In essence, the person to whom you are addressing the argument or proposition is either a criminal, or civilized. If he’s a criminal, then even the most Perfect, Absolute Argument Handed Down From God will probably not deter him. And if he’s civilized, that means he already recognizes certain base norms that are incompatible with nonlibertarian ideas.
Mr Kinsella, I dont envy you. you are about to meet Libertarian Moral Nihilists.
brace yourself.
Right. The point is that we should not fret about finding arguments proving rights in a way that is good to any listener, even one who does not share our presuppositions. That it’s okay to appeal to these. Because the skeptic or criminal can disregard a Final Proof anyway. So we may as well just use an argument that appeals to shared norms–especially when those norms are necssarily shared by anyone we care to discuss with (by virtue of being a discussant, since there are norms of discourse).
Why would there be more burden on “claiming” than on “murdering”? Anyway, we only want to punish the murderer. If he doesn’t object, fine. If he does, he is the one “claiming rights” (and thereby acknowledging them in his victim).
I’ll keep posting this passage as long as you keep calling me a nihilist.
Moral nihilism must be distinguished from ethical subjectivism and moral relativism, which do allow for moral statements to be true or false in a non-objective sense, but do not assign any static truth-values to moral statements.
I’m an ethical subjectivist with an overwhelming (if subjective) moral revulsion against the state. Please stop misleading people into thinking I have a different set of opinions than I do by calling me a nihilist, thereby lumping me with Machiavellian monsters like Jacob Bloom.
It seems that you possess some sort of metaphysical view about the existence and nature of rights. In the argument which I quoted above, you assume that such a metaphysical view is correct as one of your implicit premises. But such an assumption causes your argument to become circular because your ideological adversaries, the individuals who believe that rights exist only within a utilitistic framework or as a result of a utilitistic framework, do not subscribe to such a metaphysical view. Instead, they believe that the rights which society recognizes are merely a manifestation of utilitistic considerations and not, in any way, metaphysical. They believe that the category of rights itself is merely a set of behavioral norms which are merely a result of a cultural or even genetic evolutionary process, an evolutionary process which itself is necessarily utilitistic.
In a non-objective and irrelevant sense you may be right. If you are happy with making an irrelevant distinction so be it. I think it’s better to put ‘moral subjectivists’ in the nihilist category. Is there any objective reason for me to listen to your complaints about it ?
Of course, he can simply object on the grounds that he doesn’t like being executed or whatever other punishment you wish to inflict on him. What you’re essentially saying is that if he objects to being punished, he must do so on moral grounds. Which, of course, assumes that there really are rights and begs the question.
In any case, I think just about any system of rights can be justified according to this argument.
I think Gene Callahan’s question is dead on here. Has anybody ever converted to libertarianism because of Hoppe’s/ Kinsella’s arguments? Or is it merely comforting for some libertarians to know that nobody could ever rationally disagree with them after all.
If Nir was interested in framing your argument accurately, he would have given up the lying by now.
That depends on whether your high time preference is objectively or subjectively derived.
lilburne , you are a good soul. i like you… but your claim that moral nihilism and ethical subjectivism and moral relativism are all distinct (whilst being technically true_, fails to recognise that the differences are superficial. they are all stances of anti-moral realism. they lead to the same conclusions and face the same problems.
Well, I don’t think the human psyche is quite as binary as that.
I also don’t think inconsistency implies performative contradiction.
Is that a joke of sorts ? Or do you subscribe to the stratton school of amoral philosophy ?
That depends. Is laughter a high time preference activity?
It doesn’t assume there are rights. Rather it assumes the criminal will want to defend himself by speaking in the same language of his captors. He will want to appeal to their own moral sense, and thus is forced to enter the realm of norms.
What is the relevance of this comment? Suppose it’s true. So what?
I know my own libertarianism was strengthened and deepend by Hoppe’s work. I believe others have been persuaded by my and Hoppe’s work. I can’t say how many.
How can I tell ? What units are you using to measure preference ? High ? Low ? Using what frame of reference ?
Well they’re not superficial to me. When most thinkers hear the word “nihilist” they think of the positions held by such people as Vichy and Jacob Bloom. I don’t hold those positions. I would rather not have people think I hold positions which I do not hold. It’s as simple as that.
maybe we’re all supposed to be politically-correct[:P]
Jeffery Tucker:
“What’s at work here is an unraveling of the entire basis for any form of intellectual discussion. If we can’t agree on universal rules of establishing the veracity of truth claims, all discussion is reduced to a series of demands followed by ad hominem attacks on anyone who resists those demands. Mises himself understood that if we are to avoid this fate, there had to be some understanding and agreement on the rules of logic. George Koether reports that Mises told his seminar students that the first book on economics that they should read is a book on logic by Morris Cohen, a book which is in fact one of the last complete texts on logic to be published for universal use in the college classroom. Meanwhile, forums on academic discussion boards filled with complaints that logic as a discipline is no longer part of high-school study or even undergraduate college study, which means that after 16 years of formal study, hardly any students are taught even the basic rules on how to think. This is further evidence that this one aspect of Marxism—its radical attack on the core of clear thinking…”
If a lie were to prevent your death, you would lie; but that does not imply that you would actually believe such a lie. (In order to prevent a somewhat predictable but incorrect extrapolation of my argument, note that I am not claiming that rights do not exist but merely that the section of your argument which you referenced within the above quotation does not prove that rights do exist but only suggests that some one, if it were to save their life, would lie.)
So. What. He either accedes to HIS rights and no one else’s (making him a hypocrite–guilty of the special pleading fallacy), or he accedes to everyone’s rights. I suppose he could accede to no rights at all, in which case his life would be nasty, brutish, and–most likely–short.
This isn’t about “practicality”; it’s about logical consistency.
No, but if he just objects because of some feeling–then so what? If he’s at all consistent, he shouldn’t object in the first place.
Remember: logical consistency.
That presumes the arguments are for…conversion.