Of course.
Now I don’t deny I’m arguing that morality is objective but what I’m definately not saying is that to be a left libertarian you must think this.I’m not conflating my philosophical beliefs on morality into the definition of left libertarianism itself. There are many different justifications for what left libertarians consider moral and immoral.
Keep thinking about it. It will come to you eventually.
So if I am more logical and experienced than you, I have moral authority over you?
Learn how the burden of proof works, ok?
Don’t confuse an assertion with a proof.
Source?
Scott, if you don’t understand an argument, and cannot follow it, don’t use the bold text feature.
This is not a strawman. It might be considered a reductio. They are not the same thing. YOUR error comes from misunderstanding logic.
If you can’t prove it, why should anyone believe you?
Within praxeology, my comment is 100% correct, and your comment is 100% wrong.
Congratulations, you get a cookie.
No one has claimed that.
That’s praxeology, and you do not understand it.
First you say I am correct that all Mises said is people reason from means to ends.Then you say no one has claimed this means the means used to get to the ends are necessarily the correct ones- so far so good- but THEN when I say it’s crazy to say no one can ever act irrationally (which should be clear in this context means it’s crazy to say no one ever chooses the wrong means to an end) you say this is praxeology. I think you misunderstood me.
What I’m saying is we must be careful to seperate out what we’re talking about and not be simplistic and try to claim from "people act rationally in that they reason from means to ends " to “people act rationally because they ALWAYS choose the correct means for their desired ends”- which is clearly false and not what Mises argued.
“Your essentially saying no voluntary relationship in which someone is being mistreated is immoral.That’s absurd.”
(…)
"Answer my questions. How can someone be mistreated when they ask to be treated a particular way?
I’m making a simple praxeological insight. People act rationally."
"…given the circumstances, yes. It doesn’t follow that people can act immorally, even though people put up with it. "
“What does this mean? Your reply is not clear.”
That people act using means to achieve ends, within given circumstances. Yes, that’s the ultimate datum of praxeology. That is completely correct.
It doesn’t follow that ‘putting up with something’ is the same as ‘asking to be treated in a particular way’. Praxeology is irrelevant for thymology, but it’s thymology that is relevant here. It’s not that hard to understand, we do it all the time. The reasons why people are in a certain voluntary relationship matter for moral philosophy. It’s not ‘just’ praxeology: ‘ow, the wife stays with her abusive husband, so what the husband does, is perfectly morally oke!’ There is no real requirement for legal action, but there is room for moral condemnation. The wife (in this example) wants to be treated differently, but sees no other way, so just settles for the end and the means she sees fit, given her circumstances. Nobody is denying that she’s acting ‘praxeological’. (It’s impossible to act ‘non-praxeological’, so that wouldn’t make any sense.) Just because the husband can get away with his behavior, because the wife sees no real possibility otherwise, doesn’t follow that he’s not being immoral.
Obviously, husband and wife can be interchangeable. Abusive wives also exist. I’m just illustrating a point of the possibility of someone who in a praxeological sense chooses for a certain situation, but where there is still immoral behavior.
But, the way you explain your position, I would have to conclude that this husband is not engaging in immoral behavior against the wife, because th wife chooses to stay with her husband. If that is not your opinion, please be more clear with what you mean.
“If ought statements are value statements, then praxeologically they must be subjective.”
<= Explanatory value subjectivism doesn’t flat out deny the possibility of objective values. It could be that there are no objective values where people ought to strive for, but just because there is the concept of explanatory value subjectivism, it doesn’t follow that there is the impossibility of objective values. Praxeology is the science/logic of action. To explain certain behavior - and to deduce economic laws - we need explanatory value subjectivism. It doesn’t follow that it is impossible to deduce objective values. If you want to proof the impossibility of an objective value, just referring to explanatory value subjectivism, doesn’t cut it. If you say ‘the burden of proof is on you to proof that there is such a thing’, than I agree. But if you deny the possibility, than you have to give an epistemological argument why such a thing is impossible.
I’m not saying I have deduced objective values - that depends on what you mean by it. But it is certainly true, as Mises said, that to achieve certain objectives (ends) we have to use certain means. This relation is objective. If you thus want to aim for that end, you have to use a certain mean. It’s definitely true that objective relations exist in that way and thus a conditional objective value exists in that way.
“The burden is on the person claiming this (you, Scott, Roderick Long etc) to prove it. I can’t prove a negative.”
<= The first sentence is obviously correct. I do not say otherwise. The second sentence is obviously false: it is perfectly possible to proof some kinds of negative. Godel has an impossibility theorem, Mises has one and there are many other proofs that proof that something is impossible. Some negatives can’t be proven - e.g. is there a teapot on Mars? - but some kind. There is an epistemological argument that proofs that the negative ‘there is no teapot around Mars’ can’t be proven, as there is an epistemological argument that the negative ‘socialism can’t calculate’ can proven. (The necessary requirements to engage economic calculation are not available in a socialist commonwealth.)
So, if you say that you can’t proof the assertion that nothing meaningful can be said about how people ought to act, given a libertarian law code, than you ought to be able to give the epistemological argument why this is, in fact, impossible. If not, than I think one ought to be agnostic about it.
I do think that meaningful things can be said about how people ought to behave, given a libertarian law code. At least in the rule-utilitarian sense as Mises applied it. If you want to achieve certain ends, certain moral ought codes follow necessarily. I’m not sure if anything can be said over and above that.
Adrian, wouldn’t you say your last paragraph means you all agree here? It seems to me that your use of the term “objective value” was just a way of phrasing Mises’s subjective utilitarianism in a way that was unfamiliar to the other posters, so they reacted unfavorably to it (because they thought you meant something mystical by it).
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems you meant:
"But it is certainly true, as Mises said, that to achieve certain objectives (ends) we have to use certain means. This relation is objective. If you thus want to aim for that end, you have to use a certain mean. It’s definitely true that objective relations exist in that way and thus a conditional objective value exists in that way. "
I’m not sure. To sump up, without any arguments.
I do think that there is such a thing as a ‘natural law’. (And I think Mises rule-utiliterianism is connected to it. I don’t buy the strict dichotomy.)
I do think there is a distinction between a moral ought and a legal ought. (The main difference, probably, being the fact one can legitimately use force to enforce a legal ought, but not a moral ought.)
I do think there can be a ‘science of legal ought’ (i.e. natural law, which is an a priori science, based upon the logic of action.) The ‘logical’ conclusion from this, is something that can be called ‘libertarianism’. So, in a legal sense, the science of (natural) law, demands that we have a libertarian-law like world.
I do think there can be a ‘science of moral ought’. I’m not completely sure if this is an a priori science. But to the very least: we can make rule-utilitarian like statements, similar to Misesian rule-utilitarian arguments for what laws should guide a society (where the use of force is permitted.) I do not think it’s just ‘all subjective’. At least - in the Misesian sense - there are certain objective relations. (If rule x was a generally acknowledged and acted upon moral rule, we would have outcome X. If we desire outcome X, we should have generally acknowledge moral rule x.) So within a libertarian-law like world, there can still be moral discussion about what means we should have to achieve what means. At least in the sense of Misesian rule-utilitarianism, but I’m open to the possibility that it can go beyond that: it might be true that we can proof that people ought to have certain moral ends. But I have no example of this, nor do I know of any argument for it. But I don’t have any epistemological argument that this would be impossible either.
Again; I’m not making any arguments for it at this point in time. But, in a nut shell, this is where I stand. You might disagree with this - which some of you probably do. But I don’t think this position is in any way anti-libertarian, anti-praxeology or anti-reason.
I would also note that I don’t really like/use the term ‘objective value’. An ‘objective ought’ is not the same as ‘an objective value’.
I hope my position is clear.
Thank you for taking the time to carefully explain this.This was what I was arguing.
First, your use of the word moral here makes it seem that you would say that, “To get to the store, you ought to take a right on 9th street,” is a moral statement. Was that your intent?
Second, what would it even mean to say someone “ought to have moral ends”? I mean, you may want to prove something, but I don’t think we readers of this have any way of knowing what it is you may want to prove, so it is hard to respond.
I defined the term ‘moral philosophy’ (and thus moral statements) as that part of philosophy that tries to analyze what kind of moral rules people ought to follow regarding their interactions with other people - without the use of force being legitimate to enforce these rules. And it’s distinguished from philosophy of law, that investigates the legitimate use of force to enforce certain behaviors. I think both definitions fit into the tradition of philosophy, i.e. how those words are commonly used in philosophy.
Well; to say ‘one ought to have certain moral end x’ would mean that ‘someone is morally in the wrong if he doesn’t have and act upon moral end x’. Again; I’m not sure if that this is possible to proof, but that’s what it would mean. Take for example that ‘helping people in dying need when there is no way else around to help him/her’ would be a moral end. Than if someone is in that situation, but doesn’t try to help that person, he would be morally in the wrong.
One Misesian-kind of argument for it to be a moral rule would be: a society where people help at low cost to themselves other people in dying need could/would be a society where the harmony of interests would even be better served than an alternative libertarian world, where this moral rule wouldn’t be generally accepted. So if we want such a world, we ought to adopt that rule. (This would be a conditional argument: if x than y.)
But could it be possible to proof that something ought to be a moral rule just because of what the rules state itself, and not because we can accept that we both want to achieve end x, and therefore we ought to adopt a certain rule. This is, obviously, similar to the discussion regarding natural law versus 'ule-utilitarian approach to law, but in the realm of moral philosophy.
By “morally wrong” do you mean something other than “an inefficient way for a given person to achieve their goals” (including their goal of not feeling guilty, or of getting warm fuzzies from helping other people)? Hence what is morally wrong would vary from person to person, depending on what they care about? (I.e., this would just be a restatement of Mises.)
I will not. I’m done with this disussion, in particular, Scott, Adrian and semantics. I apologize in advance if this doesn’t satisfy you.
All I’m really looking for is your definition of “moral”. I’d also like to know how you think I was being “lazy” earlier. Of course, I can’t make you honor these two requests, but I see no good reason as to why you wouldn’t. They seem simple enough, don’t they?
Autolykos, no means no. You’ve done this with me, too. When someone says clearly they’d prefer not to go further into a topic in a given thread, and yet you still continue to ask them about it, it can only serve to irritate. I know you don’t mean anything by it; just letting you know how it comes off.
I think you got exposed on praxeology and refused to define your terms. By refusing to define your terms, you guaranteed the argument couldn’t resolve itself.
In this case, I think “no” also means “I’m deliberately evading your questions”.
When and where?
Thanks for that. I already figured it can serve to irritate. That’s not my intention, but I can’t always help how the other person takes it. My point here was to imply that, as far as I’m concerned, Liberty Student is deliberately evading my questions for no good reason (IMO). Furthermore, he repeatedly asked others in this thread for the definition of “moral”, yet he won’t provide his own definition when respectfully asked.
So, to be perfectly blunt, I don’t care whether it’s irritating. If I ask questions in a respectful manner, and they’re not answered, I’m going to assume they were deliberately ignored. At that point, I’m irritated. Why should I then care whether the other person becomes irritated as well?
You can assume anything you like. You seem to assume a sense of entitlement that people are getting tired of being demanded to fulfill.
And if you have to ask why in a social group you have to be concerned about being irritating, well then perhaps its not other people who are having a problem arguing in good faith.
