More Palmer Hoppe Distortions

Mises: Ethics, Geometry and Optics

In this post, Palmer makes the following claim:

I have read some of Mr. Hoppe’s work and found it remarkably unscholarly and poorly argued, but we’ve never met. My only interaction with him was many years ago when I attended a lecture he was giving and asked a quite reasonable question about a very strange claim that he had made but not substantiated, viz. that Ludwig von Mises had laid the foundation not only for economics, but for ethics, geometry, and optics. That seemed very strange to me and I asked Hoppe how he could defend that claim, since (setting aside ethics) geometry and optics had been rigorous sciences for thousands of years. His response was to demand to know whether I had been listening, to which I responded that I had. He then insisted that I hadn’t and that he wasn’t going to waste his time with people who were too stupid to understand and who didn’t listen.

I have never heard Hoppe say this. He does attempt to use praxeological type reasoning similar to Mises, to establish ethics; this is Hoppe’s argumentation ethics. It draws on Hoppe’s (socialistic) teacher Habermas, and Karl-Otto Apel; and is not entirely dissimilar to the approach by Roger Pilon (Palmer’s quite sharp Cato colleague), which draws on the argument by his (socialistic) teacher Gewirth (as I summarize in New Rationalist Directions in Libertarian Rights Theory). So far, so good. This is Hoppe’s own theory; so what. Palmer may disagree with it, but it is not “ridiculous” for Hoppe to use insights from his understanding of Austrian economics and philosophy, to come up with his own unique way of deriving libertarian rights.

As for geometry and optics, it seems Palmer did not hear Hoppe clearly.  I do not believe he stated “that Ludwig von Mises had laid the foundation not only for economics, but for ethics, geometry, and optics”. Rather, as shown in On Praxeology and the Praxeological Foundation of Epistemology (text at notes 60-62, and note 62; from Economic Science and the Austrian Method)), which references Lorenzen, Dingler, Karnbartel, et al., regarding an entire body of “protophysics” —

Further, the old rationalist claims that geometry, that is, Euclidean geometry is a priori and yet incorporates empirical knowledge about space becomes supported, too, in view of our insight into the praxeological constraints on knowledge. Since the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries and in particular since Einstein’s relativistic theory of gravitation, the prevailing position regarding geometry is once again empiricist and formalist. It conceives of geometry as either being part of empirical, aposteriori physics, or as being empirically meaningless formalisms. Yet that geometry is either mere play, or forever subject to empirical testing seems to be irreconcilable with the fact that Euclidean geometry is the foundation of engineering and construction, and that nobody there ever thinks of such propositions as only hypothetically true. [61] Recognizing knowledge as praxeologically constrained explains why the empiricist-formalist view is incorrect and why the empirical success of Euclidean geometry is no mere accident. Spatial knowledge is also included in the meaning of action. Action is the employment of a physical body in space. Without acting there could be no knowledge of spatial relations, and no measurement. Measuring is relating something to a standard. Without standards, there is no measurement; and there is no measurement, then, which could ever falsify the standard. Evidently, the ultimate standard must be provided by the norms underlying the construction of bodily movements in space and the construction of measurement instruments by means of one’s body and in accordance with the principles of spatial constructions embodied in it. Euclidean geometry, as again Paul Lorenzen in particular has explained, is no more and no less than the reconstruction of the ideal norms underlying our construction of such homogeneous basic forms as points, lines, planes and distances, which are in a more or less perfect but always perfectible way incorporated or realized in even our most primitive instruments of spatial measurements such as a measuring rod. Naturally, these norms and normative implications cannot be falsified by the result of any empirical measurement. On the contrary, their cognitive validity is substantiated by the fact that it is they which make physical measurements in space possible. Any actual measurement must already presuppose the validity of the norms leading to the construction of one’s measurement standards. It is in this sense that geometry is an a priori science; and that it must simultaneously be regarded as an empirically meaningful discipline, because it is not only the very precondition for any empirical spatial description, it is also the precondition for any active orientation in space. [62]

62. On the aprioristic character of Euclidean geometry see Lorenzen, Methodisches Denhen, chapters 8 and 9; idem, Normative Logic and Ethics, chapter 5; H. Dingler, Die Grundlagen der Geometrie (Stuttgart: Enke, 1933); on Euclidean geometry as a necessary presupposition of objective, i.e., intersubjectively communicable, measurements and in particular of any empirical verification of non-Euclidean geometries (after all, the lenses of the telescopes which one uses to confirm Einstein’s theory regarding the non-Euclidean structure of physical space must themselves be constructed according to Euclidean principles) see Karnbartel, Erfahrung und Struktur, pp. 132-33; P. Janich, Die Protophysik der Zeit (Mannheim: Bibliographisches Institut, 1969), pp. 45-50; idem, “Eindeutigkeit, Konsistenz und methodische Ordnung,” in F. Karnbartel and J. Mittelstrass, eds., Zum normativen Fundament der Wissenschaft.

Following the lead of Hugo Dingler, Paul Lorenzen and other members of the so-called Erlangen school have worked out a system of protophysics , which contains all aprioristic presuppositions of empiriical physics, including, apart from geometry, also chronometry and hytometry (i.e., classical mechanics without gravitation, or “rational” mechanics). “Geometry, chronometry and hytometry are a-priori theories which make empirical measurements of space, time and materia ‘possible’.They have to be established before physics in the modern sense of fields of forces, can begin. Therefore, I should like to call these disciplines by a common name: protophysics.” Lorenzen, Normative Logic and Ethics, p. 60.

So Palmer is wrong. Hoppe did not claim Mises “laid the foundation not only for economics, but for ethics, geometry, and optics”; and does Palmer want to relegate to the dustheep in a wave of the hand thinkers like Lorenzen et al.?! This is a standard branch of apriori reasoning. Palmer may not agree with it, but so what?

Scholarship

Palmer also impugns Hoppe’s scholarship.  “I have read some of Mr. Hoppe’s work and found it remarkably unscholarly and poorly argued, but we’ve never met.”

I would suggest Mr. Palmer read, say, Hoppe’s magisterial A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism; or the Economic Science and the Austrian Method noted above.  I fail to see how you can call this unscholarly. I assume Palmer thinks Mises is scholarly, though I get the impression Palmer disagrees with a lot in Mises; but the latter work cited above is a worthy extension of Misesian praxeology and epistemology. I would venture to say just about anyone who really appreciates the latter would profit from reading Hoppe here.

In another case (discussed here), Palmer ridiculously attacked Hoppe for arguing an allegedly “absurd and non-Austrian” view that free market unemployment is “always voluntary.” Palmer called Hoppe an embarrassment to Austrian economics. When I pointed out that Mises said exactly this–not to argue from authority, bu to demosntrate that Hoppe’s view on unemployment is an Austrian one and therefore not an embarrassment to Austrian economics–he retreated to the charge that my citing Mises was cultish. In other words, he was clearly, dead wrong on this question of Austrian economics; his criticism made no sense; and his only response was a feeble sputter “…. well it’s a cult!”

Hoppe’s scholarship is just amazing. Look at his publications; including dozens of translations of his work into at least sixteen languages. This is astounding. The breadth of his knowledge covers history, sociology, economics, philosophy… It would be rude and pointless of me to try to compare his scholarship to Palmer’s for the comparison is not relevant (but if I were following Palmer’s snide, callous, and hate-filled m.o. I would do that), but if one does compare, one wonders how Palmer has the chutzpah to denigrate Hoppe’s level of scholarship.

Slander, Libel, and Personal Charges (racism, homophobia, etc.)

He also keeps repeating the strange claim that Hoppe called him an “Ambassador of Homosexuality.” I don’t think anyone knows what that alleged comment is supposed to mean. It’s clearly absurd to think this demonstrates bigotry, anyway. He also repeats a bizarre story that a friend saw Hoppe show disgust when told Guatemalans were in a restaurant. This is all just so ridiculous I had to lampoon it in the skit in the comments section on the Palmer Periscope (sixth comment).

Let’s just say: given Palmer’s obvious, pigheaded, and hate-filled dishonest distortions of Hoppe’s comments in his “involuntary unemployment”and “Mises on ethics and optics” screeds, is there any reason at all to trust Palmer’s rendition of the alleged “Ambassador of Homosexuality” or Guatemalan incidents? Of course not. This is a man with a hate-filled obsession, who does not give a damn about the truth or the honor of the man he loves to take pot-shots at. He calls Hoppe a bigot based on the flimsiest of grounds; and even admits, “we’ve never met.” This is a man in the grips of a monomania; a hypersensitive wolf-crier whose rantings everyone by now dismisses as just that, the hate-filled, dishonest rantings of a man obsessed.

Hypersensitive egalitarian totalitarian-minded types like Palmer and lefties might have such ridiculous and hair-trigger standards for homophobia and bigotry that they could somehow construe these comments this way, but no one with common sense and decency would.