Stephan Kinsella Discusses Argumentation Ethics With Tom Woods
Here. Let me emphasize that I really do think I get what Hoppe is trying to do here, and I appreciate how awesome a project it is. It’s like Aquinas’ arguments for God; they are really hardcore and so much more fundamental than the usual thing you hear in a debate.
I just think Hoppe’s argument doesn’t work, I’m sorry. It’s not that I have a grudge against Hoppe’s style; for example, I love his Economic Science and the Austrian Method–he says the action axiom solved the mind-body problem. Absolutely blew my mind. But I just don’t think the argumentation ethics works.
==> Gene Callahan and I have at least three independent objections to it in this article that, in my opinion, are devastating. If just one of them goes through, it’s dead.
==> The very act of debating presupposes that we freely control our bodies and are standing on a piece of real estate. By making that observation, did I just prove that every non-criminal needs to own a plot of land in a just society? Of course not. But yet I’m pretty sure Stephan thinks it proves that every non-criminal needs to own his or her body. How?
==> At several points in his analysis, Stephan has to appeal to the fact that libertarian rights are reasonable and make sense, otherwise his argument doesn’t go through. For example, at about the 80% mark of the interview, Stephan discusses a guy who goes on a rampage on a farm, and the farmer imprisons the guy in his house while figuring out what to do next (like notify the law enforcement people). Stephan says the prisoner could demand, “How do you justify imprisoning me while you’re free?” and the farmer could say, “Because you just attacked my family!” Stephan’s point is that that is a legitimate reason, not like the arbitrary and/or non-universalizable reasons that social democrats would give to justify why they are using coercion to (say) imprison Wesley Snipes for tax evasion. But of course, the reason it seems reasonable to Stephan to imprison a guy for trying to steal private property, while it seems arbitrary and illegitimate to put a rich guy in a cage for not paying taxes, is that Stephan is a Rothbardian. Leo Tolstoy might think imprisoning the first guy would be arbitrary (especially if he was trying to take food or animals, not just hurting people and breaking stuff), and most Americans don’t think it’s arbitrary to lock up a selfish citizen who doesn’t pay his fair share of taxes. So in other words, to get anything out of argumentation ethics, you have to say, “First, let’s stipulate that libertarianism is right. Now, I can show you that anybody who denies libertarianism is wrong…”
==> Something that didn’t occur to me until listening to this podcast: Hoppe got the idea for this approach from his teacher, Habermas. Apparently Habermas himself used the approach to justify not the libertarian ethic, but a broader social democratic one. I haven’t looked it up, but I wonder if it goes something like this? “To properly debate, you need to be educated, have access to a good diet and exercise regimen, not be exhausted from working 80-hour weeks with no vacation or childcare, etc. So clearly, anybody arguing against the modern welfare state is contradicting himself.” So whatever methods Stephan uses to show why that is wrong, will also show why we don’t get to retain full-blown libertarianism either. As I said before, the only way you get libertarianism, is if you already believe it for independent reasons.
==> I’m exaggerating a bit (and hence being a bit unfair), but I want to make my above claims clear: Imagine somebody said, “2+2 = 4, therefore libertarianism is the only ethical system.” Then I say that’s a non sequitur, and the guy who proposed it is stunned. “But Bob, you’re a libertarian. So why are you playing dumb and pretending you think maybe there is a rival system that’s just as ethical? Or are you now saying math can be whatever people assert? Do you support Common Core?”
Murphy, I’ve studied argumentation ethics for a number of years, and I appreciate your criticisms as well as Hoppe’s rejoinders to (some of) the common criticisms that you and others have raised.
If I may be so bold right off the bat, I would like to say that there is a very important, not coincidental reason why you, Callahan and Woods believe argumentation ethics is flawed. It is because the ontology and epistemology of you three are so incredibly close to argumentation ethics that at the very last stages of full deduction, introspectively, the three of you call the unnameable motive force God, whereas Hoppe takes the Kantian critical approach and leaves God as a hypothetical beyond the bounds of human knowledge. Hoppe wrote (paraphrased) that “from the perspective of a superhuman being humans may be fully deterministically caused, and spontaneous action (Hoppe’s approach) with uncaused human thought and behavior may very well be an illusion, but from the human perspective it is a necessary illusion.”
It turns out that the disagreement you have with argumentation ethics stems from a firm conviction that at the back of everything there is a God. Humans have rights because of God. There can be no purely agnostic or atheistic ultimate ground for essentially who or what we are.
You find issues with argumentation ethics, and argumentation ethicists find issues with religion (not in the sense of whether God actually exists or not but whether it is theoretically appropriate to include God in a human driven analysis of human existence. Close, very close, but not quite the same thing), because of those last few steps, and the costs of accepting “the other side’s” approach.
If you accept argumentation ethics, God would be swept away to the Laplacian “I have no need for that hypothesis” territory. Those are high costs for a devout Catholic or Christian.
If argumentation ethicists accept God, then the ground for argumentation ethics would be swept away. Those are high costs for the argumentation ethicist.
You’re right, argumentation ethics are a project very much akin to Aquinas’ project. This is precisely why you, Callahan and Woods take issue with it. Argumentation ethics cannot logically be integrated into one’s consciousness if there is a presence of a belief in God.
Hence the urge to find the flaws in it.
Habermas was influenced in part by Marx. Habermas’ philosophy in general comes from the tradition of materialism of the collectivist, not individualist, variety. The concept of “praxis” led him to find a ground of human knowledge and ethics in the social activity of “discourse”. Habermas invented discourse ethics, of which Hoppe’s argumentation ethics is derived. Hoppe integrated the Idealism of Kantianism and Misesianism with the Materialism of Habermas to come to a dualist ground (idealist/thought and materialist/action) of ethics.
Hoppe was once a Marxist, but rediscovered German Idealism from Kant to Mises. Mises was the man.
I’ve read your criticisms of Hoppe’s ethics very closely, and I understand the thinking that leads to each criticism. The motivation is half-hearted, I will be honest, on both “sides.” Neither “side” is really making explicit the question of God.
Hoppe took the Kantian line and said OK, God may exist but it’s beyond our comprehension, therefore if we assume we can’t know, THEN….
Yourself, Callahan and Woods are taking the “We won’t say outright Hoppe must be wrong because “God”…but…we will throw continuous punches at the statements that were made, and hopefully with enough jabs that get through, the beast will go down with a “something this flawed can’t be right”.
Argumentation ethics is both extremely powerful, and utterly frail. By that I mean IF God does not exist, then it is perhaps the world’s best path to take for the ground of an ethic for a species that is both rational (idealistic part) and social (practical part). But IF God does exist, then the whole thing blows up.
Your written criticisms against argumentation ethics, believe it or not, are indistinguishable from the line of thought that Dostoevsky characterized by the aphorism “If God exists, then anything is permissible.”
Check out your criticisms of Hoppe. You say that the ethics cannot really refute, i.e. stop, a person from cutting another person’s arms or legs off, since, after all, “they could still argue”. What you and Callahan did in your main paper on the topic was say “God exists, and whatever happens, happens because God willed it. While we may not do this, in actuality there is a historical meaning, an ultimate “purpose”, to the existence of horrific violence in the world. Again, we will probably not engage in that activity, but all the evil in the world, in the past and in the future, has a purpose, the ultimate cause is God. Please don’t pester us with some hollow, all encompassing ontology or epistemology that claims to be able to ground all human activity of what’s right, on something other than God.”
Let’s be honest in writing Murphy…do you not see the “coincidence” that Hoppe’s critics are you, Callahan and Woods, three of the more devout theists in the libertarian academic circles? It’s not a coincidence. Both sides have to do some more “soul searching” if this debate is to settle, and it’s far from settled.
MF, on the basis of that interview, why do you conclude I am a critic of AE?
With respect, it is not this interview, that I base the above.
I do welcome it being smacked down if it is wrong. I don’t want to be wrong.
MF, if it turned out–hypothetically speaking–that Hoppe believed in the God of the Bible and Tom was a fan of argumentation ethics, would that pose any problems for your psychoanalysis of me?
No, and here’s why:
I am a “fan” of many things, for example the Daily Show, but I still think it is often purveying BS, and I don’t mean the content of the sarcarm, but what can be gleaned as the writers actual beliefs by way of such sarcasm.
I am a fan of religious studies, if that makes it clearer.
If Hoppe is a devout Christian or Catholic or Anglican or what have you, then I would say he is that rare case who does not integrate theism into his writings. He keeps them separate.
I am not making the blanket claim that every single person in the world who is theist rejects AE, nor the blanket claim that every single person in the world who thinks AE is correct, which is different from being a “fan” of it, rejects religion.
I think you, Callahan and Woods integrate religious faith into your theoretical work on economics, ethics and political philosophy. That is the key difference. Not trying to start a flame war or anything, just trying to get to the truth, which discomforts me as well, because I have to sound rather jerkish to some of my own intellectual idols, of which you and Woods definitely are. That is why I stay anonymous. I want to get to the truth, even if it means how to lose friends and not influence people.
I don’t shy away from any question, but I don’t want to make that sound like I’m all high and mighty, since I post anonymously which many have told me is cowardly, and they may be right, but it is a rule I use so as to prevent me being dishonest with myself, which I do a lot in my business life due to having to engage in “theatre” that I would otherwise not want to engage in ceteris paribus, but have to if I want to make $$. If I could have the opportunity to work hard and say whatever I want and never have to sacrifice my career, I would. So please understand that I am not trying to psychoanalyze anyone out of arrogance or contempt, but out of a pure desire to find truth. That is it. I may diverge from that path with sidetracks but I’m only human.
“If I may be so bold right off the bat, I would like to say that there is a very important, not coincidental reason why you, Callahan and Woods believe argumentation ethics is flawed. It is because the ontology and epistemology of you three are so incredibly close to argumentation ethics that at the very last stages of full deduction, introspectively, the three of you call the unnameable motive force God…”
Oh my: every atheist libertarian philosopher I know of NOT associated with LVMI who has looked at Hoppe’s argument knows it is rubbish.
“… did I just prove that every non-criminal needs to own a plot of land in a just society? Of course not. But yet I’m pretty sure Stephan thinks it proves that every non-criminal needs to own his or her body. How?”
(Haven’t listened to the interview, yet.)
Basically, this question is only relevant when someone ELSE makes a claim against your body.
“Self-ownership” is a response position, not a positive claim.
The reason the position of self-ownership is the correct response is that each person can make the same claim about everyone else, and it would be logically impossible for everyone to be right.
A debate that would be very helpful to this debate over argumentation ethics would be an ethics debate between two very devout theists, one an ultra conservative pacifist New Testament Christian who believes God wants them to do the exact opposite of an ultra violent, Anabaptist theist, the other person in the debate, who believes that God wants them to do anything and everything they have the mind or passion to do.
In this debate, neither can pull the rug out from under the other’s feet, since both are standing on the same rug.
The only way these two people can come to some sort of reconciliation, given that they both believe in God, would be for them to ground their ethics not on God, but on some practical basis that takes the form of “Yeah, you believe in God, I get it, but, if you do this rather than that, then you and I could…”
What argumentation ethics really is, is not an attempt to find a ground of human existence or ultimate right, but rather to ground ethics on the empirical existence of human beings on Earth, regardless of what is at the back of all thought.
Perhaps argumentation ethics should be replaced by ego ethics. That is what it really is but is too afraid to admit it. If someone does not recognize the ego in anything else but himself, then ethics would be irrelevant to that person, and anyone else who thinks that. But, IF we all recognize each other as ultimate egos, then that I believe will lead to what Hoppe’s libertarianism strives to do via argumentation ethics but fails when it integrates the God ego.
Ego recognition, I think, puts all Gods and men on an equal playing field. Not in the sense that everyone reaches the finish line at the same time of course.
Here no ego can claim to “represent” any other ego, or “act in the name of” other egos. Theists are those who act in the name of another ego only, whom they call God. That ego is everywhere and nowhere. Atheists are those who act in the name of their own ego only, whom they call “the good man.” That ego is everywhere and nowhere.
Oh look atheists and theists can’t come to even a mutual understanding of each other, let alone practical integration. Both must remain in thought when interaction takes place.
Rational egoists recognize the rationality in other egos, but risks misunderstanding and aloofness due to the fact that humans are more than rational. If we were not, we would not even know what rational means, because rational only makes sense in contradistinction to irrational. In order for us to be rational, we must also be irrational.
Pure egoists have nothing to hide. Every ego recognizes every other ego as a source of annihilation and destruction. “Anything goes” would paradoxically be an impossibility, since it would be impossible for anything to go even in principle. Every action would have a cost. There would be a norm, and it would be “you ought not do anything that would hurt your own egoist interests.” Everyone would be free to violate that norm. Not everyone chooses to follow that norm, but it would be a norm nonetheless, and anyone who thinks they can refute that norm by introducing their own ego, or another ego they “represent”, whom they call God, well that would not refute egoistic ethics. It would presuppose it. Individual men would be in the same league as every other man, and including God, and just like there would be a power difference between a man and another man, so too would there be a power difference between one man acting in the name of a God and another man acting in the name of God.
The above can’t be classified as “That just means you can do whatever you want.” It depends on what you mean by “whatever I myself want”, not whatever an egoistic God (abstracted from all formal religions and creeds) might want.
Sure, you could possibly cut off my legs and my arms, but you would not be refuting egoistic ethics, you would necessarily be acting in accordance with it. You cut off my legs to suit your egoistic interests.
Think this can’t be an ethic because it lacks choice? Not so. Egoistic activity includes annihilation and destruction of oneself. Every egoist has the choice to self-destruct. Thus, the fact that a person chooses to not self-destruct, means they are “presupposing” egoist ethics.
The above might be difficult to digest, but I think it is logically the only ethics that is “presupposed” in human activity.
What happens when humans start to mind read? What kind of ethics would be “presupposed” then? Everyone would know what everyone else is thinking (and hence know what everyone else will do).
If everyone knew what everyone else was thinking, what would human life be like? Incredibly oppressive, or tremendously liberating? I think it would be the closest thing to what social freedom would feel like. It would be a world where you essentially knew what everyone else was thinking. Sure, everyone would know what you were thinking, but you would still know what everyone else was thinking.
Suppose one person thought of killing another. Everyone would know instantly, including the would be victim. In order for the killer to get away with the crime, he would have to have the thought of killing someone else purely randomly and at the spur of the moment, the only way that any thought can be unanticipated by everyone else. Premeditated murder would be an imposs…and I just repeated the plot of Minority Report. nevermind.
I seem to recall that, in logics, there are propositions that are true but not provable. So, from the fact that when we try to prove X we contradict ourselves, it does not seem to follow that X is false. It could be that X is true but not provable, because when we try to prove it we contradict ourselves. Could it be that some socialist claims are true but, at the same time, cannot be proved, because the moment we try to prove them we contradict ourselves? Could it be that there are some truths inaccessible to humans, because when we try to prove them we contradict ourselves, but are true nonetheless?
What reason is there to believe in a proposition as true if attempting to prove it leads to self-contradiction?
I don’t fancy the exact presentation above, but there clearly are some things that must be true but cannot be known. They are generally logical contrivances; little traps of reasoning we can create for ourselves.
My personal favourite is the Berry number. The Berry number is the smallest positive integer that cannot be uniquely identified in fewer than two hundred English words. The question then becomes: if the Berry number exists, can you find it? Alternatively, if it does not, can you demonstrate that it does not?
And the answer is “no.” The Berry number can be proven to exist quite trivially: there is an infinite number of positive integers, but a finite number of combinations of 200 or fewer English words. Ergo, there must be positive integers than cannot be uniquely identified in 200 words or fewer, and one of them must be the smallest one. The trouble is that, as soon as you find that number, it becomes the Berry number. Which is three words long. So you’re left in the curious position of knowing absolutely that this thing exists, but being unable by definition to know what it is.
To return to the topic of argumentation ethics, it strikes me as quite the opposite: attempts to *disprove* it are self-contradictory. If I’m understanding it correctly (I’ve not listened to the Kinsella interview yet, but I’ve read Hoppe), the kernel of it is that arguing against self-ownership is incoherent, since you cannot argue without using your body and mind, which tacitly asserts that you own them. If I’m getting this right (and remember: I’m a moron), the claim is not “arguo ergo sum,” as such. Rather, as “guest” says above, it’s a purely defensive claim; if someone denies self-ownership, it can be refuted by pointing out that the act of so denying cannot be performed if the denier is not a self-owner.
The land argumenf is slightly off-base. To be sure, no argument can be made without using a piece of land, and surely nobody (okay, nobody except Henry George) would suggest that everybody owns any land he happens to occupy. The primary difference to my mind is that, for any given piece of land, it’s quite simple to identify the specific third party or parties who do own it and granted the speaker permission to use it. If the speaker is not a self-owner, can he identify the specific parties who own his body and mind and granted him usage rights?
I’m a dummy and I’m sure I have the whle thing wrong, but that’s been my take on argumentation ethics.
None at all. I was just saying that from
“the moment you argue that X is true, you contradict yourself”
does not seem to follow that
“X is false”.
(Replace X = “I am the owner of you” if you don’t get the point of my remark)
So it seems to me we have a non-sequitur right at the start.
Maurizio:
What then does make a proposition false?
If you have something in mind along the lines of “Strictly speaking nothing humans are capable of knowing”, then I hope you will at least understand that there would be no reason to believe as true the argument you are presenting right now about there allegedly being no connection between self-contradiction and falsehood.
I think self-contradiction is not so much a means to knowing what is false, but rather truth being experienced by the thinker who is committing the self-contradiction. It is a “symptom” of objective reality, not an arbitrary, floating abstraction used as a mere tool.
What self-contradiction really is, and a praxeologist knows this, is objective reality clashing with activity and thought that themselves can only be thought of as uncaused and spontaneous. The path that uncaused phenomena takes is objectively constrained to causal phenomena in the universe that is its compliment, its opposite, its negative.
When you reach a self-contradiction, what you are doing is trying to think about objective reality from the perspective of objective reality, from without, from a perspective that negates you as a thinker, which is impossible for you to do. The self-contradiction is in effect the thought that you do not exist. It is the idea of the void, the infinite abyss, the nothingness that is left when you as an actor have consumed everything, including yourself. It is the thought of death. A primal pull of inorganic forces enveloping uncaused spontenaity back from whence it came.
I listened to the interview but i didnt read everything MF wrote, so please excuse me if i ask a question that has aleady been answered.
If I cut a person open against his will and “steal” his vocal chords (or any other body parts) and put them in my own body I would clearly not been the legitimate owner of my entire body according to libertarian principles. Would Hoppe still claim I am contradictng myself if I make an argument against libertarianism?
I mean its pretty clear that you have to control at least part of your body to make an argument but just because you control something doesnt mean you are the legitimate owner of something.
I dont believe in god btw
“Would Hoppe still claim I am contradictng myself if I make an argument against libertarianism?”
(I have listened too the interview.)
I think he would say that by the time you took the vocal chords of someone who was using them, they had already been homesteaded.
You wouldn’t be contradicting yourself, though.
Bob, Thanks for the comments.
A few in return.
First, let me try to set out a few things that are interesting, if not all strictly relevant. You and Gene Callahan posted the critique of Hans. Gene is has now explicitly admitted he is not a libertarian any more, if he ever was. In fact he attacked Hoppe on immigration in a snide way around the time of your piece, and then later, he joined sides with Hans (http://www.stephankinsella.com/2010/05/switzerland-immigration-hoppe-raico-callahan/). Again, I know this is not strictly relevant to the substance, but it is informative and interesting.
I did respond in some detail to your and Callahan’s article — and I would refer people to the article (http://www.anti-state.com/article.php?article_id=312), and to the extensive back and forth comments on the comments thread — http://web.archive.org/web/20101212114455/http://anti-state.com/forum/index.php?board=7;action=display;threadid=2889. Frank Van DUn has mounted a serious and substantive response as well: http://web.archive.org/web/20101212114455/http://anti-state.com/forum/index.php?board=7;action=display;threadid=2889
I would commend people interested in this topic to read these pieces.
Also: Hoppe himself initially responded to many criticisms — “Appendix: Four Critical Replies,” by Hoppe — http://www.hanshoppe.com/publications/#econ-ethics
And I would also commend people to read my Concise Guide to Argumentation Ethics — http://www.stephankinsella.com/2015/01/argumentation-ethics-and-liberty-a-concise-guide-2011/
And I will note that although I responded in depth to your initial criticism with Callahan, I never got a response, and in fact you republished your original piece in the JLS years later, without much change that I could tell, and without incorporating or responding to my or Van Dun’s reply to you.
Second, I am not aware of any theory you yourself have for libertarian rights. As far as I can tell, you have no articulable basis for your own ethical views here. So from an outsider’s view, it seems like you are saying this: “I have no good reason to be a libertarian. There is no good reason to be a libertarian, so Hoppe should not pretend he has a good one either.” I know this is putting it crudely and simplifying, but I think it gets at the essence of the matter. It is why in my talk with Tom I noted that some people (utilitarians, natural law advocates) understandably respond nagatively to criticisms of their approach, but that it is a bit mystifying that people who have no explicit argument for rights to be upset at Hoppe. At worst, he has “no good argument either” about rights.
Now on to a few more particular issues:
“==> The very act of debating presupposes that we freely control our bodies and are standing on a piece of real estate. By making that observation, did I just prove that every non-criminal needs to own a plot of land in a just society? Of course not. But yet I’m pretty sure Stephan thinks it proves that every non-criminal needs to own his or her body. How?”
The debating partners are using a resource (land etc.) and yes, they cannot deny the need for onwership rights in that land. That does not mean each person needs to own the land. Someone needs to own it. I see no reason a host of a discussion or debate or dicsourse could not own the land as long as he is not using his ownership rights to coerce the other party. It is perfectly conceivable to have a real, genuine debate in the home of one of the debaters. What is not conceivable is to have a debate where one party is threatening to bash in the skull of the other party if he doesn’t agree. That means it is not a genuine debate. AE implies that every possibly conflicted-over resource has to be ownable and controllable and usable and that its owner ought to be determined in accordance with *some principles* that have reasons behind them–and that are consistent with the rules for the more obvious cases that few people disagree with.
“==> At several points in his analysis, Stephan has to appeal to the fact that libertarian rights are reasonable and make sense, otherwise his argument doesn’t go through. For example, at about the 80% mark of the interview, Stephan discusses a guy who goes on a rampage on a farm, and the farmer imprisons the guy in his house while figuring out what to do next (like notify the law enforcement people). Stephan says the prisoner could demand, “How do you justify imprisoning me while you’re free?” and the farmer could say, “Because you just attacked my family!” Stephan’s point is that that is a legitimate reason, not like the arbitrary and/or non-universalizable reasons that social democrats would give to justify why they are using coercion to (say) imprison Wesley Snipes for tax evasion. But of course, the reason it seems reasonable to Stephan to imprison a guy for trying to steal private property, while it seems arbitrary and illegitimate to put a rich guy in a cage for not paying taxes, is that Stephan is a Rothbardian.”
And so are you, as far as i can see. So it’s a mystery to me why you yourself would disagree here.
” Leo Tolstoy might think imprisoning the first guy would be arbitrary (especially if he was trying to take food or animals, not just hurting people and breaking stuff), and most Americans don’t think it’s arbitrary to lock up a selfish citizen who doesn’t pay his fair share of taxes. So in other words, to get anything out of argumentation ethics, you have to say, “First, let’s stipulate that libertarianism is right. Now, I can show you that anybody who denies libertarianism is wrong…”
I don’t think this is right. We don’t stipulate it’s right. We recognize that people engaged in argumentation themselves already, for some reason, *do* value certain basic norms that are necessary for the discourse to be a genuine one. And that therefore, these people could never coherently defend a normative proposition that is in conflict with these necessarily presupposed ones. Further, we believe that the content of these “grundnorms” as I call them, is compatible with the libertarian norms–and in fact is incompatible with any socialist or particularistic norm. Therefore, it is literally inconceivable that there is any way any agents could ever engage in a meaningful discourse that results in valid norms. The bottom line is that Hoppe has pointed out that there is a consistency between libertarian norms and reality–which should not be surprising to libertarians who already agree with the sensibility behind these norms.
Your Snipes example–you seem to really disregard the significance of universalizability, which ultimately means: *giving reasons*. The reasons have to be of the sort that could potentially appeal to every member of the argumentative community, which means: grounded in objective reality. That is exactly why we see that universalizable rules are the only type that could potentially be accepted and ever validated in a real social discourse; and why particularizable rules (I can hit you because I am me, and you are just you) are not even possible candidates for a potentially justifiable rule–because all rules, to be justified, have to be justified–in an actual argumentation with other real people. So when you just arbitrarily assert that someone else might think that it’s okay to imprison Snipes — that doesn’t do the trick. It’s not enough to just make assertions. These assertions could be arbitrary, contradictory, or whatever.
“==> Something that didn’t occur to me until listening to this podcast: Hoppe got the idea for this approach from his teacher, Habermas. Apparently Habermas himself used the approach to justify not the libertarian ethic, but a broader social democratic one. I haven’t looked it up, but I wonder if it goes something like this? “To properly debate, you need to be educated, have access to a good diet and exercise regimen, not be exhausted from working 80-hour weeks with no vacation or childcare, etc. So clearly, anybody arguing against the modern welfare state is contradicting himself.” So whatever methods Stephan uses to show why that is wrong, will also show why we don’t get to retain full-blown libertarianism either. As I said before, the only way you get libertarianism, is if you already believe it for independent reasons.”
Well what are the independent reasons you yourself have? If you have them, are they stronger than Hoppe’s? If you don’t, what is your gripe, really? that Hoppe is confused in thinking that he has a reason to favor libertairanism, whereas you or others already know the task is hopeless so don’t even try? As for Habermas: it is no surprise that Habermas and Apel apply their theory to result in democratic norms. that is not some criticism of the basic ideas–just because they make a mistake. As I noted Hoppe takes a cleaner, stripped down approach to the Habermasian idea and combines it with his knowledge of economics (praxeology) and a few other considerations from radicals like rothbard, to show that the only result is a libertarian one. Why this is supposed to be some criticism of him is lost to me. (It is similar by the way to libertarian Roger Pilon’s reworking of his teacher Alan Gewirth’s similar theory, to yield libertarian results, unlike the democratic-socialist results of Gewirth, as I discuss in this paper http://mises.org/library/new-rationalist-directions-libertarian-rights-theory-0 )
“==> I’m exaggerating a bit (and hence being a bit unfair), but I want to make my above claims clear: Imagine somebody said, “2+2 = 4, therefore libertarianism is the only ethical system.” Then I say that’s a non sequitur, and the guy who proposed it is stunned. “But Bob, you’re a libertarian. So why are you playing dumb and pretending you think maybe there is a rival system that’s just as ethical? Or are you now saying math can be whatever people assert? Do you support Common Core?””
That would be a bad argument. But Hoppe’s argument rests upon several propositions including the idea that only libertarian ethics are compatible with voluntary, peaceful interaction–and that is what libertarians *already believe* (for some reason) yet it is the part that they object to. To my mind, as an imperfect analogy–it’s as if someone goes to a Star Trek convention, gets dressed up in a Spock uniform, and runs around the convention insisting, demanding, that the other participants justify *to him* why they like Star Trek–why Star Trek is worthy of “being liked.” A participant who is a Star Trek fan already, associating with other Star Trek fans, demanding that *they* show why they should be there, is just …. bizarre. That is an equivalent to what we see, iMO, when fellow libertarians bristle at Hoppe’s audacity in saying that only libertarian arguments can be justified. I mean do we have libertarians who think that socialist arguments *can* be justified?
Since you are probably know AE better than most people commenting on this blog could yo please answer my question?
If I cut a person open against his will and “steal” his vocal chords (or any other body parts) and put them in my own body I would clearly not been the legitimate owner of my entire body according to libertarian principles. Would Hoppe still claim I am contradictng myself if I make an argument against libertarianism?
Aby: “If I cut a person open against his will and “steal” his vocal chords (or any other body parts) and put them in my own body I would clearly not been the legitimate owner of my entire body according to libertarian principles. Would Hoppe still claim I am contradictng myself if I make an argument against libertarianism?”
No, I don’t think so, for the reasons I explained about the slavery case. The victim or some other person engaging in argumentation with you could rightly point out that you had committed this aggression and thus were situated differently. You would be able to be regarded as and treated as some kind of criminal, but this different treatment would be justified by an objective fact. Therefore it would not violate universalizability for me to argue with you and say that you deserved to be hit and I did not. It would not be particularizable logic being used on my part.
“That would be a bad argument. But Hoppe’s argument rests upon several propositions including the idea that only libertarian ethics are compatible with voluntary, peaceful interaction–and that is what libertarians *already believe* (for some reason) yet it is the part that they object to. To my mind, as an imperfect analogy–it’s as if someone goes to a Star Trek convention, gets dressed up in a Spock uniform, and runs around the convention insisting, demanding, that the other participants justify *to him* why they like Star Trek–why Star Trek is worthy of “being liked.” A participant who is a Star Trek fan already, associating with other Star Trek fans, demanding that *they* show why they should be there, is just …. bizarre. That is an equivalent to what we see, iMO, when fellow libertarians bristle at Hoppe’s audacity in saying that only libertarian arguments can be justified. I mean do we have libertarians who think that socialist arguments *can* be justified?”
No, we have libertarians who think that both libertarian and anti-libertarian behavior and thoughts play a role in a cosmic divine plan, and therefore libertarianism on its own must by implication be grounded on that same cosmic divine plan, not our Earthly existence as mortal, finite, human actors as per AE.
Libertarian activity is in this view planned by an intelligence “external” to the objective conditions of social discourse, and thus any human who claims to have found a ground for ethics on the objective conditions of social discourse, must from the outset be necessarily wrong no matter what they say, and that is why the criticisms of AE are much like Keynesian jabs at capitalism, rather than an explicit from the ground up type argument that AE cannot be right because the ground of libertarian activity and thoughts is a divine entity.
There are Star Trek convention attendees who apparently believe that the reason they are all there is that God put them there, and therefore should they hear a particular attendee in a Spock uniform attempt to explain that all the attendees are by virtue of being there the source, the ground, for why they are there by virtue of being there, is scoffed at. After all, God could have just as easily put them all at a Star Wars convention instead, so there is nothing unique or absolutist about being at a Star Trek convention.
Stephan, I have to be brief, but let me address your closing analogy, because I think it does a good job of illustrating why you and I get so flabbergasted on this topic.
Stephan Kinsella wrote:
To my mind, as an imperfect analogy–it’s as if someone goes to a Star Trek convention, gets dressed up in a Spock uniform, and runs around the convention insisting, demanding, that the other participants justify *to him* why they like Star Trek–why Star Trek is worthy of “being liked.” A participant who is a Star Trek fan already, associating with other Star Trek fans, demanding that *they* show why they should be there, is just …. bizarre. That is an equivalent to what we see, iMO, when fellow libertarians bristle at Hoppe’s audacity in saying that only libertarian arguments can be justified. I mean do we have libertarians who think that socialist arguments *can* be justified?
Right, I agree with you, if *that*’s what happened at a Star Trek convention, that would be bizarre. Now consider a different scenario:
A bunch of die-hard Star Trek fans go to a convention. They’re all dressed up, and mingling among themselves about how awesome the show is. Then someone takes out a booth at the convention and gives a presentation for all the attendees entitled, “WHY THE VERY ACT OF TURNING ON THE TELEVISION PROVES STAR TREK IS BETTER SCIENCE FICTION THAN STAR WARS.”
A guy in the crowd says afterwards, “Huh, I don’t see how that followed at all.”
Then another guy in the crowd–who thought the presentation was amazing–says, “That’s just bizarre. You’re here, dressed as Spock. How can you not like that presentation?”
Stephan, you don’t see a huge difference between the two scenarios as you and I described them? Which is closer to our current reality?
Kinsella has explained numerous times how we come to “own” our bodies. I believe it is essentially a variation of the idea of “homesteading” — we are the first users of our bodies, and indeed the only ones who can actually control it. There is no better rule, that is universalizable. (Except if you include “God”, in which case anything goes, as Major.Freedom very eloquently explained. His observation that theist-anarchists tend to mysteriously gather in opposition to atheist-anarchists is astute. I have also noticed this, for example, with The Freedom Feens (now including the theists Bad Quaker and Bill Buppert and Davi Barker (and Dean too, kindof)) with their mysterious ganging up on atheist-Molyneux.)
I thought self-ownership was already settled in libertarian circles, but I guess I underestimated the still-strong religious/mystical influences.
I also thought that the morality of libertarianism was already settled in libertarian circles, but again, this nasty God-thing sggieems to be throwing an absurd wrench in the works (as Major.Freedom explained). Leo Tolstoy, in condoning theft, would be wrong in the aforementioned situation. Because his proposed ethical rule, that stealing can be morally acceptable, is non-universalizable.
This article leaves me confused and distressed. THESE were the points (vague questions) that lead you to conclude that Argumentation Ethics is invalid?!
Dennis, I am a bit confused by your comment–not sure exactly what the question (at least for me) is. Are you arguing against me, or someone else–? And by the way, as I explain in How We Come to Own Ourselves, http://mises.org/library/how-we-come-own-ourselves — the reason you have a better claim to your body is not because you had it first (your mom had it first). It’s because of your direct control over it. That is why the bases for property rights in bodies is not exactly the same as for property rights in external objects.
Kinsella, I was criticizing the author of this article (Doc. Murphy), and theists in general. I’m with you on this (and most things) :p.
Thanks for correcting my sloppy/forgotten understanding of your explanation of How We Come To Own Ourselves. That Mises article of yours is brilliant. I swear I understood and appreciated it years ago — it’s interesting how I forgot some essential bits of it. What does Murphy think about it? From the sound of this blog post, it seems like he never heard of it before :S. But I guess if he already has a (an irrational blind belief) basis for self-ownership (God), he doesn’t have much incentive to find a purely logical/secular one. Which is terrifying. What does that say about the value we (he/society) place(s) on logic.
Hoppe’s argument rests upon several propositions including the idea that only libertarian ethics are compatible with voluntary, peaceful interaction–and that is what libertarians *already believe* (for some reason) yet it is the part that they object to. To my mind, as an imperfect analogy–it’s as if someone goes to a Star Trek convention, gets dressed up in a Spock uniform, and runs around the convention insisting, demanding, that the other participants justify *to him* why they like Star Trek–why Star Trek is worthy of “being liked.”
Bob isn’t demanding a justification for libertarianism. He’s pointing out that the particular justification Hoppe offers doesn’t work.
Consider one possible argument in favor of libertarianism:
1. Rothbard was divinely inspired. Everything he said is infallibly true;
2. Rothbard said libertarian ethics was true;
3. Therefore, libertarians ethics is true.
You agree with the conclusion to this argument. But that hardly means you shouldn’t object to the argument.
Josiah, what I am saying is that if you already agree with libertarian principles, then of all the things to criticize Hoppe’s argument for, it makes no sense to say that the problem with his argument is that he assumes only libertarian rights can be argumentatively justified. For the fellow libertarian presumably *also agrees with this*.
If an argument is question begging, then it makes perfect sense to point that out, even if one agrees with the question begging assumption. For example, consider the following argument:
1. Libertarian ethics is true.
2. Whatever is true is true
3. Therefore, libertarian ethics is true.
Presumably you believe in both the premises and the conclusion of this argument. And the conclusion follows from the premises. And yet it’s a lousy argument, because it assumes the very thing it’s trying to prove.
Two plus two used to be four.
But Statisim gave us Common Core.
By simple elimination.
This once great nation.
Must Constitution and Liberty restore.
I have followed lots of the links, and the same arguments come round again and again. The particular ones that drew my attention are as follows.
Hoppe said (in appendix 4 that Stephan Kinsella linked): “Obviously, no one could propose anything or become convinced of any proposition by argumentative means if a person’s right to exclusive use of his physical body were not presupposed.”
I propose that God exists, he was the first user of our bodies – we could say he homesteaded humanity. We are simply allowed to use those bodies that are correctly owned by God. God has the ability and the right to make any use he wishes of my body.
So what is going on? Hoppe says I cannot propose anything unless I presuppose exclusive rights to my body, yet I appear to have done so. Either Hoppe is wrong, or I have actually presupposed right to exclusive use of my body by making a statement denying that I have such a right. He says it is obvious, but it does not seem obvious to me. This example uses God, but if Hoppe is correct, it does not matter whether God actually exists.
SK: “It is perfectly conceivable to have a real, genuine debate in the home of one of the debaters. What is not conceivable is to have a debate where one party is threatening to bash in the skull of the other party if he doesn’t agree.” The owner of the land could terminate the discussion at any moment by denying the opponent permission to remain. The opponent is granted temporary use of the land to exercise his ability to argue. That may be revoked, yet the debate is real and genuine. Why is it not equally possible for the debater to be granted temporary use of the body, although he does not own exclusive rights to the use of that body?
Hoppe: “First, it should be noted that if no one had the right to acquire and control anything except his own body … then we would all cease to exist and the problem of the justification of normative statements … simply would not exist (TSC, p. 161).”
Surely it is true that if we failed to acquire and control anything we would cease to exist. Why does this mean we have the right to such acquisitions?
A better example for supposed non-contradiction (i.e. infallibility is that of a Christian who argues no Christian can ever violent. Someone else says a Christian was arrested for a violent crime but the Christian argues that as soon as a Christian commits a violent act they’re cease to be a Christian therefore no Christian can be violent.
In an old comment thread, I made some criticisms of Argumentation Ethics. Let me repost them here, so that people can tell me what’s wrong with them:
I find argumentation ethics thoroughly unpersuasive. I’m already skeptical of the notion of performative contradictions as it’s used praxeology, but their use in argumentation ethics seems ridiculous to me. Hoppe argues, for instance, that by engaging in an argument with someone, you are implicitly acknowledging that the other person has a right to his body, since if the person couldn’t use their body they couldn’t argue with you. Even if we accept that that’s true, so what? How does that imply that the thing that they’re implicitly acknowledging is in fact true? It could be that argumentation rests upon certain norms that are in fact morally wrong norms. So the conclusion to draw may just be that the person needs to stop arguing, not that he needs to start believing in whatever ethical standards he happened to give sanction to when he decided to start arguing.
And that’s just if we grant that Hoppe’s argument is right, but that’s suspect as well. Why does accepting that the other person has a right to argue imply that they have a right to the hairs on their head? You can argue even if someone plucks all your hair out and runs off with it.
And Hoppe’s justification of homesteading is similarly unpersuasive to me. First of all he says that if people didn’t have the right to physical objects then the human race would die out and there’d be no argument, to which I again ask “so what?” But even if his argument goes through that would presumably just mean that we can have the right to what we need to live in order to argue, not that we can have the right to other things unnecessary to argument.
Second of all, he says that “if a person did not acquire the right of exclusive control over such goods by homesteading … but instead latecomers were assumed to have ownership claims to things, then literally no one would be allowed to do anything with anything unless he had the prior consent of all late-comers”. But that does not follow at all. There are theories of property rights other than homesteading and “unanimous consent of latecomers”, so rejecting homesteading doesn’t imply accepting that other theory. Zwolinsky makes similar points about Rothbard in part 4 of that series of posts I linked to earlier.
“And Hoppe’s justification of homesteading is similarly unpersuasive to me. First of all he says that if people didn’t have the right to physical objects then the human race would die out and there’d be no argument, to which I again ask “so what?” ”
This seems to be smuggling in an ought from an is, which the approach denies it is doing.
Keshav wrote: ” Even if we accept that that’s true, so what? How does that imply that the thing that they’re implicitly acknowledging is in fact true? It could be that argumentation rests upon certain norms that are in fact morally wrong norms.”
It doesn’t imply it’s (objectively) true, that’s not the argument here. It implies that both debaters agree that from their point of view they do believe it’s true. And so every time you argue at all, you are already logically conceding people own themselves. Hence the title of Woods’ show: it’s impossible to argue libertarians are wrong (paraphrasing here).
of course, you may decide you want to get your point across not with an argument but with your fist. But then you are to me the same as a hungry lion. I don’t talk to you, I fight you. Fortunately by far the most people prefer talk to fight. To those people it is useful to remind them that they already believe in non-aggression without realizing the implications.
Well, I don’t think it’s correct to phrase the conclusion as “it’s impossible to argue that libertarianism is wrong.” I think argumentation ethics, if valid, would only demonstrate a weaker conclusion “if liberterianism is wrong, then it is immoral to argue that libertarianism is wrong.” It says nothing about whether an argument against libertarianism can be factually correct or not, it just addresses whether non-libertarians ought to engage in argument or not.
“There are theories of property rights other than homesteading”
Are they universalizable (and not “particularistic”, as Kinsella says)? ‘Cuz if they’re not, they’re not valid.
Yes, there are a lot of universalizable theories of property rights other than homesteading, for instance:
1. A person is allowed to use property he’s homesteaded unless a majority of other people vote that someone else should be allowed to use it.
2. The first person to know that a piece of property exists is the one who gets exclusive ownership of it.
3. The first person to announce that he intends to use a piece of property is the one who gets exclusive ownership of it.
4. The person who homesteads a piece of property is the only one who is allowed to use it, i.e. he can’t even give it up in exchange.
5. A person who homesteads a piece of property can use it unless someone would die if they weren’t able to use it instead.
6. When there is a conflict over who gets to use a piece of property, the most virtuous person wins.
None of these, as far as I can tell, would lead to a contradiction if adopted as a universal law.
1. This cannot be universalized. For example, China (more populous external states) could use this argument to take control over the USA. And, theoretically, more populous alien species could use this argument to take over the planet. There is no objective universalizable/non-particularistic/non-arbitrary way to determine which group of people constitute the majority.
2. This cannot practically work since we cannot read minds. Anyone can lie about prior knowledge of land. Although it does sound similar to homesteading, except without more explicit fences.
3. This is basically (fenced-)homesteading, right? So this works.
4. This added restriction is “particularistic”/arbitrary. “Universal laws” are not arbitrary things that we can choose to adopt, or not — they are inescapable inevitable logic.
5. This cannot be universalized. For example, let’s say there’s a man who swims to a homesteaded island, and unless he lands on the island he will drown. Well, this can be extrapolated — have a million people swim to the island and make the same claim. It’s also particularistic — what exactly does it mean to “use” the island? Should the intruders also be allowed to take the homesteader’s phones to call for help? Should they be mandated to try to get off his island within 24 hours? Within 1 hour? Whenever they feel like it?
6. This cannot practically work. Virtues cannot be objectively measured.
Let me respond to each of your points:
1. It is universalizable. “If a majority of sentient beings in the Universe who are interested in voting on the use of a piece of property decide that someone other then you should be allowed to use it, then they are allowed to.”
2. Well, homesteading doesn’t require explicit fences either. And in any case someone can always tear your fences down. Also, this system, you could document pieces of property you come across, to show that you did know about their existence at a particular time, so it’s not dealing with something unknowable.
3. No, this is not homesteading at all. Homesteading is where you mix your labor with the land. I’m talking about a system where you just announce that you intend to use it. Like suppose Bill and John see a tree. Bill says he plans to cut down the tree and make pencils out of it. Then under this theory, John is no longer allowed to cut down the tree.
4. This is not particularistid. Particularistid is where you make you make a rule that references a particular individual, like “John gets to take whatever he wants”. Whether you feel that a particular rule is arbitrary has nothing to do with whether it can be universalized. And people may find the libertarian theory of property rights to be just as arbitrary.
5. To answer your question, the intruders are allowed to do anything at all with the homesteader’s things, with no time limitation, as long as the alternative to using the homesteader’s things is their death.
6. Well, the rule needs more specification, but I think it could be made to work. Like “The person who has killed the fewest people wins” or more complicated things along those lines.
1. Although expanding the domain of voters to sentient beings in the universe does make things a bit more universalizable, it still doesn’t solve the problem in my last sentence. There is no objective way to determine which group of beings is the current majority — especially since we’re now introducing time/space/relativity considerations. What if a super-populous alien species already broadcasted their interest in owning our solar system, but the signal hasn’t arrived here yet? And, there is also the question whether that populous majority is ethically in a position to stake territory claims — if they used aggression, they ought not be allowed to have a vote, surely? (Initiation of aggression definitely can’t be universalized.)
2. The point was, you need some objective way of imbordering.
3. I think we have a misunderstanding of what “homesteading” means. I’m pretty sure Kinsella (or any ancap) would not define it using the idea of labor-mixing — beyond the labor needed to imborder it. Many land owners will surely want to imborder land, in order to simpy leave it alone — eg. parks, nature reserves.
4. Yes, arbitrariness and universalizability are different concepts. The restriction that you posed (that land owners can’t be allowed to sell their land) is arbitrary. You might as well throw in an additional rule that only red-heads can own land. The whole point of libertarian/secular-ethics is that it isn’t arbitrary/non-universalizable. There is nothing arbitrary about a man fencing off (and storing the fence coordinates in a blockchain, etc) land, no matter how big the area. There is nothing arbitrary about the first-owner/fencer owning all this land, since there is nobody else with a better claim to it. If, for example, you propose a rule that says the second occupant of land is the only true owner, well, that doesn’t make any logical sense — what will the first (non-?)owner be allowed to do with the land? Can he blow it up entirely (for fun, or resource extraction?) No. There is no way to know what the second real owner wants. Unless you embed everything that everyone wants into this universalizable rule. In which case, you’re in a deterministic universe, and you’ve written every action/intention/thing down.
5. You missed most of my points. Firstly, it’s extremely difficult to say for certain what alternative courses of history would look like. How can you be sure that immediately kicking the man off the island, perhaps with (or without) a life-jacked, will or will not result in his death? I suppose there might be blood-thirsty sharks surrounding the island, but barring that, who is to say? And what if the people deliberately put themselves in a situation whereby they will die if they get kicked off this island. Perhaps they embed within themselves a non-removable chip that will explode once they leave the proximity of the island. Does that then mean that they can live on the island forever? In other words, anyone can live on the island once they get this chip implanted?
6. Yes. It has more specification in books like “Universally Preferrable Behavior” and probably Argumentation Ethics.
On a meta-level, I notice that you have not conceded a single point. One of us, at least, is not listening to the other.
I don’t feel like going through all of them.
“1. A person is allowed to use property he’s homesteaded unless a majority of other people vote that someone else should be allowed to use it.”
Contradiction: Each person is presumed to have the authority to grant another person authority over his own authority.
Unless each person has authority that does not derive from another’s permission, he cannot delegate that authority to someone such that his opinion (or “vote”) would matter.
I don’t see the logical contradiction here.
If I don’t own something, I can’t grant or deny permission for the use of it through the expression of my dissent (vote).
If I DO own something, then others’ expressions of dissent doesn’t matter.
The concept of voting trades on the belief that multiple people can own something, which is logically impossible.
It is an internally inconsistent (contradictory) position.
…he says the action axiom solved the mind-body problem.
When economics, like science, is passed off as philosophy, only absurdity can ensue.
Samson, when you’ve solved all of humanity’s intellectual battles by age 25, what is left in life? I pity you.
Okay, Bob, fair enough. That was a less-than-humble way of speaking to you. Rephrasing it: doesn’t it and similar statements in the least bit resemble the scientists whose scientism drives them to make wonky metaphysical claims? I’ve got no problem with economics, but it seems to me like this is an example of misapplication of it.
Are you talking about Kinsella? If so, then economics has a lot to contribute to ethics. Economics is a descriptive science that explains how humans work in the realities of the known world. Ethics is the normative science that explains how people should work. The only difference is a replacement of “do” with “should” which, of course, is a big difference but that only means it justifies the existence of both sciences, not that they are not inter-related and not that one cannot contribute to the other.
Not sure what you mean by the mind-body problem but as far as I know Kinsella merely says it doesn’t matter if you look at a person and see a body or a soul, either way there are implications stemming from the action axiom, e.g. scarcity and thus need to have some ethical rules to assign property rights.
No more than any other science.
Incorrect. It is only one of those sciences. There is also psychology and sociology and others.
No, you are so wrong about this. Praxeology contains no normative implications and the way it is thrown into libertarian ethical philosophy is just totally unnecessary and totally wrongheaded. You could not be more wrong about scarcity and property rights. There is no need to assign property rights to avoid conflict. In fact, it does NOT avoid conflict. That was never the purpose of property. Kinsella’s arguments on this basis are crap.
Jan: this object is a car. S.C.: Incorrect. This object is just one of cars.
Hope you see what you are saying is wrong. Just because there are also other such sciences doesn’t make my statement “incorrect”.
The rest is just assertions, no argument. So I’ll just say that you are wrong and will leave it at that. Discussion like this is useless to me.
Yeah, you’re better off avoiding discussion with Samson. You’ll get nowhere.
I stumbled upon this argument a long time ago, and found it fairly devastating. Can any proponents of AE tell me where they think it goes wrong?
His analysis of premise 1 fails to account for the finite regress inherent in praxeological reasoning, i.e. the action axiom. Premises in a general sense are only valid when the premises of the premises are valid, sure, but one of the keys to praxeology is that the infinite regresses and the reductios thereafter are the result when propositions are unbounded and unconstrained to action. When they are treated as abstract literary or rhetorical terms, subject to certain semantic rules, then sure, infinite regresses are always the result of deduction. But with praxeology, we can know the “first” principles which are self-evident.
The location of solution springs from the term “valid”. The author of the piece cavalierly assumed the regular purely rhetorical method of validation of abstract propositioning, aka the Socratic method, and seeks to divorce those propositions from the propositioner. To write it all on paper and then seek to have those propositions justify themselves as if they were alive and acting.
This is what praxeology “transcends”. It turns all formal propositions back onto the author who must link what is on paper, with himself which he can never alienate. There must be an unwritten, ” understanding”, or verstehen.
The way you can get a sense of what this all means is to experiment with it. Consider an infinite regress structure of argument. Conclusion 1 is valid because of premise set 1, which are themselves valid because of premise set 2, which are themselves valid because of premise set 3, and so on. From a first glance it would appear that AE suffers from this infinite regress. However when it is asked whether any argument can be practically infinite, the answer is obvious. Practically we can never provide an argument with an infinite number of premises. Now at this point there is a common misconception that this implies another sort of flaw with AE, that because it cannot be infinite, it cannot be what it claims to be, which is rationally justified. But again, praxeology transcends the formal written syllogisms and links those syllogisms with the author of those syllogisms to identify a whole. Praxeology is about action, not the content of propositions per se. Propositions are but one form of action. Understanding is another, and crucial, form.
As soon as you say something like “…and so on and so forth to infinity”, you have not actually identified a real thing. There cannot possibly be an infinite number of premises, or anything really, in the universe. An infinite number of premises implies an infinite quantity of information in the universe. Whether or not the universe is itself infinite is a question no finite mind can ever comprehend. With our finite bodies, finite resources, and finite time, not only does this provide us with a needed structure for understanding anything, but this knowledge is itself a pillar in understanding an absolute truth about reality, about ourselves. This knowledge is as good as any for the pinnacle of absoluteness. It is modest no doubt, but it is something.
Going even deeper, any knowledge about anything whatever implies and requires finiteness. Subject and object limiting each other is the setting of a finite reality.
Any event of an actor forming propositions on paper, adding premise after premise, at each step there is a consistent whole of premises plus actor. The actor is the foundation. This is why praxeologists say that any argument which contradicts via proposition the existence of the actor themselves, of the person doing the propositioning, is engaging in a contradiction, an error in reasoning, a mistake, etc. It is like saying “I am not here.”
Saying “andso on and so forth towards infinity” is really just giving up and for the moment a cessation of thinking about the subject at hand and moving towards another thought. Thoughts themselves are also scarce and subject to choice. Our minds can form concepts that through imagination will vastly outnumber the concepts that can be known by direct observation. The number is very, very, very large, and no significant practical problems in our dsy to day lives are had in treating them as infinite. But they are finite. Always have been and always will be. Knowledge presupposes finiteness. The Hegelian absolute knowledge, where the subject and object distinction is abolished, is not actually an end goal of any human or the human race, or intelligent beings as such. It is actually a destruction of everything and everyone. It is what dissident Soviet mathematician Igor Shafarevich identified as a death instinct. The drive towards where we started.
——-
The author’s other criticisms can be dealt with if you’re interested…
Do please, I’m quite interested in this!
OK,
Regarding premise 2:
The author is not taking into account the idea that an argument is not just an example of what someone might say with their mouths. They are necessarily structured. They “appeal” to a universal called Reason. When a person makes an argument, they are not just appealing to some arbitrary personal experience. They are doing more. They are appealing to an inter-subjective standard. Think of Wittgenstein’s proof that there is no such thing as “private” language.
When the author imagines an individual by himself making an argument, with the intention of showing that arguments can be made in isolation, he misses the mark. AE is not dependent on the idea that all arguments must empirically be made in a social setting of communication. Rather, the idea is that even if an individual is in isolation, and they make an argument to themselves, they are at the same time still offering an action that is by its very nature an appeal to that inter-subjective standard whereby what they are doing, can only be called by you and I an argument because you and I are already in that world of reason that applies to the guy in isolation. We cannot even say an individual in isolation is “making an argument” unless we ourselves are establishing a connection to what the individual in isolation is doing. In other words, when the author is proposing the example of an individual in isolation making an argument, the author has without seemingly realized it, presumed the individual’s actions are appealing to the very common ground that the author says is not necessary. The very meaning of argument appeals to the same common ground that the author is appealing to when identifying it is taking place with the individual in isolation! It is not that every argument must empirically take place in social settings. It is that argumentation is an appeal to what humans have in common. Does that make sense?
———————
Premise 3. This is the one that Murphy and Callahan have argued is the weakest link in AE, to the point of constituting a critical flaw. Their criticism is interestingly also the author’s criticism. Namely, that making an argument seemingly does not actually require the kind of absolute liberty that premise 3 asserts. We can of course imagine a slave chained to a wall, beaten every day, or whatever other scenario of extreme anti-liberty, and yet still we can also imagine the slave barely uttering some argument or another. At face value this seems like a legitimate criticism. The idea is that making an argument does not require every single part of your body. A can deny the liberty of B with respect to his arms, legs, whatever, but as long as B has control over that which is needed to utter an argument, like his brain, vocal chords, mouth, and so on, then this proves making an argument does not in fact require absolute liberty. Seems like a fair criticism.
But…
If we consider “making an argument using his body”, it should really be “making any argument possible using his body”. We have to consider the concept of argument not as being defined by a laundry list of particular syllogisms or audible/verbal statements, which is not a definition at all, but rather by what argumentation actually is. If A denies the liberty of B to the point where all B can do is verbally utter “I am in pain!”, then this does not prove premise 3 is refuted.
The actual idea is that in order to say B is capable of argumentation, we have already granted B everything needed to make any possible argument. For example “I am enjoying this experience of moving my arms the way I want.” It has to include all possible examples of argument. Argumentation qua argumentation is not an instance of an example of argument, or even a collection of particular arguments. It is a universal category.
Now at this point the expected rebuttal would be to say hang on, this would then imply that none of us can actually live up to being able to make any possible argument. For example “I am enjoying being the King of Spain”. From another perspective, a rebuttal might be that because the existence of mountains and seas limits our arguments by excluding “I am enjoying the experience of flying horizontally through THIS location in space-time”, that this too means we are in fact talking about a specific subset of all possible arguments. That this was the context all along after all.
To this the answer is that argumentation is NOT just what we can say with our mouths. It includes physical gestures. Like talking with a stereotype Italian. Take an Italian arms, and he goes mute.
Argumentation includes verbal, written, physical, everything possible from a human body. And there is the rub. A human body. What is a human body? The guy with no arms and no legs laying outside your front door, his name is Matt. Is that a human body? To this I say yes. That body is Matt’s body. But my body and presumably your body includes arms and legs. Argumentation includes ALL possible propositions, verbal, written, physical, you name it, consistent with the human body in question. Matt cannot speak with Italians. I can. All arguments possible for Matt, apply to Matt, and all arguments possible for me, apply to me.
The statement that “argumentation requires exclusive use of one’s body” is actually saying that argumentation is a rational, not just a physical phenomena. Physically a specific example of an argument is taking place for the chained up slave. But argumentation is not just a particular observed event. Argumentation is both physical and ideological. When a slave is chained up, that action right there, is not an argument. It is a physical motion of one person against another.
What the author’s criticism (and Murphy’s and Callahan’s criticism) is about is lumping in with argument various physical motions. They introduce the scenario of a person experiencing aggression, and then they use that as a starting point of analysis. Yet they are not actually addressing the concept of argumentation. They are talking about two different things. Argument plus aggression is not argument. Notice the subtlety in how they frame the rebuttal. They are saying, effectively, that the chained up slave can still make “an” argument. They are saying argument requires only partial, not full liberty. But again, argument is not just what people say with their mouths. Argumentation is a universal. The chained up slave is making AN argument, yes. But AE is not saying that argumentation is defined by those particular examples of arguments possible for a chained up slave. It is saying all possible argumentation for a human body. That includes arguments in the written form which for the slave would include their arms, and legs.
This rebuttal boils down to saying, as an analogy, that “Interplanetary travel” is defined as travelling to Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Neptune only. Yet “interplanetary travel” does not mean travelling to just those planets. They are just examples. If some intergalactic tyrant blew up every planet except Earth and Mars, then would this mean that “interplanetary travel” was all along just about going from Earth to Mars or vice versa? No. This again would just be an example. It is not what Interplanetary travel MEANS.
It is the age old philosophical problem of universals.
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Premise 4 and 5 later.
Yes, thank you, I’m following you so far and eagerly await more! 🙂
Premise 4:
This one is straightforward. The author is introducing a normative of “legitimacy” and treating that as one possible interpretation of what is being “denied”. Yet AE is very clear that it starts and remains in the “is” realm. There are in fact no “oughts” (of which the term “legitimacy” depends) in AE.
The author errs where he says that the only way premise 4 is true would be if what is being denied is a “right”. Actually, if premise 4 were to be associated with the component in AE closest to it, it would be that “one cannot deny that one is exercising self-ownership”. Or, “to deny self-ownership is a self-contradiction”.
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Statement 5 is just a conclusion following from 1-4, so it isn’t important to analyze it much.
Thanks. Good responses. Always happy to learn.