No offense AJ, but you have a way of taking something that is simple and clear cut and confusing the hell out of it.
I guess because people value principles and just expediency. I suppose if I were arguing with barbarians I’d use your method. But if I were arguing with a normal person, I’d try to show them that they wouldn’t feel justified in their present action if the roles were reversed. I would also point out the asocial character of their present action. Namely, if everyone where to do it, life would be far more miserable for them and the ones they love. And if they appeal to some higher principle, such as equality, I might try a discourse ethics approach.
You still haven’t given me a direct answer. Now can you or can’t you?
I think when ppl appeal to consequences, they are attempting to demonstrate that the means chosen by an actor will not result in the state of affairs which they desire. It has nothing to do with moral principle, otherwise the distinciton is nugatory.
I think that could be an over simplification. Personally I have chosen anarchism as a political philosophy because of its consequences, not because I’m religious or appealing to some higher authority.
I spent few hours reading about Estopell and Argumentation Ethics. Both seem to be making the same ‘profound’ statement:
“If everyone was nice, then no one could argue for not being nice without abdicating his niceness. Hence, everyone and everything would be nice – naturally and objectively so.”
False. Being nice is not a precondition of argumentation. If everyone were nice, then you would not need to argue for people to be nice. It would be pointless. If not everyone is nice, then you could have a not-nice person engage in argumentation. The nice-advocate coudl not say that the un-nice person is contradicting himself by engaging in argument and not being nice at the same time, since they are not contradictory. So, you are just wrong.
Neither is self-ownership. When someone else owns me he can allow me to argue with him over my ownership. Or I could just start the argument violating his me-ownership.
“No one (nice or not) could argue for not being nice without simultaneously rejecting niceness. Hence, everyone and everything would be nice – naturally and objectively so.”
My point (and it seems, the point of most critiques of Estopell and AE) is that they are circular: they both claim to prove the very assumption needed for the proof itself. They prove objective ethics by assuming objective ethics. I hope I am wrong, in which case I would love to learn what I am missing.
You say it’s circular, but the example you give was a bad one. They are not circular: they refer to propositions that the participants in argumentation cannot dispute.
As an example, it is possible to have a universe with no life, no consciousness, even no argumentation. But we do NOT have such a universe and this is argumentatively indisputable. It is simpy impossible to coherently argue that there is no such thing as life, or arguentation, say–you have to be alive and arguing to argue.
As for your new attempt: ““No one (nice or not) could argue for not being nice without simultaneously rejecting niceness. Hence, everyone and everything would be nice – naturally and objectively so.””
this does not follow at all. First, what does it mean to “reject niceness”? Second, what’s wrong without rejecting niceness, and arguing for not being nice? Your second sentence does not follow at all. Maybe someone really thinks people should be meaner. This is not incoherent at all.
My understanding is that the aggressor can’t make a coherent objection to anyone doing such and such thing to him (we would call it violating property rights), since he felt it is okay to do those things to others. It’s about justifying punishment, not consequences or proving our brand of morality.
Perhaps overly enthusiastically and somewhat clumsily I tried to use “nice” as a connection point between Estoppel and AE. Please correct me if I am off: In Estoppel, “is nice” = “cares if he can coherently object to anything”; “is not nice” = “doesn’t care, e.g. is a hypocrite”. In AE, “is nice” = “recognizes self-ownership”; “is not nice” = “rejects self-ownership”. Both theories argue that arguing for niceness (or the incoherence of arguing against it) inevitably proves that niceness (natural rights, objective ethics, self-ownership) is axiomatic thus transcends the need for a proof. My point is that this is only relevant to “nice” agents, i.e. agents who already accept the a priori of niceness. Both theories “prove” niceness (objective ethics) ONLY if niceness is accepted a priori (hence, the circularity assertion). In some sense they are preaching to the converted, and have no logical or convincing power over the rest.
It shows that only the NAP is justified, and that any ethic that is contrary to the NAP cannot be justified, siply because justification is argumentative justification, so that any justification has to be compatible with whatever norms are necessarily presupposed in argumentation itself. So the only question, I see it, is whether or not there ARE any norms presupposed in argumentation. If so, what are they? I think there clearly are norms, and they are the grundnorms of libertarianism.
Re your last sentence: if so, so what? Imagine a world where there “are” “natural rights” (whatever it means for natural rights to “exist”), and that you have a Randian Natural Law Ultimate Proof of them. Or, one handed down by God: the ultimate proof of rights. Still, there will be two classes of people: those who choose (for whatever reason) to respect your rights, and those who choose to violate them. For the former, if you give them your Ultimate Proof, you are preaching to the converted. For the latter, they aer still free to say, “okay, nice proof,” and then proceed to bash you in the head.
So what is the difference betwwen this type of proof and AE? They are exactly the same in this respect.
The only norm ACTUALLY presupposed in argumentation is de facto control of one’s head during the length of the argument. There’s no need whatsoever to presuppose: (1) exclusive (2) permanent control over that head (much less the rest of the body), nor is there the necessity to presuppose one’s (3) right to such control. Argumentation between two heads can go on for a very long time without ANY of the above three AE presuppositions. In anticipation of your response (“Yes, but whoever was denying the above three presuppositions wouldn’t be nice, and I was only talking about nice people here. No slaves, slave-owners, and hypocrites allowed.”), this is exactly what I was talking about when I said that the proof merely uses a priori assertions in order to prove them.
No difference. If you presuppose that 2+2=5 is correct in order to prove that 2+3=6 (in a system in which the number X after the ‘+’ sign is really X+1), then that proof would have no meaning whatsoever (or would be utterly wrong!) for the proponents of the system in which the number X after the ‘+’ sign is merely X.
“Anyone who says they are not interested in politics is like a drowning man who insists he is not interested in water.”
So…
Can you explain to me why the individual should behave ethically? Yes, or no?
We’ve already covered elsewhere that property rights are constant… did we not? What matters is how they are dealt with. The only logical conclusion is 100% self ownership… via the process of elimination; all others end up in absurdity.
"What do we mean by “natural law”? In its simplest definition, natural law is that “unwritten law” that is more or less the same for everyone everywhere. To be more exact, natural law is the concept of a body of moral principles that is common to all humankind and, as generally posited, is recognizable by human reason alone. Natural law is therefore distinguished from – and provides a standard for – positive law, the formal legal enactments of a particular society.
Since law must always be some dictate of reason, natural law also will be some dictate of reason. In fact, it is law discovered by human reason. Our normal and natural grasp of the natural law is effected by reason, that is, by the thinking mind, and in this service reason is sometimes called “conscience.” We, in all our human acts, inevitably see them in their relation to the natural law, and we mentally pronounce upon their agreement or disagreement with the natural law. Such a pronouncement may be called a “judgment of conscience.” The “norm” of morality is the natural law as applied by conscience. Lastly, we can say that the natural law is the disposition of things as known by our human reason and to which we must conform ourselves if we are to realize our proper end or “good” as human beings.
To sum it up, then, we can say that the natural law:
is not made by human beings;
is based on the structure of reality itself;
is the same for all human beings and at all times;
is an unchanging rule or pattern which is there for human beings to discover;
is the naturally knowable moral law;
is a means by which human beings can rationally guide themselves to their good."
Does man have a nature?
So… all you are trying to do is persuade? Isn’t that what you deplore natural rights for? You have no feasible political ethical objection to robbery, rape or murder? The listener disagrees or doesn’t care about feeling guilty, and does not refrain… The net consequences would be “good or bad,” meaning here desirable or undesirable for him.
How do you know what the advocates of the particular policy consider desirable? How do you know what their value-scales are now or what they will be when the consequences of the measure appear?
Ahh.. and where does that leave the victim?
"Utilitarianism seems to rob the words good and bad of their specifically ethical character. The utilitarian cannot make a distinction between guilt and simple error. The person who robs a bank to achieve happiness has made a mistake in qualitatively the same sense as a person who overcooks a steak. (I do not believe Yeager specifically addresses this type of objection.)
In fact, we can go further. Is it really true, for example, that Josef Stalin acted against his interests, even in the long run? Does the utilitarian really concede that our possible condemnation of Stalin is purely an empirical matter? (It might be true that had every other Soviet acted in his true interests, dictatorship would have been impossible. But this is dodging the issue.)"
How do you define justice? I believe I’ve asked this before and didn’t get a response to it.
Political ethical objections to stealing, murder and rape - you are equating that to ethical central planning? Are you able to explain why an individual should behave morally? Was the above a yes or no to that?
Your personal objections are meaningless, which is why I’m asking for your political ethical objections… if you have anything.
What is the difference between you, and a nihilist who understands economics?
Unless someone can respond to this refutation, I propose that we close this subject by concluding that Estoppel and Argumentation Ethics are plain silly and prove nothing. It is quite astonishing that (especially) AE could still muster enough credibility to even become a discussion subject TWO DECADES after its introduction, with such an obvious refutation staring everyone in their faces.