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Wednesday Lazy Linking

Call for Papers: Anarchy at the APA – Molinari Society 2011 Symposium on Philosophical Anarchy

The Molinari Society

MolinariSociety.org

Call for Papers

for the Society's Symposium to be held in conjunction with the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division meeting December 27-30, 2011, Washington, D.C.

Symposium Topic:

Explorations in Philosophical Anarchy

Submission Deadline:

May 18, 2011

The past two decades have seen a resurgence of interest, both in activist and academic circles, in Anarchist politics and theory, with new and challenging work from several differ­ent directions. Renewed academic interest in Anarchism has drawn attention to the import­ance, vitality and philosophical fruitfulness of key Anarchist arguments and concepts – such as the conflict between authority and auto­nomy; tensions between collectivism and individualism; critical challenges to hier­archy, centralized power, top-down control and author­itarian conceptions of represent­ation; and the development of concepts of spontaneous social order, decentralized consensus, and the knowledge problems and ideological myth­olog­izing inherent in relations or structures of domination.

Most of this discussion has, naturally enough, taken place within the field of political and moral philosophy. But Anarchist theory (like marxist or feminist theory) embodies more than a policy orientation or a system of moral or political theses. The Anarchist tradition offers a wide-ranging, diverse and vigorously argued literature, con­cern­ing the nature and foundations of human society, with impli­cat­ions for every aspect of philosophy, including not only political and moral theory but also aesthetics, social-science methodology, epistemology, and the philosophies of science, religion, history, lang­uage and logic. We are looking for papers that address possible connections, approaches, chal­lenges or insights that anarchy and its concept­ual environs may suggest for philosophy broad­ly – or that philosophy may suggest for anarchy – beyond the familiar territory of polit­ical and moral theory, espec­ially in such areas as epistemology, philosophy of language, philo­sophy of logic, and metaphilosophy or philosophical method. Papers from all analytical and critical standpoints (both with regard to philosophy and with regard to Anarchism) are welcome.

Please submit complete papers of 3,000-6,000 words for consideration for the 2011 Symposium by May 18, 2011. Papers should be of appropriate scope and length to be presented within 15-30 minutes. Submitting authors will be notified of the acceptance or rejection of their papers by May 31, 2011.

Submit papers as e-mail attachments, in Word .doc format or PDF, to cfp@molinarisociety.org

For any questions or information, contact us at info@molinarisociety.org

* * *

You can download a PDF of the Call For Papers to print and post on a bulletin board near you.

Some possible topics include — but are by no means limited to:

  • Authority and Epistemology
  • Anarchy and Logic
  • Illusions of control in philosophy
  • Decentralism or spontaneous order in philosophy of language
  • Philosophical implications of the work of canonical Anarchist theorists (Godwin, Proudhon, Molinari, Tucker, Spooner, Kropotkin, Tolstoy, De Cleyre, Goodman, Bookchin, Rothbard, Wolff, Zerzan…)
  • Anarchy and Rationality
  • Hierarchy, legibility and knowledge problems
  • Philosophical Method and Anarchism
  • Claims of representation and claims of knowledge
  • Etc.

Please spread the word to anyone who you think would be interested in the symposium topic!

Monday Lazy Linking

Ignorance and Markets

This is an unsigned editorial from the January 2009 issue of Philosophy (vol. 84, no. 327). Submitted for comment, without much commentary from my end. (Yet.)

Editorial: Ignorance and Markets

It may not be true that no one predicted the recent crash in the financial world. But it is certainly true that most well-informed observers and participants, including most importantly those who believed they were actually running things, were caught unawares. If they had been aware, they would have been able to avoid the worst consequences, at least for themselves, and even profit from the situation.

The 2008 financial crash has been compared to the fall of the Berlin Wall, in that just as the one signalled the end of an uncritical belief in socialism, at least of a centralised sort, the other signals the end to an uncritical belief in markets.

Let us leave aside the point that the markets of 2008 were actually heavily regulated in all sorts of ways, and so hardly unfettered. There is in fact an interesting parallel between 1989 and 2008 in one significant respect. Both events were largely unforeseen.

In one sense this is encouraging. For all our knowledge and technology there is much, even in human affairs, which is unpredictable and uncontrollable. This is, in a sense, judgment on hubris. It can also be liberating, particularly for those who do not see themselves as masters of the universe.

But should 2008 be seen as a decisive moment as far as belief in markets is concerned? Much will depend on what is meant by a market, no easy question when, as already mentioned, no markets to-day are unfettered, and are not likely to be in the foreseeable future.

We should, though, not forget that for followers of Adam Smith, such as Hayek, one of the main philosophical arguments in favour of markets was precisely the unpredictability of human action and of events more generally. From this perspective markets are not seen as perfect predictors, which there cannot be. But in situations of uncertainty they are seen as the most efficient and least hazardous way of disseminating information in a society and of responding to what cannot be predicted. It would be somewhat paradoxical if a failure of prediction was in itself taken to be an argument against a system which takes unpredictability as its starting point.

— Philosophy 84 (2009), 1. Cambridge University Press.

Thoughts?

Monday Lazy Linking

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