This makes perfect sense to me. But my original question in the other thread:
I think this is the main issue. Given that there are disputes, we can determine certain things. Clayton put it together nicely in his thread A Praxeological Account of Law.
But I think my original problem was with the idea that we can know without experience that there will be disputes. Even with scarcity, it seems like something we have to experience. Like I said, some people do sacrifice their lives for others. Some people don’t. While we can imagine both possibilities, are they something we can know independantly of experience?
I used the example of pigs flying as well. I can imagine a father sacrificing his life for his child, and I can imagine him not doing it. I can imagine pigs flying, and I can imagine pigs not flying. It seems to me, at least at first glance, that these are things that we have to experience in order to know.
They seem to be different than “bachelors are unmarried men”. That is something that is independant of experience. Same with human action. You do not observe human action in order to know it. It is independant of it. It’s essentially a description of purposeful choice versus instinctual or reflexive behavior. It’s a definition. It separates the categories of behavior.
Maybe we could say that there is voluntary and socially cooperative behavior, and there is coercive and socially adversarial behavior. Disputes fall into the category of socially adversarial behavior until they are resolved and cease to be disputes. Perhaps in this way we could say that the existence of disputes is a priori?
Let me know what you think.