From Twitter:
Dear
@NSKinsella
, I have a question about argumentative ethics. Isn’t natural law more fundamental, since it is based on human nature, which precedes all language, and therefore much more transcendental than it? Thus being a stronger starting point.
Hoppe argues persuasively in my view that natural rights have to be justified by reference to a particular aspect of our human nature, that is the activity of argumentative justification. It cannot be found in action itself, as Gewirth argues, because action itself is not normative or conative, and thus does not invoke universalizability. Our rights are based on our nature as acting beings in a world of scarcity but those who use reason and engage in peaceful, normative-laden argumentative discourse to justify norms. It cannot be based on nature alone because of the is-ought gap: you cannot go from what something is to conclude what it ought to do; this gap is logically unbridgeable; you must rest normative claims on other values, norms, which is in fact the case when one engages in peaceful, genuine argumentation. See my book, stephankinsella.com/lffs/ , ch. 6, at n.14, and ch. 22, Part II.E. See also stephankinsella.com/2010/01/intell On getting an ought from an ought, see stephankinsella.com/2006/11/omega-
