Argumentation Ethics Is Stupendously Idiotic, so Much So That Anyone Who Believes It Is either 13, Afflicted by Severe Libertarian Motivated Reasoning, or Unable to Reason

It is hard to believe that people believe it

In certain segments of the libertarian movement, there seems to be a perverse and almost pathological desire to make maximally implausible ethical claims. Ayn Rand is, of course, a great example of this, given her tendency to produce reasoning so full of holes that Friedman would suggest bringing dozens of shovels to any analysis of it. But she is far from alone. Libertarians, whose basic views of government I’m far from unsympathetic to, seem to, with alarming frequency, make demonstrably confused ethical claims. It’s a very strange phenomenon—you don’t see Democrats, for example, employing provably fallacious reasoning to argue for social security from first principles.

Argumentation ethics is a particularly bizarre and odious instantiation of this general trend. For an amusing debate I had with a proponent of argumentation ethics, see here. Why was it amusing? Well, in the debate, among other things, my interlocutor claimed that a person who claims that they are sleeping is saying something that is not even false, something that is contradictory in its formulation and thus lacks a truth value. This is absurd—the claim that one is sleeping, given that they have to be awake to write it, is not some liars paradox-esque example of a statement that’s neither true nor false. It’s just false. He also, even more amusingly claimed that this was logic 101. Finally, there was an amusing trend throughout the debate wherein he would ask me to define goodness, I’d do so, defining it as that which is worth pursuing, before several minutes later, he’d claim I’d never defined it. This repeated several times. Several friends of mine have described the extent of his errors as sufficiently grating that they could not get through much of the video¹.

The claim made by argumentation ethics is that even arguing requires accepting libertarianism. Arguing involves deciding to pursue peace rather than violence, which requires generally recognizing that peace is better than violence, which entails the non-aggression principle. For those claiming this is a strawman, I will, in a moment, go through in excruciating detail a document produced by the Mises Institute, and rebut it thoroughly.

There are two important confusions here. For one, agreeing that arguing is good is just one example of an act that would be sanctioned by the idea that one shouldn’t pursue violence (of course, there’s some gerrymandered excuse for why it’s okay to use violence in self-defense, for example). But it doesn’t require accepting it across the board. One can accept that non-violent means are justified in one case, but not in other cases. This is relevantly analogous to claiming that speech involves necessarily thinking that one’s act will maximize utility, therefore utilitarianism is correct. There is no reason that taking one act sanctioned by the NAP requires endorsing it across the board.

To argue without being a hypocrite, one just needs some principle—any principle—that sanctions arguing at that point. This can be a utilitarian principle, a moderate deontological principle, or any other principle under the sun that sanctions arguing in that particular instance. Thus, to argue, one doesn’t have to implicitly endorse the norm that the NAP is true.

But even if they did, this would be totally irrelevant to its truth. Suppose that there was a device that would behead anyone thought that some dictator was bad. In order even to argue, one would have to have positive thoughts about the dictator. Nonetheless, this would not mean that the dictator was actually good.

I’ll expand on this more detail as I go through the Mises institute’s silly defense of argumentation ethics.

First, it must be noted that the question of what is just or unjust — or for that matter the even more general question of what is a valid proposition and what is not — only arises insofar as I am, and others are, capable of propositional exchanges, i.e., of argumentation.

This statement seems malformed. The question of what is just or unjust is wholly independent of what people argue—there can be injustice in a world of mutes. Of course, if all this statement means is that to argue about what ethics, and to ask the question of what is just, one has to speak, then of course, this is just as true as it is trivial.

The question does not arise vis-à-vis a stone or fish because they are incapable of engaging in such exchanges and of producing validity claiming propositions.

This is again, ambiguous for the reason discussed above. There are ethical questions about how to treat stones and fish and axiological questions about which things are bad for stones or fish.

Yet if this is so — and one cannot deny that it is without contradicting oneself, as one cannot argue the case that one cannot argue — then any ethical proposal as well as any other proposition must be assumed to claim that it is capable of being validated by propositional or argumentative means.

It’s not clear what is being claimed to be so. If it is just that people can argue, then that is, of course true. The further claim that any proposition must be claimed to be capable of being validated by propositional or argumentative means is a total non-sequitur. The fact that talk about ethics requires talking doesn’t mean that all ethical proposals must be resolvable through reason alone. Now, I’m inclined to think that sufficiently rational beings wouldn’t have moral disagreements, but denying this doesn’t require claiming that one can’t argue.

In fact, in producing any proposition, overtly or as an internal thought, one demonstrates one’s preference for the willingness to rely on argumentative means in convincing oneself or others of something.

When one argues, they reveal that they prefer to argue, at that very moment, in that very context, to doing other things. This doesn’t require an across the board endorsement of arguing, of course.

There is then, trivially enough, no way of justifying anything unless it is a justification by means of propositional exchanges and arguments. However, then it must be considered the ultimate defeat for an ethical proposal if one can demonstrate that its content is logically incompatible with the proponent’s claim that its validity be ascertainable by argumentative means. To demonstrate any such incompatibility would amount to an impossibility proof, and such proof would constitute the most deadly defeat possible in the realm of intellectual inquiry.

This is false as the dictator example showed before. Even if the dictator was metaphysically necessary, and thus there were no possible worlds where they could be criticized, this would be totally irrelevant to the question of whether or not it is good.

Second, it must be noted that argumentation does not consist of free-floating propositions but is a form of action requiring the employment of scarce means; and that the means which a person demonstrates as preferring by engaging in propositional exchanges are those of private property. For one thing, no one could possibly propose anything, and no one could become convinced of any proposition by argumentative means, if a person’s right to make exclusive use of his physical body were not already presupposed.

Why? Obviously to speak one has to use their body, but there’s no reason this requires affirming a right to use one’s body. One can deny rights, but think that speaking is good on alternative grounds. It’s also not clear why talking involves employing a scarce means—words aren’t very scarce.

It is this recognition of each other’s mutually exclusive control over one’s own body which explains the distinctive character of propositional exchanges that, while one may disagree about what has been said, it is still possible to agree at least on the fact that there is disagreement.

For me to talk, I don’t have to think I have rights, and I certainly don’t need to think anyone else has like. All I have to believe, to avoid hypocrisy, is that my talking is worthwhile. To argue one doesn’t have to recognize any further fact, but if they aren’t wildly irrational, they will recognize that other people exist, and are being argued with. This does not require recognizing that others have exclusive control over their bodies (for worries with that account, see Wollen).

It is also obvious that such a property right to one’s own body must be said to be justified a priori, for anyone who tried to justify any norm whatsoever would already have to presuppose the exclusive right of control over his body as a valid norm simply in order to say, “I propose such and such.”

Nope! If I’m a utilitarian, I can argue on the grounds that it maximizes utility, not that I have exclusive control over my body.

Furthermore, it would be equally impossible to sustain argumentation for any length of time and rely on the propositional force of one’s arguments if one were not allowed to appropriate in addition to one’s body other scarce means through homesteading action (by putting them to use before somebody else does), and if such means and the rights of exclusive control regarding them were not defined in objective physical terms. For if no one had the right to control anything at all except his own body, then we would all cease to exist and the problem of justifying norms simply would not exist. Thus, by virtue of the fact of being alive, property rights to other things must be presupposed to be valid. No one who is alive could argue otherwise.

The mere fact that if some norm weren’t recognized no one could argue does not mean that arguing against the norm is hypocritical. For example, suppose one argues that the extinction of all life on earth would be good. If everyone did this, they couldn’t argue, but given that everyone isn’t doing this, arguing may be justified. Thus, it’s totally irrelevant that in the absence of property rights no one could argue. By the way, in the absence of statism, none of us would exist, given that statism changed the world enough to change when each of our parents had sex, but nonetheless, we can, as Hoppe does, criticize the state.

But also, no one is arguing for no property rights. People merely argue for more limited conceptions of property rights, according to which some property can be taxed away.

Finally, this produces a direct contradiction. Suppose that the only way to save the world from destruction is to make it impossible for people to argue. Both action and inaction would violate one’s ability to argue—nonetheless, it wouldn’t both be wrong to do something and nothing.

Moreover, if a person did not acquire the right of exclusive control over such goods by homesteading action, i.e., by establishing an objective link between a particular person and a particular scarce resource before anybody else had done so, but if instead late-comers were assumed to have ownership claims to goods, then no one would be allowed to do anything with anything as one would have to have all of the late-comers’ consent prior to ever doing what one wanted to do.

But we could have some other way of establishing ownership. Also, my above comments obviously apply here. This is like claiming that because one needs land to argue, one should never destroy land.

Finally, acting and proposition-making would also be impossible if the things acquired through homesteading were not defined in objective, physical terms (and if correspondingly, aggression were not defined as an invasion of the physical integrity of another person’s property), but in terms of subjective values and evaluations. While every person can have control over whether or not his actions cause the physical integrity of something to change, control over whether or not one’s actions affect the value of someone’s property rests with other people and their evaluations. One would have to interrogate and come to an agreement with the entire world population to make sure that one’s planned actions would not change another person’s evaluations regarding his property.

None of this requires inalienable property rights. In fact, in various societies that Hoppe thinks don’t have proper property rights, people still argue. Thus, his conception of property rights can’t be required to argue.

Then, Hoppe purports to refute utilitarianism. He, of course, does no such thing.

As regards the utilitarian position, the proof contains its ultimate refutation. It demonstrates that simply in order to propose the utilitarian position, exclusive rights of control over one’s body and one’s homesteaded goods already must be presupposed as valid. More specifically, as regards the consequentialist aspect of libertarianism, the proof shows its praxeological impossibility: the assignment of rights of exclusive control cannot be dependent on certain outcomes. One could never act and propose anything unless private property rights existed prior to a later outcome. A consequentialist ethic is a praxeological absurdity. Any ethic must instead be “aprioristic” or instantaneous in order to make it possible that one can act here and now and propose this or that rather than having to suspend acting until later. Nobody advocating a wait-for-the-outcome ethic would be around to say anything if he took his own advice seriously. Also, to the extent that utilitarian proponents are still around, they demonstrate through their actions that their consequentialist doctrine is and must be regarded as false. Acting and proposition-making require private property rights now and cannot wait for them to be assigned only later.

No! In order to propose the utilitarian proposition, one just has to propose that the correct set of acts involves arguing, or be a hypocrite. They certainly don’t have to invoke inalienable property rights. Furthermore, the idea that consequentialism sanctions waiting around until you know what has the best consequences is deeply silly—that would, of course, have bad consequences.

Perhaps the thought is that utilitarianism can’t be formulated because arguing for it involves agreeing that one is sometimes doing the wrong thing, for the right thing is hard to predict. But so what? There’s no contradiction in a moral theory’s adherents often doing the wrong thing according to it.

Finally, Hoppe says

Here the praxeological proof of libertarianism has the advantage of offering a completely value-free justification of private property. It remains entirely in the realm of is-statements and never tries to derive an “ought” from an “is.”

But then it can’t give moral advice. It can’t tell anyone that they should stop doing what they’re doing. All it can do is claim (falsely) that one who violates the NAP is a hypocrite. But who cares? I’ll be a hypocrite if it saves the world—let the NAP be damned.

Well, now that I’ve refuted each of the specific leaps of illogic in Hoppe’s essay, I’ll make a few general comments.

My good friend Amos Wollen once joked that if we ever discover aliens, we shouldn’t let them discover the argumentation ethicists. The paucity of their reasoning is an utter embarrassment, and the aliens would doubt that the human race is intelligent. This is how I feel about it. It resembles the worst of philosophical reasoning—trying to deduce everything from undeniable first principles, while violating every rule of inference. The end result is a theory with no good—or even non-provably fallacious—arguments for it. There is a very good reason it is not taken seriously by actual philosophers, or even smart libertarians like David Friedman and Michael Huemer who do not have a brain ridiculously infected by motivated reasoning.

1. My polemical tone here is caused by Fabian refusing to issue a correction to a demonstrably false claim that I, at various points, claimed that things were good because they were natural. He wasn’t able to point to a single place where I did this, but refused to issue a correction, before strangely calling me spineless (generally the person who lies and refuses to correct their lies is seen as the one being dishonest). Of course, his abject confusion is so immense that it is possible that he genuinely believes that I did appeal to nature, but at some point, when one is a public figure and dishonestly smears people, even if the dishonest smear is a byproduct of stupidity rather than malice, it merits taking off the kid gloves.