issues of LeftLiberty and the New Proudhon Library, edited by Shawn Wilbur. Take Shawn’s advice and do “a little tree-killing, and probably a coffee- or whiskey-stain or three”.
Paper Bags
March 1, 2009
The following is my “blog intro” submission to LeftLiberty #1:
Others offer you the spectacle of genius wresting Nature’s secrets from her, and unfolding before you her sublime messages; you will find here only a series of experiments upon justice and right a sort of verification of the weights and measures of your conscience. The operations shall be conducted under your very eyes; and you shall weigh the result.
– P.J. Proudhon, What is Property?
Instead of a blog, being much too busy to write one, I am trying to wrestle out of the paper bag of, as Shawn Wilbur put it, “defending a poorly defined territory against equally ill-defined invaders”. If I succeed in breaking out, it will be through systematic thinking about the topics that interest me: property and contracts, labor-management, non-state forms of oppression, autonomy-respecting assistance and development, the foundations of ethics, law, reciprocity and immanent justice. If we succeed in breaking out as an alliance, it will be because we have chosen the harsh, critical light over the safe darkness of our canards and herrings; we will have found our conatus.
A Different Game
February 6, 2009
Occasionally someone has an inspired moment. Shawn Wilbur, in a post at the Forums of the Libertarian Left, sums up quite well the problem with the debates that spring up around mutualism and also offers a valuable perspective on the “key elements” behind the philosophy: Read the rest of this entry »
