You’re missing out on the definition of property. Property by definition in the natural law tradition includes in ones person. When a person, ie. property, argues such a person is using their person, ie. property.
And I mis-spoke in my last post to you in that rights are not axiomatic. When I meant is the enforcement of rights are not axiomatic. You maintain a enforcement to a right is universal or axiomatic. That’s a misunderstand of what natural rights mean.
What is implied has always existed. just like 2+2=4 has always been such before a child or humans did the math.
Neither of you appear to understand what rights are. The arguments raised are not arguments against rights but come from a line of reasoning that doesn’t appear to quite grasp what you both are philosophically attacking, ie. rights. Before arguing against a position I suggest reading this post to get a better understanding on what rights are before trying argue against them. The posts by you two have not been addressing rights and I find myself explaining what rights are more than actually making an argument to maintain them.
I read your post in the past. I simply don’t find the natural law account of rights to be consistent with the observable world. Rights “emerge” (for lack of a better word) from human interactions, in a manner similar to the way language “emerges” from human communication. In my view, there are no a priori rights. Nevertheless, I think that natural law comes very close to describing the rights which have actually emerged through the long experience of human existence. Its only flaw is the attempt to justify natural law propositions as a priori true. There is no reason that I should not be your slave if you can make me. Slave-holders of the past were not illogical or committing “performative contradictions.” They were hypocrites, to be sure, but not illogical.
Again, you’re not arguing with substance. Human action is observable. In other words, property being the person by definition the person is observable. Life is observable. Liberty by definition being the absence of initiated physical aggression is observable.
I have no idea what this has to do with anything.
Define aprior.
Again. A complete misconception of what rights are. Rights are not some kind of physical magical enforcement shield.
Yes. They were illogical. Special pleading is a logical fallacy.
Again. Another post of yours in which it is obvious you don’t know what rights are and I need to define them to you. I suggest reading the link. I don’t know what else to tell you, but you can’t argue against something you don’t know about.
good. you realize the difference. Wasn’t sure if you did. I don’t know why you introduced “universalizability”. It’s a non-sequitur which is really understandable since you’re reasoning from a false inclination. Know what rights are first.
Maybe if you gave you’re argument as to what you’re debating?
I take strong exception to all of those statements.
A priori truths are analytical, they are true by virtue of the chosen set of axioms. If we take only logic as our initial axioms (with the assumption that all other assumptions are controversial), we cannot arrive at natural rights. There is simply no path from here to there. Mises’s action axiom also does not help since it is inherently value-free.
Agreed but absent physical realization, rights are meaningless. We can debate right and wrong until the end of time but unless our conclusions are really applied to the physical world, how does it matter? The purpose of ethical debate is to inform human behavior. Ethical debate divorced from informing human behavior is pointless.
You don’t see people, life, or absence of initiated physical aggression anywhere? If so, then consider the conversation done. I’m a realist and I don’t hold any illusions about reality.
That’s incorrect. I know Mises, Rothbard, and Hoppe each do not define aprior as analytical. Mises and Hoppe have described aprior as synthetic aprior, and Rothbard as reality. My signature offers a good footing on diving into what aprior means by various philosophers and Austrian economics. It’s not a simple argument and is debated even today on how best to explain aprior. Yet there I haven’t come across any debate by any Austrian economist-philosopher that maintains aprior is analytical. That’s denied without question as each Austrian economist-philosopher incorporates some kind of realist position.
Logic is not solely taken as an axiom. Life isn’t necessarily logic, unless, one would say a human being a life form is logical, then yes it could be said logic is alive as a human being. Reality isn’t necessarily human logic. Though a realist asserts that reality is intelligible and logic infer implications within reality.
There is a path from here to there. Because you personally don’t know it doesn’t mean it’s not present.
Argumentation ethics is value-free too - non-sequitur
If you’re some kind of illusionist, then as I stated above consider the discussion over with.
you’ve never heard of these people called cops and robbers? They are types of physical manifestations of the concepts of rights, justice, and law. Anytime I tell my son to not go on the neighborhoods property or to not hit his cousin (he’s only three) the act of rights are physically affirmed by argumentation or pointing out the property of the neighbor or cousin.
ok. so the person is being a hypocrite. That only affirms my position.
A. I agree with Wilderness that apriori can be synthetic or analytical:
A.0. material propositions that are combined are all synthetic.
A.1. Formal propositions that are combined or a formal proposition and material proposition are all analytical.
A.2. Some material propositions however are empirical, others are not. The last are synthetic, i.e., material in the sense of being about the real world, and a priori.
Classical example: If the strong empirical thesis ‘All material propositions are empirical’ is true, then it is false because it itself is a priori statement; hence its contradictory is true.
Johnson and Blanshard showed this (and other before them more or less).
B. I agree with Clayton, however, about rights.
I’ve read the interesting post by filc concerning a natural law definition of rights: ‘right is a claim to action.’
B.1 My objection is this: why do I need a claim to action? I do not need a claim to myself or my things. They are mine. And your things are yours. This is observable through my successful action with my things and someone else being unsuccessful in the same circumstances.
B.2. Hence the Bruno Leoni (and Hayek) concept of property as axiom, ‘legal’ right as empirical.
‘Rights’ are claims. I agree. But they are only important in the world as legal claims (defined by Leoni). These types of claims are the only claims that affect the behavior of people.
Therefore: If there was no law, there would still be property, and I could know this is mine and that is yours.
B.3 The legal claim is a defense against theft.
See the collection of Leoni’s essays published in 2009.
That is the claim. Nobody said it had to be announced or something. The claim is the act itself.
edit: BTW, thelion, it is being argued that human action in Aristotelian terms is not of the mind nor of the empirical data. It is a middle-way reality of the two. There are arguments against the use of the terms synthetic aprior and other Kantian terminological problems that incline the interpretation too of the mind, sacrificing the empirical. The dichotomy has even been expressed to better define the Austrian-philosophic as reflectionist-impositionalist but even this dichotomy introduced by Bruce Smith has been argued against by Geoffrey Plauche and the argument makes sense. Wittengenstein (spell?) is referred to and Aristotle in order to clear up what is nearly universally acknowledged - that being that Kantian philosophy has too much of a mental interpretation on logical deductions and axioms.
I agree that the claim is an act (according to Hoppe’s argumentation axiom). I disagree, however, that the claim to property is an act required by argumentation. It is a separate act from the knowledge or choice that private property exists.
Let A = ~B; I acted in categorizing A as not B. But did I communicate (that is, make a ‘claim’') that A is not B? Ethics involves communication. To ‘argue’ A is not B, I do not necessarily ‘claim’ A is not B.
As Kirzner somewhere noted (I don’t have the book at hand), already knowing that there is an opportunity for profit here and an opportunity for profit there is costless. Getting that knowledge by argument or alertness is costly. Acting on the opportunity here, is a separate act, and is costly.
Knowledge once possessed is separate from action. Action is involved in getting that knowledge. Action is also involved in making use of or communicating that knowledge. But these are two separate actions. And ‘Arguing then Knowing’ does not presuppose further ‘Using once Knowing’. That would require a further goal: the knowledge becomes means to an end.
Ethics, as Hayek showed, have to do with communication. The communication is a further act, perhaps to defend my private property, but not one that is implied in the concept of private property at the moment of recognizing there is private property (which is Hoppe’s Ethics argument separate from his Epistemology argument).
SO: private property is a predicate. But realizing that private property exists does not mean I could have been aware of private property before I began debating, unlike Hoppe concluded (see page number in above posts).
Technical Note 1: You mentioned Ludwig Wittgenstein. I would argue against Wittgenstein in favour of Blanshard. In Wittgenstein’s posthumous work (published long after the Tractatus, which was hard logical positivist, as he met Hayek only later), the discussion tried to base logic on claim and statement manipulation. Later, he only discussed communication of logic, not logic itself (the whole Philosophical Investigations of his are on this topic). So his work was irrelevant to logic per se said Blanshard.
Technical Note 2: Jevons showed in the 1860s that logic can be mechanical (but it can yield non-computable results, as they would be called in modern terms). See his only 1860’s article if you have access to JSTOR (or I’ll post it). Action as human action breaks the mechanical nature of the material proposition selection, but not the mechanical nature of predicate. Try combining Jevons’ theory with Blanshard’s theory of ideas to see how this result arises.
Property in ones person is required by argumentation. Private property in terms of goods not including the person - I agree with you. That said with the caveat that I don’t know if there is a good argument in existence on how external goods tie in with argumentation other than arguing over the external good. Yet that wouldn’t be the only way to settle a dispute.
Conflict over scarcity on external goods still requires judgment either the one stealing or maintaining and the resolutions that are theorized try to come to terms on such inevitabilities in society. But common law, and not doing armchair resolution for some cases is probably the best way to go. Yet, all cases will still need to be resolved in accord with property being the axiom because that’s what scarcity by definition is. A society based on free market’s will come to different resolutions on scarcity compared to socialist as private property is the foundation of a free market society. Original appropriation is sound, but how judgments based on this principle will be made may vary from community to community. This is where there is one principle, ie. property, but possibly several theories. Knowledge on the principle and the extant circumstances will vary and we couldn’t possibly know all resolutions here and now. And as I said, I don’t know how argumentation fits in with external goods, but the assumed concept of private property and original appropriation principle do appear to take over when it comes to external goods.
Argumentation ethics involves communication/discourse. Ethics in general doesn’t exclusively involve verbal communication. Original appropriation is a more physical act of actually handling an external good. Yet I think you are spot on in noting that argumentation ethics doesn’t cover everything, but I don’t think it is meant to. Verbal communication only goes so far. Even buying a car and showing the receipt to a would-be robber only goes so far. Resolution always takes place but the goal, ethically speaking based on the NAP, is to resolve issues with as minimal conflict as possible. I personally think virtue is a must for a society to prosper and maintain civility.
I agree. These are all different ways to resolve conflict. I’d rather reason with somebody (argue) than having to always physical restraint somebody from taking what is mine. If somebody will listen to reason, then that’s would be better if the goal is peace.
ok
ah. Good to know. I haven’t read his stuff other than what Long has quoted. So you’re saying “Philosophical Investigations” is a good read, though, not a book on logic? Cause I’ve heard, I believe I have the time sequence correct, that his early works were good, but not his later in terms of Aristotelian. I believe Barry Smith says that. Barry is also a fan of Husserl, but I haven’t read any of his works either yet. Have you?
Post that please.
But where do these selections take place? From where according to them? Any good links on Blanshard? At the moment I’m liking U. Maki and B. Smith. They are both realists, ie. Aristotelian. And Maki’s work involves investigations on Carl Menger, explanations on realist ontology, whereas, Smith adds early phenomenology insights. He points out that later phenomenology doesn’t maintain Aristotelian. I don’t know if he has meant in all phenomenological cases or only some specific ones he has introduced. What’s interesting about this is the method in realizing where terms, propositions, and axioms come from categorically before logical deductions. They arise out of common sense which has also been termed primitive or non-logical categorizing, but the process is what I’ve been learning about dabbling here and there in some articles I’ve read. I’m not well-read in that direction as of yet. But that’s what I gather from what I’ve read so far. Maki and Smith are extant philosophical investigators on Hoppe’s, Mises, Rothbard’s, Menger’s, and others as to what their philosophy entails.
A “slave” cant meaningfully argue. Remember that we are talking about a ‘slave’ as in a murderer who can’t coherently object to another enslaving or murdering him, not as in illegitimate slavery of ~150 years ago. Objections like this are over and done with as far as I am concerned. See the original argumentation ethics thread.
Suppose the estoppel approach is wrong like some claim. Where does this put libertarianism in contrast with whatever alternative anyway?
What are you saying is “hard logical positivist”, the Tractatus? The post-Humean positivists of the Vienna Circle took to Wittgenstein’s work, but Wittgenstein strongly opposed these folks. It’s said that they mistook his work for something it isn’t (cf. §6.4 on regarding ethics). I’m not familiar with Blanshard besides one essay of his in Nagel and Brandt’s Meaning and Knowledge, so I don’t get the rest of what you’re on about.
@wilderness: I found an interview (MP3) of Barry Smith on Wittgenstein for (an incomplete) introduction to him.