It must be the first because for two people to have an argument and for it to count as an argument, both parties must be able to exchange propositions freely. If someone were to force or compel them to make wome proposition not of their own free will, but under duress, it wouldn’t count as an argument, at least not one in which they are a participant.
It must be the second because each participant has entered into the argument of their own free will (again; or else it wouldn’t be an argument), and are demonstrating their preference to be in an argument with that person. They also demonstrate, by logical extension, that they each prefer the other person to be in control of their own body and standing room, as these are the necessary conditions for an argument to take place. Hence, they demonstrate that they prefer the norm that their opponent in the argument have full control over their own body and standing room and that it is implicitly justified as it is the necessary norm for anything to be justified in any argument whatsoever. That is to say, for any proposition which is justified (demonstrated to be true), anything wich logically presupposes it is also justified. And rights are justified norms.
For example, if you agree with me that “England exists” (i.e., it matters for your actions) then it matters to both of us, and we can talk coherently about England.
So it seems you are hinting at intersubjectivity (agreement on our subjective experiences), not objectivity. Why not just call it intersubjective value?
“Intersubjective valuation between you and me” means we both value the same thing. It could even be that everyone values the same thing - universal valuation. But that is not “objective valuation” - unless that is all you really meant by “objective” in the first place.
So it seems you are hinting at intersubjectivity (agreement on our subjective experiences), not objectivity. Why not just call it intersubjective value?
No, the geographical area of England exists independently of you or I or anyone else. It’s objective. It doesn’t matter whether we both “value” it or not, because I don’t think that has anything to do with existence. You seem to think Man creates reality, which is patently false. Reality exists ere man can “invent” it.
“There is a reality” is a meaningful statement independent of human thought.
Well you’re addressing two different sets of arguments.
One is that “objective” is a useless term, and the other involving Hoppe’s AE. As for the first, yes “intersubjective” is better.
As for Hoppe’s Argumentation Ethics, well for one thing the choice to be “in error” doesn’t seem to have any negative consequences anyway, so why should anyone care even if that were the case? Normally being in error could result in death, like if you were in error about whether you were eating spinach or hemlock. But this kind of “in error” you speak of seems to be a very special kind where it would result in no possible negative consequences.
Actually my last post wasn’t very good. It is necessarily intersubjective, as in everyone must understand the same concept in the same way. It must be taken for grante that everyone has the same structure of logic. That there is no polylogism. That the same concepts mean the same thing to different people.
I was just tying it back in with the original discussion on objective ethics, not talking about England anymore in that last question. If we are still talking about England, we can say it “intersubjectively exists,” meaning we both deem the sensations we experience that we label “England” to be part of the set of sensations that matter to our future actions/anticipations. (As per my definition above.)
It is circular. “There is X” = “X exists” = “X is part of reality.” The only way to break out of that circularity is to refer to actual experience, as my definition does.
That’s a very good point Nir. I think this is a good reason why it doesn’t work to simply say that ‘ethical values’ are subjective because they are a subset of ‘values’. ‘Ethical values’ should perhaps be called ‘virtues’ to avoid this confusion. The disagreement, then, is about whether virtues, statements about certain norms/behaviors with weight attached to them, are objective, i.e. subject to being shown to be correct/incorrect, or whether we can only say that virtues are a preference like aesthetic preferences and not subject to being proved correct or incorrect.
Or in Hoppe’s words, whether statements about ethics are “truth claims” which “must be raised and settled in the course of an argumentation”. AE only applies to these truth claims, so are ethical statements like “the NAP is the best norm” truth claims or not?
Question for Nir / Conza… if I were to make the statement that “Picasso paintings are beautiful” and you disagree and we have an “argument” about it, would this be an “argument” in the sense Hoppe uses that term? I mean, it’s not like this is going to be “settled”. One of us is not going to prove the other person incorrect. Even if I persuaded you to change your mind, neither of us would say you were ‘incorrect’ before.
I see how it could look like I’m saying “we create our reality,” but I’m just saying we cannot speak coherently about that which we cannot experience. It may sound odd when someone actually speaks in terms of only what they actually experience firsthand, but it is the only way to be precise in this discussion.
It is circular. “There is X” = “X exists” = “X is part of reality.” The only way to break out of that circularity is to refer to actual experience, as my definition does.
No. That “X exists” is the only way to break the circularity. Otherwise you are arguing with circularity that the world only exists because you create it. Which is circular. My argument isn’t, because it is just a basic truth, or axiom. X=X; X exists.
But it is the only way to be precise in this discussion.
Why? Because it conforms to your biases rather than mine? I could just as easily argue that the only way to be precise is to accept the actual definitions of the words as per the OED, rather than creating your own, which don’t make any sense.
If we use the word virtue, I sure hope there’s a way to make it into a verb. “Put importance on” works for me, and apparently also for Nir. I can place importance on people not hurting others, for example.
Objectivity is simply necessary for any argument to take place. If the mind of A has a different logical structure than the mind of B, and understands concepts differently, they could not have an argument. There would simply be no way for either of them to know what the other means or what they are agreeing with or disagreeing with. The fact that they are arguing and can understand what the other means by A follows from B, regardless of whether or not they agree with the proposition, show that they both understand (inter-subjectively/objectively or whatever) What concept A means and what concept B means and what it means for one to logically follow from the other. Otherwise, neither of them would be able to justify anything to the other and there would be no point to arguing.
Keep in mind that we are trying to define the word exist, not make an axiom. We are trying to define the word merely for the purposes of communicating clearly, which I assume is your goal. Hence saying “X=X; X exists” just doesn’t tell me anything.
Because when we communicate we have to make sure we are both talking about the same thing. We have to have some confidence that when I say a word, you understand the same thing that I understand by it. We have to know what each other’s words refer to before the discussion can even begin. The OED is not anywhere near precise enough to be useful, and that should come as no surprise considering it’s just a catalog of everyday usage. If you don’t like my definition, tell me why, and propose your own - one more precise than OED, one that is not obviously circular. Mine is, at least, not circular: it points to particular aspects of experience.