tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-208273152011-12-16T10:07:55.351-05:00Philosophical Musings on Ethics, Politics and War (i.e., pretentious-sounding claims that shouldn't be taken all that seriously)Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.comBlogger1201100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-34887474513802336652007-02-19T09:35:00.000-05:002007-02-19T09:51:48.317-05:00

Dear blog,By now you may have discovered that things seem rather empty around here. My closet is empty, the good dishes are all packed, and the bookshelves are bare. There's no easy way to say this, so I'll just come right out with it: I've found someone else.After months of friendly flirting and occasional heavy petting, I've decided to move in with Catallarchy. Don't get me wrong here. The

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-40998741766611026662007-02-15T17:35:00.000-05:002007-02-15T19:37:45.305-05:00

So now Melissa McEwan has followed Amanda Marcotte into the ranks of Former Employees of John Edwards. If you've been living in a bubble (or perhaps more accurately, if you've been living outside of the bubble that is the blogosphere), you may not have heard that McEwan and Marcotte have been known to say some, well, some unkind things about Catholics. Actually, that's not really quite accurate.

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-31986331743833385382007-02-14T23:19:00.000-05:002007-02-15T10:48:51.822-05:00

It's post Valentine's Day blogging! Now that the bottle of white Burgundy (that's just so much fun to write) has worn off, the coffee has kicked in and the morning run has cleared out the cobwebs, maybe I can say something semi-coherent. Or as semi-coherent as anything that I write here ever really gets.Anyway, in my last post, I mentioned John Edwards' new proposal for Iraq. I said a few things

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-89009287786199223832007-02-14T18:07:00.000-05:002007-02-14T18:27:55.621-05:00

Yes, it's true. Alas, though, he's not writing to praise my sparkling wit in making fun of Health MarketsTM. No, it's just the old bulk mailing thing for me. It's much like the sort of thing that I used to get from John Kerry, only now with added charisma.To tell you the truth, though, the message is actually sort of exciting. It seems that Edwards has decided to abandon the

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-13920066993310757292007-02-13T14:31:00.000-05:002007-02-14T16:42:25.675-05:00

I begin to see now why the Catallarchs sometimes got so frustrated with some of my initial comments way back when I first started posting there. See, I've been having this discussion with some of John Edwards' supporters about health care and the free market. I initially just tried to offer a suggestion that, I think, was fully in line with the spirit of Edwards' proposal, but that worked rather

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-76669929900376485922007-02-11T20:48:00.000-05:002007-02-10T21:14:30.045-05:00

In my previous post I looked at Senator Edwards' health care plan and argued that it could be simplified by getting rid of the regional Health Markets (which, I argued, already exist) and instead simply allowing anyone who wants to sign up for Medicare (on some sort of sliding fee scale). A number of people objected to that proposal, claiming that ultimately it would serve to undermine Medicare.

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-50286049388125313102007-02-10T21:08:00.000-05:002007-02-10T20:19:14.945-05:00

From a comment at John Edwards' blog to my post on the Senator's health care plan:A "market" where the "sellers" work hard to turn customers away and equally hard at taking customers money but not handing over the goods purchased ... that is a broken market.My reply:I guess that maybe I should have been clearer. Health Markets are unnecessary given (2) above. Once we open up Medicare to everyone

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-37081853379120425562007-02-10T20:06:00.000-05:002007-02-10T15:42:50.135-05:00

Big news Thursday out of Fort Lewis -- or at any rate, big news for those of us who have been following the court-martial of LT Ehren Watada. For those not following at home, LT Watada was court-martialed for his refusal to deploy to Iraq. Watada does not deny deliberately refusing the order, and argues in his defense that the order to deploy was actually an illegal order. Unfortunately, Watada

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-42773517393533981872007-02-10T00:10:00.000-05:002007-02-11T20:51:21.128-05:00

A post made over at John Edwards' blog. It's the first time I've ever actually put something up on a community blog site. We'll see if I can manage to make it past the guardians at the gate. Anyway, here's the post, just in case it never sees the light of day elsewhere.I just finished reading Paul Krugman's very nice review of Edwards' health care plan. I figured that I'd go ahead and read the

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-13100176751968767592007-02-08T21:54:00.000-05:002007-02-08T21:49:14.077-05:00

I suppose that I sort of gave the game away back in the previous post, but I thought that I'd go ahead and sort of say it formally here. For what it's worth, John Edwards is my guy for '08.Yes, I know that my libertarian friends are taking great delight in making fun of Edwards for the phrase "Health Markets." (Note to Mr. Edwards: hire me and I could catch those sorts of things for you.) But

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-59532690584143446022007-02-08T21:22:00.000-05:002007-02-08T17:23:52.168-05:00

What should one say, really, about the mild uproar over John Edwards' hiring of Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan? For those out there who don't know (all three of you), Marcotte blogs at Pandagon while McEwan blogs at Shakespeare's Sister. It seems that these two very well-known, funny, insightful and extremely intelligent women bloggers have been known to (gasp!) say some over-the-top things

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-23729004008209793212007-02-08T16:59:00.000-05:002007-01-30T11:34:55.608-05:00

Over at Catallarchy, I made what I thought was pretty much just a passing observation on a throwaway comment to a post on diminishing marginal utility. Oddly enough, that comments sparked a spirited (if IMHO hugely misinformed) defense from Constant, a regular Catallarchy commenter. The issue has to do with normativity. Constant mentioned that he finds less value in normative uses of economics,

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-22562722113537880702007-01-29T09:51:00.000-05:002007-01-29T11:20:58.154-05:00

I'm a bit late to the party with this story, particularly considering its relevance to some of my previous writings, but the court-martial of 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, who refused an order to deploy to Iraq on the grounds that the war is immoral, provides an instance of an officer (one lonely officer) who takes exactly the stance I argue for here (subscription required). That argument, in brief, is

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-47127331332936158492007-01-29T08:34:00.000-05:002007-01-29T09:13:16.512-05:00

Just finished reading Brandon Berg's quick hit on leftists and their inconsistencies on IQ. I'm not so terribly sure that Brandon's point is particularly fair, but I'm willing to look the other way on that one. After all, I do know plenty of people on the left who made much of President Bush's IQ but who would be horrified at the thought of, say, writing off some of their students as just being

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-48651455323212512762007-01-28T20:44:00.000-05:002007-01-28T22:03:13.989-05:00

This being Sunday, I had my usual 5-hour-round-trip driving Matthew back to meet his mom. That gives me all sorts of time to think about, well, all sorts of oddness. Last week, I imagined scenes from an absurdist noir story involving Witt Genstein, PI. Don't ask. Just be glad that you don't have to live inside my mind. Be very glad.Anyway, as I drove along today, I was thinking about the

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-77129698004217092052007-01-25T15:23:00.000-05:002007-01-25T15:50:06.344-05:00

In today's NY Times Op-Ed pages, Tyler Cowen dismisses much of the hand-wringing over wealth inequality by noting thatHappiness, possibly the most relevant variable for a study of inequality, is also the hardest to measure. Nonetheless, inequality of happiness is usually less marked than inequality of income, at least in wealthy societies. A man earning $500,000 a year is not usually 10 times as

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-41172899511687068562007-01-25T10:29:00.000-05:002007-01-25T11:09:28.181-05:00

No, I'm not just trying to be clever. Okay, I am trying to be clever, but there's a real point to the title. It's the insider nickname for the Army War College. What's it mean? Well, I'm sure that you'll all be surprised to discover that VUCA is an acronym (what is it with the Army and its fondness for acronyms, anyway?). VUCA stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. The AWC

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-29119916916098155222007-01-23T15:07:00.000-05:002007-01-23T16:59:32.433-05:00

It's hard being a Republican these days. As if the President's 28% approval rating and the huge disapproval of the Iraq war weren't enough, one now needs a cheat sheet to keep track of who, exactly, the enemy is supposed to be. I mean, it's not that long ago that liberals were (somehow) all on their way to becoming radical Muslims. Remember this gem, courtesy of Ann Coulter?When contemplating

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-41648839482637873622007-01-22T09:07:00.000-05:002007-01-22T11:27:14.560-05:00

Last September, during my guest stint at Catallarchy, I noted in passing that Randolph-Macon Woman's College (shouldn't that be Women's College, btw? It's just always bugged me) has decided to end its 114 years as a single-sex institution. Beginning in the fall of 2007, the college, to be known as Randolph College (since there's already a Randolph-Macon College), will begin admitting men. The

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-51587293173541937162007-01-18T20:54:00.000-05:002007-01-18T21:29:02.531-05:00

It's the oft-forgotten third leg of just war theory. But it's a pretty essential part, nonetheless. The essential jus post bellum claim is that a necessary condition for waging a just war is that there be a just resolution to the war. That is, for a war to count as just it must be the case thatThe war be fought for a just cause (i.e., in defense of aggression or in defense of genuine humanitarian

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-18460152975740829402007-01-17T19:15:00.000-05:002007-01-18T09:54:16.416-05:00

So after a couple of lame warm-up posts where I take on really important tasks like calling John McCain names and writing about the best show on Television, I suppose that it's time to return to Serious Blogging.Via Matt Yglesias, I came across John Judis' article at TNR Online (free registration required) about American involvement in the Horn of Africa. For those of you who were too busy

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-21855060518798918242007-01-16T21:07:00.000-05:002007-01-16T22:11:47.681-05:00

Thank you John McCain for bringing me one step closer to the view that government would be better off privatized.It seems the good Senator -- he of the Straight Talking, tell it like it is, don't take no shit from anyone, Maverick reputation -- has once again demonstrated that said reputation is pretty much a bunch of horseshit. In this charming display of cravenness, McCain demonstrates once

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-41890380730534592102007-01-14T11:13:00.000-05:002007-01-14T12:19:13.585-05:00

I've acquired a new vice over the holiday period. It's been both wonderful and (at least in some abstract purely intellectual way) a tad distressing. You see, I've managed to become completely addicted. When I get my fix, it's all good. Unfortunately, I find my thoughts drifting throughout the day, looking forward to my next chance, worrying about what will happen when I run out. It's awful. And

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-1158540879800320382006-09-17T19:52:00.000-05:002006-09-17T19:54:39.820-05:00

Yet another post up at Catallarchy, this time on positive and negative freedom.I think that my time at Catallarchy is going to end tomorrow. Maybe I'll manage that one last post on killing noncombatants.

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-1158462583815642642006-09-16T21:02:00.000-05:002006-09-16T22:09:43.996-05:00

As promised (but somewhat belated), here are links to my first few posts at Catallarchy. Thanks to Wesley for the gentle reminder to post some links.A suggestion for winning the war in Iraq.A discussion of libertarians and conservatives.An observation about skinny models.A lament for the end of an era.A few thoughts on exit.There's more to come. I'm working on something on why captured soldiers

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-1157918974058531632006-09-10T14:57:00.000-05:002006-09-10T15:09:34.116-05:00

For the next couple of weeks, I'm going to be filling in over at Catallarchy while the regulars there are off enjoying their yearly anarcho-capitalist drunken get-together. Sorry. Scratch that. They'll be out on the West Coast plotting how to get individuals to realize that it's in their best interest to bloodlessly rid the world of the unnecessary and immoral state. Over beer.I'm not quite sure

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-1153833079531359512006-07-25T07:58:00.000-05:002006-07-25T08:11:19.576-05:00

As you all know, I work in political theory, which of course means that while I talk lots about war and morality I don't, in general, do things like, well, get my hands dirty with actual empirical day-to-day issues in war. Fortunately, there are those who are willing to get their hands dirty, doing the sorts of empirical work necessary for theorists to do ours. One such man, Patrick Bentley, is

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-1153386527791665442006-07-20T03:21:00.000-05:002006-07-20T04:08:50.670-05:00

...but I can't really help it. I've been interested in Nozick's Experience Machine objection in Anarchy, State and Utopia since early in grad school. Now David Friedman blogs about the experience machine, with some insightful discussion following, and at Catallarchy, Scott Scheule both comments on Friedman and offers a very thoughtful criticism to my own comment. I started to respond to Scott

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-1153132436430829202006-07-17T05:31:00.000-05:002006-07-17T05:33:56.453-05:00

Ohmygod. It’s a real post. Or a sort of real post. Okay, it might be a real post, depending on how long I decide to keep writing. It’s Saturday night here in Swansea as I write this. I’m tired—physically, not really ready for sleep—full on some, frankly rather bad, Chinese take-away, clean again after spending a long day out in the sun, and starting to feel just a bit warm from the now

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-1152717173882568562006-07-12T10:10:00.000-05:002006-07-12T10:12:53.910-05:00

Yes, I do still exist. I'm sure that you all missed me terribly. I've been suffering through a lack of internet access for the past few days; it's taken the university here a couple of days to finally get my account up and running. In the meantime, I've had to deal with weather in the 20 C range (a welcome break from the mid-to-upper 30s back in NC). Swansea has much to recommend it. More later (

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-1152074516425869772006-07-04T23:23:00.000-05:002006-07-04T23:41:56.446-05:00

Apologies for the light blogging recently. Okay, I know, it's not like I ever have been all that good about blogging regularly, but it's been particularly bad of late. It'll probably be a couple more days before anything of substance might appear. I've been preparing for my trip to Swansea for the last couple of weeks, and that's sucked up most of my blogging time.So for the next month or so,

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-1151520635949516432006-06-28T13:33:00.000-05:002006-06-28T13:50:36.033-05:00

In a recent post, I commented that arguments for psychological egoism are laughably bad and that I thus wasn’t going to address them further. Tom, quite fairly, called me out on the claim, asking whether I could provide either a summary or a link to a good argument against PE. So in what follows, I’ll attempt to show why psychological egoism is a doctrine that ought to be rejected. First, we

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-1151326776090923232006-06-26T07:39:00.000-05:002006-06-26T08:00:58.390-05:00

Okay, this is kind of a waste of time, but it's at least a marginally interesting waste of time. Via Kevin Drum, I came across this survey that purports to determine social values through questions about consumer preferences. People are then lumped into various "tribes" that vary according to generation (there are three tribes for pre-boomers, four for boomers, and six for us lucky Gen Xers.)I

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-1151082298714251692006-06-23T10:56:00.000-05:002006-06-23T12:20:05.596-05:00

At Catallarchy, there's a rousing, extended (several days now, which is extended in blogosphere-time) discussion of interpersonal comparisons of utility. Several of the regulars there have weighed in on the issue, and there is some disagreement among the Catallarchists themselves regarding whether or not it's possible to make interpersonal comparisons of utility. (See here, here, here, here, and

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-1150816591391056422006-06-20T09:36:00.001-05:002006-06-20T10:22:43.456-05:00

During my ritual reading-of-blogs-in-order-to-put-off-work-I- should-be-doing-this-morning, I came across this post by Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber. There Chris discusses, among other things, Luck Egalitarianism and the relationship between luck and desert. Luck Egalitarianism rests upon something like John Rawls' criticisms of desert as a morally useful concept. Rawls points out that much of

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-1150747683871746332006-06-19T14:14:00.000-05:002006-06-19T15:08:04.076-05:00

Last week, I posted an argument that I received via e-mail positing that the difference between liberals and libertarians is that liberals adopt a zero-sum morality while libertarians are able to grasp that, in a post-hunter/gatherer society, morality really is positive sum. I promised a longer response than the one I gave there. You thought I'd forgotten, didn' you? Well, I didn't. I'm not sure

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-1150744467835667752006-06-19T13:43:00.000-05:002006-06-19T14:14:27.880-05:00

Via Kevin Drum, I see that North Korea is preparing to test-launch a missle that is capable of reaching parts of Alaska. That same missle is also thought to be capable of delivering nuclear warheads. Kevin posits that this news is an excellent opportunity for muscular liberals (Peter Beinart, for instance, has been making a great deal of noise with his recent book--The Good Fight-- calling for

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-1150739689337451812006-06-19T12:24:00.000-05:002006-06-19T12:54:49.533-05:00

The Great Puke Adventure. That's what Matthew (my almost-4-year-old, for those of you not in the loop) and I have agreed to call Friday evening. It wasn't supposed to be that way. For the last month, Matthew has been excited about Grandpa's promise to take him to see Cars when it opened. Actually, I'm not sure which of them has been more excited; my dad is a huge NASCAR fan, and I think that he's

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-1150479084768203842006-06-16T11:49:00.000-05:002006-06-16T12:31:25.073-05:00

As several of you know, I grew up as a Baptist. Not just any Baptist, either. A conservative Baptist. My church didn't belong to any particular Baptist convention because those organized Baptists were just way too liberal (though I think that, after the conservative take-over of the Southern Baptist Convention in the '90s, my old church may have decided to affiliate itself with the SBC). In the

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-1150345527861371542006-06-14T21:10:00.000-05:002006-06-14T23:25:28.000-05:00

Continuing the recent theme, an e-mailer asks me about the differences between liberals and libertarians. My e-mailer's suggestion: perhaps the answer is to be found in evolutionary psychology. Here's the argument in its entirety.One of the very first attractive selling points of libertarianism to those who are inclined to accept it is its symmetry and consistency with regards to government

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-1150306798459037302006-06-14T11:30:00.000-05:002006-06-14T12:39:59.020-05:00

Am I really a liberal Democrat? That's the question posed to me recently by a reader of this blog and a regular commentator at Catallarchy, Steve Podraza. I'll let him speak for himself. In a very nice e-mail to me (which he kindly gave me permission to quote here), Steve submits that:You insist that you are not a libertarian, but a liberal and a democrat. My own reaction to this is to believe

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-1149953235728210672006-06-10T09:26:00.002-05:002006-06-10T10:27:55.123-05:00

So what the hell am I doing ripping off a Sartre title? No, really, what the hell am I doing ripping off a Sartre title? I'm the guy who rolls his eyes at the very mention of French philosophy. So what's the explanation? I suppose it could be that I've realized the truth of Sartre's claim that hell is other people. Or perhaps I'm really tired. Or maybe it's that I'm dating an existentialist.

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-1149267289271711722006-06-02T11:28:00.000-05:002006-06-02T11:54:50.536-05:00

Twice now in the last couple of weeks, I've been accused of an unwillingness to change my mind. Now as a philosopher, I take great affront to such a charge; we are, after all, supposed to be willing to go wherever the best arguments lead us. I suspect that, in both cases, the person in question confused my defending the position that I think is conclusion of the best arguments with my holding a

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-1149081480921733242006-05-31T07:59:00.000-05:002006-05-31T19:58:43.313-05:00

At Catallarchy, Matt McIntosh has responded to my response to his initial article on Mill and polycentric law. Matt raises some good points there; go check it out.But this post isn't really a reply to Matt, but rather to part of the discussion thread in Matt's post. There Dain criticized my arguments as neocolonialist and suggested that colonialism and exploitation are necessarily connected.

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-1148841803590563642006-05-28T12:38:00.000-05:002006-05-28T13:43:23.736-05:00

Okay, so maybe making claims about the future of liberalism is a bit overblown. But I hate thinking of titles, so just deal with it. Wow, there's a really professional start to a post. It is Memorial Day weekend though, and I'm feeling casual. Or more causal than usual. Didn't think that was possible, did you? Enough of this. Let's get to the serious stuff.So in my last post, I confessed to

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-1148439143664613012006-05-23T19:17:00.000-05:002006-05-23T21:52:23.840-05:00

So I've finally made it through all of the Mill-fest articles from last Friday. There is really a lot of good stuff there; I wish that I had time to comment on everything that I found to be of interest, for there is certainly a lot of it. I do plan to get to at least some of it in the near future, now that my Maymester course is over. Whether that in fact works out remains to be seen, though:

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The Catallarchy Mill-fest is now up and running. Included are posts from Rick Clancy on Mill and immigration reform; Brian Doss on consequentialist and axiomatic resoning in On Liberty; Matt McIntosh on experiments in living as an argument for polycentrism; and two by yours truly, one on the proper scope of the Harm Principle and the other on Mill's case for liberal colonialism.I want to take a

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by Joe MillerI know that it seems like I'm picking on Tom rather a lot lately. Okay, it's just twice, but still. Anyway, in what I suspect is at least an oblique reply to my discussion of Tom's post on gay marriage, Tom offers his analysis of Mill's Harm Principle:Many proponents of the harm principle read it narrowly, as if the only harm that one may do to another is immediate or predictable (as

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by Joe MillerMany of you know (at least via his writings and comments here), Tom from Liberty Corner. Now I like Tom. I even agree with him on some things once in a while. It's not terribly often, I'll admit. Despite his libertarianism, I'm actually far more liberal than he is on social matters. And despite my respect for markets, I'm far less of a marketist than he. Many of our differences,

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by Joe MillerI had kind of a fifth-grade moment earlier today. While reading Crooked Timber, I came across this post by Belle Waring. She's responding to a bit of lunacy from Eugene Volokh in her usual extremely witty way when, out of nowhere, comes this:Now, I say this in the full knowledge that Eugene Volokh holds all sorts of views on many topics with which I completely disagree. Furthermore,

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by Joe MillerSometime commentator, Catallarch and all-around smart guy (you owe me $20 for that last one, by the way) Matt McIntosh has written a nice defense of exploitation at TCS Daily. I'm going to rather shamelessly quote at length here: Let us say that I am poor and you are wealthy. I live a harsh life of bare subsistence farming, while you make several thousand dollars per day as a

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-1146714773185779842006-05-03T21:48:00.000-05:002006-05-03T22:52:53.206-05:00

by Joe MillerIt's not uncommon in the philosophical literature to find at least a few snarky comments about the tensions inherent in the notion of armed humanitarian intervention. The comments are even snarkier (is that a word?) in some of the referee's comments that I've received from various journals. (Interesting aside: the snarkiest of these comments came from journals that accepted my

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by Joe MillerOkay, so the magazine doesn't really endorse Peter Singer. I doubt that Rick Reilly has the faintest idea who Singer is. But he does nicely channel Singer's utilitarian argument for famine relief. Reilly's target, however, isn't famine relief but malaria relief. Check it out here. Then click on over here and donate your $20 to by mosquito nets for kids in Africa. Private charity at

Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15490160745469826370noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20827315.post-1145907335728110592006-04-24T10:35:00.000-05:002006-04-24T14:35:35.733-05:00

by Joe MillerIn my last post, I looked at two arguments in favor of restricting profane speech on public airwaves during certain hours of the day (the so-called 'safe harbor' provisions which prohibit profanity between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.). In this post I want to take up the next challenge for those who are opposed to FCC restrictions on speech.3. Profanity is harmful to children and should thus

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by Joe Miller First, a big welcome to all of you who just found this site while looking for porn. I'll just throw in the words 'teen'’ and 'MILF'’ and I should pretty much capture the highly-coveted Comic Book Guy demographic. For everyone else, welcome to (another) defense of free speech. I'’ve been thinking some lately of the so-called '“Hart-Devlin Debate'” current in the philosophy of

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by Joe MillerRick makes a nice point with respect to my claims about rich societies providing a safety net:And sure, the idea of Utilitarianism is to maximize utility (happiness), but what about those situations that don't *maximize* but are still the right thing to do. Such as Joe's comment that a wealthy nation should provide a fairly large safety net for the lower class at the expense of

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by Adam Johnson In Chapter 12 of Just and Unjust Wars, Walzer addresses several of the issues surrounding terrorism. Numerous times in this discourse on terrorism, the concept of assassination is also discussed. Though he flirts dangerously close to conflating these two categories of actions at times, Walzer eventually settles on drawing a somewhat odd and particularly blurred lined between the

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by Steven Grueshaber We all know that wars are terrible things. This seems evident from Michael Walzer's constant reiteration of "War is Hell." Our goal in constructing a theory of just war should be to limit the number of wars and to limit the amount of suffering caused by those that do occur. My goal is to examine the concept of terrorism and to determine how we should treat it in our just

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by Kim Morrison I have had the most difficult time with the topic of a soldier’s moral responsibilities. I suppose part of my problem lies in my belief that people who can philosophize about war so much have probably never experienced it for themselves. Since I don’t know the military history of any philosophers I am sure that I am wrong, at least I hope I am. The other part of my problem lies

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by Joe MillerA couple of weeks ago, a threw together a post in which I attempted to distinguish liberals from leftists. Or at least that's how the post started; looking back, I'm not sure that I really did say all that much, other than to offer some vague claims about anti-Americanism and a soapboxy rant that while criticism is important, so too is remembering all the things that the U.S. does

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by Joe MillerInteresting how sometimes real-life events catch up to abstract philosophical discussions. Just today, Mitch passed along this link to Flt Lt Malcolm Kendall-Smith, a RAF doctor (who as it happens has a diploma in philosophy). Kendall-Smith is currently awaiting a verdict from his court-martial. His crime? Refusing an order to deploy to Iraq, which he claims is an illegal war.

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by Joe MillerWarm weather, college students in shorts strolling to class, driving my car, not once wondering where the hell I am or whether I'm at the right tube stop. I guess that I'm officially back in North Carolina again. I'm also about 10 days behind on everything, having done exactly zero work while off in London. Okay, I did attend a Mill conference, but it's really hard to call something

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by Wesley GibbsWhen reading Dr. Miller’s article I found myself agreeing with the logic behind many of his points, mainly those associated with the lack of invincible ignorance for a soldier and the ones surrounding a soldier’s duty to obey the law. The main issue that I had with the article was surrounding the United States being bound under Constitutional law to follow the United Nations

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by Jeremy Page Although Walzer is supposedly the foremost Just War Theorist we have been studying, it has not stopped our class from finding “issues” in his writings. I have found that sometimes I am able to agree with Walzer, but with a great deal of modifications to his writing. Walzer’s writing on War Crimes is no exception; I have found that most of the conclusions that Walzer comes up with

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by James Moore I am responding to chapter sixteen of Just And Unjust Wars by Michael Walzer. In this chapter Walzer continues his discussion on rules of war during war. He is particularly concerned with soldiers and their obligations to their superior officers. He is trying to see who should be held accountable for war crimes and acts that are directed at innocent civilians. During this essay

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by Mitch UllmanJ. J. Miller, in his paper “Jus ad bellum and an Officer’s Moral Obligations: Invincible Ignorance, the Constitution, and Iraq,” runs a long gauntlet, filled with moral spears, at an attempt to get from jus ad bellum to jus in bellum. While the Constitutional/International law issues and the points concerning the morality/legality of the second invasion of Iraq are quite

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by Joe MillerSorry for the scarcity of posts recently. I'm currently in London at University College London for the John Stuart Mill Bicentennial Conference, which concluded just yesterday. There were a number of really outstanding papers on display as well as questions and comments by some impressive philosophers. I've a number of posts on the conference milling (sorry) about in my head, so as

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by Steven Grueshaber This week we are dealing with questions regarding jus in bello, or ‘justice in war.’ Jus in bello questions are concerned with actions that occur after a war is already started. What actions are you justified in performing during a time of war? This is a very broad question and the answer to it is beyond the scope of this paper. The goal of this paper is to address more

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by Joe MillerAt the TPMCafe Bookclub, Todd Gitlin is blogging about his new book, The Intellectuals and the Flag. It seems that Gitlin's basic premise is that, post 9/11, "intellectually as well as politically, it felt to me that the left was disarmed." Indeed, Gitlin goes on to criticize in the second part of the book several "incapacitating trends in the academic left." Gitlin goes on to

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by Joe MillerA week or so ago, I criticized Edward Feser's account of preventive war (see Feser's original posts here and here). Professor Feser was good enough to reply to several of my points via a very nice (indeed, much nicer than my own post had been) e-mail. He has graciously allowed me to reprint those points here. As this sort of interaction (that is, feedback from other philosophers,

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by Joe MillerIn preparation for a campus lecture at the University of Minnesota, Peter Singer has written an editorial for the Minnesota Daily, the campus newspaper, condemning factory farming. Singer chronicles a fairly standard set of objections to factory farms:Cows and veal calves are confined in crates too narrow for them even to turn around, let alone walk a few steps. Egg-laying hens are

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by Joe MillerI came across a couple of different sets of statistics today, and I'm not really quite sure what to make of them.The first is courtesy of the Pew Research Center (via Liberty Corner) which shows that Republicans are happier than Democrats (see the pretty chart here). According to Pew, 45% of Republicans report being very happy as compared to just 30% of Democrats and 29% of

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by Joe MillerThe always enlightening Matt McIntosh has posted a nice analysis of the somewhat incoherent U.S. foreign policy with respect to Iran. Matt's thesis: the hardline approach that the U.S. has taken (beginning with the inclusion of Iran on the "axis of evil" list) provides perverse incentives for the Iranian regime. Specifically, by making it clear that Iran is on our hit list of

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by Joe MillerVia Jonathan Wilde, I see that Tyler Cowen asks readers to offer their most absurd beliefs. Tyler lays out the rules:What is your most absurd view? Comments are open. Yes your comment should be crazy but serious too. It should refer to a view which you actually hold, but many other smart people consider untenable and bizarre.For me, I hardly know where to start. I hold a number of,

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by Wesley GibbsAs I was reading the article by George Lucas Jr., I was at first pleased with much of the analysis he makes about the difference between war and humanitarian military intervention. His point about how the goals and strategies used in intervention will always be hard to identify was one I agreed with. Even after finding points I disagreed with, I still got some overall enjoyment

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by Joe MillerThanks to Tom at Liberty Corner who alerted me to the existence of a couple of posts on JWT at Right Reason, I've been spending my evening alternating between attempting to perfect my martini recipe and reading Edward Feser's first two of a projected three-part series of posts on Paleoconservatism and the War in Iraq (see here and here for parts I and II respectively). I had intended

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by Joe MillerIn Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Robert Nozick famously advances the view that rights act as side-constraints on our actions. There Nozick rejects what he calls a "utilitarianism of rights" which calls for minimizing instances of rights violations and argues instead that a proper understanding of rights as side-constraints requires that rights function as "moral constraints in the

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by Wesley Frazier Walzer outlines a series of justifications for the intervention of one state towards another. They are drawn initially from Mill and largely from the legalist paradigm. They are as follows : 1) The formation of political communities within a nation due to secession or national liberation. 2) Counter balancing other external involvement. 3) Human rights and other

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by Adam Johnson In Chapter 6 of Just and Unjust Wars, Walzer addresses the complicated issue of wars of intervention. Under the premise that aggression is the most important (or perhaps only) factor in determining if a war is just or unjust and the only wars waged in good moral standing are defensive, wars of intervention seem to be rather directly disallowed. Indeed, military intervention to

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by Joe MillerThat seems to be the position of Robert Kaplan, at any rate. Writing in the Washington Post, Kaplan argues thatBecause under Hussein anybody could and in fact did disappear in the middle of the night and was tortured in the most horrific manner, the Baathist state constituted a form of anarchy masquerading as tyranny. The decision to remove him was defensible, while not providential.

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by Joe MillerOne of the difficulties with any sort of discussion of preventative war is that it's pretty nearly impossible to know, on consequentialist grounds, whether your decision was the right one. After all, the justification for prevention is that (a) fighting later would have been inevitable and (b) delaying would be more costly. The problem? Short of having a direct line to an omniscient

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by Jamie McCall In “The Romance of the Nation State”, David Luban draws a distinction between the universal rights of all people and the conception of the nation-state through an analysis of Michael Walzer’s essay “The Moral Standing of States: a Response to Four Critics.” Luban proposes that a distinction between the traditional nation-state and universal rights must be made, and that the

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by Joe MillerOkay, actually, I've no desire whatsoever to defend leftists. Nor would I dispute the claim that in American universities (at least in the humanities and the social sciences), the faculty lean noticeably to the left. I'll happily admit that I am a liberal--a neoliberal to be more precise. When it comes to economic policy, I believe very strongly in markets; indeed, I think that the

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by James Moore The piece I will be focusing on and responding to is a piece by William Galston. Galston gives his stance on the idea of a preemptive war in Iraq. Galston wrote this piece prior to the United States going to war with Iraq, yet he still fell firmly against going to war with Iraq. Preemptive war is a difficult topic to talk about because it is something that you can never be one

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by Jeremy Page Given today’s political climate, this subject is probably the touchiest one we will encounter this semester. I have no doubt where most of our class’ opinion lies with respect to the Iraq War. I suppose most of us are willing to slam the war, decrying the preemptive strike Bush made along with the accusations of American imperialism. No doubt Thursday night will be amongst the

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by Joe MillerI'm not quite sure what exactly to make of the news that President Bush has signed off on a plan to outsource running six U.S. ports to a subsidiary of the government of the United Arab Emirates. Granted, when it comes to hating Americans and breeding Islamists, the UAE isn't in the same league as Iran or Afghanistan or even Saudi Arabia. Still, the UAE isn't exactly the most

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by Mitch Ullman In a class concerning itself with matters of war and morality, especially at a time in which ‘war’ appears to be simply an indefinite article of the catch-phrase-of-the-day and morality has been dashed upon the sponge that is Relativism, I feel that it is only right that the concerns contemporary to the members therein be analyzed and deliberated. Such is the case with William

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by Joe MillerFrom CNN:On the eve of a presidential visit to a renewable energy lab in Colorado, the Department of Energy said it has transferred $5 million to the operation, which had funding cut and employees laid off this month due to budget shortfalls.I'm sure that there is a perfectly good explanation for this, and that it's not at all a sudden realization that what had been a perfectly good

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by Joe MillerPresident Bush's call for an additional 7,000 international troops in Darfur strikes me as good news indeed. Continuing violence and genocide would seem to indicate that the status quo isn't working well. Supplementing the roughly 7,000 African Union soldiers currently on the ground with an international force under U.N. control is a step in the right direction.Cynics may point out

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by Joe MillerSeveral weeks ago, in my first post on this subject, I argued that the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution together with the U.N. Charter's status as a fully-ratified treaty act as a limitation on the conditions under which Congress may legally declare war. The post drew fire from a few readers (okay, I have only a few readers, but those I do have were more vocal than usual in

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by Joe MillerI often joke with my students that I became a philosopher mainly by default; being unable to decide on a major, I chose to enter a field in which where I can discuss everything. We philosophers simply stick "philosophy of" in front of any old noun and christen it a new sub-field. So it's not often that I find myself totally and completely speechless. Yet that's how I've spent the

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by Adam JohnsonIn his essay "The ‘Just War’ and The Right of Self-Defense," Frederick Struckmeyer addresses the morality of defensive wars. In this discussion, he brings up and rejects the pacifist stance of Donald Wells who holds the premise that all wars are equally immoral. Struckmeyer’s grounds for dismissing this stance center on the complaint that Wells is offering no real support for the

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by Kim MorrisonWhen I chose to read the article by Frederick Struckmeyer, I had no idea that I was going to be dealing with the article on “just war” by Donald Wells again. I knew I had gone in a very different direction with the Wells article than most would have but after reading Struckmeyer’s article I can see now just how different my direction was. When writing my last paper I admit that I

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by Joe MillerLet me start by acknowledging that, yes, it is probably bad form to write on an assigned reading before those of you doing papers this week have turned them in. But I'm going to do it anyway. Sorry. You can always say that you had been planning to write just what I'd written but then had to change your topic at the last minute. Maybe you'll even make me feel guilty. More likely

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by Joe MillerAmong the several books I'm currently working on reading is a nifty volume entitled War and Border Crossings (which I'm supposed to be reviewing for Social Theory and Practice). Edited by Peter A. French and Jason A. Short, the book is a collection of papers presented at a conference by the same name back in February 2003 (a month before the U.S. invasion of Iraq). There are several

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by Joe MillerAt Left2Right, Elizabeth Anderson, a philosopher at the University of Michigan, takes up the question of economic justice. Anderson's post is far, far too long to summarize adequately. Go read it; it's very well done. Of course, having said that it can't be summarized adequately, I'm now going to summarize it inadequately. The nutshell version: Anderson offers a game to be played

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by Joe MillerOver at TPMcafe, Matt Yglesias complains about the developing trend of applying the label "neo-realist" to apply to anyone who cherry-picks from realpolitic and idealism in order to offer a post hoc justification for whatever George W. Bush's flavor-of-the-month foreign policy. Matt notes that "neorealism" already has a meaning in foreign policy circles. It is the position of Kenneth

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by Joe MillerI wrote a bit last week about freedom of speech here at UNCP. I haven't, to date, said anything much about the farce turned tragedy that is the fundamentalist Islamic response to the publication of "blasphemous" cartoons by newspaper. The truth is that while I thought about posting on it earlier, I'm really not sure what there is to say that I didn't just cover in the earlier post.

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by Andrew DavisIntroduction After the smoke clears and the fires are put out, what can you say was the reason for such tragedy? What kind of theories can one come up with to explain wars? Explaining war and what it does to a society is something that has been debated and talked about since the dawn of man. Theories of war come from tremendous amounts of time and research. Thucydides and other

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by Steven GrueshaberIn chapter four of Michael Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars, Walzer explains the idea of aggression and its role in a war. He also discusses the way in which a political community is an incarnation of the multitude of individuals within that community. However, when he moves on to the topic of appeasement, which is the policy of conceding to enemies in order to preserve a state

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