Work in progress (2)

Some more work in progress by IOS-types….

David Kelley (Atlas Society) has just announced a webinar for 9-10 pm Eastern time, this coming Monday, June 3^rd. The topic is “Rand Versus Hayek,” and is  based in part on Kelley’s paper “Rand Versus Hayek on Abstraction,” in Reason Papers vol. 33 (Fall 2011) [18 page PDF]. Carrie-Ann and I saw Kelley give a version of this talk to an overflow audience at the Students for Liberty Conference this past February in Washington, DC; about 120 students were crammed into the room, sitting on the floor and in the aisle, but held in rapt attention. For a variety of reasons, the Rand and/vs. Hayek topic itself is heating up not just among Objectivists and libertarians but among people outside of either camp, so this is a good time to be discussing it.

A bit of web searching produced a few interesting hits of papers relevant to Kelley’s topic, generally more Hayekian than Objectivist. (Objectivists have been late to the party.) Here is Glen Whitman’s “The Rules of Abstraction.” Here’s an older piece by W.P. Baumgarth, “Hayek and Political Order: The Rule of Law.” Here’s Linda Raeder, “Hayek on the Role of Reason in Human Affairs.” Arthur Diamond, “Hayek on Constructivism and Ethics.” And Steven Horwitz on Hayek and Rand in JARS. Readers interested in keeping up with Hayek talk should bookmark or follow Greg Ransom’s Taking Hayek Seriously, and Jeffrey Friedman’s Hayek Project. In engaging with Hayekians, no matter how vehemently you reject Hayek’s thought, I’d advise against taking this head-in-the-sand methodological approach, care of Harry Binswanger.

 (I should say that I know of Hayek’s arguments only from the comments of writers who agree with him, but I’m pretty sure I’ve got it right; if not, I hope someone will correct me.)

A quick response to the audacity of Binswanger’s hope: as a methodological point, you can’t legitimately criticize an author you haven’t read, and you shouldn’t expect to be taken seriously enough to be corrected after you’ve done so.

On a completely different topic, Shawn Klein (Rockford College) reports at his Sports Ethicist blog that he’s gotten a paper accepted for the upcoming conference of the International Association for the Philosophy of Sport this September at Cal State Fullerton. Here’s the first paragraph of his abstract for “Work and Play: Similarities and Parallels”:

The concept of play is one of the most discussed concepts in the philosophy of sport. The relationship between play and work, however, is less explored. But when it is, the assumption is that work and play are radically separate activities. In this paper, I want to challenge this assumption and argue that a clearer understanding of these activities shows us important parallels between work and play.

Click here for the rest, and for more information. By coincidence, Shawn’s topic dovetails with a discussion we’ll be having about the relation between productiveness and leisure in Reason Papers this summer.

Finally, Roderick Long (Auburn University) is doing his bleeding heart libertarian-thing in Istanbul, Turkey with this paper, and is then off to Athens to give a paper on “Shakespeare, Godwin, Kafka and the Political Problem of Other Minds.” Here’s a link that’ll take you to that paper–and to his flight itinerary.

Now that my grades are in, I’m looking forward to reading some of this stuff.

Irfan