Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response

DISAGREE WITH MOLYNEUX?

—“What are some things you disagree with Stefan Molyneux on? I’m really interested in knowing.”— Carolyn Scudder

Stefan is still practicing rule ethics, instead of outcome ethics. The question is why is he doing so?

SEQUENCE:

Imitation ethics(child) -> Virtue ethics(young adult) -> Rule Ethics(adult) -> Outcome Ethics (mature adult).

So just as one practices justificaitonism under rule ethics (excuse making) as we practice in morality and law, one practices criticism under outcome ethics as we practice in science.

So when one uses a lower standard of ethics when a higher standard is available, that means one is ignoring information that would contravene one’s priors.

In other words, (as most of you others state less precisely) Stefan continues making excuses for his priors just like theologists make excuses for their priors.

Why? Because reframing your entire belief system and stating that it is a malinvestment is very difficult to do.

What we have seen is Stefan incrementally has moved to the right as he is no longer able to maintain a fiction.

What he has NOT done is move from rationalism to science (as I have done).

This is the same mistake Hoppe has made: using justificationism instead of science to make arguments.

HERE IS WHAT ONE MUST DO:

1) survive a test of full accounting (not cherry picking and falsification)

2) survive a test of rational action (rational possibility and falsification) AND

3) survive a test of external correspondence (empirical evidence) and non-correspondence (falsification).

So if you cannot survive BOTH tests then we as the audience cannot determine whether you are engaged in ignorance, error, or deceit.

For most people it is a question of ignorance, error, self-deception (confirmation bias), and wishful thinking, rather than outright deception.

We are all victims of wishful thinking.

—“some specifics would be dope. The theoretical pontificating is nice and all but walking people through with an anecdote would get the point across a lot better”—Joe Drozd

I find the pejorative ‘pontificating’ insulting. If you mean instead that I must educate people on the limits of rational justificationism (explanation) vs scientific criticism (survival) then that is a non-trivial proposition that most people will need to read at least Popper to understand – but it is how science is conducted: like evolution, scientific statements must SURVIVE criticism, whereas justificationary statements must only CONVEY meaning.

So any truth proposition requires that we first (a) construct a narrative capable of communicationg meaning, and then (b) insure we haven’t engaged in ignorance, error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, loading/framing/overloading, or deceit.

virtue ethics convey introspectively imitative meaning – essentially general principles conveyed by myths. Rule ethics convey more precise recipes and prohibitions – essentially general rules of moral and legal behavior. Outcome ethics convey much more precise tests of ethical and moral action.

So while virtue, rule, and outcome ethics require increasing knowledge and skill to exercise, and we can only be expected to exercise the ethical model available to us given our age, intelligence, and experience, we can also invert this statement and say that if one has the age, intelligence and experience to employ a higher ethical standard, we must ask why one does not.

Or put more precisely, any question of ethics must survive tests of all models: virtue, rule, and outcome ethics, just as all true (scientific) statements must survive tests of voluntary transfer, rational possibility, and empirical evidence.

And we can generalize this statement into the logical rule that reality consists of multiple dimensions, and just as mathematics consists of disciplines that increasingly test additional dimensions (identity, numbers, ratios, functions, space, and motion), scientific statements must survive tests of similar dimensions: identity(categorical), internal consistency(logical), external consistency(empirical), full accounting (scope consistency), moral consistency (reciprocal consistency).

Or if you want to simplify it – anyone who tries to make morally justificationary arguments in lieu of empirical outcomes is impossible to distinguish from someone who is lying.

ie: Stefan practices deontological (rule) ethics, as a means of avoiding the falsfiication of those rules by empirical evidence.

I suspect he does this as do all people who are drawn to libertarian ehtics, out of a desire to justify his moral intiutions rather than attempt to falsify them and adopt different ethics he finds less intuitively appealing (as I had to do.)

What I have found is that Stefan is a moral man, a fantastic educator, and a proponent of liberty. And he is certainly more capable of those roles than I am.

Furthermore, while I have Thousands of followers, he has tens of thousands. Why? Because there are only thousands of people capable of understanding what I say and there are tens of thousands capable of understanding what he says.

Just as most people can learn virtue ethics of imitation of heroes, fewer can learn moral and legal rules of while maintaining internal consistency, and fewer still can learn outcome ethics in enough fields to make use of them, and fewer still can learn what I teach which is essentially strictly constructed natural law: social science in scientific terms.

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev, Ukraine