We had a philosophy department picnic on Saturday, at Lake Wahburg, which is this pretty little place owned by the University. We kayaked a little, but failed to see any alligators. We also consumed much of Ludwig's world-famous marinated flank steak, really good guacamole, hummus, brownies, Holly's famous chocolate-chip pumpkin muffins.. it was a good day.

Except that we really wanted to swim (uh.. jump off the dock), but there were little cones around saying No Swimming, apparently because no lifeguard was around. So we walk up to the boathouse to ask about a lifeguard, and we were told that "there was something in the water."

Seriously, how scary is that? The entire lake was closed because there was "something in the water." Like... a giant gator? With chainsaw attachments and homicidal instincts? Lasers, even? Or maybe just skin-dissolving parasites. In the end, we didn't get to swim. Boo.

I did get a good conversation in with Carlos and his very pretty wife Maria though. They're both law people, and Maria is working on her dissertation in Spanish, and we got to talking about what justice is, and what the responsibility of the state and the judicial system is. It ended up being the two Columbians and Moti versus me. They were the hardcore socialists, and I was libertarian through and through.

But they did bring up many good points, put more clearly than I have ever heard it put, and argued more convincingly than I have ever encountered. Very roughly, their position was that the purpose of the government and justice system is to distribute resources evenly - what is called distributive justice. So, if you earn alot of money, the state can (and should) take some of that money and use it to help the poor, the hungry, the unfortunate. My position was that the government and justice system should be about protecting property - what I earn is mine, and the government should help ensure no one, not even itself, can take it away from me without my consent. It might be really nice for me to help the less fortunate, but it cannot be the case that the state can compel me to do so against my will. The right kind of justice, on my view, is corrective and protective, not distributive.

A simple thought experiment might serve to draw out intuitions on this issue. Say, you have someone born to a rich family, who then, through inheritance, becomes obscenely rich. On the other hand, you have someone born to a poor family, who is finding it really hard to scratch out even a meagre existence. The socialists would say that the state is justified in taking money from one to give to the other. I say it is never justified - legalized looting is still looting. I will not pay higher taxes just so you can get healthcare you couldn't afford otherwise, so you can have more children, so you can have subsidized housing. If you haven't earned it, these are things you don't deserve, and it cannot be morally right to give someone something he does not deserve, just like it cannot be morally right to withhold from someone something he does deserve.



And now, for something a little lighter - PHILHOUSE, in green!

That's me napping, after a crazy two weeks. Holly snuck in and took the pictures. I'm plotting my vengeance as we speak. I think I'll sneak into her room and take pictures of her as she's doing her daily naked dance. They will be posted.

Two papers due in one week is not funny. Especially when one of them is on Descartes the assclown, who, despite being rather intelligent, decides to spread his writings on the intellect and the will among various letters in addition to the Meditations, resulting in me having to look them up for the paper. Jerk. But in my paper, I got to prove that Joe (a random person Pereboom talks about) doesn't exist. Fun-ness.

Also, we had a crazy party on Friday, aptly named the Philhouse Soiree. (Phil-house, philosophy house, because it's us three philosophy grad students living together...get it?) We had about 40 people show up, lots of booze for those who drink, lots of gamecube for those who don't. The fencers also showed up, and I discovered (to my delight) that Steve was just like me, with respect to being awesome at fighting games and sucking at everything else. And he plays Soulcalibur. Whee.

Oh, and these two russian girls (maybe three) were definitely hitting on Brian and I. They kept trying to get Brian and I to make out, the whole time they were at the party. Oh yeah, they wanted us bad.

I've also been reading too many comics instead of writing my papers. It's Terences fault, for introducing me to Dee Cee Plus Plus. Oh, and Terence, you should check out Annihilation. The artwork is pretty, and if you're into ridiculously superpowered beings duking it out, this is awesome. Some of the most powerful beings in the universe get together to stop Annihilus.

Another good one is the MarvelX series - EarthX, UniverseX, and ParadiseX. It's an insane epic, where Reed Richards accidently awakens the cosmic seed in everyone, so everyone has powers, and the world is changing massively. It's deeper than alot of the other stuff, just because it's longer and has time to develop, I guess.

In other news, we've had a spate of very successful culinary adventures recently. I made an awesome beef stew, Holly did some tasty tasty grilled ham and cheese on rye with potato soup, Brian made chilli with Killian's Red, it was all good. I'm gonna have to break out the basil soon before it stops being 'fresh basil' and starts being 'gross black goo.'


And with that, I'm back to working on my paper. Just so yall have a sense of what it is I do, here's an excerpt - delightful, ain't it?


Consider the two billiard balls A and B we were discussing earlier. A hits B, and B rolls away. There is a microphysical causal explanation for this, which tracks the token microphysical causal powers L₁ through L_x possessed by the microphysical bits[1] A₁ through A_n. According to Pereboom, there is a token higher-level causal power H, such that H is constituted wholly by L₁ through L_x, but it not identical to them. H, in this example, might be the power to cause B to move at velocity v.. H, obviously, cannot be attached to any particular one of the microphysical bits A₁ through A_n, since one of these atomic bits, by itself, has the power to cause B to move at velocity v. In addition, since the object-causal-power relation cannot hold many-one, H cannot be attached to multiple members of the set A₁ through A_n. H, however, cannot float free. There must then be an entity to which this higher-level causal power attaches. The natural choice would be A: it is the ball A that possesses the causal power H, to cause ball B to move at velocity v.

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[1] “Bits” is, of course, not a scientific term. I use it here to distance myself from theory-loaded words like atoms or strings or quarks. I use it to mean something like the ‘atoms’ of Democritus rather than the atoms of modern science, by which I mean simple parts that remain at the highest level of decomposition of physical objects. My argument is not committed to the existence of simples, however, and if modern science were to discover that there were no simples, my argument could nevertheless stand with minimal modification.