Okay, but Snake also defends Nozick (what I’m talking about, and the title of this thread). I would like to see a robust debate between conza and snake about the merits of Nozick’s philosophy. You know, without dismissing it right off the bat, and appealing to authority.
I skimmed through the article you posted, but couldn’t find any objections to Nozick’s actual philosophy. Hoppe says he’s unsystematic and compromises his own positions. Are there substantive arguments against Nozick’s philosophy in that article? Maybe I missed it.
You should probably go back to the post mentioned above, where I ask for solid_choke to back up his assertions with arguments, you know make a positive case for them.
I don’t do that with anything. I have however, read the numerous critiques of and agree with them. That’s something you should probably go ahead and do. And no, I’m not going to waste my time re-writing what I already agree with, when you can simply go ahead and read - then try refute. Like I said earlier, go ahead and defend Rawls and Nozick. Ball’s in your court.
Don’t be a liar now, considering I did no such thing. You didn’t even understand why I was discussing Rawls, lol.
Right. But didn’t Rawls support the welfare state, and didn’t Nozick attack the welfare state? I’m still trying to see where you actually mention/address Nozick’s position.
Also: “I have however, read the numerous critiques of and agree with them.” But mainly, I’m still waiting to hear Nozick’s “important contributions to epistemology, philosophy of science, metaphysics, and decision theory.” [:D]
In this article by ________, we find the following: “while liberals are in favor of any sexual activity engaged in by two consenting adults, when these consenting adults engage in trade or exchange, the liberals step in to harass, cripple, restrict, or prohibit that trade. And yet both the consenting sexual activity and the trade are similar expressions of liberty in action.”
Nearly everyone in the philosophical profession thinks Nozick came up with the idea of “capitalist acts between consenting adults” in Anarchy, State, and Utopia. But here we find the same analogy used by ________ a year before (1973) Nozick’s book came out (1974).
Btw, I removed the authors name so no-one would ignorantly make the mistake of thinking it was some kind of appeal to authority. [^o)]
You’re too kind. I’m lucky to have met you online.
Was Nozick familiar with praxeology? How would he respond to the claim that minarchy is inherently unsustainable? This is something I’ve been dealing with my self. I realize that anarchy is inherently unstable, but if Minarchy is as well, then it appears that we’re all doomed to statism forever.
My take on anarchy (all of its forms) is that it’s basically a utopian and self-refuting doctrine, which cannot, in anyway, be taken seriously. The major achievements of humanity were not developed in anarchic Ireland, but during the Victorian age of liberalism. It reminds of Marxism in a way, namely the belief that man will somehow recreate himself in his new and perfect world. There will be no warfare; no one will try to ruthlessly seize power, and that, for the first time in history, a power vacuum will remain just that. Basically, my belief is that the potential to seize absolute power would be too great to resist for many praxelogical agents.
"Liberalism is not anarchism, nor has it anything whatsoever to do with anarchism. The liberal understands quite clearly that without resort to compulsion, the existence of society would be endangered and that behind the rules of conduct whose observance is necessary to assure peaceful human cooperation must stand the threat of force if the whole edifice of society is not to be continually at the mercy of any one of its members. One must be in a position to compel the person who will not respect the lives, health, personal freedom, or private property of others to acquiesce in the rules of life in society. This is the function that the liberal doctrine assigns to the state: the protection of property, liberty, and peace…. Liberalism is therefore far from disputing the necessity of a machinery of state, a system of law, and a government. It is a grave misunderstanding to associate it in any way with the idea of anarchism. For the liberal, the state is an absolute necessity, since the most important tasks are incumbent upon it: the protection not only of private property, but also of peace, for in the absence of the latter the full benefits of private property cannot be reaped."
I removed the authors name so no-one would ignorantly make the mistake of thinking it was some kind of appeal to authority.
Yeah Kinsella took care of that nonsensical garbage.
That’s a shame you choose to replace your God with the State, and worship it instead.
Btw, you didn’t answer my questions:
"How do you define anarchy? What is unstable?
Having no rulers is inherently unstable? For who exactly? Btw, no rulers - doesn’t mean no rules."
Seemed like you danced around the issue. You failed to define the term.
Developed in an environment of private property rights, division of labour, money - i.e civilization. The greater respect for all of those, the greater the potential for achievements that benefit mankind.
Where on earth does an anti-social / parasitic entity come in to play here? Hmm?
That’s great, except “reminding you of whatever” isn’t exactly a coherent argument. And instead - amounts to a strawman of the position that follows methodological individualism. Your argument reminds me of the level of discussion I encountered in the 5th grade.
Rothbard’s anarchism was not the sort of anarchism that his teacher and mentor Mises had rejected as hopelessly naive, of course. “The anarchists,” Mises had written,
contend that a social order in which nobody enjoys privileges at the expense of his fellow-citizens could exist without any compulsion and coercion for the prevention of action detrimental to society. . . . The anarchists overlook the undeniable fact that some people are either too narrow-minded or too weak to adjust themselves spontaneously to the conditions of social life. . . . An anarchistic society would be exposed to the mercy of every individual. Society cannot exist if the majority is not ready to hinder, by the application or threat of violent action, minorities from destroying the social order.[10]
Indeed, Rothbard wholeheartedly agreed with Mises that without resort to compulsion, the existence of society would be endangered and that behind the rules of conduct whose observance is necessary to assure peaceful human cooperation must stand the threat to force if the whole edifice of society is not to be continually at the mercy of any one of its members. One must be in a position to compel a person who will not respect the lives, health, personal freedom, or private property of others to acquiesce in the rules of life in society.[11]
Inspired in particular by the nineteenth-century American anarchist political theorists Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker and the Belgian economist Gustave de Molinari, from the outset Rothbard’s anarchism took it for granted that there will always be murderers, thieves, thugs, con artists, etc., and that life in society would be impossible if they were not punished by physical force. As a reflection of this fundamental realism—anti-utopianism—of his private-property anarchism, Rothbard, unlike most contemporary political philosophers, accorded central importance to the subject of punishment. For him, private property and the right to physical defense were inseparable. No one can be said to be the owner of something if he is not permitted to defend his property by physical violence against possible invaders and invasions. “Would,” Rothbard asked, “somebody be allowed to ‘take the law into his own hands’? Would the victim, or a friend of the victim, be allowed to exact justice personally on the criminal?” and he answered, “of course, Yes, since all rights of punishment derive from the victim’s right of self-defense” (p. 90). Hence, the question is not whether or not evil and aggression exist, but how to deal with its existence justly and efficiently, and it is only in the answer to this question that Rothbard reaches conclusions which qualify him as an anarchist.
That was probably unnecessary, see, I know the material and authors so well - I don’t make ignorant mistakes like believing a Rothbard quote is from Mises. Hey, we both know who ends up saving the day though, right?. [;)]
All those that find human action to be axiomatic are explicit or closet anarchists, unless of course you didn’t deliberately write that above, but we know it’s axiomatic that you did. Needed no ruler for that anarchist act.
P.S. This post is within the context of Nozick, though indirectly, so, I apologize for what can be considered a tangent and I will refrain from further commenting on this bit. Yet, I couldn’t pass this up, darn me.[:@]
I have to say, that Nozick piece by Rothbard left a really bad taste in my mouth. I’m not going to discuss my opinion of Rothbard, many have said that he was a very kind and otherwise pleasant individual, so I’ll take their word for it. Nonetheless, passages such as this are entirely unwarranted and cross a line that I believe shouldn’t be crossed by academics:
As Rothbard said, Robert Nozick was never in the libertarian movement, he was a professional philosopher and should have been respected as such. His personal life should never have been used as ammunition for a jealousy inspired bitter hit piece.
I say this because some of the personal attacks on scholars, even (especially?) fellow libertarians by people associated with the LvMI is really quite worrying. I don’t wish to impugn an entire organization based on the actions of a few individuals (there are some very gracious scholars associated with the Institute, don’t get me wrong), but the willingness to resort to misrepresentations, personal attacks and character assassination is worrying.
Hayek, Nozick and Friedman seem to take it particularly hard for no good reason as far as I can tell.
Nozick’s tracking theory of knowledge solved several paradoxes that had stumped epistemologists for decades and helped inspire modern virtue epistemology. His argument involving the experience machine is probably the most conclusive refutation of hedonism of all time. He formalized and made a general account of “invisible hand explanation” that has Adam Smith’s and Charles Darwin’s theories as instantiations. He created the concept of symbolic utility and showed how it could be applied in both Evidential Decision Theory and Causal Decision Theory, but even developed the outline of a completely new decision theory that falls prey to one less inconsistency than EDT in its most popular formulation. He developed the “closest continuer” theory of personal identity. Also, his work in philosophy of science still hasn’t really been incorporated into the mainstream, but looks to be fruitful. In it he develops a theory of objective reality relying on invariance under transformations as its essential component. That is what I can come up with off the top of my head. There is much more to Nozick that I can fit into a single message board post.
Nozick’s track record as a philosopher dwarfs Rothbards. Only if you judge Nozick solely on his work in political philosophy are any of your criticisms valid. I agree that Nozicks defense of minarchy fails in ASU, but taken as a whole his body of work is the one of the most impressive of the 20th century. I don’t hesitate to place him alongside Russell, Wittgenstein, Quine, or Popper.
Nozick says in the very beginning of ASU that the entire book was the result of a conversation he had with Rothbard. You would know this if you had read the book. It wouldn’t be his fault if people think that he invented ideas that were Rothbards. He cites Man, Economy, and State and Power and Market in the footnotes for crying out loud. That would be like others crediting him with the “right to ignore the state” when he clearly cites Herbert Spencer and includes his works in the bibliography.
OK, I worded that badly so let me try again. Robert Nozick needn’t necessarily be respected because he was a philosopher per se, but his status as one certainly should be respected. ASU gained him a great deal of fame, but I think we need to remember that it is a scholarly piece of work, whatever ones critical appraisal of it is, and he should be seen as much. I daresay many intellectuals (Austrians included) lapse into hypocrisy, but in most cases it’s a private issue, not one that should be used for scoring points by other intellectuals. Rothbard was, of course, well within his rights to write that piece, but ultimately I think it just comes of as petty and spiteful.
Now, as for defending the state, I’m far from an anarchist so I don’t think we’re really going to agree on this, I also don’t think that what the state does is “theft”. Let me first point out that there are many Austrians and libertarians who have defended the state and don’t receive the sort of abuse that those three do, I daresay it’s in no small part because none of these figures as successful as Hayek, Nozick and Friedman.
Without going into their scholarly work, let me point out a few things. Hayek’s RTS has been a best seller for a long time, given the books message I would hope that libertarians would be please with this, not to mention Hayek’s Nobel prize was partly responsible (yes, there is a debate over this) for the resurgence of interest in Austrian ideas. Nozick’s ASU put libertarianism back on the table as far as intellectual discussion goes, as the Long piece noted, before that defending libertarianism was seen to be the analog of saying the earth was flat. Finally, Friedman’s Free to Choose and Capitalism and Freedom have made more libertarians than any book the LvMI has published.
I’m all for respecting people and I’m even a fan of Nozick, but I don’t see any point to this. There isn’t any reason why he (or the other two) shouldn’t be criticisized, Rand’s Atlas Shrugged has probably made more libertarians than anyone, and she’s constantly under heavy fire here.