Category Archives: Uncategorized

Overview of Chapter 3 of Anarchy, State, and Utopia

We will begin our review of Chapter 3 of Anarchy, State, and Utopia later today or tomorrow. Before proceeding, however, let’s take a closer look at Chapter 3’s overall structure and organization. In brief, Chapter 3 is titled “Moral Constraints … Continue reading →

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North Pole of Mars

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Proto-state or protection racket?

Nozick concludes Chapter 2 (pp. 22-25) of Anarchy, State, and Utopia with a hybrid definitional-theoretical question: Is the dominant protection association a state? That is, does the postulated dominant protective association (postulated by Nozick) rise to level of a minimal … Continue reading →

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Invisible hand theories

In this post, we continue with our review of Anarchy, State, and Utopia (ASU). We have already reviewed Chapter 1 and the first three subsections of Chapter 2, so let’s just re-grab this philosophical bull by the horns and pick … Continue reading →

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Science Twitter

As a public service announcement, below is a listing of some science-related Twitter accounts:

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Blog on hold

Today is our last day of classes, and we will be flying out to Austin, TX this afternoon to attend a teaching workshop. Our review of Chapter 2 of Nozick’s classic work Anarchy, State, and Utopia will resume on Monday, … Continue reading →

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Are Nozick’s protective associations natural monopolies?

We continue our review of Chapter 2 of Anarchy, State, and Utopia. As we noted in a previous post, Chapter 2 is divided into five subsections. Here, we review the third subsection (pp. 15-17), which is aptly titled “The Dominant … Continue reading →

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Nozick’s protective associations (and two untestable conjectures)

Our previous post revisited the first section of Chapter 2 of Anarchy, State, and Utopia. In that post, we summarized Nozick’s comprehensive summary of three serious problems that could arise even in Locke’s idyllic version of the state of nature. … Continue reading →

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The laws of nature

Chapter 2 of Anarchy, State, and Utopia is divided into five separate subsections. Here, we will review the first of these five subsections (pp. 10-12), where Nozick summarizes Locke’s description of the state of nature and identifies three practical problems … Continue reading →

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Nozick’s state of nature

Chapter 1 of Nozick’s classic work “Anarchy, State, and Utopia“ poses the following “what if” thought experiment: What if we lived in a state of nature, in a world in which there were no actual states or governments? This hypothetical … Continue reading →

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