I would argue that it is never in one’s favor to steal, murder, etc. While such actions may bring an individual advantage or utility of a sort, they contradict the virtues that are constitutive of one’s flourishing, which is, by definition, the standard by which actions are judged as being good or bad. I was perhaps unclear in my original explanation as well; the important point is that peaceful cooperation and exchange are constitutive of one’s eudaimonia, not that they lead to institutional arrangements that are to one’s advantage (although that is also true).
I see this as being a borderline case. The Aristotelian case for human flourishing holds true for the genus “human”. While there may be certain individuals whose biology or upbringing or what-have-you has made it impossible for them to cooperate peacefully with others, this is merely evidence that we live in a world where tragedy is possible.
I think we may be arguing past each other here. Whether or not murder is wrong isn’t the result of a cost-benefit analysis; it is wrong because it is working against one’s flourishing. Just because someone holds something to be good for them, doesn’t mean that it actually is.
This distinction seems to disappear if we use a common-sense definition of value (noun): “something that someone places importance on,” or value (verb): “to place importance on something.”
Under what special definition of value (noun and verb) can it be true that value is “a relation between the object valued and the agent, but [depend] upon the natures of both”?
it’s still using the definitions you provided and an understanding of a differing epistemology as well as involving metaphysics (not sure if you entertain either of these). i don’t see any “special definition” necessity. the value doesn’t spring about by the individual alone or the object alone - when the individual is considering the object. This consideration involves both what the object is and is relative to the agent. It’s a valuing process defined by the natures of the two involved in collaboration. Looking at the example: the food is contributing something and it is valued by someone. There is a collaboration between the food and someone in such an event.
true in one sense, but not true if that murderer can go and kill more people so now it’s not victim singular but victims plural due to this one person: the murderer, being a person not flourishing well as an individual so therefore…
this idea of justice, and the murderers lack of flourishing: Justice is a species of truth and somebody that enacts an injustice does so within a false paradigm - this in itself is not a flourishing individual. And then perpetuate this falsity upon others coercively (which some falsities are merely taught with more sly tactics of persuasion in school or what have you, the murderer is in a realistic sense physically applying their own ideas in destructive ways, and this destruction is the outcome of their fallaciousness).
I understood you’re original exposition (at least, I hope I did), I just understood you to be making the point that certain institutional arrangements will make it far easier for members of society to “flourish” than others. These institutional arrangements include the division of labout etc. I understood that you were also making the point that peaceful cooperation and exchange are constitutive of one’s flourishing, but I was sort of addressing that later.
I think you’re sort of missing my point here, which was that if such people did exist I don’t think it would make any sense for you to say that murder will mitigate against their human flourishing. I’m sure you’d agree that there exist individuals who have certain character attributes that make them unable to feel remorse or empathy or whatever else. I’m not sure it makes any sense to say to these individuals that murder is immoral.
Once again, you’re sort of missing my point. Giving your conception of rights I don’t think I have any objective rights with regards to my property. If you were to steal my bike and turned around and said “I’ve done a cost benefit analysis and this will benefit me more in the long run” there’s not much I can do. I don’t really think I have any higher claim to the bike than you do. I mean, imagine the following situation, I walk outside of my house and see Wombatron cutting the chain of my bike, I run outside to confront him:
Giles: What are you doing?
Wombatron: Well, I’ve got a job interview and my car broke down, I really need this job and I have no other way of getting there. I also took one of your suits because I thought it looked nicer than the one I was wearing.
Giles: You can’t do that!
Wombatron: Well, why not? What rights do you have to this bike that I don’t?
Giles: I don’t really have any, in objective terms, but don’t you know that stealing my bike well impede your human flourishing?
Wombatron: I know, and I’ve thought about this. But I really need this job, it pays well and I’ve not found any others at all. Right now I think that the money from this job will help along my path to human flourishing more than stealing your bike will work against it. In any case, it’s a nice bike.
Now, at this point there’s nothing I can really say. You’ve rationally decided to take my bike, and even if it actually does work against you in the long run, that’s for you to find out. The key point here is, however, that any attempt on my behalf to stop you taking my bike must take the form of an appeal to your self interest, not any “rights” I have to the bike. It just seems to me that this is an odd way to find justification for rights.
I don’t believe Plauche’s explanation is satisfactory:
“But this does not mean that food is of value to you merely because you happen to desire it. It is something that you need to survive and even to live well.”
This explanation is based on an inaccurate description of the Austrian theory of value. The Austrian theory of value does not say that people value things “merely because they happen to value them,” it says that people value things in relation to their ends. So Plauche misrepresents the standard Austrian position.
Next, he re-states the standard Austrian position in order to refute the misstated Austrian position, essentially saying:
You don’t value food merely because you value it [not the Austrian position], you value food when your ends are survival and living well [a statement of the general Austrian position].
Plauche seems to be attributing the insights of the Austrian school to Aristotelian eudaimonists.
Regarding Ayn Rand, she seems to have many revisors. To assess the accuracy of what you are saying she said, we would need references to the specific passages where she expresses the ideas you mention.
On its face, Rand’s theory might be summarized briefly as:
“There can be no doubt that she intends to construct an ethical system in which the standards of morality operate independently of their subjective acceptance by individual human wills…”
This comes from O’Neil’s 1983 article here:
“Whereas Austrian subjectivism is methodological; it doesn’t necessarily say anything about whether ethics is objective or subjective.”
Here, I believe you miss something important. There are at least two possible approaches to ethical phenomena. Ethics can be considered a discipline of shoulds and oughts, or ethics can be considered a value-free science of ethical phenomena, the same as economics, but with ethical rather than catallactic (market) phenomena as its object. When ethics is considered a value-free science of ethical phenomena, then whatever Austrian subjectivism says generally, it says about each of the particular realms of inquiry of Austrian subjectivism. And thus your statement above is not entirely accurate.
“Wouldn’t it be so much easier if we all just used the same terminology?”
I agree with this, and I think many people on the forum probably do too. Since this is a Mises Institute forum, and since the Austrian school has developed a fairly well defined terminology over the last hundred and thirty years, I recommend using standard Austrian school terminology.
A value-free ethical theory is a contradiction in terms.
Maybe you can ‘classify’ people’s moral theories and say, well, some people who call themselves libertarians have a moral theory based on non-aggression, other people who call themselves nationalists have a moral theory based on collectivism, people who call themselves the military base their moral theories on mass murder, and so on.
That might be a ‘value-free’ commentary of sorts - not really a theory - but that’s as far as you could go while remaining ‘value-free’.
You might add that people whose morals are based on mass murder will murder a lot of their fellows (and will be justified in doing so…according to their ‘subjective morals’ at least).
Personally I as a libertarian see no use for such “value-free science of ethical phenomena”.
I don’t think so. Value being subjective when considered from an economic point of view is different from moral values being only subjective preferences. Conflating the two is a big mistake IMO.
As I said, your ‘value-free science of ethics’ can only describe what’s going on - yet all moral agents intuitively know what’s going on - they are just doing what’s morally correct according to their own ‘subjective’ preferences and choosing whatever ends they think are right. Or so the subjectivist party line goes.
You either stick to analyzing whether means are correct/proper/useful given an ‘irrational’ end (economics, more or less) or else you admit that ends can be rationally analyzed (and so admit there’s an objective morality of sorts).
If language is an institution, to what address may I send my complaints regarding the English language? Oxford, perhaps?
Yes, that’s exactly what the etymology of the word “blue” is… ancient man identified an objective bandwidth of light waves (measured in Hertz, long before Mr. Hertz lived!) and defined this band as the “blue band.”
But that does not make the incorrectness of such a phrase a physical fact. It is semantically incorrect, and that only with respect to a particular lingual order that has arisen between humans. In any case, the issue of true and false have little to do with morality.
I should have specified that I was talking about normative ethics, as opposed to descriptive ethics (which I believe is what you are talking about in your second approach).
“Blue” is a good example of why this word for a color cannot be objectively defined. Different races perceive light differently and the Japanese translation of blue (ao/青) really means a what would be a blue/green color to most of us. Stoplights we would call green, they call blue.
Oh my. Light at a given frequency is a physical fact and ALL people (except those who are color blind =P) see colors almost the same way. What arbitrary sounds (words) are attached to particular objects or concepts is irrelevant and doesn’t prove that relativism is right.
There are a few words to name colors but we can see MILLIONS of them. But maybe those millions of different colors don’t exist because they don’t have particular names ?
I agree that light at X frequency can be agreed upon. I dispute the assertion I will quote again:
‘Blue’ is what ‘blue’ means to those communicating. A typical “English blue” is not a typical “Japanese Blue”. Japanese people speaking English won’t mean the same thing as you when they say, “The light is blue”.
I said jack shit about proving relativism or colours not existing. My only point was that a language definition can’t be empiricized, at least in this case.
What Laughing Man said is written in English. That’s as far as this little exegesis really needed to go. I could look up what the frequency of blue is and define it using English.
I’m not saying you in particular E.R. since you agree that there is an objective frequency of blue, but since the “oughtism” group wants to continue denying that an object’s truth can be intellectually apprehended this current discussion goes to show how easy oughtism would rid science altogether. I brought up the fruits of theory in a previous post in this thread and a growing list, this included, of how unfruitful oughtism is, is perpetually compounding.
I wasn’t refuting your dissertation or trying to make an argument, weak or not. I was pointing out that it is relatively easy to construct an argument by simply noting that morals are like any other taste or preference - subjective.
I have no idea what agent-neutral is. As far as I understand your position, you fall into the same trap of planting the seed of collective morality to which Rothbard also fell prey. Since I know Rothbard’s argument better than yours, let me explain the problems with his argument (and hopefully you and others will see how it applies to your argument):
In Ethics of Liberty, Rothbard makes the following argument:
This is where Rothbard strays into collectivist morals. Crusoe has not made an “objectively immoral” decision at all. If we were to take Rothbard’s line of reasoning seriously, then we must say that suicide, euthanasia, celibacy and homosexuality (insomuch as it results in non-reproduction) are objectively immoral! If Rothbard is right that Crusoe’s eating the poisonous mushroom is objectively immoral, then ethics does not emerge from human choice. This is, in fact, what he is arguing - that ethics emerge from reason, where reason supersedes individual choice with respect to what is, or is not, ethical. Reason, then, replaces religion as the instrument of tyranny by which to bludgeon others over the head, psychologically. Sure, Rothbard will never physically hit you (as the State will), but he will heap derision and scorn upon you - and lead others to join him in doing so - for making an “objectively immoral” choice.
Continuing with Rothbard,
This is not really true. An axiom is a proposition for which no other argument is given. Usually, because no other argument can be given. Showing that some proposition must be assumed within a particular argumentative framework does nothing to prove the axiom to be true. Else, the axiom were not an axiom (it is really a theorem based on more fundamental arguments). Axioms, in other words, are supposed to be those things which are “self-evident”, not those things which are “irrefutable.” I find both Hoppe’s and Rothbard’s reliance on this “presuppositional” approach distinctly unsatisfying.
Continuing with Rothbard,
It is entirely possible for someone to be a hypocrite or logically inconsistent (just as Crusoe can have incomplete information, he can have implicitly contradictory beliefs) or to reject the axiom of universalizability, and so on.
The best framework, in my opinion, in which to reason about ethics is to start from the simple fact of human action. Individuals choose, at every point in time, from among a set of physically possible courses of action. The choices which individuals make, like moves in a chess game, exhibit patterns. These patterns reflect a strategy or decision-making heuristic according to which the individual is operating. This is the individual’s ethic. An individual’s ethic is the patterns within the set of answers to the question “What should I do now?” asked again and again at each point in time, given the information and reasoning powers available to the individual. The philosophy of ethics is both internal (what should I do?) and external (what do I want others to do?), but only the internal aspect of ethics is within an individual’s own control. The claim of deriving an ought from an is, or deriving objective ethics must necessarily deny human action since it means that I may answer the question “What should I do now?” for you. Without somehow seizing control of your soul and overriding your individuality (say, through some sci-fi technology), this is physically impossible. And, even if it were physically possible, the claim that you have a right to make decisions for me would simply have to be rejected like any fradulent property claim, since that is ultimately what it is.
As to the goals which an individual is pursuing, I agree with Rothbard that these goals are not arbitrary, but neither do they emanate from “reason.” The goals that individuals pursue are subject only to the constraints of physical law and their evolved ethic. The urge to reproduce, for example, does not follow from reason, it follows from evolutionary forces which have programmed the individual to invest energy into reproducing, even though he or she must give up other material satisfactions to achieve this. Similarly for the goals of not murdering or not stealing or not raping or accumulating wealth, and so on. As with all other human desires, there is a variety of ethics between individuals and it is this variation that is the substrate upon which the evolution of ethics occurs.
Evolution’s choices of what goals individuals should pursue are also no more arbitrary than our evolved taste preferences. Poisonous chemicals taste awful because we are the descendants of those to whom poisonous chemicals had an awful taste. In the weak sense of being able to identify reasons for why certain ethics exist within humans, we can say that ethics emanates from reason. But this is only a very weak link since many things that are uncontroversially immoral (e.g. rape) are not necessarily “bad” from the evolutionary point of view. Reproduction without resort to rape may be more efficient than reproduction via rape but reproduction via rape is better (from evolution’s PoV) than no reproduction at all. So, deriving ethics from reason is very dangerous, leads to obviously wrong conclusions, entails collectivist morality, and does not even square with our intuition.
Contra GAP’s tactical flip, I think “oughtism” is much more fitting for your side of the debate, because it is your side that sees "ought"s where we say there are none.
An Australian professor of history I corresopnded with online (he passed away quite young, too bad) pointed out to me once that the Roman word “azure” meant something quite different from “blue”, as English speakers use it, even though “blue” is the only available English word to translate “azure.”
But leaving that aside, I think there is a deeper problem. Even if we restrict ourselves just to English, it is not a physical fact that “The grass is green.” Physical facts, in themselves, are unintepreted and meaningless. However, once we have interpreted physical facts (for example, by observing lightwaves emanating from grass and then processing this sensory input through whatever verbalizing mechanism our brains use to “understand” what it is seeing), we have translated them from the physical substrate into a higher-order system of speech patterns which are subject to rules of grammar and semantics. But violating the rules of grammar and semantics in natural language is not similar to violating physical law (which is impossible, in any case).
It is a strawman to respond by saying that language is not a convention. Natural language is not a convention any more than market money is a convention. Fiat money is a convention, market money is a sopntaneous order. Both money and language emerge from the uncoordinated actions of individuals each seeking his or her own goals. Language, in other words, is a spontaneous order, not a convention. I cannot change the definition of “blue”. You and I agreeing together cannot change the definition of “blue”. Even all of us on this board, united, could not change the definition of blue. Meaning is decentralized.
Meanwhile you spent most of your posts in this thread (and others) explaining how it’s all subjective, nothing is objective, and we “ought” to listen to how Hume feels even though Hume can only say how he feels but not what object is relating in value to such a feeling. I haven’t read Hume, so I’m going by your posts, Plauche anaylsis, and Rommen’s (and other’s cited from both of them) that Hume, even according to you, rejects the intellect and reason. It’s only about how Hume feels. So Hume can’t tell what something actually is - which regresses into me wondering how Hume can even understand his own feelings. It’s perpetual. It was you agreeing with Clayton that blue can’t be objectively defined as X frequency.
Edit: I believe this discussion began in the ‘Natural Law’ thread some time ago (the actual name of the thread escapes me, but I provide the link) in which Rothbard pointed out Hume’s problematic philosophy too (and Rothbard again cites more people that have refuted Hume in the same way in that very quote given). That quote in Rothbard’s book (The Ethics of Liberty I believe) in which was pasted on that thread also showed how Hume is inconsistent in his own philosophy for Hume took a position and by the end of the book, as the quote of Rothbard notes I believe, Hume had to usurp his own position on objective justice for he saw the flaw in his own philosophy eventually. Yet Hume didn’t, as far as I understand, further anaylize his own change in heart upon his own position. This quote I remember vividly lead to a stampede in which you yourself started a thread coming up with a term ‘Rothbardians’ as your objection to Rothbard’s denouncing of Hume’s position also had you defending Hume. So are all these people wrong even Hume himself in having to adjust his own philosophy in latter works (even within the same book) or is Hume still being strawmanned by all these people that include Plauche, Veatch (spelling?), Rommen, Rothbard, and numerous others cited that speak out against Hume’s position? Or is it as I’ve learned: that Hume has actually strawmanned Natural Law in a unnecessary arbitrary institution of a so called is-ought gap? of course you know the answers I have to these questions
I don’t think I ever said language is not conventional, and if I did please forgive me. My care factor is plummeting and I regret stepping into this debate.Something still seems fishy about blue being XYZ wavelength because ABC people say so.
You guys go have your playtime. All I request is this dictionary wavelength definition of blue.