David: “(3) Outline why it is impossible to demonstrate preference for coercion as a universalizeable ethical norm, i.e., “action ethics”.”

Geoffrey: “It isn’t necessary to demonstrate that preference for coercion is a universal ethical norm to undermine argumentation ethics. One need only demonstrate why he is sometimes justified in violating or overriding your rights.”

Yes, but demonstrating this is impossible to do because the effort would constitute a contradiction to the presuppositions involved in the argumentation required in the attempted justification.

“I have yet to see it demonstrated, in a way that takes other positions seriously, why the values of argumentation ethics should always be considered the most fundamental or important.”

Because only the ethics implied in argumentation can be justified. It is impossible to argue against them and yet remain consistent. All contradictory ethics contradict the presupposition of argumentation, as such, advocating them represents an inner contradiction and demonstrates them to be invalid.

“Without drawing on a braoder philosophical and ethical framework, how do you respond to critics who argue that some values are more important (at least some of the time)?”

By pointing out to them that in their very act of making their argument they are necessarily refuting the content of their argument which contradicts the presuppositions of argumentation.

“Also, how will you defend argumentation ethics against someone who rejects the strong Kantian version of the universalizability principle?”

Then he rejects that his own argument can, in principle, be shown universally true to all those who can understand his argument. It refutes that his own argument might be provable to be universally true. Yet he is proposing to argue just exactly that: that there is a condition where overriding the libertarian ethic is justifiable. He is perpetually caught up in his own inner contradiction.

“Moreover, ethics and law differ in their natures and functions, but neo-Kantian ethics like Hoppe’s seem not to recognize this.”

This is only true because the state legislates with a blatant disregard to justice. Unperverted law and ethics should be one and the same. Only practical limitations in human effort separates ideal ethics and the practical outcome of the execution of the law.

“See Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl on the difference between Aristelian ethics and law. For example: “Law must be concerned with rules that are universal and necessary, because it is concerned with the question of establishing social conditions that
must apply to everyone equally. Ethics, on the other hand, need not be so construed. Ethical principles need to be open to the particular and contingent circumstances of the lives of different individuals.” (Norms of Liberty, p. 146 n. 79)”

This law sounds like proper ethics to me: justifiable property rules which allow conflict avoidance. Are they saying that ethics are subjective?

“Rights are arguably the most universal of ethical principles and constitute the foundation of just laws, but nevertheless they are not themselves laws and are not as “universal” as Kantian rules that must be applied dogmatically without regard to context and particulars.”

Justice must account for context, but the principles of justice must be unwavering.

The principle of utilitarianism is destructive.

Utilitarianism means that all action should be directed toward achieving the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. Intellectually the principle lets the door stand wide open for the use of physical violence and theft against people which happens to belong to the lesser number. If we grasp a state of things where the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people exists in using physical violence and theft everywhere and in all human situations and places (i.e. in the classroom, shop, street, airport, forest etc) against all those people that happened to belong to the lesser numbers, the human race would quickly perish.

As we have seen, the principle of utilitarianism if followed by all groups of people in all places would lead to human destruction and this, therefore, proves that the principle is destructive. Any crime could be done in the name of utilitarianism such as murder, theft, rape, slavery etc. The lesser number of people would always be at the mercy of the greatest number.

Private groups of people in society are therefore, naturally, not allowed to commit crimes in the name of utilitarianism.

The state has a “legal right” to commit crimes and the state nearly, always does it in the name of utilitarianism.

In the name of utilitarianism Hitler could have justified all the murdering of the Jews that he made. He probably, also, thought that he by doing those crimes achieved the greatest happiness for the greatest number of Germans.

Let us not forget:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-309490343652240839&q=hitler+jews

Or, alternatively, as Rothbard wrote in his book For a New Liberty:

“Let us consider a stark example: Suppose a society which fervently considers all redheads to be agents of the Devil and therefore to be executed whenever found. Let us further assume that only a small number of redheads exist in any generation-so few as to be statistically insignificant. The utilitarian-libertarian might well reason: “While the murder of isolated redheads is deplorable, the executions are small in number; the vast majority of the public, as non-redheads, achieves enormous psychic satisfaction from the public execution of redheads. The social cost is negligible, the social, psychic benefit to the rest of society is great; therefore, it is right and proper for society to execute the redheads.” The natural-rights libertarian, overwhelmingly concerned as he is for the justice of the act, will react in horror and staunchly and unequivocally oppose the executions as totally unjustified murder and aggression upon nonaggressive persons. The consequence of stopping the murders—depriving the bulk of society of great psychic pleasure—would not influence such a libertarian, the “absolutist” libertarian, in the slightest. Dedicated to justice and to logical consistency, the natural-rights libertarian cheerfully admits to being “doctrinaire,” to being, in short, an unabashed follower of his own doctrines.”

http://mises.org/rothbard/newliberty2.asp

If anything should die, it is the principle of utilitarianism.

The right path to follow is instead:

The Ethics of Liberty:

Hesselberg continues:

“But a social order is not possible unless man is able to conceive what it is, and what its advantages are, and also conceive those norms of conduct which are necessary to its establishment and preservation, namely, respect for another’s person and for his rightful possessions, which is the substance of justice. . . . But justice is the product of reason, not the passions. And justice is the necessary support of the social order; and the social order is necessary to man’s well-being and happiness. If this is so, the norms of justice must control and regulate the passions, and not vice versa.”

http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/two.asp

Or in other words and in a more rigid form: “that no man or group of men may aggress against the person or property of anyone else”.

I have written an essay about normative principles. Please go to:

http://normativeprinciples.blogspot.com/2006/12/normative-principles-pure-free-market_10.html

Björn Lundahl
Göteborg, Sweden

Bjorn, I like your approach to deriving ethics, because your starting point–the individual human life as the highest moral value to that human being–is essential to understanding ethics. More fundamentally, it is essential to understanding the meaning of “the good”, and moral values.

I don’t want to precipitate trench warfare with devoted Rothbardians, but I strongly suspect that Rothbard owed his insight about “life as the standard of moral value” to Ayn Rand. I can’t prove this, of course. Sadly, in “The Ethics of Liberty”, (published in the early Eighties) Rothbard chose to, in a sense, blacklist Rand by claiming that NO ONE, other than himself, in the libertarian movement was working to develope a system of rationally defensible ethics. (Maybe Rothbard meant “at the moment I am writing this statement”.)

It has been awhile since I’ve read Hoppe, and Rothbard; but I suspect Hoppe’s reasoning goes: either we all own ourselves, or everyone owns everyone else. Since the first proposition is clearly more defensible than the latter absurd proposition, one can affirm self ownership as valid. But if this is the argument, it fails. For that argument assumes that which it sets out to prove, namely that an ethical concept,
“ownership”, exists. But on this basis, ownership remains unproven, so that one could just as well assert: “no one owns anything, and anything goes.”

I like the broadly Randian, Aristotelian approach to this difficult subject, because its ethics are built on prior insights about the source and nature of moral good and moral values. Those prior insights are themselves based on insights about the nature of man–a thinking choosing being–and knowlege, which must be established through reason, directed by volition.

All philosophical insights must cohere logically. That’s why a complete and satisfactory justification of ethics and rights must stand on prior philosophical groundwork, for example in epistemology.

But I don’t think any of this contradicts your valuable insights.

I will post this again since I do believe that my comment regarding none existence of any property rights is here presented more clearly and logically than in my above post.

Life and self-ownership

Mark Humphrey “I don’t want to precipitate trench warfare with devoted Rothbardians, but I strongly suspect that Rothbard owed his insight about “life as the standard of moral value” to Ayn Rand. I can’t prove this, of course. Sadly, in “The Ethics of Liberty”, (published in the early Eighties) Rothbard chose to, in a sense, blacklist Rand by claiming that NO ONE, other than himself, in the libertarian movement was working to develope a system of rationally defensible ethics. (Maybe Rothbard meant “at the moment I am writing this statement”.)”

Björn That life is an axiomatic value and functions “as the standard of moral value” in an ethical system, Rothbard could, alternatively for example, have gotten this insight from Mises himself through analyzing his statement in his book, “Human Action”, page 11:

“We may say that action is the manifestation of a man’s will.”

http://mises.org/humanaction/chap1sec1.asp

I am not saying that Rothbard did get his insight from Mises; I am only saying that it was possible. Surely, many other possibilities exist which we do not know anything about.

Mark Humphrey “It has been awhile since I’ve read Hoppe, and Rothbard; but I suspect Hoppe’s reasoning goes: either we all own ourselves, or everyone owns everyone else. Since the first proposition is clearly more defensible than the latter absurd proposition, one can affirm self ownership as valid. But if this is the argument, it fails. For that argument assumes that which it sets out to prove, namely that an ethical concept, “ownership”, exists. But on this basis, ownership remains unproven, so that one could just as well assert: “no one owns anything, and anything goes.””

Björn Self-ownership is a natural fact, since a man in his very nature controls his own mind and body (natural disposition), that is, he is a natural self-owner of his own will and person (having a free will) and if this was not true, neither could he effectively control any property and, therefore, not own it. In other words; “nothing could control and own something”.

Naturally, praxeology the science of human action, by itself logically confirms the natural fact of self-ownership, since praxeology is based upon “the acting man consciously intending to improve his own satisfaction” and I quote from answers.com:

“From praxeology Mises derived the idea that every conscious action is intended to improve a person’s satisfaction. He was careful to stress that praxeology is not concerned with the individual’s definition of end satisfaction, just the way he sought that satisfaction. The way in which a person will increase his satisfaction is by removing a source of dissatisfaction. As the future is uncertain so every action is speculative.

An acting man is defined as one capable of logical thought — to be otherwise would be to make one a mere creature who simply reacts to stimuli by instinct. Similarly an acting man must have a source of dissatisfaction which he believes capable of removing, otherwise he cannot act.
Another conclusion that Mises reached was that decisions are made on an ordinal basis. That is, it is impossible to carry out more than one action at once, the conscious mind being only capable of one decision at a time — even if those decisions can be made in rapid order. Thus man will act to remove the most pressing source of dissatisfaction first and then move to the next most pressing source of dissatisfaction.

As a person satisfies his first most important goal and after that his second most important goal then his second most important goal is always less important than his first most important goal. Thus, for every further goal reached, his satisfaction, or utility, is lessened from the preceding goal. This is the rule of diminishing marginal utility.

In human society many actions will be trading activities where one person regards a possession of another person as more desirable than one of his own possessions, and the other person has a similar higher regard for his colleague’s possession than he does for his own. This subject of praxeology is known as catallactics, and is the more commonly accepted realm of economics.”

http://www.answers.com/Praxeology?gwp=11&ver=2.0.1.458&method=3
Further:

The Ethics of Liberty, page 45:

Footnote:

“[1]Professor George Mavrodes, of the department of philosophy of the University of Michigan, objects that there is another logical alternative: namely, “that no one owns anybody, either himself or anyone else, nor any share of anybody.” However, since ownership signifies range of control, this would mean that no one would be able to do anything, and the human race would quickly vanish.”

http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/eight.asp

Or in my own words:

Why must anybody own anything?

In accordance with our objective test to find out if something is a condition for something else, we grasp a state of things where the following principle is none existent anywhere and at all:

“The existence of property rights”:

In a world without any property rights nobody would be able to do anything, since nobody has the right to control anything. Not even themselves (see below about property rights in your own person).

This question is not only a contradiction it is also silly. You ask a question which means that you control yourselves (natural disposition), that is owning yourself (see below the excellent writing of Hans-Hermann Hoppe). The other contradiction is that if nobody would own anything, nobody would be able to hinder anyone to own anything either since they would otherwise have an invalid control (having the disposition to) of everyone else, that is having an invalid ownership to everybody else (see below about valid property rights in your own person).

Ownership itself is, therefore, an objective condition for the preservation of human life.

Please read some of Hans-Hermann Hoppe´s excellent writing from the book “The Ethics and Economics of Private Property”:

http://mises.org/etexts/hoppe5.pdf

And to:

ON THE ULTIMATE JUSTIFICATION OF THE ETHICS OF PRIVATE PROPERTY:

http://www.hanshoppe.com/publications/econ-ethics-10.pdf

Björn Lundahl