I want to thank Conza88 for the great contributions.
I have always asked myself how could anyone not become involved in a contradiction if he first says that the Hoppe’s axiom is not valid and then proceeds to say that people don’t need a-priori ethics, or that such don’t exist at all, but rather ethics could be contracted, i.e. come out as a result of some cooperation. Well my question is - do or do not these actors who contract to come up with the “free market ethics” act? If they are acting they are doing so with the presumpion of some preestablished ethics. The action they are commiting while contracting demonstrates that they are already keeping some moral rules.
Others suggest that a-priori ethics are unnecessary, since people will reconsize the benefits of cooperation and simply will not do “wrong things”(how could you say that something is wrong if you think that ethics does not exist?). But wait a minute, when they are talking about cooperation they do not refer to the such as a whole but rather to some category of cooperation. And this category is the one which includes humen interaction which produces an outcome they like. So they do not have any argument against such activities as stealing and killing. They like the cooperation which aims at outcome that they appreciate, and deem the action involved in such cooperation “good”, and whatever other outcomes could be produced that they don’t like are deemed “bad” simply because they don’t like them. (that is why every theft of killer could use the same false argument for a justification of his actions)
As you are probably aware - the axiom that Hoppe formulated, which states that the individual is the one who is in exclusive control over his body, can not not be proven and what is else it does not tell you that someone else should not initiate aggression against you. It merely refutes any arguments that try to prove the opposite - which is a positive - that someone should coerce you. So his axiom just shows that arguments that are for the initiation of aggression are unsound. Not that they are unethical, but rather unsound.
I was surprised to see the reputation of the following thread, which contains at least several non-sequiturs in the OP that completely corrupt what he is trying to articulate: https://forum.freecapitalists.org/t/why-capitalism/17612
"I want to thank Conza88 for the great contributions. "
Hey, no worries!
“As you are probably aware - the axiom that Hoppe formulated, which states that the individual is the one who is in exclusive control over his body, can not not be proven and what is else it does not tell you that someone else should not initiate aggression against you. It merely refutes any arguments that try to prove the opposite - which is a positive - that someone should coerce you. So his axiom just shows that arguments that are for the initiation of aggression are unsound. Not that they are unethical, but rather unsound.”
Well said.
“My entire argument, then, claims to be an impossibility proof. But not, as the mentioned critics seem to think, a proof that means to show the impossibility of certain empirical events, so that it could be refuted by empirical evidence [such as the existence of non-libertarian societies-RPM and GC]. Instead, it is a proof that it is impossible to justify non-libertarian property principles without falling into contradictions . . . empirical evidence has absolutely no bearing on it.” (Hoppe 1988, p. 53)
“I was surprised to see the reputation of the following thread, which contains at least several non-sequiturs in the OP that completely corrupt what he is trying to articulate”
Ha, typical. I missed that as I was travelling. Can I be bothered wading through the probable circle jerk? Nay.
What would that change / focusing on that achieve? I’d prefer to keep the discussion prominently on the arguments, not the people promoting them. But you seem to have only enquired about the latter, not the former. In addition to ignoring previous points raised - i.e “tolerance” & consequentialism.
My question was simple and direct. Who specifically were you calling out? If you can’t name names, then spare us your condemnation. Internet cowards are a dime a dozen.
How does exactly the specified person who made the argument which Conza proved invalid relates to the validy of Conza’s own argument? What does it matter whether a theorist who has demonstrated that another theorist’s argument is invalid has named this other theorist or not? Doesn’t his proof still hold or it doesn’t?
I do not see the red herring… But I see that you are the one participant in the debate who questions the feelings and emotions of another participant as a way may be to proof him wrong?
I see several conclusions being drawn but no premises for those conclusions. It’s possible that this is because I am reading this section out of context in which case would you mind including his premises?
Conclusions he comes to that I don’t see premises for:
demonstrates that simply in order to propose the utilitarian position, exclusive rights of control over one’s body and one’s homesteaded goods already must be presupposed as valid.
the assignment of rights of exclusive control cannot be dependent on certain outcomes.
demonstrate through their actions that their consequentialist doctrine is and must be regarded as false.
The other conclusions appear to be based on these statements which are unfounded, at least in this single excerpt. Alternatively, if you have a personal argument in favor of any of those conclusions that will work just as well.
Conza chose to make an appeal to riddicule against some set of people on this forum. Liberty student wanted to know who they were. Conza indicated that he didn’t want to derail the conversation. Liberty student pointed out that Conza initiated the derailing by appealing to riddicule in the first place, which started the whole chain.
I see that there are people who can not grasp the axiom formulated by Hoppe. Think over this:
No one but the human individual himself is the ultimate decision maker about the way his body to be disposed. This essentialy means that only he can possibly decide who to include or exclude in the control of this particular body.
I am not talking here how come that actually only he can do so. Whether the self is in control, whether some spirit inside the body or whatever. It does not matter what exactly inside the body takes the decisions. What matters is that this thing is the one that first and only homesteaded the particular body in question and what is more*;* this thing can not be replaced with another thing*; no two things could simultaneously be ultimate-decision makers.*
From here then every action performed by the thing or the thing’s body as its means only confirms this. Every action of a thing or thing’s body involved in an argument which goal is to settle a way for interaction with another thing demonstrates in practice the double confirmation of this axiom. And every action of a thing or thing’s body which aims at the impossibility of conquering another thing and becoming the thing of its body demonstrates unreasonabless, which does not suffice a valid argument in defence of coercion. That is what the axiom is all about: it proofs the invalidy of all the arguments that are for coercion; what it does not proof is that coercion should not be practiced. But until someone comes with a valid argument for coercion (he first has to successfully escape the inherent contradiction of arguing for coercion) no such argument will exist and first and only homesteaded things will still be the only legitimate ultimate-decision makers about their bodys’.
“Conza chose to make an appeal to riddicule against some set of people on this forum. Liberty student wanted to know who they were. Conza indicated that he didn’t want to derail the conversation. Liberty student pointed out that Conza initiated the derailing by appealing to riddicule in the first place, which started the whole chain.”
If a theorist has already made a sufficient refutal of someone’s argument how does it matter if he even starts making flying somersault?
I was tired when I posted last night and forgot to make my point. Both of them are being petty is what I was getting at. Conza for his initial appeal to riddicule and liberty student for not ignoring it.
My contention lies with this statement. It presumes that the human individual is a single indivisible object, not a collection of cells, molecules, atoms, etc. In essence, it is assigning special value to the collection of matter that makes up a human compared to the collection of matter that makes up a dog, a spider, a tree or a stone.
I am not against assigning special value to the human collection of matter but it seems to me to be a very weak premise for an argument. In this case, you are assigning special value to the collection of matter we define as human and then you are deriving theorems from that specialness. The problem is, it’s impossible to define that specialness objectively since it is an abstract nonscientific concept. While you may believe the specialness to have a certain set of bounds or properties I may not agree and there is no way to reconcile that disagreement through science and logic. Reconciliation requires a shared metaphysical belief system.
In this particular example you are defining a human as the ultimate decision maker for the matter that makes them up. What about someone who is brain dead? In a coma? Asleep? They are not capable of being a decision maker so does that mean they are free to being homesteaded by other thinking entities? Do you believe that a dog, who can make decisions for themselves, can also not be homesteaded by another decision making body (e.g.: humans)? What about a rat? Spider?
The point of that last paragraph was to show that you are drawing an arbitrary line in the sand and while I don’t fault you for it in any way and in most cases I likely agree with you where to draw the line, it is a very easy argument to logically invalidate and therefore a poor premise for further arguments.
I wasn’t petty at all. I asked him to clarify his remarks. He never retracted them, he just refused to make them specific which frankly is nonsense.
Conza is a very bright man (and a friend of mine outside this forum) but that doesn’t mean we can’t have intellectual disagreements, and that doesn’t mean that sloppy argumentation (his or mine) should slide.
Laughing at people isn’t an argument. It’s good form to give the other side an opportunity to respond, instead of taking a vague swipe at what could have been several posters, in this thread and others, non-specifically. If his refutation was strong, he should have no issue with identifying the source of the flawed rgument.
My contention lies with this statement. It presumes that the human individual is a single indivisible object, not a collection of cells, molecules, atoms, etc. In essence, it is assigning special value to the collection of matter that makes up a human compared to the collection of matter that makes up a dog, a spider, a tree or a stone.
I am not against assigning special value to the human collection of matter but it seems to me to be a very weak premise for an argument. In this case, you are assigning special value to the collection of matter we define as human and then you are deriving theorems from that specialness. The problem is, it’s impossible to define that specialness objectively since it is an abstract nonscientific concept. While you may believe the specialness to have a certain set of bounds or properties I may not agree and there is no way to reconcile that disagreement through science and logic. Reconciliation requires a shared metaphysical belief system.
Hoppe’s axiom does not use as a premise for its conclusion what is the substance of the thing that occupies the role of an ultimate decision-maker. He does not bother to explain what is or what is not the human individual consisted of. This consideration whether or not humans represent a distinct matter or do not represent a distinct matter does not serve as a premise for his conclusion. He does not treat human matter in some special way, that supposedly grants some special status of the human matter over that of the non-human matter. He is not considering matter. He also does not consider non-humans. That is because non-humans can not engage in argumentation, either because they can not reason or they are inanimate or do not have proper cognitive functions. Can you possibly debate with an animal or with a rock? Do arguments for any moral rules made by non-humans exist? Can moral rules be established between a human party and a non-human party? The way non-humans ought to act is not a possible subject of argumentation between a human and a non-human. Hence, the way non-humans ought to act can not be bound to moral rules. When a guy that uses a dog in his circus demands from this dog to do something and it actually does so is not a primer for established moral rules between the guy and the dog. A dog is A) not a human and B) can not elaborate an argument. The dog is an animate thing. If a human recognizes the dog as a thing that can probably render services useful to his want satisfaction and he can control the dog - this makes the dog another scarce resource.
In this particular example you are defining a human as the ultimate decision maker for the matter that makes them up. What about someone who is brain dead? In a coma? Asleep? They are not capable of being a decision maker so does that mean they are free to being homesteaded by other thinking entities? Do you believe that a dog, who can make decisions for themselves, can also not be homesteaded by another decision making body (e.g.: humans)? What about a rat? Spider?
How do exactly humans that are braind dead or in coma act?
You can not homestead a human individual neither when he is awake, nor when he is asleep. “… and what is more*;* this thing can not be replaced with another thing*; no two things could simultaneously be ultimate-decision makers.”*
I am sorry for my poor quotation ability. I hope that you can properly understand which part of what I have written addresses which part of your text.
Am I correct in understanding that the key here is an object’s capability of argumentation? If so, does that mean a human with a mental deficiency causing them to be unable to argue becomes a scarce resource rather than a human with the ability to homestead (including homestead his own body)? What if this deficiency is temporary such as in children (they grow out of it) or while asleep/in a coma (it ends once you awaken)? What about people who are born with a permanent deficiency (mentally retarded)? What about people who develop a permanent deficiency later in life (dementia, damage to the prefrontal cortex, etc.)?
I am not arguing your point, just trying to understand it. In fact, I don’t necessarily have a problem with your definition of “capability of argumentation” as the defining factor, I just want to make sure I understand it before I really think it through and try to poke holes in it.
I guess that I meant as simple as possible for the situation. I didn’t mean that you should try to expand every word into some sort of huge paragraph worth of explanation. I think that most people tend to take their jargon way too far, but it still has its place. I just meant that it would be useless to use a complex grammatical form in the place of a simple one meaning the same thing, or a big word in the position of a small one referring to the same thing. Useless if you’re trying to share ideas, I mean.
I suggested Human Action because we sort of expect everybody to be fluent in Misesian language here. If you’re not fluent in it, we’re prepared to quote him and stuff, but we just sort of act as if you already know it anyway. I mean, not everybody here does that, but it works if you do. Some of the people here focus more on Rothbard or something, and that’s fine. It’s just like, if you’re speaking something foreign to us, we expect you to break it down into ordinary language, or translate it into one of our languages (Misesian, Rothbardian, or whatever).
But remember that I didn’t even agree that we should both use the same language. I could speak Misesian while you speak Vichian. That would be fine. So with that in mind, I don’t think that my actual position is susceptible to that criticism (that a book doesn’t provide easy access to its definitions). It’s just that most of the people here read Mises, Rothbard, and so on, and are fluent in that kind of language. If you want to speak to us, you must teach us your language (by translating it into one of ours or using ordinary language to define it), or keep your ideas to yourself until we learn yours on our own. We don’t need to source the definitions unless it would be the best way to explain what we’re saying.
That might be something to work on. Maybe the Wiki will serve that purpose at some point.
That’s the unfortunate reality of our situation though. Just take a look at all of the assertions on this forum. They’re all mostly just a bunch of definitions. At least if you understand where I’m coming from, you would know what you’re doing. Check out this part of this post. Is that a definition or an assertion? It’s a definition masquerading as an assertion. You’ll find that all day long around here and a ton of other places. Our language isn’t very good at distinguishing definitions from assertions. And it leads to a lot of endless semantic arguments. It’s a big problem.
In a lot of cases, we really do have to spend the vast majority of our time defining terms rather than actually communicating about topics. Most of the discussions on this forum (and a lot of other places!) are an epic communicaton failure. If they were to step back and accept that they actually do need to spend the great majority of their effort on getting the language straight, then at least there would be a lot less nonsense. Most of the arguments on this forum are just word slinging. One guy’s words against the other’s.
It would be nice if we were all using the same words the same way, but I just don’t know how that would be practical with English (or any other natural language). Every word has like 7,000 meanings, there are like 1,000 synonyms for everything, the grammatical structure is a wreck, and so on. With what we have to work with right now, I prefer to just accept everybody’s definitions straight up. If I talk to your past self from a few days ago, I would refer to myself as a moral nihilist. But if I talk to LS, I probably wouldn’t. That’s it.
But I try to make my language as useful as possible. I avoid a lot of different grammatical forms because they’re messier than these. I avoid a lot of different words because they’re more confusing than these. And so on. If I lead by example enough, and I ask for clarification at the right times enough, I think that would be the best way to communicate right now. Suggesting other people to do it my way instead of theirs just doesn’t seem like it would work, but of course I haven’t ruled anything out.
But why would you need the words to contemplate the topic?
I try to translate their word language (whatever variant of English) into my thought process (pictures, sounds, and so on), and then that is what I contemplate. If I want to share my contemplations with them, I translate my thought process into my word language (some other variant of English). That’s all. I try not to contemplate the words unless I’m trying to figure out how to make one of the translations. Knowing their word language and my own at the same time isn’t categorically different than knowing both Spanish and French. It’s just a matter of degree, and it doesn’t pose any problems for my thought process.
If you spoke both German and Japanese, you would need to remember to “retrain” yourself every time you move from Germany to Japan or vice versa, right? That doesn’t seem too bad. It would be better if we all spoke the same universal language, but that doesn’t seem like it would be practical yet.
This is a very interesting topic currently heavily discussed at the academic level of cognitive psychology and one that no one can answer yet. Last I read up on the current research (about a year ago) the majority consensus was that there is a very strong correlation between thought and language but it is heavily debated whether thought begets language or language begets thought. Humans do think in a spoken language (English, French, Japanese, etc.) but researchers aren’t entirely sure if thought requires language in order to occur or if language is a side effect of thought and it’s optimization mechanisms.
There is some very interest research on the topic, particularly the studies on people who never learned a language growing up (very rare cases) and people with certain types of brain damage that impact speech, cognitive function, etc. The research supports both language begets thought and thought begets language so some think the two may be interdependent.
Both of them are being petty is what I was getting at. Conza for his initial appeal to riddicule and liberty student for not ignoring it.