18
Dec
2019
Bob Talks More on Hoppe
By popular demand, I elaborate on my conversation with Stephan Kinsella about Hoppe’s argumentation ethics. But then I also talk about Hoppe’s essays on praxeology, which I think have been underrated.
Since the earlier podcast I have become intrigued by the argumentation ethic but am not sure I have totally nailed it in terms of my understanding.
I have put together the following notes on what I think may be the key aspects:
– An argumentation scenario is a situation where (amongst other things) ethical rules can be peacefully discussed and potentially agreed upon
– By definition an argumentation scenario forbids the use of or threat of violence against other participants
– Any legitimate ethical rule would have to be capable of arising from an argumentation scenario involving the people to whom the rule is to be applied.
– Any candidate ethical rule that involved the threat of violence could not pass the argumentation test and therefore would not qualify as a legitimate rule.
– It would not matter if any such argument actually took place because of the first bullet point above, its still not permissible to impose rules on other that could not in theory have been legitimately agreed with them during argumentation
– Thus literally any rule that would force people to do things against their will is logically impossible as an ethically legitimate rule as it could never come out of legitimate argumentation because it threatens the use of violence.
– And in as much as people have gained their property legitimately (that is, without infringing on anyone else’s rights) any rule threatening their property is also logically impermissible.
-People who have themselves violated rules prohibiting violence (criminals) have shown themselves outside the bounds of argumentation so its OK to threaten violence against them without the theoretical need to persuade them of the justice of their punishment by argumentation.
I would welcome any feedback on if I am in the ballpark, or of not, where my main area of misunderstanding are.
One concern I have with my own thinking on this matter is that it does not seem to rely to any great extent on one having exclusive use of one’s physical body and access to one’s legally-gained property in the way that seems very central to Hoppe’s own presentation of his ethic.
IPerhaps that would come here
“– Any candidate ethical rule that involved the threat of violence could not pass the argumentation test and therefore would not qualify as a legitimate rule.”
if I can own you, then violence would be legitimate
Hoppe comments on slavery in regard to the argumentation ethic:
‘if the slave master would say to the slave ‘let’s not fight but argue about the justification of slavery,’ and he would thereby recognize the slave as another, separate and independent person with his own mind and body, he would have to let the slave go free and leave. And if he would say instead ‘so what, I have recognized you momentarily as another independent person with your own mind and body, but now, at the end of our dispute, I deny you ownership of the means necessary to argue with me and prevent you from leaving anyway,’ then he would be involved in a performative or dialectic contradiction. ‘.
At least in regard to self-ownership (I’m less sure how it plays out for property rights) I find this somewhat persuasive in favor of his argumentation ethic:
Where is that from, Transformer?
And ironically, you are saying you find that persuasive, but my point (as spelled out e.g. in my paper with Gene) is that if THAT’s the argument, then it proves way too much / too little. Everything I said in the beginning of this episode applies to the argument if it’s the one you just quoted.
But, I didn’t take Stephan to be saying that.
test
Seems like anything but very short comments are going to moderation – apologies for the duplicates !
Its from http://propertyandfreedom.org/2016/10/hans-hermann-hoppe-on-the-ethics-of-argumentation-pfs-2016/ (you linked to this in your earlier post and I think Hoppe wrote that bit in response to one of your and Gene’s points in your joint paper on the subject).
The reason I like it as a follows: If the slaveholder is to enter into argumentation with his slave on the ethics of slavery then for it to count as argumentation the outcome (by definition of the term ‘;argumentation’) must be binding. After the discussion they can agree or they can agree to differ. Assuming we’re talking about involumray slavery then the slave can never consent to his slavery so the only outcome of the argumentation can be to let the slave go free (this would have to happen in the case of ‘agree to differ’ as the slave has not agreed to continue to be slave).
If the slaveholder goes into the argument with the view ‘I’ll have this debate but no matter what the outcome I’m keeping the slave anway” (or in any case keeps the slave even thought the outcome of the argumentation was ‘agree to differ’) then he is committing a performance contradiction as he does not respect the result of the argumentation.
Further, if the slave owner wants to live his life in an ethical manner then he doesn’t even need to really have the debate. He just needs to think it through and he will realize that it is logical impossibility to justify slavery through argumentation as one could never win such an argument. Slavery can only be justified along ‘might is right’ lines not in genuine free debate. If he wants to live an ethical life in regard to slavery ‘he would have to let the slave go free’
BTW: I do not think the matter has anything to do with the slave owner having to allow the slave the freedom and tools to argue. That appears to be be your view at least when you wrote the paper. several years ago now. The universal ethics of slavery can be determined even with no actual debate between owner and slave using the argumentation ethic.
The reason I like it as a follows: If the slaveholder is to enter into argumentation with his slave on the ethics of slavery then for it to count as argumentation the outcome (by definition of the term ‘;argumentation’) must be binding. After the discussion they can agree or they can agree to differ. Assuming we’re talking about involumray slavery then the slave can never consent to his slavery so the only outcome of the argumentation can be to let the slave go free (this would have to happen in the case of ‘agree to differ’ as the slave has not agreed to continue to be slave).
If the slaveholder goes into the argument with the view ‘I’ll have this debate but no matter what the outcome I’m keeping the slave anway” (or in any case keeps the slave even thought the outcome of the argumentation was ‘agree to differ’) then he is committing a performance contradiction as he does not respect the result of the argumentation.
Further, if the slave owner wants to live his life in an ethical manner then he doesn’t even need to really have the debate. He just needs to think it through and he will realize that it is logical impossibility to justify slavery through argumentation as one could never win such an argument. Slavery can only be justified along ‘might is right’ lines not in genuine free debate. If he wants to live an ethical life in regard to slavery ‘he would have to let the slave go free’
For most of human history, slaves were completely recognized as people with their own minds and bodies, but they were owned by another person thanks to being prisoners of war, or as punishment for some crime, or various other things but those were the main two. It was also generally recognized that offering freedom to such a person (generally after a fixed period of time) was a vary respectable and decent thing to do, therefore demonstrating understanding of the preferences of all concerned, and the moral context of this activity.
There was never any epistemological confusion about whether one human was imposing force of will over another human. It was a pretty simple formula: use military force, build empires, subjugate anyone who gets in your way, extract tax in one form or another. Go back and repeat.
It’s only modern people who have started getting all angsty over this … and really only a subset of Western people, who started feeling a bit guilty over past conquests.
My comments got eaten – did something change ?
No, I don’t know why it sometimes holds them up for Moderation. If there are a lot of links that’s usually a guarantee, but not sure why it held up this one from you.
And now I think i get the point Hoppe is making about the importance of ‘first appropriator’ property rights as being key to the argumentation ethic.
• People have to interact with the world in order to survive
• This leads to bits of the world becoming resources for utility generation
• In a world of scarcity, if there are multiple people then there is a potential for conflict over these resources and who controls them
• If these conflicts are not to be solved by fighting (the winner gets control) they must be resolved by argumentation
• They can only consistently be resolved by argumentation if everything that is used by humans as a resource has a defined owner who decides how they are used .
• Only the ‘first appropriator’ property rights rule provides a logically consistent way to assign owners to things.
• The alternatives of ‘everyone owns everything jointly’ fails because it will be impossible to get everyone to agree on how the resource should be used and hence conflict will not be avoided
• The alternative of ‘a late-comer has precedence over the first appropriator’ fails because it is clearly impossible for a late comer to make decisions about a resource before they appear on the scene – so logically they cannot be considered the owner and given this it would be unjust for them to take it over from the first appropriator when they do arrive on the scene.
• These are the only two alternatives to the ‘first appropriator’ which has no such logical gotchas and so this leaves it as the only property right ethic consistent with the argumentation ethic.
“Only the ‘first appropriator’ property rights rule provides a logically consistent way to assign owners to things.”
Yeah, but it doesn’t really. Someone has to decide whether something has been “appropriated”, which is subjective. So we are really back at square one. Just as self ownership just ignores when someone is asleep and someone else can move their leg. It sounds OK, but fails on closer examination. It is an appeal to “common sense”. We know that someone owns themselves because it feels like that to most of us. A rigorous examination reveals the flaws.
To be clear: I was trying to describe Hoppe’s views rather than providing editorial comment.
I think Hoppe is thinking of a theoretical world where people just appear on the scene and appropriate’ things that nobody else is using. In this situation it seems reasonable that they should be the first owners and that any ‘late-comers’ are therefore initiating violence (forbidden by argumentation ethics) if they claim ownership. I agree that in the real world things are much more murky since property ownership probably only arrived on the scene after social arrangements akin to ‘primitive communism’ existed.
Nevertheless I think there is some value in the theoretical world as a thought experiment to derive some (possible) fundamental truths about property rights.
I disagree with you on self-ownership though. If Hoppe’s ethic applies at all then it definitely applies to self-ownership. Just because someone else can move my leg while I am asleep it does not mean I do not own it – and I think Hoppe provides logically consistent reasons to prove this with his argumentation ethics and his analysis of ‘first appropriation’ property rights.