This sounds good, but I don’t think it is actually correct. Argumentation ethics is a negative proof. I’m sure you are familiar with performative contradiction. It is the same thing as Mises saying that nobody can deny that humans act, because that denial is itself an action.
While we would probably still call this conversation an argument, it isn’t the same as an argument in a court drawn to rectify private property disputes. I think this latter form of arguing would be a distinct category of action, or in Reinach’s terminology a different type of “social act”.
In both cases, the person arguing against libertarian grundnorms is caught in logical contradiction, but only the latter form of argument is our concern, as the goal of any legal theory is to justify punishment. Whether it is deductive or not really isn’t important though. I think Kinsella’s estoppel reformulation is much more convincing as to the validity of argumentation ethics.
Mises (and I) say that the protection of life, liberty, and private property are the most appropriate means to everybody’s ends (save ascetics and sadists). But we do NOT derive the notion that those things should be protected from nature.
Am I a “natural law theorist” by defending Hoppe? I really don’t see the point in using the term “natural law” at all looking forward. We’re concerned with human actions, so that those are natural (or not) seems kind of irrelevant.
Anyhow, I didn’t quite get why you went after me in another thread for quoting this paper by Block, where he said:
In [Mises’] view, it was reasonable to deduce what the law ought to be from purely economic considerations, provided only that we take as a given the utility of the normal or average man, who is in this case the typical advocate of government intervention, as the lodestar of our analysis.
I thought maybe Mises somewhere else said some things about justice, but this seems to be exactly what you are saying now. Isn’t the problem then though that we aren’t talking about the suitability of the sadist or the average man in achieving their own preferred ends. We’re asking whether the sadist’s (“criminal’s” sounds better to me) actions are in line with those we say are vital to human society and the process of civilization, and this is where AE comes in.
Last, I have been making an effort to be civil to people here and just ignore those that repeatedly employ fallacies or are just off in left field. What still irks me most is when I spend my time writing out a response (like this one) and the person it was addressed to (in this case you) says something like this:
ERO,
Your analogy would only work if your lazy, “But what about Argumentation Ethics?” could even be considered a “swing”. It can’t.
Again, if you want something from me, give me something concrete to respond to that you think undermines my position, even if it’s only a single paragraph, and I’ll respond.
But I don’t write monographs on cue.
How was there nothing concrete to respond to? I just basically repeated the same thing here and I will probably have to again and again in new threads on this perennial topic. I only skimmed this one, but I might not still understand your position. If you really think your case against argumentation ethics is that solid, please stop arguing against wilderness and spend your time making a Mises Daily on it or something. I also would appreciate if the original AE thread here was stickied. Ones like the nuclear disarmament thread could at least go in a master sticky of topics that have threads. I spent a good bit of time on writing the last response there, let alone thinking about it, and it seems all for naught. My time is scarce too, but I spend a great deal of it reading about law and hoping to contribute to libertarian theory. When what I say is baselessly rejected out of hand it’s pretty off-putting if I think about contributing more.