Philosophy Club!

The Baggage Claim Effect and Limited Determinism

The Butterfly Effect is the common term for a system where small changes to initial conditions create outsized impacts. Logan, Katie and Ben discuss the "Baggage Claim Effect," to describe a system where for a limited time, changes to initial conditions—even large ones—have no impact whatsoever. When we rush to catch a connecting flight, there is one thing that may hold us back. We may speed off the aircraft, run down the corridors, breeze through passport control, and yet, if our bag is not blundering down the carousel, we have gained nothing. It seems then, that to hurry brings you nothing more than if you hand merely dawdled. Logan, Katie and Ben discuss this "baggage claim effect," whether it exists, how it might be significant or meaningless and wonder just how determined our lives might be. Still, there may be some solace to be gained from those moments when you believe you have no control, baggage claim is still ahead of you.

Non-Consensual Governance

After a six-month hiatus, Logan and Ben come back to dismiss "Consent of the Governed" and move on to what happens next. If consent of the governed does not dictate good governance, what does? We rollick through ideas from John Rawls, Jean-Jacque Rousseau, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Socrates (by the way, it was the Dialogue of Crito, in case you were wondering) and Charles Tilly before comparing our results with James Madison. Philosophy Club! is back and this is just the beginning!

What is Justice? Parsing through Plato, Habitual Obedience and Batman.

Is Justice getting what you deserve? Is it perhaps the balance of wisdom moderation and courage? Or is Justice a chimerical idea we are fed to go along with authority? Beau, Ben and Logan begin to tackle this timeless question. We explicitly reference Plato's Republic, Batman and John Austin's Command Theory of Law to make sense of this question. Beau will allude to H.L.A. Hart's Core and Penumbra understanding of legal terms, as well as evoke Hart's Rule of Recognition to deal with the problem of authority. In the end, we temporarily settle on a version of justice--"the obligatory exercise of authority" (we realized afterwards this definition seems to owe a great deal to Hans Kelsen's Pure Theory of Law, which we don't address at all), and our philosophers agree to re-attack this problem another time.

Philosophy Club Afterthoughts! How to be Free.

No question so concerns our collective humanity as that of freedom. Unsatisfied with our first conclusions on the subject, Ben and I reframe the question of Liberty. Perhaps it is not choice maximizes freedom (to the credit of Kitty as well from the last episode, no quantity of colorful consumer choices which line the shelves of our stores and line our streets with briefly used garbage add even an ounce of real freedom to our lives) but there are certain higher order freedoms that outline what it is to lead a free life. If we but look to the Federalist Papers or the Preamble to our United States Constitution, we find a treasured attempt to outline freedoms by demarcating the limits of government power. It is from this angle, we re-attempt to discover what it is that makes us free.

How to be Free.

Logan asks Kitty, Mike and Ben "what is Liberty? Is it the most choice? Is it the least obligation? Is it the least arbitrary system?" There is perhaps no concept so central to humanity as freedom. Every choice is an inherently human exercise of the will. The four Philosophers' discussion of what Liberty means ranges from Cherry Blossoms and John Denver to slavery and John Rawls' veil of ignorance. They decide that obligation and choice are interrelated, that the cost of a given action is a part of freedom, and that society today is generally far more free than society of yesteryear because of how much more choice the average American enjoys. Additionally, Mike discovers that expectations of others are often obligations.