I’m not sure on this.
There is the a priori of argumentation (which seems to be what you are touching on: that people are capable of argument and all that is implied by this), but Hoppe seems to emphasize that argumentation is an activity- this distinction of argumentation as an activity is what implies property rights and the rest of Hoppe’s argument. So in this sense, I think that this point (revolving around the brain’s capacity for argument) is not what Hoppe argues.
No, you’re exactly right. Argumention is the activity. People forget that action, especially something as basic as forming an argument (making a claim, even in one’s mind), doesn’t require more than one person. This is from Economic Science and the Austrian Method. Although, we shouldn’t need Hoppe to explain something that obvious.
EDIT: I guess the OP implicitly acknowledged this, but I haven’t seen it stated explicitly anywhere except by Hoppe, and only once I believe, very briefly in that red book.
‘this’ meaning the contention that ‘argumentation is an activity’?
Have you read The Economics and Ethics of Private Property? The essays within were pretty repetitve, but Hoppe mentions this point many times (iirc, it’s the sentence by which he introduces his argument in any article regarding his AE). I linked to sources above where he makes this point (I think a choice word he chooses to use as a contrary point is “free-floating.” If you search for this in the articles, this point should be nearby if not in the former half of the same sentence).
I’m not disputing that argumentation is an activity. We agreed on that if you read my last post. I don’t even think we disagree fundamentally, I was just trying to remind of something that people generally neglect to acknowledge (at least explicitly) about AE: that the activity doesn’t require more than a single human. Thus, if you can make a claim, an argument, then AE holds, and I take this from Economic Science and the Austrian Method.
I understand this. I was commenting on your claim that you ‘haven’t seen it stated explicitly anywhere except by Hoppe’ (I excerpted your post incorrectly, so this is probably a misunderstanding caused by me). I was saying that Hoppe does mention it frequently.
And the point you’re making is especially crucial to understand in analyzing some of the more specious critiques of Hoppe’s AE (i.e. “slavery has existed and, according to his argument, Hoppe thinks slaves can’t argue because they don’t own themselves”).
Yes, that was my next point. Understanding that the activity isn’t dependent on their being several people is important to solving many (most? all?) objections to AE.
tunk: If I make the statement, “Everybody should physically aggress against everyone else, so long as no one is arguing,” am I caught in a performative self-contradiction?
tunk, as Conza pointed, AE is relevant only if you are engaed in argumentation, i.e. aim to resolve the conflict in a non-violent way, which means- via justification. Such a statement is obviously inconsistant with violence aversion.
While the statement tunk makes in that post explicitly advocates for aggression, Hoppe takes care to note that his AE is strictly based on (a priori) is-statements. Does this mean that his argument doesn’t apply to ought-statements (as I state above, true or false as the statements are)? If his argument does not apply, then doesn’t tunk’s proposition (which makes an ought-statement) fall outside the analysis of argumentation ethics? If Hoppe’s argument does apply, how is this accounted for given Hoppe’s distinction?
TheOldGuy, you are correct. Hoppe’s argument relates to justification not any and all speech acts.
TheOldGuy
It’s like I’ve just been promoted.
So if we’re in agreement, then, an adequate response to the OP, or any argument that uses an ought-statement, is to just state “Well, that’s your opinion.” Ultimately, ought-statements are value-judgments.
I replied to the OP, you can see above.
I understand your proposition, and I find it interesting, yet, I’m not secure that what Epicurus proposes is, in fact, morality. A moral thing is a right thing to do, an immoral thing, a wrong one. Acording to Epicurus, everything that causes pleasure to oneself is moral, everything that causes pain, immoral. Is this value-free? I’d argue that is the most value-laden moral code that is, because each individual is different; so if someone absolutely doesn’t care at all about what pain attempting to murder dozens of people will cause him in the future, he will be acting moraly. But that doesn’t impede someone, or the very victims, to do something about it. That where law comes in. Now, what law should be based upon? Should it be based in customs? What if a society wanted to kill all the twins that were born, because it is believed that one of them is evil (like what happens in some tribes)? I suppose that that could happen (like it happens in smaller societies), but I assure you that I wouldn’t want to live in a society like that. After all, that’s the whole thing libertarians are up to, right? Living in a society where law is value-free, and based on the NAP (a rational moral proposition).
So, what law should (in a libertarian view) be based upon? Moral principles, right? But which kind of moral principles? Rational ones. That’s where AE comes in, and I’m honestly yet to see a better rational proposition than the NAP. Epicurean morals, in my opinion, is a completely amoral code, unless you change the definition of the word morality.
Also, I don’t see why every AE that is there today is restating Epicurus. Hoppe’s argumentation is pretty different from what you present of Epicurus, and I don’t see why UPB is a bad concept, care to explain me why?
It is value-free as long as we properly qualify the extents of the value-freedom. We can safely say “drinking battery acid for the sake of drinking battery acid is immoral” because it is a fact of human physiology that it will cause extreme pain. Of course, there are always freak exceptions to things so we always have to be careful to keep this in mind. But the principle still holds - anything that brings about pain is - in itself - an evil. And what we mean by saying that it is an evil is that it is something to be avoided.
Sociopathic personalities appear to be oblivious to the social cues that curb outrageous behavior in normal people. If this is the case, then such people are actually suffering from a pathology. That doesn’t necessarily entail our sympathy but it does mean that such a person is handicapped in terms of participating in the social order without hurting themselves and others. By analogy, think of someone who has no nerves in their skin and cannot sense pain. They would have to be very careful not to burn or otherwise injure themselves.
Of course not, why should a murderer’s subjective sense of self-approval affect anyone else’s behavior?
I’m more interested in understanding what the law is based upon because I don’t think we really have very much latitude in altering the law, popular delusions aside.
I wouldn’t self-describe as a libertarian, though I am not antagonistic to liberal philosophy.
Not at all - it simply places the locus of moral calculation in the mind of each individual. There is no external standard for judging right and wrong - your internal subjective state is the only sure guide.
I don’t think I asserted that. Mises was definitely an Epicurean but I can’t speak for others. I don’t think Rothbard or Hoppe are Epicurean at all.
Agreed.
Not really, no. I have yet to see why it’s worth my effort to even inform myself what UPB is beyond the Wiki description of it.
Clayton -
hmmm, I guess I agree.
Really? From your posts (various across the forums) I assumed you were a libertarian. Out of curiosity, what you define yourself, if anything?
I agree to that to the extent that doesn’t affect others (NAP). If someone thinks murdering is right because it brings him/her ultimate satisfaction, I cannot possibly accept that as moral. Morality is a social construction, in my view. So, if you don’t take the (human) beings into account, morality doesn’t make much sense to me. Every action that does not affect anyone else is outside the scope of morality (one of the conclusions of UPB, as far as I can remember).
Your post:
EDIT: Oops, I overlooked chasing their tail (even though I disagree, you really didn’t assert that). My bad
Okay =)
Well, you’re playing loose with definitions. Murder is by definition unjustifiable (immoral in the fourth connotation) homicide. The question is whether homicide is right or wrong for a particular person in a particular instance and this question has to be answered the same way any moral question is - will it lead to my highest pleasure? In the case of someone breaking into my house, homicide may very well be the correct answer.
It is important to remember that this is not an exhortation to wooden self-interestedness as in “Well, I would like to save your life, however, that would entail me walking over to the ledge which makes me uncomfortable so I prefer to minimize my risks and stay comfortably far from the ledge and sorry about this but there’s nothing I can do for you, you’re going to die.” The fact is that self-image and innate sympathy for others are just as much a part of the recipe of happiness as external factors like life-risk, physical comfort, and so on.
I once thought this, too, but I’ve altered my views on this. I think that there is a kind of morality even for actions that affect only the self but it is not an impositional morality. I can’t go to someone and say “you may not commit suicide because it’s immoral because it will not lead to a flourshing and happy life for yourself, this is objectively the case and provable and to not submit to this conclusion is to throw out logic, etc. etc.” This is just silly.
Instead, what we can say is that every decision has an entrepreneurial/speculative aspect to it and, therefore, even when someone is doing something that seems like it is obviously and objectively wrong, they may actually turn out to be right. Look at the guy who can handle thousands of volts of electricity. It’s only because he was in a position to get shocked (which is “immoral” if we take gratuitous pain to be immoral) and then didn’t get shocked that he even found out that he has this immunity. So, uncertainty forces us to temper our “objective” moral pronouncements and instead qualify them as statements about human populations.
Clayton -
Yeah, of course, that’d be self-defence. For some psychopaths, murder dozens would give him/her the highest pleasure (as you already acknowledged as an exception), then again, why make this double standard? Why shift the morality right-wrong dichotomy to morality pleasure-pain?
Even if you consider that a normal man is, for some reason besides the point who wants to electrocute himself, immoral, what’s to that? What are you going to do? I think we diverge in this subject because morality, in my view, goes hand to hand with law, and I think you don’t think the same. So, in an Epicurean-moral society, there would be immoral legal and immoral ilegal (electrocuting oneself and raping, respectively), yes? If so, what’s the point to consider electrocuting yourself immoral?
But that’s exactly what I’m trying to draw attention to… for the imaginary first caveman deciding whether to smash his cave-invader’s skull in with a rock, this wasn’t an “of course”. What constitutes justifiable versus unjustifiable homicide is a complex set of criteria (that are still not completely regularized despite tens of millenia of human social evolution).
Let me turn your question below back to you: what’s to that? How does “declaring” that “murder” is “prohibited” change anything about what is going on inside the psychopath’s head? The point I made above is that his condition is pathological, that is, obviously malfunctional and diseased. I don’t think that constitutes an excuse but it does make it irrelevant to a theory of morality - it is an exception that doesn’t affect the rule.
I think that law and morality are separated by two criteria:
As for the example of the self-electrocution, it was only meant to illustrate the point moral questions certainly do apply to the solitary individual (contrary to my earlier position on this point). The Epicurean principle of morality is that suffering is always an evil-in-itself - but this principle is best understood formally because otherwise we get lost in a labyrinth of trying to separate what is suffering for its own sake versus suffering for the sake of attaining some greater pleasure, and so on. So, instead of getting lost in this labyrinth, we just throw it on the judgment of the individual and say: pain is that which we seek to avoid, pleasure is that which we strive to attain. In one word, the unattainable state of satisfaction or ataraxia is the ultimate end of any action.
Clayton -
True
oh, I understand now.
True
hmm, so, if for someone, pain is pleasure, than that would be considered pleasurable/moral. I understand now. I still am not certain about if I think this is more logical than AE, but Epicurean moral is definitely interesting, and I’ll keep reading about it.
Thanks for the thoughtful responses =)
Not quite, sorry to be pickayune. The correlation is purely formal. For example, let us say we see a man walking down the street flagellating himself. His face is wincing in pain with each strike, yet he keeps striking himself again and again. Unless he is actually insane (a pathological condition, thus negligible to our analysis), we can be certain that he is acting towards some end. The end may be righting himself with God. It may be some weird sexual fetish. Who knows. Doesn’t matter. The point is that he believes this is the best use of his time and energy right now. If he didn’t think it was, he’d be doing something else instead. The logic is inescapable because it is tautological (Mises points out in HA that the fact that it is tautological doesn’t make it meaningless, it just means it’s not justified in terms of something more basic than itself).
So, we’re not just saying that masochists and ascetics are acting toward their own pleasure even as they inflict physical pain on themselves, we are saying that whatever pains a person undergoes - whether it be anxiety, stress, labor, etc. - he is doing so in the expectation of avoiding some greater pain or some pleasure that - in his estimation - is worth the pain. In short, he is always seeking satisfaction, and that, by definition.
Mises espouses Epicurean philosophy in HA with the caveat that I gave above, namely, that the “pleasure/pain” dichotomy be understood formally. Pleasure is whatever satifies a person, that is, it is whatever end they are seeking. Pain is the opposite. The carnal sensations of pain and pleasure are a crude reflection of this formal description of the will so one should not get lost in futile questions of what exactly is suffering or pleasure. Instead, we simply say that - as long as a person is not mentally diseased - whatever end he is seeking is what satisfies him. If it were not, he would be seeking a different end, whatever end does satisfy him.
Clayton -
By any means, do so. I love learning.
Got it now, thanks =)