Re this facebook post, where Cathy Reisenwitz writes
“It’s telling that basically no academic libertarian philosophers try to ground libertarianism in NAP; using NAP to generate libertarianism is the hobby horse of philosophical amateurs. I think the reason for that is that academic philosophers recognize that using NAP to get to libertarianism begs the question against their intellectual opponents. One of the effects of having to publish articles refereed by left-wing philosophers is that they don’t let you get away with shitty arguments for libertarianism. In contrast, when you just write for a libertarian audience, they reward you for producing shitty arguments for libertarianism.” -Jason Brennan somuchthis
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On self-ownership:
Franklin Harris:
“Libertarianism is simply self-ownership…” That’s just another way of saying libertarianism is incoherent. Ownership is a relationship between two or more things. You can’t own yourself because that’s not a relationship. Libertarian shorthand clouds more than it reveals.
You hear this dumb claim made all the time. As I wrote there:
When you hear people sniff at the NAP, you should hold onto your wallet–they are coming after it.
“Is there a need to reform taxes? Most certainly. Always and everywhere. You can always make a strong case against all forms of taxation and all tax codes and all mechanisms by which a privileged elite attempts to extract wealth from the population. And this is always the first step in any tax reform: get the public seething about the tax code, and do it by way of preparation for step two, which is the proposed replacement system.”Of course, this is the stage at which you need to hold onto your wallet.” —Lew Lew Rockwell
“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.” —Ayn Rand, “Francisco’s Money Speech“
The long thread [pasted below] contains interesting arguments about the non-aggression principle, Rothbard, and so on.
I’ve dealt with the “self-ownership is incoherent” objection many times. See What Libertarianism Is; How We Come To Own Ourselves; Correcting Some Common Libertarian Misconceptions (2011); Yeager and Other Letters Re Liberty article “Intellectual Property and Libertarianism”.
See also:
- Roderick Long, This Self is Mine, Getting Self-Ownership in View and Defending Self-Ownership
- Gerard Casey, “Can You Own Yourself?“, Research Depository UCD Dublin (Dec. 2011)
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NAP is an incrowd term, which is fair enough. It gets problematic when it’s not recognized as such.
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One important question would be: What is more beneficial to the advance of the cause of freedom? Incrowd populist rethoric or peer-reviewed philosophy papers?The NAP (or some version of it) may be burdened with many logical problems, but it inspires many.
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It really is not an or/or.
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But isn’t the NAP just the logical extension of property rights?
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Using axioms as a starting point is rarely a good way to outreach. Morality binds and blinds.
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For the record, the only person who ever used the NAP in a semi-academic sense (Rothbard), actually argued for it. He didn’t blindly assume it. Wether or not those arguments are good, is a different matter.
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Hoppe would be another, with even more questionable results.
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Does Hoppe actually say ‘NAP’?
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Rothbard was a genius when it came to studying social movements. A lot of his tactics were adaptations of Marx and other productive revolutionaries. If you can convince someone that an action is morally wrong, then all evidence to the contrary does not matter. It surely worked with Marx, but we cannot stop at the moral argument.
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Yes he does, Lode.
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I’ve always disliked the laziness of citing the NAP and more verbose ways of saying the same thing.
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Why is the moral argument not itself sufficient justification? I am all for showing that a free society is the best possible way for society to be organized in a consequentialist sense but even if Marxism was a better system I would still defend a free society on moral grounds.
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99% of the population, Joe.
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The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist.”
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Because there is no objective morality, Zachary, and persuading others who have quite different moral values becomes an impossible task.
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And when Hope uses it it as an extension of property rights which he academically justifies (whether you agree with him or not is another matter)
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Michel that statement would make an objectivist scream!
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And a rothbardian, and a kantian. I know, I’m on fire.
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Off with his head!
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Michael obviously which is why I favor both approaches but I justify my belief in a free society on moral grounds which is sufficient for me.
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And yes as an objectivist ( or at least leaning very strongly in that direction) I disagree haha
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NAP is a moral and ethical guideline – a result of the principle of individual sovereignty – it is not the other way around.
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When academic philosophers and economists make LearnLiberty videos, they care.
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Like I said, morality binds and blinds. You should check out The Righteous Mind by Johnathan Haidt.
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Shots fired!
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The non aggression principle is an ethical statement. Without any epistemology or metaphysics for it to be built on. It’s jumping into philosophy in the middle. Of course, Rothbard wanted it that way to attract a larger number of people. But, it makes for a shaky platform.edit: Sorry, not an ethical statement, but a political statement. Missing epistemology, metaphysics AND ethics for it to stand on.
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“Using the NAP to generate libertarianism”, lol! It’s libertarians’ favorite pastime!!
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Steve Horwitz puts it perfectly:“I think coercion is bad and that we should generally hold that coercing competent decision makers requires a pretty good rationale. and what makes something a “pretty good rationale” is an effective argument that it would make the world a more peaceful, prosperous place etc.. IOW, I think one power of the NAP is to put the burden of proof on the coercer.”
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Joe Paul, pretty much all accepted opinions in society have links with academia. Indirectly, but there is relevance. What is true is that most ideas do not filter through. That is true.
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Seems like I’m “suddenly” seeing a lot of hate for the NAP. (I have also widened my circle of anarcho-libertarianistas just recently.) Anyone care to bring me up to speed on why the NAP is a bad thing?
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It’s not that NAP is a bad thing. It’s just that it’s the end of the argument, and most libertarians want to treat it as the beginning, middle, and end.
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“There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance – that principle is contempt prior to investigation” – Herbert Spencer
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It’s important to distinguish between treating the NAP as a first principle without bothering to defend it, and grounding the NAP in something more fundamental and then building from there.
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Which would only take you so far, anyway.
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If you treat the NAP as the beginning (and this is the only sense in which I think that’s valid), it only works as a kind of fuzzy intuition, a presumption that violence is bad. You still have to show your work and not just scream NAP at people.
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AMAZON.COMUniversally Preferable Behaviour: A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics (Freedomain Radio)Universally Preferable Behaviour: A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics (Freedomain Radio)
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Cliff, I don’t think there is hate of the NAP as much as hate of its abuse.There have been great debates about the NAP. You can start here.
BLEEDINGHEARTLIBERTARIANS.COMNAP Roundup-
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In full disclosure, I am all for the NAP. My issue is that you have to move past that if you are going to do more in an argument than say, ” I am right, and you are immoral.” and vice versa.
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“Why does everyone get mad at me? It’s a mystery.” — Cathy Reisenwitz
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I’m all for a Non-Aggression PRESUMPTION, not so much for a dogmatic principle.
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“But if you stop your thinking there and don’t allow for anything else, you can get to ridiculous extremes like driving on govt roads is an act of aggression.” This explains it, I suppose. I am cursed with a capacity and a desire to see a much larger picture than only the details, and to see issues and concepts contextually. I find it necessary to grasp the physical composition of the metaphorical links, but without the context of most or all of the chain, where and if the ends are connected, what is being bound to what else (or being bound alone in itself) the links are almost pointless. Without the links, the chain is useless. Without the chain, the link is useless. For me, the NAP has always been a link in a powerful and profoundly ethical way of living, but I am aware that there are people who magnify the gnats and dismiss the camels….
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Not that I give a shit about any of this, but libertarianism isn’t a religion. Maybe that makes me a thin libertarian, but I don’t give a shit because I already have a religion. And, it isn’t the NAP, either…
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An argument from authority?
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Using a priori arguments to justify consequentialism: notably feckless.
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Followers of the NAP tend to be the most ardent and fearless followers of libertarianism. I certainly appreciate their dedication to their beliefs.
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Cathy, those whole quote is an ad hom.”shitty argument” is not an argument.So the real question is how does the principle of the NAP not maximize the personal freedom of others when practiced? How does it not offer the best barometer of personal rights violations?
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I’d be curious to know when those who are critical of the NAP advocate for initiating violence.
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So the status quo is your validation?
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ActiveYup- it’s tough to understand principles when your career depends on you not understanding it.
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Appeal to authority?
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Nozick is another libertarian that was capable of using standard logic, rather than libertarian-specific logic.
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Logic isnt relative
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Yes, academic philosophers must have some sort of value. Honestly, if libertarians want to change the world, be in the hard sciences. Send your kid to a stem college. Peer reviewed humanities papers have the same value as a shit soaked plunger.
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NAP = I believe in an individual’s liberty, so everyone must follow this one set of subjective preferences. Use econ, not feels.
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“Subjective”Can you give me a morally justified example of initiating violence on somebody?
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Lap: yeah I am in a hard science field … I find the idea of “academic philosophy” to be quite pretentious usually.
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ActiveWhen you hear people sniff at the NAP, you should hold onto your wallet–they are coming after it.
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It depends on what people view as “violence” or “coercion”. Morals are just your preferences. There is nothing objective about each person deciding for themselves when their preferences are being violated, because preferences differ from person to person.I find it ironic that hardcore individualist libertarians focus on one central moral code. Showing people that their desired ends are best achieved through the means of the free market is a better method than trying to proselyte in the religious-fanatic way of stroking yourself off to the NAP.
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Michael: That’s just it though. There are no morally justifiable reasons to initiate violence, because there is no objective way to morally justify anything. Whether you like or not, really everything comes down to preferences. If somebody prefers violence, really and truly there is no reason why its less valid than not wanting to commit violence.
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ActiveSo, in my experience, people who rail against the NAP as an improper “grounding” of libertarianism never have one of their own. And this is a strawman in part b/c it’s not a “grounding” for most, it’s just a shorthand summary for our view of property rights. There are different “groundings” for our particular view of property rights–though most libertarians it seems to me are just intuitionists and have no grounding, so it’s a bit rich that they criticize NAPers for having the temerity to have a grounding. Third, this kind of argument is a distraction. The point is not whether the NAP is a “grounding” or not for libertarianism–but whether you think aggression is or is not justified. Those who think it is not, are consistent libertarians and have no claim to complain about other libertarians advocating the NAP as an inviolable principle. Those who think aggression is sometimes justified–well, it is these ideas that we libertarians oppose, and thus the complaint about the insufficiency of the NAP just serves to camouflage the hidden advocacy of aggression.
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“One of the effects of having to publish articles refereed by left-wing philosophers is that they don’t let you get away with shitty arguments for libertarianism.”Yeah, because they’re so good at acknowledging the good arguments.They don’t know the difference because they start from different assumptions.Logical constructions can be valid.Logical constructions can be persuasive.Neither one infers the other.“Grounding” your political ideology in presumptions other people find easy to accept does not make them rigorous or true.
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Wrong seth. It can be quantified in a loss/gain analysis. If there is a net loss, then its quantifiable
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But when you remove the NAP from libertarianism; what is left but “free markets!” and “limited government!”? I think the NAP properly understood can be quite liberating, but it can also be misused.
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To use nap means to define aggression. In my reading of these neolibertarian posts, it is an empty signifier for what they already believe, not a philosophical foundation.
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Ayn’s flaw in reasoning was equating eveything to money. With better booking and proper accounting for generated value mothers would have far greater value than they do.
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How is this society to deal with criminals who gladly violate nap? Are only ppl of means to be free of coercion?
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ActiveDavid, Ithink that quote is from Marco de Wit, paraphrasing my stuff. But I like the formulation. http://the-libertarian.co.uk/interview-marco-de-wit/
THE-LIBERTARIAN.CO.UKInterview: Marco de Wit – The Libertarian-
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Active“Is there a need to reform taxes? Most certainly. Always and everywhere. You can always make a strong case against all forms of taxation and all tax codes and all mechanisms by which a privileged elite attempts to extract wealth from the population. And this is always the first step in any tax reform: get the public seething about the tax code, and do it by way of preparation for step two, which is the proposed replacement system.”Of course, this is the stage at which you need to hold onto your wallet.” —Lew Lew Rockwell“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.” —Ayn Rand, “Francisco’s Money Speech“
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You never go full Rothbard.
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ActiveHe did , but it was not a quote, not my words. but it’s an accurate summary of our mutual position.
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I could use a NAP.
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I’m not a big fan of the NAP as a starting point Stephan Kinsella, but I _do_ have an alternative for founding my principles. I base my understanding of libertarian thought on consistency. If someone murders someone, they have authorized anyone else to kill them. If someone steals, they have given implicit consent to have anyone take anything and everything they own. Initiation of actions creates a rule of consistency and reverse applicability. By using the principle of consistency, people can readily see that it is much better to have property rights through homesteading and not initiating force is certainly more desirable.
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I have never heard of Jason Brennan though. Is he a politician, an activist? When people discuss libertarianism, does his name come up?
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“Libertarianism is simply self-ownership…” That’s just another way of saying libertarianism is incoherent. Ownership is a relationship between two or more things. You can’t own yourself because that’s not a relationship. Libertarian shorthand clouds more than it reveals.
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ActiveRobert Kruger: “I’m not a big fan of the NAP as a starting point Stephan Kinsella”Um, me neither. This is a straw man, it seems to me. Most people who say it’s their “starting point” are about the same as those who deny it, who also have no foundation–they just have assumptions.“, but I _do_ have an alternative for founding my principles. I base my understanding of libertarian thought on consistency. If someone murders someone, they have authorized anyone else to kill them.”That is my argument too — see my estoppel/punishment/rights stuff in a few articles listed here. http://mises.org/daily/5322/ But consitency is not a foundation. You have to have some base values, or grundnorms, on which you base consistency as a value too. You can’t just assume it.” If someone steals, they have given implicit consent to have anyone take anything and everything they own. Initiation of actions creates a rule of consistency and reverse applicability. By using the principle of consistency, people can readily see that it is much better to have property rights through homesteading and not initiating force is certainly more desirable.”Again, this is basically my own argument for rights, in my estoppel theory. And it is compatible with that of Rothbard’s protege, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, in his argumentation ethics.
MISES.ORGArgumentation Ethics and Liberty: A Concise Guide7
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NAP isn’t an argument FOR libertarianism, it IS libertarianism.Why would it be a shitty argument? It’s a definition?Shitty arguments come when you use NAP to justify your actions or a policy. NAP doesn’t prove libertarianism is good or bad, it just is. Proving that it is ideal is a whole other argument.
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Re: Hoppe, I defer to Robert Murphy: https://mises.org/journals/jls/20_2/20_2_3.pdf
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“If someone steals, they have given implicit consent to have anyone take anything and everything they own.”That’s just ridiculous. If, for example, I steal to feed my starving family, I am only saying, at most, that one may steal to feed a starving family. Context matters. (No, I’m not defending stealing, just opposing bad arguments.)
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ActiveMurphy’s response was a repeat of an earlier one, which I responded to (http://www.anti-state.com/article.php?article_id=312) , and which his reprint did not take account of, nor did it take account of Van Dun’s evisceration of it published in LIbertarian Papers — http://libertarianpapers.org/…/19-van-dun…/ — moreover it was co-authored with Gene Callahan, a waystation libertarian who was at the time pretending to be AUstrian and libertarian and now is some kind of neocon. But I would not expect knee-jerk opponents of a solid defense of the NAP to have read the literature. They like to shoot from the hip.
ANTI-STATE.COMAnti-State.com : Defending Argumentation Ethics: Reply to Murphy & Callahan , by Stephan KinsellaAnti-State.com : Defending Argumentation Ethics: Reply to Murphy & Callahan , by Stephan Kinsella
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Though I would consider NAP a default ethic that is prima facie true. The burden is not for me to prove I own myself but for you to prove why you have a right to partial or co-ownership of my body. There is a long history of arguments attempting to prove that people are co-owners over eachother and libertarians academically argue for why this shouldnt be.
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Just restating Hoppe’s argument ad nauseum doesn’t qualify as defending it.
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When did so many libertarians become moral relativists?
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I didn’t call it a contradiction Kyle Kalutkiewicz. If you do it, however, you have no legitimate argument when someone else does it to you.
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Stephan Kinsella: almost every libertarian I know in philosophy who rejects the NAP has a story about the foundations of libertarianism. Who do you have in mind?
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I see why Mike has so much trouble understanding this topic, but I’m trying to be civil, so I won’t mention it.
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Active“Just restating Hoppe’s argument ad nauseum doesn’t qualify as defending it.”What is your defense of rights, Franklin? Why are you a libertarian?
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ActiveKevin Vallier: “Stephan Kinsella: almost every libertarian I know in philosophy who rejects the NAP has a story about the foundations of libertarianism. Who do you have in mind?”Oh, really? A “story”? So what? What is their main defense? So far as I can tell they pretty much always are intuitionist, positivistic, empiricist, and/or just build on some unstated moral premises–i.e. are hypothetical, without acknowledging it.
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“What is your defense of rights?” is a question that assumes the answer. I’m a libertarian because of the preponderance of the evidence. It makes people happy, gives them autonomy, preserves moral agency, in general people are the best judge of what is good for themselves, etc. I don’t have an incontestable A to B to Z argument because those are a fantasy, and if any of them wasn’t there would probably be a lot more libertarians.
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Active“”What is your defense of rights?” is a question that assumes the answer. I’m a libertarian because of the preponderance of the evidence. It makes people happy, gives them autonomy, preserves moral agency, in general people are the best judge of what is good for themselves.”sounds like you do not even understand the question. YOu are presupposing some basic norms–that it’s good for people to be happy, etc. So you have a consequentialist, or hypothetical, case. Fine. But your foundations seem to be nonexistent–you just “happen to favor” these grundnoms. That is fine, but it’s a bit rich to attack Hoppe’s argumentation ethics–how dare he have an objective basis for the same things I believe in! We must all believe it for arbitrary reasons!” I don’t have an incontestable A to B to Z argument because those are a fantasy, and if any of them wasn’t there would probably be a lot more libertarians.”What a non-answer. If you don’t know why you are libertarian why do you weigh in and attack those who explicate this?
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“how dare he have an objective basis for the same things I believe in!”It’s that his objective basis A) isn’t B) is a string of non-sequiturs.
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“If you don’t know why you are libertarian why do you weigh in and attack those who explicate this?”I know exactly why I’m a libertarian. You just don’t like non-Kantian answers.
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ActiveSo basically you are saying Hoppe is as arbitrary and clueless as you, and he should just admit it instead of pretending he has an objective basis for rights. In other words, people who have no coherent basis for their political norms are floundering and are offended by people who think they do.
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ActiveSo Franklin, even though you say you oppose aggression (I guess), and think it’s “wrong” (for some reason) (I guess), you think it’s perfectly compatible to argue for aggression with someone that you are having a civilized discussion with? These things are perfectly compatible? No inconsistency, no contradiction, at all?
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No contradiction at all. Exactly. Claiming an argument is universalizable means it applies to all people; it doesn’t mean it applies to all contexts. Most people get that you don’t bash people over the head in the middle of a discussion. It doesn’t follow (from argumentation) that head-bashing is illegitimate in other contexts.
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Active” Guys, the point isn’t that the NAP is false. I agree that it’s true. The point is that you can’t use it in an argument with a smart leftist, because the leftist disagrees with you about who owns what and thus what counts as aggression.”You can’t use it in an argument with a rapist or criminal either. So what? Libertarianism is normative. It is prescriptive. It does not pretend that rights are impossible to violate. We do not make the mistake of equating “persuasiveness” with correctness. Or at least, those of us not mired in activism as a way of being don’t make this mistake.
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ActiveI would just like to know whether people who mock HOppe’s AE actually espouse libertarian norms yet think it’s perfectly consistent to argue for its opposite in a civilized discourse. I have yet to get a good explanation of this. It’s like libertarians bending over backwards to pretend that their statist-criminal opponents are all on an equal playing field–some kind of bizarre, self-hobbling egalitarianism or skepticism.
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The problem of course with this quote is: no “amateur philosopher” but some random dudes on facebook claims that libertarianism is grounded in the NAP (or maybe I missed some, but it is up to Jason Brennan to make his case and show us some). The NAP is a conclusion, not a starting point. Yes, even for Rothbard or Hoppe. One can argue about how right or wrong someone’s justification of it is, but that is another thing. Not the same thing as having none. Jason Brennan is doing the same thing here than with his fictitious “Austrian dude”. He targets the worst possible defense of the NAP and strawman some authors as representative of that defense while suggesting he is a role model of academic standards in the process. This is… Well, this is annoying to put it nicely
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Though I’m sure I’ll get a TLDR comment, here’s argumentation ethics in 3 minutes.Libertarian ethics are based off the self-evident truth that you own yourself, that any attack upon your body is unjust, and that any society that considers itself ethical cannot be based in direct opposition to your rights. Self-ownership is presupposed in any argument, for an argument to occur both individuals have to accept that each other has the ability to think rationally and be able to change their position, that each other is the exclusive owner of their body, and in doing so, one cannot rationally argue that you do not own yourself. In conjunction with this, it is impossible for a rational argument to be made to justify unsolicited force upon you, for the attackers verbal argument would contradict the idea they needed to use force, for their argument has demonstrated that you are capable of rational, voluntary communication, that you’re capable of changing your mind through conversation, that you are the exclusive owner of your own body, and therefore their force was unnecessary and was an intrusion upon your self-ownership. This non-aggression principle is a direct result of self-ownership. Just as self-ownership is a result of being alive, so are property rights, as they are a necessary pre-condition to being alive, for in order to live one must eat, drink, and take up space. If an individual is arguing, he has demonstrated that he necessarily had to have used scarce resources in order to be alive, and there for any argument against property rights is inherently contradicted by the very act of living. This does not mean that anyone is entitled or owed property, but that human beings have the right to attempt to own property through just means which is through original appropriation or a voluntary transaction that results in the exchange of property, which is necessarily win-win for both people value what they are getting more than they are giving. As a result of the self-evident truths of self-ownership and property rights, In order to have a just society, individuals transactions must be done with a respect for the principles presented within libertarian ethics – i.e., a respect for self-ownership and property rights- and therefor a society based on taxation is inherently unjust, for taxation is the involuntary theft of property under the threat of force, which is a rejection of self-ownership and property rights. The only just society is one that respects self-ownership and property rights; therefor the only just society is a stateless society.
YOUTUBE.COMLIBERTARIAN ETHICS EXPLAINED IN UNDER 3 MINUTES3
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Brennan and Zwolinski need to watch the entire video that Matt apparently stopped watching within the first 5 minutes. Molyneux expands on the issue of pollution later in the video. I don’t think his initial “refutation” was sufficient in the beginning of the video but his argument towards the end is.The part where Molyneux describes the YAD Principle is essential. Don’t be the D in the YAD.BLEEDINGHEARTLIBERTARIANS.COMMolyneuxveau Arguments for the NAP
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Snickers at the term *academic libertarian* in the OP. I imagine them very much like academic liberals, with theories and a great grip on semantics – little of it which applies to real life solutions.Using the NAP is begging the question only if you can’t demonstrate where your rights come from. The NAP is not an axiom, but the political and philosophical extension of the concept of individual rights. If *academic libertarians* don’t ground their libertarianism in it, I prefer they stay in acadmia and out of our way.
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I imagine, that since most *academic economists* argue Keynesianism, we should find that a ‘telling’ argument against free markets.
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ActiveIn reference to the original post, I don’t know if it really matters so much if the NAP is the basis for someone being a libertarian. What might be more important is the strength of one’s foundation and the depth of one’s knowledge regarding libertarianism. Without this foundation, some might very well support the NAP, but then change their views without much thought. “The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended.” – Bastiat
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ITT: Butthurt, butthurt everywhere
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Professional philosophers are silly.
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Everything is free floating, there is nothing to anchor to.Consistency is the best one can offer.
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Stephan Kinsella:Here’s my list of libertarian and classical liberal philosophers/p-theorists, with my super quick summary of their foundations ethical/political approach:1. Roderick Long: eudaimonism.2. Dougs Den Uyl and Rasmussen: eudaimonism.3. Mack: natural rights (not a mere self-ownership view).4. Huemer: Rossian intuitionism.5. Schmidtz: moral particularism, sorta-kinda intuitionism.6. Narveson: Hobbesian contractarianism.7. Gaus: Kantian contractualism.8. Lomasky: a hard to specify hybrid.9. Levy: broadly welfarist.10. Jason Brennan: Rossian pluralist? I think MZ is too.11. A bunch of misc. neo-Objectivists: Randian eudaimonism.12. Gordon: I could never get clear on David’s view. It’s some kind of idealist intuitionism.13. Tomasi: Kantian contractualism.
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Have you read any of them?
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Explain “bits.”
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So, we’re supposed to ignore academic philosophical standards and talk about NAP because academic philosophy is just elites talking to themselves. But we’re not supposed to talk about libertarianism in terms of values people actually hold and understand, like utility or happiness or self fulfillment or moral agency, because those things aren’t as rigorous as the abstract NAP. Got it.
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I just finished reading The Ethics of Liberty again, as I’m teaching an independent study, and it is really poor quality stuff. If anything, someone should have told Rothbard that you don’t write a book with gigantic block quote after gigantic block quote without adequate exposition. The book is not only philosophically weak, it’s rather poorly assembled. But for those who like the arguments: both trilemmas establishing self-ownership and acquisition rules are false trilemma. There is a mile between natural law and natural rights that Rothbard simply missed. And this is a man willing to bite ridiculous cannon-ball sized bullets, especially in the children and rights chapter. I would fail it as a dissertation as well.
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ROFL on the HHH-penis pills. You should find someone other than the bottom of a Cathy Reisenwitz-inspired FB slugfest to post it.
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Kant may have awoken from his dogmatic slumber, but will his libertarian acolytes awaken from their dogmatic NAP?
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So Mr. Brennan is the liberty-philosopher hero of the day. JB agrees ZAP/NAP is true. JB agrees that “smart” leftists don’t agree with the concept of self ownership/property rights. Who do these leftists think own or should own their own bodies? What is the best way to help them understand what you want them to understand?
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ActiveJason Brennan: “Hardly anyone believes things on the basis of good arguments or good evidence.”So … you say you think the NAP is true–apparently most of your fellow libertarians just happen to have stumbled into what you consider the right view by dumb luck or random chance?
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Jason Brennan & Kevin Vallier, could you agree (I am sorry if you have already answered this) that the NAP (and the usual content) is a good and easy summary/soundbite to summarize the conclusions of what libertarians belief?(But that the actul arguments put forth by Rothbard and Hoppe are bad?)
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ActiveJason Brennan:“Guys, the point isn’t that the NAP is false. I agree that it’s true. The point is that you can’t use it in an argument with a smart leftist, because the leftist disagrees with you about who owns what and thus what counts as aggression.”Libertarians have long recognized that the NAP is based on a more fundamental theory of property. It’s just shorthand to refer to our particular property allocation rules. Lots of libertarians recognize that the real disagreement with the leftist is over how property rights are to be assigned to particular claimants.
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Lode Cossaer: it’d take awhile to explain. But here’s a quick thought. In some cases the NAP-generalization is workable and appropriate, especially when it comes to rights of bodily integrity. And when property rights are plainly justified, then again the NAP seems to get our intuitions right (burglars). Where it starts to become less helpful is when you have genuine moral disputes between parties (does NAP help resolve the justice of abortion?) or when the bounds of what is aggressed against has a heavily conventional element (does the NAP help settle the justice of intellectual property? Nope, and not even Kinsella would say so, I assume). So as Stephan has just said, the underlying theory of property is what really matters. And I think it starts to matter most when what counts as aggression becomes unclear.
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I think I tend to agree with that.
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ActiveI agree –many people don’t recognize this, that a theory of property is more fundamental and prior to aggression; aggression is a dependent concept on property rights. Hoppe does and I think Rothbard did–he said all rights are property rights.And I am not sure who called you a statist but it was not me, to be clear. (and I’ve published books with Oxford as well, so maybe their vetting is not perfect….
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I love naps in the middle of the day, around 3 pm!
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I think that would probably go for most philosophies/ideologies when arguing them to people of who do not subscribe. X person will think harder about refuting Y person’s claims than another Y person. It’s called confirmation bias. People also use the term ‘echo-chamber’.
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I agree with Stephan Kinsella in this thread. The NAP is simply a way to summarize property rights, even Rothbard confirmed this… besides, like math, it truly is deductive reasoning. Is 2 + 2 = 5 just because others say they can’t test it? No, it still = 4 and that won’t change. In fact, I think it’s a good thing that NAP is so static/unchangeable. Unlike utilitarian/consequentialist arguments which can be replaced by other statist consequentialist arguments…. (ie. the state uses fake statistics all the time to “show how statism is better” even though they are all twisted with lies and nonfacts… ie, Al Gore’s hockey curve), with NAP there is no way to debunk that we are individuals.Let’s see Al Gore debunk NAP… the best he could do is say that the NAP isn’t objective, but he couldn’t debunk it per se…. the argument always goes, “well we don’t have good enough evidence to support NAP 100%, so that means it’s worthless.” I think this is the true fallacy, the slippery slope fallacy. I have found that people can argue against statistical data all day long (right or wrong doesn’t matter…), but to prove that we aren’t individuals (that we are the borg in a social contract) is much harder to do. I believe both arguments are complimentary, and not in competition… NAP and consequentialism.
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Non aggression principle is walmart-quality philosophy. Below first order logic.
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Thanks for your subjective opinion Phil…
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Well, shit. I’ll have to read some Jason Brennan.
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It says something that no one is providing any hard philosophical defense, instead providing quips. I’d say the NAP/ZAP/whatever people are calling it this week is crap philosophy and I challenge anyone to provide a rigorous philosophical justification for it. If it’s so perfect, defend it.
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The NAP is also pretty old, discovered by Epicurus I believe, and was also part of the Islamic belief system. What I hate about the NAP is that those who espouse it tend to act like they always have the moral high ground in every argument, and are very loose with accusing people of violating it. The truth is that just because you follow the NAP doesn’t mean you automatically have the moral high ground. I do not give up the moral high ground every time someone use that special, magical acronym in their defense. Life is just not that simple.I also think it is very weak when it comes to preventing violence; instead of preventing it I have argued that it has caused it. People used the NAP to justify intellectually the cop shootings by Jared and Amanda Miller, and even the Zimmerman shooting. People have twisted the NAP to mean that it is ok to use excessive violence, up to an including deadly force, as a response to even the threat of “aggression”, a nebulous term which can be loosely interpreted to mean anything someone doesn’t like (it doesn’t have to mean explicit violence). So it’s not even a non-violent philosophy, in fact it is a potentially very violent ideology that justifies pre-emptive attacks, such as the cop shootings and the Iraq war.I recommend libertarians drop the NAP altogether, except perhaps as something to teach children on the playground so that they are not bullied by the big kids. Other than that, I’d prefer adults to use their brains and to not let a “philosophy” do the thinking for them (especially when it comes to physical violence), and would also would prefer a much more robust “non-violence principle” to the very weak and easily refuted non-aggression principle.
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I like Mises utilitarian perspective; that value is ordinal, not measurable between people (therefore economic models based on money aren’t utilitarian and can’t measure the utility of a pauper), and that the only way to maximize utility (and this is what Rothbard does/ completes) is to have rights which he takes from the natural rights tradition. The right to self-ownership and property as an extension of self is built up around this idea of utility. Utility being the ability to exchange one set of circumstances for another without the initiation of violence by a third party.That being said, I’d love to read Jason Brennan on Anarcho-Capitalism.
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It’s hard to quickly state what Mises thinks on Utility but to my admittedly untrained mind Rothbard seems brilliant in synthesizing Molinari and Mises together. Mises view on utility, though, I think is the most important idea out there. NAP is touted as “axiomatic” but it makes sense looking forward and backward onto the justification for NAP. It is also utilitarian (not simply axiomatic) in the sense that, looking forward onto decisions, asymmetric info and all, any action a person takes has more utility than any action a person takes under threat of violence or while being coerced.There is the issue of regret but unless we’re talking about parents, non-initiation of force should be the exception to a rule, not the rule.
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