If ethics are taken as rules of interpersonal conduct, what would preclude epistemological proofs/negative demonstrations like de Jasay’s or Hoppe’s?
Wilderness: The Ethics of Liberty, p.32
For the reader’s convenience… (bold and underline emphasis added)
“Suppose now that Crusoe is confronted with a choice of either picking berries or picking some mushrooms for food, and he decides upon the pleasantly tasting mushrooms, when suddenly a previously shipwrecked inhabitant, coming upon Crusoe, shouts: “Don’t do that! Those mushrooms are poisonous.” There is no mystery in Crusoe’s subsequent shift to berries. What has happened here? Both men have operated on an assumption so strong that it remained tacit, an assumption that poison is bad, bad for the health and even for the survival of the human organism—in short, bad for the continuation and the quality of a man’s life. In this implicit agreement on the value of life and health for the person, and on the evils of pain and death, the two men have clearly arrived at the basis of an ethic, grounded on reality and on the natural laws of the human organism.”
yes. and? That’s not about politics or legal concepts.
edit: Also. I’ll explain more. If the end is “continuation and the quality of a man’s life”, then clearly the means of eating a poisonous mushroom is not going to achieve those ends. The one man says that’s poisonous. The other man implicitly agreed to the end as he shifted from the mushroom to berries. This interpersonal relationship was explained (ethics) and it involved a mushroom event.
“Planning for Freedom” p. 140:
“However, the only thing that matters is whether or not the program concerned is fit to attain the ends sought. A bad program and a bad policy can never be explained, still less justified by pointing to the unsatisfactory conditions of its originators and supporters. The sole question that counts is whether or not these policies can remove or alleviate the evils which they are designed to remedy.” - Mises
So there are ends that are evil to “remove” and “alleviate”? I know what Mises means. I know what Rothbard means.
There is a difference between personal ethics and political ethics (law in the legal sense of the concept). There is a difference between economics and politic-justice. There is a difference between “evil” in the moral sense and “evil” in the sense of not attaining the end that is sought due to bad means. Yet what is the difference when they are both evil? I guess it depends on the end being sought by a certain rational means.
Hi Jon
Here’s what I believe is the essential issue:
In social science we will not be able to escape or overcome the general phenomenon of causation, regardless of how each individual social thinker chooses to conceive of causation. (exact laws, a priori propositions, constitutive means, etc…)
Social science ultimately returns to the relationship between some act A, and some consequence B, whether the consequence is conceived as following A or co-present with A. Then the question becomes the precise nature of the relationship between act A and consequence B.
Both Menger and Mises are primarily if not exclusively focused on necessary relationships between A and B such that if A occurs, B must necessarily also occur. To achieve a demonstration of such a necessary relationship, they are forced, by the laws of logic and the laws of thinking, toward a mode of reasoning that is more and more formal, and less and less referring to particular content. This is necessary if one wants to arrive at the kind of praxeological knowledge both thinkers were primarily concerned with.
The law of marginal utility which asserts a necessary relationship between an actor’s supply and his valuing with respect to that supply, does not refer to any particular good. It is formal in nature, without respect to material content.
One need not be concerned with this kind of knowledge. One can focus on empirical knowledge and empirical regularities. But once one explicitly agrees to relinquish a claim to “apodictic certainty” in one’s propositions, this entails a fundamental change in the nature of the propositions one can make. This means that the relationship between A and B, strictly speaking, is characterized by the word “might.”
A might lead to B. B might be co-present with A. Etc…
I’m not familiar with Jasay’s demonstration, but I am familiar with Hoppe’s. Generally he provides two sets of consequences that follow or are co-present with arguing against a nonlibertarian ethic. One consequence is performative contradiction, the other is the more drastic consequence of “not being able to do anything,” etc… Hoppe argues that if you do act X (arguing against a nonlibertarian ethic), then consequence Y will befall you (performative contradiction or not being able to do anything). In his theory, he keeps this implicit, I assume, because, following Rothbard, he wants to avoid utilitarianism.
Then the question becomes whether those two things must befall the individual who argues against libertarianism, or whether those things only might befall that person.
The general problem of all nonformal approaches to social phenomena is that on the one hand they seek to make statements about the relationship between two concrete events, and on the other hand, they seek to avoid using the conjunctive “might” to characterize the relationship between them.
For example, in the context of the current debate and discussion, Rothbard begins with a standard cause and effect conception of natural law:
“It also follows that when these various things meet and interact, a specifically delimitable and definable result will occur. In short, specific, delimitable causes will have specific, delimitable effects.” (EOL p.9)(emphasis added on “will”)
This is intended to apply to the moral and ethical actions of individuals, so that on page 32 he writes:
“If Crusoe, on the other hand, had known of the poison and eaten the mushrooms anyway…then his decision would have been objectively immoral,…”
Rothbard is saying that knowingly eating poisonous mushrooms (act A) leads to or is co-present with the immorality of Crusoe (consequence B).
Eating poisonous mushrooms “will” make one immoral. (not “might”)
But if there are cases where Crusoe can knowingly eat poisonous mushrooms and not be considered immoral, then where “would have been” is written, this is not accurate, and the phrase “might have been”’ is a more accurate characterization of the asserted relationship. To be accurate, we cannot write “will” but instead must write “might.” But then does this convey the information that the social theorist wanted to convey ??
This is just one example of the principle at issue.
It’s not that Hoppe or anyone is precluded from attempting an epistemological proof that if someone acts against liberty in some fashion (act A), that some consequence B is sure to follow. The question is whether when such a relationship between A and B is asserted either implicitly or explicitly, we can say that B must occur, or we are forced in to admitting that B might occur, but it also might not occur.
The fact that almost no social theory uses the word “might” to characterize the relationships between the actions and consequences it treats, tells me that social theorists want to say that doing A must lead to B.
But there are epistemological requirements of making such apodictically certain statements.
This is the point Mises is trying to make. To make apodictically necessary statements one must abandon all attempts to “prove” universal concrete values or ends.
But this is what Hoppe is trying to do:
“The answer, then, to the question of which ends can or cannot be justified is to be derived from the concept of argumentation.” (A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, p.131)(emphasis added)
That’s an incorrect conclusion. See my posts above.
Another Mises quote:
“These considerations have an evident bearing on the widespread
tendency of the present age to appeal to the irrational. The
concepts rational and irrational are not applicable to ends at all.
Whoever wishes to pass judgment on ends may praise or condemn
them as good or evil, fine or vulgar, etc. When the expressions
“rational” and “irrational” are applied to the means employed for
the attainment of an end, such a usage has significance only from
the standpoint of a definite technology. However, the use of means
other than those prescribed as “rational” by this technology can be
accounted for in only two possible ways: either the “rational”
means were not known to the actor, or he did not employ them
because he wished to attain still other ends—perhaps very foolish
ones from the point of view of the observer. In neither of these two
cases is one justified in speaking of “irrational” action.” - Mises
–
One does pass judgment in accord with their actions are decision based, ie. human action. According to Mises, and he’s clarifying here what would be better stated terms of judgment instead of mislabeling action with the term irrational as human action is rational. It all depends on the ends being sought and the use of means to meet such ends. Do the means correctly meet those ends? If not, then one might call those means immoral, evil, vulgar, incorrect, wrong, catastrophic, etc… If yes, then one might call those means moral, good, fine, correct, right, prosperous, etc… But either way, the means not fitting the end are rational, but may or may not be good, moral, correct, etc…
No, Mises is not saying any ends are evil. He’s saying there are things which agents regard as “evils” (harmful things), and that agents regard removing or alleviating those things as ends. The end is “to remove/alleviate the harmful thing”, not the harmful thing itself.
I don’t know what you are saying. You said no “ends are evil”, but then say “regard… those things as ends.” Things as ends? So they are ends that are regarded as things. I don’t know what you’re saying.
The end is to remove the harmful thing but not the harmful thing? If the harmful thing is removed, then it is gone. remove=now gone.
–
I don’t know what you’re saying, but my interpretation is there is a choice. There is that which is evil according to what end an individual wants. It is evil because it is not what the individual wants. The means to avoid the evil are reasoned correctly or not. I don’t know if their means are evil, in other words, if their means are actually opposing their true intent, because even if such an individual tells me what they want and their actions persist to differ from what is logical. Their actions differ from their verbal announcement, well, that could simply mean that the individual was lying and they are meeting their goal but they didn’t want to tell me their true intent. I may try to reason with the individual as to what means would correctly attain such a goal, but the person makes the choice and may find their means to be evil as they are not prosperous to their end. It is a decision and their actions entail their choice.
Wilderness:
This is the point.
There is no basis for a designation of something as good, bad, evil, or immoral, outside of the wants of particular individuals.
That is the crux of the disagreement between objective ethics and theoretical subjectivism:
“We originally want or desire an object not because it is agreeable or good, but we call it agreeable or good because we want or desire it; and we do this because our sensuous or supersensuous nature so requires. There is, thus, no basis for recognizing what is good and worth wishing for outside of the faculty of desiring–i.e., the original desire and wish themselves.” (Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 151, dictum of Jacobi)
In your two sentences above, you have basically stated the situation.
It is evil if the person wants to live, but the person chooses the wrong/evil means to attain the end of living.
I don’t know what you’re saying “basically stated the situation”, but that’s a good quote.
I’ll give it a go at some point (I really do have a huge reading list) but as for what you initially say, simply because something is an initial preference, doesn’t make is a true ethic, even if you say that it is instilled into all men it is still your preference to enforce these, they are your preferences. It is universal that all men need to eat, but some do not. I’ll take a look at the article as soon as I find time
I’d love to continue the discussion. I stopped replying because it got to the point where there simply seemed like an endless stream of quotes to statements which I could no longer remember the reason for saying.
Maybe if I say this another way, because I truly didn’t conceive what you said. Ok. Why I say Mises is discussing evil as an end. When he states in the above quote: “…remove or alleviate the evils which they are designed to remedy…” I read that the evils are what are to be remedied as the policies are designed to remove them. The policies are means to remove an end (that Mises states is evil).
Right here you say “those things as ends”. So you designate “things” as “ends” that “agents regard removing or alleviating”. I mean so far in this post of mine, I’m repeating back what you said in order to point out that I know what you are talking about or how you came across.
And here you repeated yourself. You say the end is “…the harmful thing” (I know you added “to remove/alleviate” but that’s not necessary for clarifications sake). Then you finish the sentence with “not the harmful thing itself”. Ok. You say the end is “the harmful thing” (I’ll call this A), but then state “not the harmful thing” (I’ll designate this as not-A). You see why this didn’t come across very clear? You say the end is A, but not-A. The end is the harmful thing, but not the harmful thing. I’m not trying to be a stickler on logic to refute or affirm as in a debate. I’m pointing out why that doesn’t make sense and hope you see why.
Is that really the disagreement or is it misconceptions? I think it’s misconceptions. The individual in self-defense has a want and uses means to attain a goal (self-defense). The individual initiating physical aggression has a want and uses means to attain a goal (initiating physical aggression). I designate the goal of both individuals as their actions. The means to those goals can varying, ie. rationalizations, body, weapons, earth to stand on, etc…
True, but people don’t like to be told that their strongly held feelings are “mere” preferences with no backing of any kind (not even some kind of biological basis). That could almost lead people to feel like oddballs for having a strong moral urge about anything, and I don’t think any argument that makes people feel that way (for having what are after all very normal emotions) is optimally effective for dispelling the myths at hand. Hence I think “preference” is just a bit too dismissive-sounding.
I see where you’re coming from and I agree for most issues, however I expect that people, when discussing ethics and challenging one another, should be prepared to here the most pivotal part of the issue. I would never use such language if we were not discussing ethics and I believed that the person would be directly alienated by such a statement
Rothbard is referring to political philosophy… ‘natural law as science’ is the section that quote is from.
Which makes this as obvious as night and day, because at the end of that natural law section we have:
"IT IS NOT THE intention of this book to expound or defend at length the philosophy of natural law, or to elaborate a natural-law ethic for the personal morality of man. The intention is to set forth a social ethic of liberty, i.e., to elaborate that subset of the natural law that develops the concept of natural rights, and that deals with the proper sphere of “politics,” i.e., with violence and non-violence as modes of interpersonal relations. In short, to set forth a political philosophy of liberty.
In our view the major task of “political science” or better, “political philosophy” is to construct the edifice of natural law pertinent to the political scene." - Chp 5, TEOL (The Task of Political Philosophy)
Additionally (foot note to the text you quoted);
[3]See H.W.B. Joseph, An Introduction to Logic, 2nd rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1916), pp. 407–9. For a hard-hitting defense of the view that causation states a necessary relation among entities, see R. Harre and E.H. Madden, Causal Powers: A Theory of Natural Necessity (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1975).
You should probably go do that.
Wrong. You are again making the same mistake I mentioned above, that post which you & others ignored.
Chapter 6 - Crusoe Economics, Rothbard is dealing with the individual [personal] here,
“If Crusoe economics can and does supply the indispensable groundwork for the entire structure of economics and praxeology—the broad, formal analysis of human action—a similar procedure should be able to do the same thing for social philosophy, for the analysis of the fundamental truths of the nature of man vis-à-vis the nature of the world into which he is born, as well as the world of other men. Specifically, it can aid greatly in solving such problems of political philosophy as the nature and role of liberty property, and violence.[2]”
[2]Such seventeenth- and eighteenth-century constructs as “the state of nature” or “the social contract” were not wholly successful attempts to construct such a logical analysis. Such attempts were far more important than any actual historical assertions that may have been made in the course of developing these concepts.
Tell me, where any of your out of context quote deals with anything that is political, refers to violence, sphere of rights, aggression or criminality. No where - because he’s talking about the individual here, personal ethics. Not political philosophy.
Once again, your post fails to make the distinction - as Rothbard has CLEARLY done, yet obviously not clear enough for some… or maybe he did, and those who continue to turn a blind eye should realise it is their failing, not his:
“For we are not, in constructing a theory of liberty and property, i.e., a “political” ethic, concerned with all personal moral principles. We are not herewith concerned whether it is moral or immoral for someone to lie, to be a good person, to develop his faculties, or be kind or mean to his neighbors. We are concerned, in this sort of discussion, solely with such “political ethical” questions as the proper role of violence, the sphere of rights, or the definitions of criminality and aggression. Whether or not it is moral or immoral for “Smith” — the fellow excluded by the owner from the plank or the lifeboat — to force someone else out of the lifeboat, or whether he should die heroically instead, is not our concern, and not the proper concern of a theory of political ethics.[5]” - Chp 20 TEOL
Rothbard’s brief explication of objectivity within individual / personal ethics, can be seen as merely an aid to objective political philosophy.
The critical and unique facts about man and the ways in which he must live to survive—his consciousness, his free will and free choice, his faculty of reason, his necessity for learning the natural laws of the external world and of himself, his self-ownership, his need to “produce” by transforming nature-given matter into consumable forms—all these are wrapped up in what man’s nature is, and how man may survive and flourish. Suppose now that Crusoe is confronted with a choice of either picking berries or picking some mushrooms for food, and he decides upon the pleasantly tasting mushrooms, when suddenly a previously shipwrecked inhabitant, coming upon Crusoe, shouts: “Don’t do that! Those mushrooms are poisonous.” There is no mystery in Crusoe’s subsequent shift to berries. What has happened here? Both men have operated on an assumption so strong that it remained tacit, an assumption that poison is bad, bad for the health and even for the survival of the human organism—in short, bad for the continuation and the quality of a man’s life. In this implicit agreement on the value of life and health for the person, and on the evils of pain and death, the two men have clearly arrived at the basis of an ethic, grounded on reality and on the natural laws of the human organism.
If Crusoe had eaten the mushrooms without learning of their poisonous effects, then his decision would have been incorrect—a possibly tragic error based on the fact that man is scarcely automatically determined to make correct decisions at all times. Hence, his lack of omniscience and his liability to error. If Crusoe, on the other hand, had known of the poison and eaten the mushrooms anyway—perhaps for “kicks” or from a very high time preference—then his decision would have been objectively immoral, an act deliberately set against his life and health. It may well be asked why life should be an objective ultimate value, why man should opt for life (in duration and quality).(5)
In reply, we may note that a proposition rises to the status of an axiom when he who denies it may be shown to be using it in the very course of the supposed refutation.(6) Now, any person participating in any sort of discussion, including one on values, is, by virtue of so participating, alive and affirming life. For if he were really opposed to life, he would have no business in such a discussion, indeed he would have no business continuing to be alive. Hence, the supposed opponent of life is really affirming it in the very process of his discussion, and hence the preservation and furtherance of one’s life takes on the stature of an incontestable axiom.
(5) On the value of life not depending on whether it is perceived as one of happiness, see Philippa R. Foot, Virtues and Vices (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), p. 41.
(6) Elsewhere, I have written: “if a man cannot affirm a proposition without employing its negation, he is not only caught in an inextricable self-contradiction; he is conceding to the negation the status of an axiom.” Rothbard, Individualism, p. 8. Also see R.P. Phillips, Modern Thomistic Philosophy (Westminster, Md.: Newman Bookshop, 1934-35), vol. 2, pp. 36-37
Look, when you’re resulting to quoting massively edited sentences, out of context and attempting to refute a large part of the edifice of liberty - you’re going to run into problems and err. My suggestion to you and others would be to put down your microscopes and get a “more complete picture”.
"Without using the terminology of natural law, psychologist Leonard Carmichael has indicated how an objective, absolute ethic can be established for man on scientific methods, based upon biological and psychological inquiry:
because man has an unchanging and an age-old, genetically determined anatomical, physiological, and psychological make-up, there is reason to believe that at least some of the “values” that he recognized as good or bad have been discovered or have emerged as human individuals have lived together for thousands of years in many societies. Is there any reason to suggest that these values, once identified and tested, may not be thought of as essentially fixed and unchanging? For example, the wanton murder of one adult by another for the purely personal amusement of the person committing the murder, once it is recognized as a general wrong, is likely always to be so recognized. Such a murder has disadvantageous individual and social effects. Or to take a milder example from esthetics, man is always likely to recognize in a special way the balance of two complementary colors because he is born with specially constituted human eyes.[29]"
Nice juxtaposition [:P]