Well maybe you could save me hours of toil by telling me why virtue ethics is dead from the neck up 
So you deny this.
The nature of ultimate ends are always psychological and physiological.
no, satisfaction subjectively perceived is the ‘highest value’. what it will consist of is dependent on the constitution of a given actor.
power and market is only a critique of certain kinds of normative formulations, and ethics of liberty isn’t a critique of anything - it’s frankly an assertion of an unjustified axiom with a rational extension of it. not that i disagree overmuch on his qualitative judgements (they are compatible with my view of liberties and claims), but Rothbard’s reasoning in this book strikes me as hermeneutical at best.
no, because in order to establish exclusionary priviliges you must establish that you have a claim which precedes and supercedes the liberties of the other person. thus you must prove that you have a prior connection to it (which is to say, finders, keepers).
So you deny this.
yes, i deny that life is a unique category of existence. it is a functional and empirical narrowing of scope for a particular science (which does not mean it is arbitrary, or without relevance, simply that it is not a philosophical or metaphysic primary). all complex objects are composed and determined entirely by their constituents. this is not to deny that consciousness exists, simply to say that consciousness is what it is to be a particular recursive process. likewise there are certain technological features of life that manifest qualitatively different behaviours than ‘rocks’, but ultimately it is nothing but a composition of various processes exactly like those which make up ‘rocks’ and ‘stars’.
And why does every single person pursue eudaimonia as the highest end? Why can’t a hell-bent man value revenge over his own happiness? There is no objective “‘over-arching’ end”, and we cannot assume that the reason someone is doing x action is that he is pursuing his own happiness, there may very well be another motive.
Human beings undeniably have a large degree of overlap in their values/goals. This is why objective morality exists and cooperation can occur.
On the contrary, survival is the overaching end.
i disagree. they have compatible plans, their values are singular to their own existence and are only meaningful in the context of their being actually felt.
So rocks will animations from within?
You know what ? Alice reminds me of Vichy…
‘animate’ will is constituted of the same processes that make rocks hard, heavy, etc.
That sounds like Vichy…
No. Rocks are made hard and heavy through the processes called cementation and lithification - external forces are necessary for such processes to even happen. Animate will is an internal force. A rock is sitting in this flat field. I push on the rock, but the rock is not pushing on me.
An ultimate end is just a series of constitutive means applied to the series of ends. It is simply looking at the various ends we have met as a constitutive part of where our actions have taken us.
And like I have stated, eudiamonia is a subjective matter applied objectively. Therefore if my eudiamonia is intelligence then my highest value is applying means towards that overall goal. For you it could be something else. Each eudiamonia has the chance of being different from person to person, however I believe that each of us has one.
I believe the last chapter of Power and the Market, Rothbard states thus:
‘The economist, of course, is a technician who explains the consequences of various actions. But he cannot advise a man on the best route to achieve certain ends without committing himself to those ends. An economist hired by a businessman implicitly commits himself to the ethical valuation that increasing that businessman’s profits is good (although, as we have seen, the economist’s role in business would be negligible on the free market). An economist advising the government on the most efficient way of rapidly influencing the money market is thereby committing himself to the desirability of government manipulation of that market. The economist cannot function as an adviser without committing himself to the desirability of the ends of his clients. The utilitarian economist tries to escape this policy dilemma by assuming that everyone’s ends are really the same—at least ultimately. If everyone’s ends are the same, then an economist, by showing that Policy A cannot lead to Goal G, is justified in saying that A is a “bad” policy, since everyone values A in order to achieve G. Thus, if two groups argue over price controls, the utilitarian tends to assume that the proven consequences of maximum price controls—shortages, disruptions, etc.—will make the policy bad from the point of view of the advocates of the legislation. Yet the advocates may favor price controls anyway, for other reasons—love of power, the building of a political machine and its consequent patronage, desire to injure the masses, etc. It is certainly overly sanguine to assume that everyone’s ends are the same, and therefore the utilitarian shortcut to policy conclusions is also inadequate.’
In the Ethics of Liberty, Rothbard provides a system of positive ethical values that should be sought after by individuals. Power and the Market is more of a critique of normative subjective value while Ethics of Liberty is a positive denouncement that not all values are equally valid or beneficial
Well I define a right as being a legitimately enforceable claim and truly from what I see in your writing, the only difference that there is between rights and ‘liberties’ [according to you] is the name.
Because eudiamonia is the highest end…
Because his revenge would bring him happiness.
Preference through choice. Even if we are to take Mises ‘reduction of uneasiness’ phrase then all choices we make are towards an ultimate goal of a plane of reduced uneasiness. You may call it uneasiness, I call it the propounding of happiness.
My opinion is compatible plans have compatible goals, compatible goals have some overlap and therefore something held in common between men with compatible plans. Their values are singular if they are subjective, but they can also be objective. If a man values a perfect square, thats objective because it is measurable, and it becomes an objective value for mankind if they all hold that value and cannot deny that value.
Individuals reguarly sacrafice their lives for causes they believe to be more valuable for survival; ergo, it seems dubious that everyone is striving for survival as their over-arching end.
Man is denied knowledge of what others strive for; ergo, there is no method by which we can discover the highest end that every individual strives for.
Not necessarily, not every single action is done for happiness. Knowledge is denied to the third party of why someone is doing what they are doing, and therefore we cannot know the general ends to which individuals strive.
Uneasiness, and the propounding of happiness are two entirely different things, and you are wrong in assuming that every individual strives for happiness.
no, because what is a cost and what is a benefit is entirely subjective. all costs are opportunity costs, which we can make no comparison of among people. people may consider one thing (freedom of speech for homosexuals) a cost which they are nonetheless willing to accept in order to achieve a benefit (freedom of speech of christian gnostic sects), while others may have the reverse valuation and a third person may consider different aspects entirely.
And yesterday you denied man can know anything… so you don’t even know what you wrote is correct or not.
the problem is categorical in nature, value is only value when felt. motive is only motive when it motivates
So you think that the means/ends scheme is…unknowable?
Only concerning semantics. Easiness could very well imply happiness. Why do we choose to reduce uneasiness if there is nothing benificial to the state of mind that it provides?