Category: Epistemology and Method

LETS LOOK AT ARGUMENT VS ARGUMENTATION ETHICS.

Argument:

the use of statement to construct an hypothesis and eliminate error, for the purpose of persuasion in order to choose between interpersonal avoidance, cooperation, parasitism, or violence, or personal inaction, action, or delay.

Argumentation:

the action or process of reasoning systematically in support of an idea, action, or theory. (IOW: Abstraction of Argument)

Argumentation Ethics:

—“Hoppe states that because honest argumentation aimed at resolving a conflict over scarce resources must presuppose various norms including non-violence to be meaningful, then it follows that propositions propounded during such argumentation cannot contradict these norms, from which, he claims, the non aggression principle can be logically derived. So Hoppe claims that to deny the non aggression principle during such argumentation is a performative contradiction between one’s actions and one’s words. For example, to argue that violence should be used to resolve conflicts is an obvious performative contradiction if one is to engage in a meaningful argument to resolve such a conflict.”— Wiki

OK, NOW LET’S BREAK THIS DOWN A BIT (IT’S HARD)

Presuppositions (requirements)

– honest argument

– promise of non violence

in other words, an already existing contract for cooperation eschewing deceit (honest argument, non-coercion-by-fraud) and violence (non-coercion-by-violence), and unstated (non-theft-independent of coercion)

Evidence Instead:

– arguments consist of negotiations in pursuit of wants, not truths independent of wants.

– it is almost impossible for people to construct arguments that are truthful, and instead, people engage in ignorance, bias, suggestion, and deceit.

– Violence is just another input to negotiations, and is always ‘available’ unless a third party insurer demands and warrants restitution(theft), punishment(harm) or death(ostrasization).

So, for Argumentation ETHICS to exist, we must be within a contract for cooperation, insured by a third party. For argument to exist requires only humans. For truthful argument we require a means (skill or technology) for the purpose of testing whether arguments are in fact, honest and truthful – even if we can never know if they are in fact true since we are never possessed of perfect information.

So lets fully expand these sentences:

“Those who are already in an agreement not to engage in parasitism through violence, theft, and fraud, demonstrate that they agree not to engage in parasitism through violence, theft, and fraud, by engaging in truthful argument, and as such the use of truthful argument demonstrates that non aggression against (some scope of) property in and of itself serves as a test of a contract for reciprocity (non aggression).”

Yeah. That’s what’s called a very elaborate tautology. A circular definition. Which is OK. Because all he’s saying that non-aggression is a sufficient rule of thumb for simple people, even if he hasn’t deduced from CAUSALITY, because if he did, he would have to admit that the scope of property necessary for non aggression within a polity is pretty much ‘everything’ (what we call ‘property-in-toto’) in order to prohibit enough conflict that we would eliminate the demand for a state to impose cultural, normative institutional laws upon us. In other words, by RATIONALIZATION from internal consistency rather than from construction by operational causality hoppe makes it impossible to determine the scope of property necessary to eliminate demand for the state to impose rules of the commons both physical and normative.

How about this instead:

Use of honest and truthful argument in a court of law under a third party insurer, and under some scope of property, wherein we prohibit the imposition of costs against that property, and provide the court as a means of dispute resolution, restitution, punishment and ostracization, in order to prevent retaliation cycles that will cumulatively destroy the market created by the polity’s insurer’s market for dispute resolution, can be summarized in the general rule of thumb: dont aggress against that scope of property, and the fact that you are arguing in a court over it rather than engaging in violence, theft, or fraud instead, demonstrates the sufficiency of the above methods, which are reducible to: don’t aggress against life, and property.

To which I would argue we must add “don’t aggress against life, property, commons, norm, institution, tradition, and myth’, because all of those aggressions produce the violent retaliation that non aggression as a test of the basis for law demonstrably advocates.

In other words, hoppe is showing that the argument is in fact circular, but only once we have established such a contract in the first place, And therefor he does not include the CAUSAL: People fucking lie, cheat, defraud, bribe, externalize costs, conspire, free ride, socialize losses and privatize gains, engage in propaganda, conversion, asymmetric and therefore parasitic reproduction, immigration, warfare, conquest, and genocide.

I don’t play this game.

I start with:

1) “Why don’t I kill you and take your stuff? (Ethics).

2) And “why don’t we kill you, your sons, and rape and enslave your women?” (Politics)

3) “Why should I invest in a corporation, rather than in my kin?” (Government)

4) And “Why don’t we conquer, enslave and sterilize your people, so that our people can prosper further? (Group Evolutionary Strategy)

The reason being, that the scope of law necessary to eliminate demand for the state is equal to the scope of law necessary to eliminate the incentives to engage in violence against that which I have born a cost.

And why? BEcause people will not pay the high cost of creating a higher trust social order than their neighbours, and therefore one that produces greater prosperity and security if it is possible for invaders to constantly lower that level of trust by claiming that only private physical property is protected, instead of all that individuals and groups invest in.

Thus Endeth The Lesson

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev, Ukraine