False. You suppose about me wrongly. It probably means you are actually trying to understand me and not drawing the debate into semantic quibbling.
I’m referring to objectivist ethics/moral realism. For both terms I mean any doctrine according to which normative statements can be verified or refuted.
What evidence is that?
Do you mean argumentation ethics?
How are statements I and II (below) of yours non-contradictory?
Statement I:
and then in response to my statement…
Statement II:
What’s Wrong with Libertarianism by Jeffrey Friedman is a brilliant critique: Libertarianism is essentially vacuous Enlightenment nonsense.
How reminiscient of your “critique” of argumentation ethics I suggested to some random person not posting here now. And I quote:
It follows that a portion of vacuous enlightenment nonsense might also be vacuous enlightenment nonsense.
kool?
I should give this a read myself since I also find myself disagreeing more & more with the Rationalism that the Enlightment is usually famous for, but i don’t anticipate it giving a huge dent into libertarianism.
I am guessing the nonsense you refer to is Rationalism?
Also, to anyone who is rolling their eyes at the title, read the entire abstract of the paper. The author adds some nuance by saying: " Libertarianism retains signifigant potnetial for illuminating the modern world because of its distance from mainstream intellecual assumptions. But this potential will remain unfufilled until it’s ideological superstructure is dismantled."
What do you mean by “normative”?
If it is ok with you, I am not talking in terms of subjective or objective anymore in this discussion between you and I. I may in the future, but at this point, I think it only inhibits our exchange. I refuse. Sorry. I was talking with somebody else in terms of objective and subjective, which you quoted and started this exchange, but that was with them. I am talking with you now. It is different. I am making this decision based on our usual discussions that tend to wonder around terms instead of getting to what we actually mean. Maybe it’s partially my fault so I want to stop it now. Fair?
Now to answer you’re question. My evidence is my person.
If you mean the axiom can only be stated in words, then I disagree. I’m only guessing because I don’t know what you mean by proposition and last time I tried to explain to you what I meant you falsely accused me of confusing words and evidence.
My take: Axioms are empirically grounded as well as being able to be put into words. The words reference the evidence (empirical grounding). Other words for axiom is common sense, primitive sense, intuition, assumptions, and yes self-evidently true.
Not necessarily.
In the first statement I meant: I was using fact synonymously as correct, meaning, my preference is a fact. In other words, my preference is.
In the second statement I meant: Everybody is doing what their preferences are.
That’s what I mean.
From Wikipedia: “In philosophy, normative statements affirm how things should or ought to be, how to value them, which things are good or bad, which actions are right or wrong.”
How is your person evidence that normative utterances can be verified or refuted?
What other negative demonstration(s) are you referring to?
I read over it for about half an hour. Would like to know what you think.
I don’t feel like he really used the strongest libertarian positions during the consequentialist section. The libertarians, who are minarchists, basically rely on inductive logic and psychological smoke. There’s no real mention of Austrian methodology (in passing, mentions mises’ calculation problem), that would help to better establish the utilitarian case for voluntary markets.
Some political philosophy would be nice too.
On the self-ownership part he also completely misunderstands coercion. He thinks coercion = violence, not coercion = violence against innocent people.
I’m not a libertarian, but this piece really didn’t strike me as something Austro-libertarians couldn’t easily come back at.
Arrangements in my internal, private world have properties, like vividness or severity.
Ok, thank you. This is what I’m saying. In this possible world a society, ie. aggregrate of individuals, found a law to maintain the society. The society decides to maintain economic action by protecting private property and human existence. The starting point or axiom of such a society is therefore the human existence and private property. This is where all the laws will start from in such a society in order to found it and maintain what the society has decided on maintaining, ie. economic action in the Miseian sense. Since the society has decided in this possible world to maintain these foundations of said society, ie. human existence and private property, then this is what the society has determined the individuals within said society ought to do. It starts with preferences. The society begins with these preferences on how a society is to become. How this has evolved isn’t being discussed at this point, what is being discussed is that in this possible world this is what the society has decided to maintain. The law based on these foundations of protecting human existence and private property are the axioms that all subsequent laws will be logically deducted from. The initial axioms are not necessarily deducted. They are established on preferences on how the society has come to realize it will need to establish itself. The society establishes laws or norms, ie. private property and human existence, and then maintains these essentials by maintaning these ought to be the norms in order for continued existence of said society.
As a person I hold the view of the above society that I transcribed as being possible. It can be verified by those individuals in the world who are also maintaining argumentatively and bodily human existence and private property. It is being refuted by those individuals in the world who are not maintaining human existence and private property. Both of these are established by the preferences of the two different types of people. Both are also showing evidence to their particular cause. The first by actual maintenance in their everyday lives. The second by destroying the human existence of the first and destroying, stealing, or simply trying to live a life that tries to establish itself by non-private property means, ie. tribalism maybe or socialist efforts.
Those that are presupposed before argumentation (which is argumentation ethics), and therefore they are also presupposed in everything people do, such as human action. Argumentation is an act as well as walking is an act or sitting, etc… The underlying act is presupposed in all of these. Thus human action as well as the axiom of person or scarcity each imply each other and are therefore negatively demonstrated by all people whether they know it or not because even to attempt to refute them in argumentation or simply acting, human action, person, and scarcity are negatively demonstrated. But of course some people will still try to refute by bodily action (kill somebody) or by argumentation, but simply because a person killed another person doesn’t mean human action has been refuted. For one, the killer is still alive and acting.
Okay, the difficulty I have with conceiving of that hypothetical world is that societies don’t “decide” or have “preferences”: only individuals do.
Okay, except I was asking for evidence that normative utterances can be verified or refuted, not whether the existence of a certain kind of society can be verified or refuted. Do you think normative utterances can be verified or refuted?
Argumentation does indeed imply human action. But how is that a “negative” demonstration? And what does that have to do with moral realism (the doctrine that normative statements can be verified/refuted)? And how is it that killing another person is attempting “refute” them or their action. Are you being poetical, or do you really think a killer in murdering someone is really attempting a “refutation”?
Yep, and yet it still seems to be ‘another common charge’ from certain individuals around here…
“Another common charge is that natural-law theorists differ among themselves, and that therefore all natural-law theories must be discarded. This charge comes with peculiar ill grace when it comes, as it often does, from utilitarian economists. For economics has been a notoriously contentious science - and yet few people advocate tossing all economics therefore into the discard. Furthermore, difference of opinion is no excuse for discarding all sides to a dispute; the responsible person is the one who uses his reason to examine the various contentions and make up his own mind.[22] He does not simply say a priori, “a plague on all your houses!” The fact of man’s reason does not mean that error is impossible. Even such “hard” sciences as physics and chemistry have had their errors and their fervent disputes.[23] No man is omniscient or infallible - a law, by the way, of man’s nature.” - MNR
[22] And there is a further point: the very existence of a difference of opinion seems to imply that there is something objective about which disagreement can take place; for otherwise, there would be no contradictions in the different “opinions” and no worry about these conflicts. For a similar argument in refutation of moral subjectivism see G.E. Moore, Ethics (Oxford, 1963 [1912)), pp. 63ff.
[23] The psychologist Leonard Carmichael, in “Absolutes, Relativism and the Scientific Psychology of Human Nature,” in H. Schoeck and J. Wiggins, eds., Relativism and the Study of Man (Princeton, N.J.: 1). Van Nostrand, 1961), p. 16, writes:
We do not turn aside from what we know about astronomy at any time because there is a great deal we do not know, or because so much that we once thought we knew is no longer recognized as true. May not the same argument be accepted in our thinking about ethical and esthetic judgments?
Where did anyone here say the diversity of views sharing the name “natural law” is itself grounds for dismissal?
this is why we can’t have nice things
Lilburne, I think they may be addressing me (since I made a comment about conflicting theories of natural rights). I didn’t insist that because there are different theories they all must be false. I was simply asking how I am to judge one theory against another. Specifically, a way to verify or falsify them so I can choose the best one. If I have no reason to believe that one of them is more likely to be true than any other, then I will assume they are all equally likely to be true (an application of the indifference principle).
But they agree on certain things about it.