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This is an attempt to clarify the nature of extreme, or complete, “wokeness” in its modern sense. The central thesis is that it is an inverted form of fascism, and thereby even worse than some of its critics assume. In fact, it is far worse than ordinary fascism whether or not it is correct to see it as an inverted form. As this is a thesis, it is not a definition. Therefore, this thesis could certainly be mistaken. But if it is, then sound criticisms of the explanation would be needed to refute…Read more
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Immigration and Libertarianism: Open Borders versus DirectionalismMEST Journal 9 (2). 2021.To explain the correct libertarian approach to immigration, a thought-experiment posits a minimal-state libertarian UK and then the introduction of several relevant anti-libertarian policies with their increasingly disastrous effects. It is argued that the reverse of these imagined policies, as far as is politically possible, must be the correct way forward. This framing is intended to counter the tendency for many articles to misapply libertarian principles to the current messy situation on the…Read more
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Peter Singer’s “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”: Three Libertarian RefutationsStudia Humana 9 (2): 135-141. 2020.Peter Singer’s famous and influential article is criticised in three main ways that can be considered libertarian, although many non-libertarians could also accept them: 1) the relevant moral principle is more plausibly about upholding an implicit contract rather than globalising a moral intuition that had local evolutionary origins; 2) its principle of the immorality of not stopping bad things is paradoxical, as it overlooks the converse aspect that would be the positive morality of not startin…Read more
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Abortion and Infanticide: a Radical Libertarian DefenceIn Charles Tandy (ed.), Death And Anti-Death, Volume 19: One Year After Judith Jarvis Thomson (1929-2020), Ria University Press. pp. 139-152. 2021.1. First there is an outline of the libertarian approach taken here. 2. On the assumption of personhood, it is explained how there need be no overall inflicted harm and no proactive killing with abortion and infanticide. This starts with an attached-adult analogy and transitions to dealing directly with the issues. Various well-known criticisms are answered throughout. 3. There is then a more-abstract explanation of how it is paradoxical to assume a duty to do more than avoid inflicting overall …Read more
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Eleutheric-Conjectural Libertarianism: a Concise Philosophical ExplanationMEST Journal 10 (2): 111-123. 2022.The two purposes of this essay. The general philosophical problem with most versions of social libertarianism and how this essay will proceed. The specific problem with liberty explained by a thought-experiment. The positive and abstract theory of interpersonal liberty-in-itself as ‘the absence of interpersonal initiated constraints on want-satisfaction’, for short ‘no initiated impositions’. The individualistic liberty-maximisation theory solves the problems of clashes, defences, and rectificat…Read more
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The “free world” was the political rhetoric used during the Cold War in contrast to the “communist” countries. However, the “free world” was manifestly never free: the state considerably interfered with people in their persons and their property. And the “communist” countries were manifestly never communist in the Marxist sense: there was no common ownership of the means of production with the absence of social classes, money, and the state. It would have been more accurate to call them the “aut…Read more
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The Heterodox 'Fourth Paradigm' of Libertarianism: an Abstract Eleutherology plus Critical RationalismJournal of Libertarian Studies 23 91-116. 2019.1) Introduction. 2) The key libertarian insight into property and orthodox libertarianism’s philosophical confusion. 3) Clearer distinctions for applying to what follows: abstract liberty; practical liberty; moral defences; and critical rationalism. 4) The two dominant (‘Lockean’ and ‘Hobbesian’) conceptions of interpersonal liberty. 5) A general account of libertarianism as a subset of classical liberalism and defended from a narrower view. 6) Two abstract (non-propertarian, non-normative) theo…Read more
London, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Specialization
Political Libertarianism |
Social and Political Philosophy |
Anarchism |
Areas of Interest
Karl Popper |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Value Theory |