On the Danger of Metaphors in Scientific Discourse

by Stephan Kinsella on June 12, 2011

From the Appendix to my post Objectivist Law Prof Mossoff on Copyright; or, the Misuse of Labor, Value, and Creation Metaphors, quoted below. See also “Objectivist Law Prof Mossoff on Copyright; or, the Misuse of Labor, Value, and Creation Metaphors”; “Hume on Intellectual Property and the Problematic “Labor” Metaphor”; “Thoughts on Intellectual Property, Scarcity, Labor-ownership, Metaphors, and Lockean Homesteading“; also Intellectual Freedom and Learning Versus Patent and Copyright, text at note 21.

See also Kinsella, “KOL044 | ‘Correcting some Common Libertarian Misconceptions’ (PFS 2011),” Kinsella on Liberty Podcast (May 2, 2013), at slide 7; idem, “KOL049 | ‘Libertarian Controversies Lecture 5’ (Mises Academy, 2011),” Kinsella on Liberty Podcast (May 4, 2013), at slide 15; idem, “KOL092 | Triple-V: Voluntary Virtues Vodcast, with Michael Shanklin: Can You Trade Something You Don’t Own?,” Kinsella on Liberty Podcast (Oct. 30, 2013); idem, “The ‘If you own something, that implies that you can sell it; if you sell something, that implies you must own it first’ Fallacies,” StephanKinsella.com (June 1, 2018).

See also related comments in Stephan Kinsella, “Libertarianism After Fifty Years: What Have We Learned?”, in Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023), in the section “Danger of Unclear Language and Metaphors.”

Update: Fritz Machlup, Economic Semantics 2nd Edition (Transaction 1991), p. 73:

The existence of homonyms in scientific as well as in everyday language raises no problem when the separate meanings of the same word are sufficiently different to make confusion impossible in the context in which the word is used. If we economists, for example, use the word “labor,” no reader or listener will ever think of the painful muscle contractions preceding childbirth, and if we say “capital” he may not know precisely what we mean, but he will rarely confuse it with the seat of government in a state or country.

If the separate meanings of the same word are closely related, overlapping, or otherwise ambiguous so that the context be relied upon to indicate which meaning is intended, the writer or speaker has a moral duty, I would say, to state what he means.

Update: From Julian Baggini, “‘Ludwig Wittgenstein’ Review: An Attack on the Abstract,” Wall Street J. (Nov. 18, 2025), reviewing Anthony Gottlieb, Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophy in the Age of Airplanes (Yale, 2025):

In one of his many arresting metaphors, Wittgenstein claimed that the aim of philosophy is “to show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.” The bottle is the trap philosophers inadvertently create for themselves by abstracting concepts such as “knowledge,” “being” and “object” from their ordinary usage and analyzing them as though each has some kind of independent essence. Wittgenstein demanded that whenever we find ourselves puzzling over the meaning of such terms, we should ask, “is the word ever actually used in this way in the language in which it is at home?” His answer was, usually, no. “Philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday,” he wrote, and philosophy is full of vacationing abstract nouns.

The philosopher’s task is therefore not to solve philosophical problems but to dissolve them, showing why the questions they pose are illegitimate. Philosophy thus leaves the world as it is—or at least as it was, before philosophers raised a dust and then complained that we cannot see, as Bishop Berkeley put it in 1710.

Appendix: On the danger of metaphors in scientific discourse

The following observations and quotes assembled from previous email and other conversations re same:

See the following, from Mark Thornton’s The “Market” for Academic Research: this is a great quote; I think it would be a useful project to collect various comments on dangers of the use of metaphors into one place:

“For it would be an absurd undertaking to banish from the language of economic theory every manner of speaking that is not literally correct; it would be sheer pedantry to proscribe every figure of speech, particularly since we could not say the hundredth part of what we have to say, if we refused ever to take recourse to a metaphor. One requirement is essential, that economic theory avoid the error of confusing a practical habit, indulged in for the sake of expediency, with scientific truth.”

–Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, (1881), “Whether legal rights and relationships are economic goods.” In H. Sennholz (Ed.), Shorter classics of Böhm-Bawerk, Volume I. Spring Mills, PA: Libertarian Press, 1962, p. 135. As Mark noted on a list: “Bohm Bawerk took up this issue [of misuse of metaphors] in Shorter Classics. I quote him at the opening of this paper (attached). The whole public choice agenda is based on the use of market metaphors for government institutions.”

NSK:

I’ve long noticed the over- and mis-use of metaphors. For example Paterson or Lane’s use of “energy circuits” …. very scientistic. Similar to the way people talk about the “momentum” of a football game or the “energy” of a crowd or a crystal.

Or in the idea of mixing or owning labor, or owning ideas, or in the idea that prices “convey knowledge”.

Also, as I noted elsewhere: “Mixing labor” is horribly misleading and a sloppy metaphor: if I turn a piece of land into a farm, did I *actually* mix my labor? I mean, is there like an amount of labor “in” the soil? It’s really sloppy and imprecise.

I’ve always liked this observation of Huelsmann’s:

Only in a metaphorical sense could one say that prices reflect or contain information on present conditions. …

… It is asserted that prices communicate abridged relevant information. This, however, is only a metaphorical expression.

It is not prices that coordinate the actions of sellers and buyers of tin; prices are the outcome of (coordinated) action, not its coordinators. It is property, rather than knowledge, that coordinates the separate actions of different people. The terms coordination and communication rather obfuscate than adequately express this fact. This is another example of the dangers linked to the use of metaphors in scientific discourse.

From p. 29 of this article

And Rothbard:

“The term “consumers’ sovereignty” is a typical example of the abuse, in economics, of a term . . . appropriate only to the political realm and is thus an illustration of the dangers of the application of metaphors taken from other disciplines. “Sovereignty” is the quality of ultimate political power; it is the power resting on the use of violence. In a purely free society, each individual is sovereign over his own person and property, and it is therefore this self-sovereignty which obtains on the free market. No one is “sovereign” over anyone else’s actions or exchanges. Since the consumers do not have the power to coerce producers into various occupations and work, the former are not “sovereign” over the latter.”

On Mises:

“Mises rightly criticised treating imaginary things (collectives, analogies, metaphors, etc.) as real and warns us to be very cautious when using fictitious auxiliary constructs to explain things” —Benjamin Marks

Also, from others’ comments about this on an email discussion list:

Roderick Long:

“Ironically, in his memoirs Mises accuses Bohm-Bawerk (in their dispute over Cantillon effects) of being led astray by the idea of “friction” and other metaphors from the physical sciences.”

On a thread, I had written: “Right, and this is the danger of metaphors (BTW I wonder if anyone has examined this issue in any detail–? The dangers overuse of metaphors in scientific discourse?).” Roderick Long replied: “Right, such a study might be called “How Scientific Discourse is Being Savagely Bitten to Death by Rabid Metaphors.” Tom DiLorenzo’s reply:

“A fun paper (Vedran, are you listening?) would be to ridicule the metaphors in macroeconomics with all the talk of “injections,” “Leakages,” shocks,” etc. I would start by comparing it all to the movie Young Frankenstein, where they tried to “shock” the monster to life, just as “infusions” of money or tax dollars supposedly shock the economy out of a recession. Then when shock therapy didn’t work, Gene Wilder pulled out a giant needle and “injected” the monster, just as money is supposedly injected into the economy by the Fed. The possibilities are endless.”

John Brätland:

In this connection, I would put in a strong plug for Peter Lewin’s paper: “Methods and Metaphors in Capital Theory.” (Advances in Austrian Economics, vol. 2B).

I might add that important parts of Mises’ “Ultimate Foundations… ” and “Theory and History” deal with the issue of inapt and misleading metaphors in economic science.

See also The Problem with “Fraud”: Fraud, Threat, and Contract Breach as Types of Aggression, discussing problems resulting from uncareful use of concepts like “fraud” in libertarian reasoning.

Update: See also:

It is not particularly helpful to think of real and intellectual property as structurally unified. The differences matter significantly and resorting to rhetorical metaphors distracts attention from critical issues. As Judge (later Justice) Cardozo cautioned in 1926, “[m]etaphors in law are to be narrowly watched, for starting as devices to liberate thought, they end often by enslaving it.”

–Peter S. Menell, quoted here

For more on Böhm-Bawerk, as quoted in my book Legal Foundations for a Free Society (ch. 24).

Böhm-Bawerk makes a similar point about the necessity of continuing to use some inaccurate terms in economics. As he writes:

[We do aught but recognize that, from the economic viewpoint, such “goods” as family, church, love and the like are merely linguistic disguises for a totality of concretely useful renditions of service. …

No matter how clearly I may have proved that payment-claims and good-will relationships are not genuine goods, no matter how clearly I have therefore proved that, whenever, in practical economic life rights and relationships are bought and sold, it is not, in truth, those intangibles that are meant and are valued and transferred, but that actually it is material goods and renditions of service that are so dealt in; no matter, I say, how clear my proof, I am not going to pretend to believe that economic practice will submit to any slavish accuracy in the matter. It will in the future continue to be the custom, and rightly so, to say that A’s wealth consists in payment-claims, that B sold his good will for $50,000 to C, and that the state, the church and the family are valuable “goods.” Yes, I believe even economic theory will, quite properly, continue talking that same language because it is the language that all the world talks and understands. For it would be an absurd undertaking to banish from the language of economic theory every manner of speaking that is not literally correct; it would be sheer pedantry to proscribe every figure of speech, particularly since we could not say the hundredth part of what we have to say, if we refused ever to take recourse to a metaphor.

One requirement is essential, that economic theory avoid the error of confusing a practical habit, indulged in for the sake of expediency, with scientific truth. ¹

He goes on:

I do make the request that economic theory, when it speaks ex cathedra about goods and categories of goods, substitute the two underlying associates, material goods and renditions of service, for the figurative appellations, “intangible rights” and “relationship-goods.” And I make the further request that, whenever it does employ figures of speech in mentioning these things as goods, it remain at least tacitly conscious of the figurative nature of its expressions. To put it briefly, I think that economic theory should always retain the exact truth in its armory and bring it forth at all times when there is any real necessity for doing so. If it does that, it may be permissible to retain the accustomed terminology of an outmoded error, just as we do in other fields. For do we not still speak of the sun “rising” and “setting,” of its “coming up” and “going down”?

Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, “Whether Legal Rights and Relationships Are Economic Goods,” George D. Huncke, trans., in Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Shorter Classics of Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk (South Holland, Ill.: Libertarian Press, 1962 [1881]), pp. 173–75 (first emphasis added). [↩]

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Hoppe on Property Rights in Physical Integrity vs Value

by Stephan Kinsella on June 12, 2011

[From my Webnote series]

Note: This issue is discussed in Stephan Kinsella, Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023). See, e.g., ch. 5, at n.16; ch. 8, at n.17; ch. 23, at n.27; ch. 25, at n.36. See also discussion of defamation law in my forthcoming chapter “Defamation Law and Reputation Rights as a Type of Intellectual Property,” p. 286 et pass. and “Aggression” versus “Harm” in Libertarianism.

Update: See Hoppe, Hans-Hermann and Walter Block, “Property and Exploitation,” International Journal of Value Based Management 15, no. 3 (2002): 225–36 (also in Walter Block, Iulian Tãnase & Bogdan Glãvan, eds., Building Blocks for Liberty: Critical Essays by Walter Block [Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2010]). Abstract:

The authors contend that what can legitimately be owned in a free society is only rights to physical property, not to the value thereof. You are thus free to undermine the value of our property by underselling us, by inventing a new substitute for our property, etc. But you cannot legitimately physically agress against our property, even if its value remains constant despite your efforts.

See also Rothbard’s comments on this issue in Rothbard, Man, Economy, and Liberty (1 March 1986), where Rothbard comments and responds to the speakers and papers presented at the “Man, Economy and Liberty” colloquium hosted by the Mises Institute; backup Youtube, which concerned Man, Economy, and Liberty: Essays in Honor of Murray N. Rothbard, Walter Block and Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., eds. (Mises Institute, 1988). Note his comments on Hoppe’s view that there can be no property rights in the value property:

See also: Hoppe, “The Justice of Economic Efficiency,” in The Economics and Ethics of Private Property: Studies in Political Economy and Philosophy (Mises, 2006 [1993]), at 337–38:

Such proposals are absurd as well as indefensible. 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 to change 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 per- son’s evaluations regarding his property. Everyone would be long dead before this could ever be accomplished. Moreover, the idea that property value should be protected is argumentatively indefensible, for even in order to argue, it must be presupposed that actions must be allowed prior to any actual agreement because if they were not, one could not even argue so. Yet if one can, then this is only possible because of objective borders of property, i.e., borders which every person can recognize as such on his own, without having to agree first with anyone else with respect to one’s system of values and evaluations. Rawls and Nozick could not even open their mouths if it were otherwise. The very fact, then, that they do open them proves what they say is wrong.

Update: see also

From Rand on IP, Owning “Values”, and “Rearrangement Rights”:

By viewing “values” as things that we create, Objectivists then think there should be property rights in values. They are things, after all, right? But this is a fundamental mistake. As I noted in Objectivist Law Prof Mossoff on Copyright; or, the Misuse of Labor, Value, and Creation Metaphors, a common mistaken belief is that one has a property right in the value, as opposed to the physical integrity of, one’s property. For elaboration, see pp. 139-141 of Hoppe’s A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism; also see my comments re same to Patents and Utilitarian Thinking. This assumption sneaks into or lies at the basis of many fallacious notions of property rights, such as the idea that there is a right to a reputation because it can have value. It ties in with the (especially Randian) notion of “creation” as the source of rights, and the confusing admixture of the “labor” idea, when we talk about using our labor to “create” things of “value” (like reputations, inventions, works of art). As Hoppe notes in The Economics and Ethics of Private Property: [continue reading…]

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Read Hoppe, Then Nothing Is the Same

by Stephan Kinsella on June 10, 2011

On Constitutional Sentimentalism
and other posts tagged under constitution and constitutional sentimentalism
Rockwell on Hoppe on the Constitution as Expansion of Government Power
KOL359 | State Constitutions vs. the Libertarian Private Law Code (PFS 2021)

My article, “Read Hoppe, Then Nothing Is the Same,” discussing my upcoming Mises Academy course, “The Social Theory of Hoppe” (Mondays, July 11-Aug. 21, 2011) was published on Mises Daily last Friday, June 10 2011. The article has also been translated into Spanish: Tras leer a Hoppe, nada es lo mismo. Archived comments below. The course is on my site beginning with KOL153 | “The Social Theory of Hoppe: Lecture 1: Property Foundations” (Mises Academy, 2011).

From the Mises Blog; archived comments below.

Read Hoppe, Then Nothing Is the Same

06/10/2011 Stephan Kinsella

Austrolibertarianism begins with Murray Rothbard. His mentor Ludwig von Mises systematized Austrian economics and put it on a modern, rigorous foundation. Rothbard built on, and extended, this Misesian-praxeological Austrian framework, and he integrated it with his own radical anarchocapitalism to produce the superstructure of modern Austrolibertarian thought.

Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe, who studied under and worked with Rothbard from the 1980s until Rothbard’s untimely death in 1995, was Rothbard’s greatest student. After Rothbard’s death, Hoppe became the editor of the Journal of Libertarian Studies, a coeditor of the Review of Austrian Economics, and then a coeditor of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. His important books include A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, The Economics and Ethics of Private Property, Democracy: The God that Failed, and The Myth of National Defense.

Combining Misesian praxeology with Rothbardian insights, Hoppe has developed a magnificent, integrated edifice of rational thought. This edifice includes work on sociology, economics, philosophy and epistemology, libertarianism and political philosophy, and history. Hoppe is now the world’s leading Austrolibertarian social theorist.

It is no surprise, then, that Professor Hoppe’s writing has inspired scholars all over the world to follow in his footsteps and to provide a scientific foundation for individual freedom and a free society (his works have been translated into at least 22 languages). His influence was extended when he founded the international Property and Freedom Society (PFS) in 2006 as a more radical alternative to the now-watered-down Mont Pèlerin Society.

The video below is a good demonstration of the power of Hoppe’s ideas. This is a talk Professor Hoppe gave in April 2011 at the Second Austrian School Conference, Mises Institute Brasil, in Porto Alegre, entitled “State or Private Law Society?”1 It’s a truly masterful presentation of the Austrolibertarian defense of what Hoppe calls the “private-law society.” For example, Hoppe here brilliantly and succinctly argues that there is but one correct answer to the problem of social order: the libertarian-Lockean rule (starting at 7:30 in Part 1; see also Parts 2, 3, 4, 5). He explains why the only answer to the question of who owns your body is you — who else would own it? All other competing rules are either incoherent, contradictory, or obviously unfair. And furthermore, when you appropriate an unowned resource, no one else can have a better claim to it than you, the person who had it first.

Fernando Chiocca, of Mises Brasil, told me that the audience was riveted and loved it; he got standing ovations,

and one reaction in particular was pretty interesting. We have only a couple of Austrian professors in Brasil, and one of them wasn’t acquainted with Hoppe’s work. (He is what we used to call “old-school Austrian,” whose ideas were shaped in the era before the modern Mises Institute website, and mainly influenced by Hayek.) In a matter of seconds after Hoppe’s speech, he was in our bookstore buying all Hoppe’s books that we had for sale, requesting autographs from Dr. Hoppe, repeating how marvelous Hoppe was, and declaring to everyone his instantaneous conversion to “Hoppeanism.”

I am reminded here of what Lew Rockwell wrote of Hoppe in the festschrift written in Hoppe’s honor (Property, Freedom, and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe):

This same Hoppean effect — that sense of having been profoundly enlightened by a completely new way of understanding something — has happened many times over the years. He has made contributions to ethics, to international political economy, to the theory of the origin of the state, to comparative systems, to culture and its economic relation, to anthropology and the theory and practice of war. Even on a subject that everyone thinks about but no one really seems to understand — the system of democracy — he clarified matters in a way that helps you see the functioning of the world in a completely new light. There aren’t that many thinkers who have this kind of effect. Mises was one. Rothbard is another. Hoppe certainly fits in that line. He is the kind of thinker who reminds you that ideas are real things that shape how we understand the world around us. …

Often times when you first hear a point he makes, you resist it. I recall when he spoke at a conference we held on American history, and gave a paper on the US Constitution. You might not think that a German economist could add anything to our knowledge on this topic. He argued that it represented a vast increase in government power and that this was its true purpose. It created a powerful central government, with the cover of liberty as an excuse. He used it as a case in point, and went further to argue that all constitutions are of the same type. In the name of limiting government — which they purportedly do — they invariably appear in times of history when the elites are regrouping to emerge from what they consider to be near anarchy. The Constitution, then, represents the assertion of power.

When he finished, you could hear a pin drop. I’m not sure that anyone was instantly persuaded. He had challenged everything we thought we knew about ourselves. The applause was polite, but not enthusiastic. Yet his points stuck. Over time, I think all of us there travelled some intellectual distance. The Constitution was preceded by the Articles of Confederation, which Rothbard had variously described as near anarchist in effect. Who were these guys who cobbled together this Constitution? They were the leftovers from the war: military leaders, financiers, and other mucky mucks — a very different crew from the people who signed the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson was out of the country when the Constitution was passed. And what was the effect of the Constitution? To restrain government? No. It was precisely the opposite, just as Hoppe said. It created a new and more powerful government that not only failed to restrain itself (what government has ever done that?), but grew and grew into the monstrosity we have today. It required a wholesale rethinking of the history, but what Hoppe had said that shocked everyone turns out to be precisely right — and this is only one example among many.

If you are interested in the ideas of Mises and Rothbard, it is essential to study the work of Professor Hoppe. Starting on July 11, I will be teaching a six-week online Mises Academy course to present and discuss Professor Hoppe’s most important ideas and theories, including his brilliant critique of positivist methodology as applied to the social sciences, his groundbreaking “argumentation-ethics” praxeological approach to political philosophy,2 his encompassing comparative analysis of socialism and capitalism, his profound critique of democracy, and a host of other insights and contributions to areas such as monopoly theory, the theory of public goods, the sociology of taxation, the private production of security, the nature of property and scarcity, immigration, economic methodology and epistemology, and the evolution of monetary institutions and their impact on international relations.

I decided to teach this course for a few reasons. First, as noted above, there was a need for this course because of the growing interest in Hoppe’s ideas and the increasing number of younger or newer Austrolibertarians just beginning to absorb the thought of the masters. Second, while I did not enjoy teaching mainstream law when I served as an adjunct law professor at a local law school a few years back, I have greatly enjoyed and benefitted from the three online Mises Academy courses I’ve taught so far (Rethinking Intellectual Property twice, and Libertarian Legal Theory once). And based on student feedback, the students have enjoyed the Mises Academy format in general and my courses in particular (see, e.g., the comments I noted in my articles “Teaching an Online Mises Academy Course,” “Introduction to Libertarian Legal Theory,” and “Rethinking IP”).

Third, aside from Hoppe himself, I felt uniquely qualified to present this overview of Hoppe’s work. I’ve been a close associate and (informal) student of Professor Hoppe since 1994 — I served as book-review editor of the JLS for five years under Hoppe’s editorship, I founded and edit Libertarian Papers, the successor journal to the JLS (Professor Hoppe serves on its editorial board); and, with Guido Hülsmann, I was editor of the festschrift in Hoppe’s honor, Property, Freedom, and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe. I have also built on Hoppe’s work in my own libertarian theorizing (e.g., Against Intellectual Property, “Punishment and Proportionality: The Estoppel Approach,” “A Libertarian Theory of Contract: Title Transfer, Binding Promises, and Inalienability”).

When I proposed this course to Professor Hoppe, though he was humble in reaction, he fully endorsed the idea. He has graciously offered to provide a written response to submitted questions near the end of the course.

The reading material will consist primarily of A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism and The Economics and Ethics of Private Property (both free online in ePub and PDF formats), several other selected articles by Professor Hoppe, and articles by others commenting on Hoppe’s thought (such as my own “Argumentation Ethics and Liberty: A Concise Guide,” “New Rationalist Directions in Libertarian Rights Theory,” and “Defending Argumentation Ethics: Reply to Murphy & Callahan”), which are also available for free online.

This will be a fun and intellectually stimulating course. I am looking forward to it.

1.The text of this speech was published on Mises Daily as “State or Private-Law Society.”
2.See my recent article “Argumentation Ethics and Liberty: A Concise Guide.”

Archived comments:

Comments (19)

Drigan· 16 weeks ago

I’m always a bit hesitant to read articles by Kinsella because of the inevitable pontification on intellectual property. (I’m not quite sure where I stand on IP, but repeatedly hammering that anti-IP is the only way to be for a libertarian has made me a bit more resistant to it.) I was pleasantly surprised by this article; now make a few substantive articles about something other than IP and I might be a bit more receptive to the IP-related message.

Read Hoppe, Then Nothing Is the Same

Comments (19)

Argumentation Ethics and Liberty: A Concise Guide

Analysis of Hoppe’s Argumentation Ethics

Critiques of Argumentation Ethics (external links)

Argumentation Ethics (external links)