Sterba libertarian critique

[Charles_Anthony]

@Donny with an A

Charles, you wrote:

@Charles Anthony

You must start off with an axiom that states that something is morally wrong.

This, I think, is not exactly right; you need to start off with some sort of value judgment. This is the axiology of the moral theory. The problem that I’m trying to identify here is that these guys haven’t provided any judgment about what’s valuable. They’re just talking about property rights as if they just ought to be respected well…just because. But what are property rights? And why does it make any sense to attribute value to them? If the contention is that it’s really property rights that are valuable in themselves, then fine…but…well…really?

You have changed the goal posts by bringing up demands for justifying value.

Property rights are simply claims of what actions should be judged to be moral and immoral. Us libertarians tend to construct convoluted methodologies for arbitrating disputes over those claims but ultimately, they are simply claims. I.E., my word against yours.

Forgive me but I can not help but ask if you are serious. Re-read what you wrote: You want these guys to provide judgement about what is valuable. Nothing has to make sense to attribute value to them – we simply do!

Edited To Add:

Concerning your objection to libertarianism depending upon a moral axiom at its root, I will fefer to a previous discussion led by a libertarian which I believe we can agree is certainly superior to both of us:

@Len Budney

Hoppe, like Rand and too many others, attempts to prove (in effect) that aggression is morally wrong. In Hoppe’s case, he attempts to prove self-ownership–and he tries to do it, not from axioms, but by “proving” that any alternative is self-contradictory. His argument fails. No argument will ever succeed, because self-ownership is an axiom.

If we grant his proof that you “own” yourself, that still fails to prove that there’s any reason I can’t eat you. He sometimes equivocates on the meaning of “ownership” to derive that self-ownership implies exclusivity.

His entire ethical argument falls to earth if you reply, “Besides, who gives a d*mn about minimizing conflict?”

@Geoffrey Allan Plauche

The NAP is not an axoim, btw; it is a conclusion derived from a long chain of reasoning.

You’re being a philosopher now, not a mathematician.

Some attempt to prove the NAP as a theorem. All of their attempts either (1) are invalid, like Hoppe’s self-ownership argument, or (2) depend on some other moral axiom. In the latter case, the other moral axiom is equivalent to the NAP. If Hoppe and others were just slightly less philosophical, and slightly better mathematicians, they would realize that the reason they’re in a quagmire is that they’re trying to prove axioms.

@Geoffrey Allan Plauche

This is mistaken in a number of ways. And I think it’s based on mistaken assumptions about metaphysics, epistemology, and ethical theory. Yes, any argument in favor of the NAP will lead back to discussions of metaphysics and epistemology because the NAP is not an axiom. And no, the NAP will not be at the base of all premises.

Rest assured, ANY attempt to get TO the NAP logically must start from SOME axioms. And at least ONE of those axioms must be a moral assertion of the form: X is wrong. If no axiom has that form, then it will be impossible to conclude that aggression is wrong. Once you’ve identified that axiom, you’ll realize that X is a synonym for aggression. QED

Trust me on this one. I am not confused.

@Geoffrey Allan Plauche

Your approach may be good for persuading people, good rhetorically, but it doesn’t suffice for providing a philosophical defense of the NAP.

It is impossible to prove any assertion of the form “X is wrong,” as I’ve just proven with fair rigor. You will always be found, at the bottom of it, either assuming that X is wrong, or else assuming that Y is wrong and then proving that X implies Y. There’s no way around it; that’s how aristotelian logic works.

But it’s also impossible to prove that “X is wrong” empirically. Sometimes crime pays. To argue that crime is still wrong, even when it pays, even when nobody ever realizes a crime was committed, you must either sneak in an assertion (and hence beg the question), or else invoke some notion analogous to karma, whereby the criminal or others are harmed even if nobody is ever conscious of harm. A eudaimonist would say that the criminal in that case is “not flourishing fully as a human,” which is somewhere between begging the question and meaningless.

The NAP can’t be “proven.” Anyone who attempts to prove the rightness of a moral code is trying to prove axioms without realizing it. Rand was an egregious offender in this area: her “proof” was garbage even IF you grant her axiom that “life is the standard of value.” Which we don’t grant: who says that life is the standard of value?

–Len