Actual Logical Proof of Natural Law

[Laughing_Man]

@wilderness

The Nazi’s took over as their legal system was based on the historical school of positivism

That’s interesting because Germany is know for its historicist school of thought. You know Gustav Schmoller and his toadies.

@wilderness

It’s an amazing book. One of the biggest recent eye-openers for me with his history, in-depth philosophical inquiry, and the clarity in his comparison’s on what is natural law and what is positivism. I could say so much more out of excitement, but I’ll let it go at that. I have more to read in that book and I realize the depth and magnitude of what’s happening. Much more to learn…

Haha well it seems to have wisped you away to paradise. I shall add it to my books to read list. It sounds fascinating though

[wilderness]

@Laughing Man

@wilderness

The Nazi’s took over as their legal system was based on the historical school of positivism

That’s interesting because Germany is know for its historicist school of thought. You know Gustav Schmoller and his toadies.

I haven’t heard of them or can’t recollect. Here’s what Rommen said of Hitler quoted from the book:

“As a practicing lawyer, Rommen watched with alarm as the Nazi party deftly used German legislative, administrative, and judicial institutions to impose totalitarian rule. ‘Our modern dictators,’ he remarked, ‘are masters of legality. Hitler,’ Rommen concluded, 'aimed not a revolution, but at a legal grasp of power according to the formal democratic processes.”

@Laughing Man

@wilderness

It’s an amazing book. One of the biggest recent eye-openers for me with his history, in-depth philosophical inquiry, and the clarity in his comparison’s on what is natural law and what is positivism. I could say so much more out of excitement, but I’ll let it go at that. I have more to read in that book and I realize the depth and magnitude of what’s happening. Much more to learn…

Haha well it seems to have wisped you away to paradise. I shall add it to my books to read list. It sounds fascinating though

lol

[Laughing_Man]

@wilderness

I haven’t heard of them or can’t recollect. Here’s what Rommen said of Hitler quoted from the book:

He is the individual who basically said there are no economic laws. He and Menger got off on a debate over methodology.

@wilderness

“As a practicing lawyer, Rommen watched with alarm as the Nazi party deftly used German legislative, administrative, and judicial institutions to impose totalitarian rule. ‘Our modern dictators,’ he remarked, ‘are masters of legality. Hitler,’ Rommen concluded, 'aimed not a revolution, but at a legal grasp of power according to the formal democratic processes.”

This reminds me of Roderick Long’s paper “They Saw it coming” in which he talks about 19th century theorists seeing the raise in fascism. In it he stated and I’m paraphrasing that while Communism seeks to end any rivals to the state power, Fascists seek to ally with them. So it is interesting to see the fascists using the democratic legal system to aggrandize their power instead of causing a revolution to destroy it.

[wilderness]

@Laughing Man

@wilderness

I haven’t heard of them or can’t recollect. Here’s what Rommen said of Hitler quoted from the book:

He is the individual who basically said there are no economic laws. He and Menger got off on a debate over methodology.

Oh, I did hear of him before (Gustav). yes, that tradition isn’t interested in knowledge and learning what is. science doesn’t germinate in such conditions.

@Laughing Man

@wilderness

“As a practicing lawyer, Rommen watched with alarm as the Nazi party deftly used German legislative, administrative, and judicial institutions to impose totalitarian rule. ‘Our modern dictators,’ he remarked, ‘are masters of legality. Hitler,’ Rommen concluded, 'aimed not a revolution, but at a legal grasp of power according to the formal democratic processes.”

This reminds me of Roderick Long’s paper “They Saw it coming” in which he talks about 19th century theorists seeing the raise in fascism. In it he stated and I’m paraphrasing that while Communism seeks to end any rivals to the state power, Fascists seek to ally with them. So it is interesting to see the fascists using the democratic legal system to aggrandize their power instead of causing a revolution to destroy it.

yes, their focus is on the will - on power such as that happening inanimately (a rock needs pushed externally and they end up wanting to be the pushers of rocks/people - probably cause their society is made up of bullies and it’s a game of either be dominated or be the dominator for positivists). The intellect is thrown out the window by them and abandoned. For them, it’s about will and apply their will upon others - that’s positivism in a nutshell. They are skeptics, moral relativist, legal positivists, and historical school, etc… advocates not trying to know what is, and simply playing king of the hill for no real reason except to apply their will. Whereas the practical reason of natural law is the unison effort of intellect and will.

[Laughing_Man]

@wilderness

They are skeptics, moral relativist, legal positivists, and historical school, etc… advocates not trying to know what is, and simply playing king of the hill for no real reason except to apply their will. Whereas the practical reason of natural law is the unison effort of intellect and will.

I have to ask, is there any reference to Nietzche in the book? Perhaps is master values and slave values? I hear he had great influence on the Nazi regime.

[wilderness]

@Laughing Man

@wilderness

They are skeptics, moral relativist, legal positivists, and historical school, etc… advocates not trying to know what is, and simply playing king of the hill for no real reason except to apply their will. Whereas the practical reason of natural law is the unison effort of intellect and will.

I have to ask, is there any reference to Nietzche in the book? Perhaps is master values and slave values? I hear he had great influence on the Nazi regime.

I’m not through with the book… let me look at the index… no he doesn’t mention him. I’ve heard that before as well. Even though Rommen didn’t mention him, I don’t know if that means Nietzche played no part.

He does mention Hume is kin to Hobbe for Hume’s philosophy basically rids intellect all together and therefore has results similar to Hobbe’s effort to anchor any legal system in the state’s will. Hobbe and Spinoza changed what “nature” had meant for centuries. They redefined “nature” and “natural” into meaning ‘might makes right’ and in opposition to civility and reason whereas before and after them (those not infected by their corruption of the terms) the concept was commonly understood to have intellectual and civil connotations. They undermined it’s concept and infused a different definition into what “nature” means to provide aggrandizement to their philosophy and the State (in which their philosophy was trying to make loom as all powerful). They corrupted it’s meaning, but with clarity of intellect it’s true meaning is understood. The nature of a thing is the what is of the thing. Therefore if a person has been able to intellectually apprehended the nature or essence (quiddity) of the object, then that can be called the objects true nature (whatever the object may be) and therefore the person is said to have true knowledge of the object.

[Stephen_Forde]

@AJ

I do not here advance any ethical position myself. I only point out that Hoppe’s logic here is flawed beyond repair, and I hope he comes to grips with this so as to advance libertarianism on a sound basis and not open himself up to easy demolition like this, because the casual observer may throw out the baby (strong arguments for libertarianism) with the bathwater (glaringly fallacious arguments like the argument of Hoppe’s we are discussing).

I thought I would add this little nugget of gold for good measure.

@Hoppe pg.7

Yet such relativism is impossible to follow and thus wrong in the most objective sense of being literally incompatible with our nature as actors. Just as it is impossible to say and mean to say that there is no such thing as objective truth without in so doing actually presupposing objective criteria for the application of terms, so is it impossible to actually advocate ethical relativism. Because in order to advocate any ethical positioin whatsoever, one must be allowed to communicate rather than be coercively shut up and silenced, and thus, contrary to the relativist message itself, its messenger in bringing it to us, must in fact presuppose the existence of objectively defined absolute rights. More specifically, he must presuppose those norms of action as valid whose observance makes talk as a special form of cooperation between physically separate talkers possible, […] and whose validity must then be regaded as objective and absolute in that no one could possibly ever be alave and talkingly challenge them.

[Stephen_Forde]

@wilderness

@Stephen Forde

You have your natural rights theory and I have mine. And it’s natural. Just look at the empirical evidence. And anything that’s natural must be right. So murder, enslavement, and crime are right.

wrong… you’re lacking an epistemology based on a metaphysics of the nature of natural rights.

life is.

liberty is.

property is.

Once you intellectually apprehend what the quiddities of life, liberty, and property is (of human nature) and gain knowledge, their natures will be understood. Until then your logical fallacy of murder is life, liberty is enslavement, and crime (I guess) is property is a doublethink where A is not-A.

Well don’t keep your treasure trove of meta-physical knowledge locked away. By all means, do share.

[wilderness]

life is.

liberty is.

property is.

all three are being… is denotes being.

As the intellect apprehends these that are - life, liberty, and property - true knowledge of what they are is part of the process in deliberating their nature - their what is.

It is true this knowledge of life is life.

It is true this knowledge of liberty is liberty (freedom from physical coercion)

it is true this knowledge of property is property.

Definitions usually bog down discussion from expanding, but I’ll expand into this for now:

life being life is the truth of life.

liberty being liberty is the truth of liberty.

property being property is the truth of property.

in other words for each of these: if life is not life that is not only illogical (A is not-A) but false according to what the object - life - is. (liberty and property can be put in place of the term life in that statement and the same would hold true.)

*I MOVED THIS TO ANOTHER THREAD HERE.

[Amanojack]

@Stephen Forde

@AJ

In that case, Hoppe’s statement is a simple non sequitur: “You must understand as true that the person has spoken freely. Therefore, you must understand as true that there is an underlying norm adopted by both participants in an argument.” In other words, “The fact that each person spoke freely implies that each person adopted certain norms toward the other participants.” That clearly does not follow.

So it’s not normal for people to not coerce each other when they enter into an argument? Is that really what you are arguing? This isn’t a mode of operation that is necessarily adopted?

@Stephen Forde

If I adopt a norm of not drinking or smoking, the fact that there are no cigarettes or booze around doesn’t change that.

Whatever analogy we bring in, it is simply not the case that not violating a norm implies recognition of that norm, as Hoppe wants it to.

@Stephen Forde

@AJ

Nevermind that Hoppe starts with the underlying notion that an ethical theory can only be justified in an argument, implying that Hoppe’s ethical theory wasn’t justified until he argued about it with someone else(!!). Besides being patently ridiculous, it appears to include an inverse ad hominem fallacy for good measure. He also hints at an appeal to psychology fallacy with his talk of the arguer being uncoerced. Or else, he means justified to mean something other than “valid,” hence allowing any ethical principle at all to still be valid.

Obviously, justifying means proving to someone else. It’s not just a matter of convincing oneself. Also, what is being justified is a set of norms. And these norms exist whether anyone justifies them or not. Hoppe’s proof is a proof that only certain norms can ever be justified. Valid means that the conclusions of an argument logically follow from its premises.

So Hoppe merely “proves” that it would be hypocritical to advocate not letting people speak freely. Except that he doesn’t. A man could easily make statements like this, “Everyone should vie to speak first and everyone else should try to compete to see who can get out their arguments before others do or before others try to stop them.” Hoppe has not shown such an advocate of “violating the right to speak freely” to be inconsistent, as he had hoped to. He has in no way derived an “ought” from an “is.” He has in no way shown the man’s argument to be even unjustifiable (let alone invalid) as a universal norm.

@Stephen Forde

@AJ

And even in the fairy-tale world where Hoppe’s non sequitur holds, he still has nothing to say about those who would advocate that everyone with kidneys be forced to give up one kidney for scientific research. After all, the advocate may well have given up his kidney, and people can still argue fine with one kidney. Hoppe fails even on his own terms.

But this is ruled out by the universalizability principle which is also presupposed by argumentation. Going into this is unecessary since the OP only asks whether the is/ought gap can be bridged. I think I have sufficiently backed up Hoppe and demonstrated that some norms are indeed valid and objective.

Yes, ignoring Hoppe’s non sequitur, the is/ought divide would be breached, but a logical fallacy is no help to the OP, and even ignoring that fallacy does not give his argumentation ethics any way to derive the NAP. As for universalization, see the argument of the hypothetical man above.

@Stephen Forde

His proof is only a conservative logical innovation building on top of many other philosopher’s work.

I have not read his predecessors, but either (a) they are right and his “innovation” does not logically follow, or (b) they are wrong and his innovation may logically follow but be invalid in any case because his predecessors’ argument was invalid. I think I and others have Swiss-cheesed Hoppe’s AE enough for a while.

@Stephen Forde

So, I think you’re right that something else is needed to market to the casual observer.

Yes, I contend that even if his AE were valid, it would accomplish less than the NAP, which is already pretty easy for people to agree with. Although people may fundamentally agree with the NAP but discard it for practicality, if people can discard the NAP for practicality, how much more easily Hoppe’s AE? I don’t think there is anything to be gained even if an “ought” could be derived from an “is” (to use Hume’s awkward phrasing).

[Amanojack]

@Stephen Forde's quote of Hoppe

…he must presuppose those norms of action as valid whose observance makes talk as a special form of cooperation between physically separate talkers possible…

Again, the same old fallacy that observance of norms implies the validity of those norms. Otherwise me not wearing green would imply that I recognize the norm “You ought not wear green” as valid.

[nirgrahamUK]

if it was impossible to justify wearing green . yet possible to justify not wearing green . then you could as a point of faith believe that you could wear whatever green thing that you liked, but you could not even defend your claim against dissent, let alone prove your point. the other side would have all the cards. imagine the debate:

“you ought not to wear green because X , Y Z, notice, my oppenent can not even offer a possible counter without instantly lapsing into contradiction and falling silent, thus we know his position to be false”

“I think a man can wear green because …(i cant speak the next part of my sentence or i am in contradiction)”

well, the arguments all point one way.

[wilderness]

is there even such a thing as a green shirt?

[Conza]

Hoppe’s links his own “argumentation ethics” with a passage from the Ethics of Liberty in which Rothbard states that “a proposition rises to the status of an axiom when he who denies it may be shown to be using it in the very course of the supposed refutation.” (Rothbard 1984, 32; cf. Hoppe 2002, xxxiv– xxxv) Rothbard, in turn, was hugely impressed by Hoppe’s work and wrote that “[Hoppe] has managed to transcend the famous is/ought, fact/value dichotomy that has plagued philosophy since the days of the scholastics …”

(Rothbard 1988, 44; cf. Rothbard 1990)

http://libertarianpapers.org/articles/2009/lp-1-34.pdf

[Amanojack]

I’ll respond once someone actually articulates an objection rather than just hinting at one.

[Live_Free_Or_Die]

My first thoughts addressing the OP:

Natural law is the knowledge of human actions that result in existence or nonexistence perceived by human senses.

[Amanojack]

Could you elaborate on this? Existence or non-existence of what?

[Live_Free_Or_Die]

Natural law is the knowledge of human actions that result in existence or nonexistence of life perceived by human senses.

[Amanojack]

Sorry, I’m not getting what you mean. How is law knowledge? I can’t make sense of the rest of the sentence.

[Le_Master]

@Live_Free_Or_Die

Natural law is the knowledge of human actions that result in existence or nonexistence of life perceived by human senses.

o_O