A tautology merely restates what has been said, and is usually the product of an analysis of the terms in a definition (e.g. all bachelors are unmarried men.) He’s referring to the very foundations of knowledge.
-Jon
^And they can make differing judgements.
Fear not, Geoffrey! As far as the meaning of mathematics is concerned this question belongs to the topic of the philosophy of mathematics. Seemingly Len embraces the school of thought called formalism, which widespread and respected but by no means dominant. Rumor has it that between half and two thirds of mathematicians are platonists, about one third formalists, about one tenth constructivists or intuitionists. I think formalists are yet to prove why math is more than mere mental masturbation, and yet to account for [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_of_Mathematics_in_the_Natural_Sciences]this[/url.]
Tautology is what is logically necessarily true regardless of assumptions.
Ah yes, Hoppe invokes a lot of constructivists (e.g. Paul Lorenzen) in his epistemological works. I was reading through them today. I hadn’t made much note of the references in the past, but I think it merits further investigation, especially since I recently covered modal logic on my Logic course. I have a hard time figuring out where Aristotelian logic fits in with all of this.
-Jon
And by what reasoning is someone’s rational judgment perhapse greater/better than anothers?
What exactly are you asking? Are you asking how do one know whether one person is more reasonable than another? I could ask you that!
How is what he said tautologous?
-Jon
By what justification do you have in dictating one person’s unreasonableness over another? How can you say one person is wrong in the absense of some infinite entity dictating what is naturally right and wrong? Or are you saying that someone is wrong in your eyes and not necessairily anothers? That their actions are not wrong objectively, but are merely wrong based on your subjective premise?
It was not, I disproved him. What he said do not exist are called tautologies.
I remember those references too, but I was not impressed by their work however interesting. Would Hoppe really reject exluded middle? lol I cannot, so I support Aristotelian logic. I also do not totally get the difference between formalists and logicists.
The problem of who is right and who is wrong exists no matter what; my point is simply that there doesn’t need to be a God (or karma) for individuals to determine what’s right and wrong; in fact, we’ll still need to do that no matter what! [:P]
Ah, I see now. Anyway. nearly every “refutation” of the law of the excluded middle I’ve seen has been horribly sloppy quasi-philosophical confusion as opposed to sound argument, that drops the context.
-Jon
Not refuted, rejected. You cannot logically disprove a logical axiom. 
You’re slightly off there: I discussed proof. A tautology is not proven. It is inherently true because it includes a statement of the form “A or not A” or other statement that can never be false by the rules of logic itself. More importantly, tautologies are never interesting. In particular, you cannot set up the nonaggression axiom as a tautology.
Tautologies can be rhetorically fun for trapping the weak-minded though. For example, my usual style of discourse is to open with a tautology of the form “A or not A,” and then present (subjective) arguments against “not A,” leading one to realize, hopefully, that one must either take A as an axiom, or “not A.”
It’s a good tight beginning place, but the weak-minded always end up disputing the statement “A or not A” itself, which marks them as complete idiots. (The especially amusing ones are the suckers who argue that “A or not A” is a false dichotomy. It is, of course, the very definition of a true dichotomy.)
–Len
OK, then you’ve just conceded that right and wrong are not objective absolutes. Two people disagree whether X is wrong, and there’s no resolving it, because “the problem of who is right and who is wrong exists no matter what.” I quite agree! That’s what makes the NAP an axiom: Libertarians assume it, but can’t escape the fact that others reject it. There’s no absolutely objective way to make everyone accept it, unless we can construct an experimental process for measuring “wrongness.”
Right. But there does need to be a God, or karma, for right and wrong to be objective absolutes. Without God, or karma, morality is nothing more than my word against yours.
–Len
It’s just the framework; the ground rules. Aristotelian logic is what forbids us to say, “X is true, but it’s also false.” It forbids us to say, “X or Y is true, but in fact both are false.” It prevents us from ever doubting that “A or not A” is true, and it prevents us from ever believing that “A and not A” can ever be true.
Complying with the rules of logic is not sufficient to build a morality, but it is necessary. Any argument that breaks the rules of logic is invalid and self-contradictory. Sometimes I’ll describe such arguments more loosely as idiotic, or retarded, or stupid. By that I simply mean that they involve assumptions like “A and not A.”
–Len
An axiom can’t be meaningfully denied. You can’t deny that you “own yourself” (so to speak) without contradiction. Frankly, that’s libertarianism 101 and logic 101…
The fact that some people ‘don’t get it’ or pretened that it’s not true, so that their political plans are not hindered by morality, doesn’t mean that the axiom is false.
That’s just wildly false. All sorts of axioms can meaningfully be denied. “Can’t be meaningfully denied” is no part of the definition of “axiom.”
That’s Hoppe’s argument, but it’s flawed. That I argue proves that I “own” myself enough to offer an argument, but Hoppe’s notion of self-ownership critically depends on ownership entailing exclusive use. Arguing proves that I have some use of my body, but doesn’t remotely begin to prove that I have exclusive use of my body. The flaw is an equivocation on two meanings of “ownership.” In other words, he fails to exclude notions such as joint ownership, or part-time ownership, or non-exclusive ownership.
His argument is marvelously convincing, though, because everyone believes that he owns his own body. So it’s extremely easy to convince people to assume that as a given.
–Len
Is that why you rely on the other argument he uses for self-ownership (the one involving direct use over one’s body to attain indirect control over another’s, thereby implicitly assuming the right to directly control one’s own body whilst denying it to another)?
-Jon
Either one is great for convincing. Neither one is sufficient as proof. This argument, like the first, fails to exclude partial ownership. It convincingly argues that I use my body to control others, but fails to prove that still others can’t, in turn use their bodies to control mine. Actual proof is impossible: you can’t set up self-ownership as a tautology; and you can’t prove it without assuming something, which simply moves the goal-post by requiring you to “prove” whatever you assumed.
–Len
It is not Hoppes’s argument and is not flawed. Hoppe is one among many to realize that humans are self-owners.
It’s not Hoppe’s notion of self-ownership. It is self-ownership plain and simple - it’s a fact - and facts don’t need to be proven. Humans are thinking entities wich act according to their beliefs, their perception of reality, etc. The natural freedom of humans can be tampered with but it can’t be totally destroyed. And even if totally destroyed, that shows again that freedom exists in the first place.
We are not talking about formal logic here. We’re dealing with philosophy, wich is a valid subject despite your attempts to dismiss it as mere talk.