 I'm pleased to introduce the Ludwig von Mies' Memorial Lecture sponsored by James Walker. Hans Hermann Hoppe earned both his PhD in philosophy and his ability in sociology and economics from the Goethe University in Frankfurt. He taught at several German universities as well as the Johns Hopkins University Bologna Center for Advanced International Studies in Bologna, Italy. In 1986 he moved from Germany to the United States to study on the Murray Rothbard. He remained a close associate of Rothbard's until his death in January 1995. An Austrian school economist and libertarian and narco-capitalist philosopher, Hoppe is emeritus professor of economics at UNLV, distinguished fellow with the Ludwig von Mies' Institute, founder and president of the Property and Freedom Society. He is also the former editor of the Journal of Libertarian Studies and a lifetime member of the Royal Horticultural Society. I didn't know that, but that makes me even greater. Hoppe is the author of several English language books as well as German language books and numerous articles on philosophy, economics, and the social sciences. His most recent book is A Short History of Man, Progress and Decline. He and his lovely wife, Dr. Gulchin Imre Hoppe, reside in Istanbul. So I am pleased to introduce my friend, my comrade Norms, and the person I consider the greatest living embodiment of Rothbard's thought, Hans Hermann Hoppe. Ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank Lou, and I want to thank Joe, and all the Mies' Institute folks for having invited me. Above all, I want to thank Ludwig von Mies', the greatest economist of all time, and for his work without which I would have been lost. I think it is as important as ever to study Mies' carefully and not always try to go above and beyond him, which is usually unsuccessful. Learning what Mies' has said, in my view, is still the most important obligation that we have. The last book that Mies' wrote was The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, an essay in MESSED. And since I'm already of advanced age myself, I have also been working on and off for a number of years on an essay on MESSED. And this will probably still take a while before it is finished. But I want to give you a glimpse of what I'm trying to do there in this lecture on men, nature, truth, and justice. It is possible to describe and explain men in purely naturalistic terms, in the same way as we describe and explain stones, plants, and animals. That is in the language of physics, chemistry, biology, genetics, neurology, and so forth. But a purely naturalistic account of men. While entirely legitimate, and even if it is true, must fail to capture the essence of men. That is what makes men unique and distinguishes him from all other things, from stones, from plants, and from animals. That this is the case can be easily recognized by asking oneself what it is that one is doing when debating the question at hand, that is the nature of men. Or any other question for that matter. The answer, we speak to each other in meaningful words and sentences. We present arguments. And we do so with the purpose of argumentative success, of reaching agreement regarding the validity of an argument or the truth of a sentence. Yet it is obviously impossible to give a naturalistic account of this undeniable part of human nature, namely of meaningful words, of sentences, of arguments, of intention, of purpose, of truth, of falsehood, of success, and of failure. There is nothing purposeful, meaningful, true, false, successful or unsuccessful in nature. Nature and the laws of nature are what they are and they work the way they do, unchangingly and unfailingly. Yet human propositions or sentences are intentional, they are meaningful, they are true or false. And that is that all meaning and all truths are in a most fundamental sense, meaning and truth for men, rather than meaning and truth an sich. Hence, every natural scientist, whether biologist, physiologist, chemist, geneticist or neurologist, who claim that men can be reduced to nothing but nature becomes entangled in a contradiction. I should emphasize that there are plenty of scientists nowadays who try to do precisely this, that is reduce men to nothing but nature. On the one hand, I want to show now why this is a contradictory attempt. On the one hand, the men that this scientist who tries to reduce men to nature, the scientist speaks and writes about, that is men as nature, which the scientists claim to be the only men there is, has no purpose and no meaning and nothing about its inner workings is true or false, successful or failing. Everything works the way it does in accordance with unchanging and unfailing causal laws. Even life and death have no meaning. Death and bodily decay do not falsify any causal laws. Nor does life confirm these laws. The same laws of nature hold for life and for death equally. Life and death are not a success or a failure as far as man as nature is concerned. They simply are morally or valuationally neutral events. And yet, on the other hand, he, that is this very scientist who tries to reduce men to nature, this very scientist who obviously counts himself as a member of the class of men, follows a purpose in conducting his research on men as nature. He conducts purposeful operations and must employ meaningful sentences to describe the results of his research concerning an sich meaningless natural materials and processes. He claims these results to be true rather than false and given his purpose, he considers his research a success or a failure. And for him, in contrast to men as nature, death and bodily malfunctions do have a meaning and are indeed failures and malfunctions. Yet they have meaning and are failures or are malfunctions only insofar as they are related to a human purpose, the purpose of wanting to preserve life and prevent death, wanting to preserve health as something good and prevent illness or death as something bad. Instead of a necessarily insufficient and incomplete naturalistic account of men, then I want to present what one might call a culturalistic account of men, which captures what the naturalistic account leaves out and thus elucidates what distinguishes men from everything else. And we have already gained a non-naturalistic starting point from which we must begin this endeavor, namely what I call the a priori of argumentation. Men can undeniably argue, not only is arguing what we do here and now, there is simply no other justifiable starting point available. For whatever we may choose as such a point, we cannot but speak and argue about this point. We cannot deny that argumentation must be the starting point of all of our intellectual endeavors. And it must be the point of departure of all talk about men without falling into some immediately to explained form of contradiction. Now, setting out from the a priori of argumentation as my necessary and undeniable, and hence a priori true starting point, then it is my plan to explain everything that is already implied in this a priori and hence must likewise be regarded as a priori true. That is my following argument aims to establish and elucidate what must be presupposed by argumentation. That is what an arguer must accept as more basic and more elementary than argumentation or as the pre argumentative foundation of argumentation. If you will, and that makes argumentation at all possible. And four immediate insights bring immediately to mind when we try to do something like this. And I want to elaborate on all of these four points in a row. The first insight is argumentation presupposes action. Action comes before argumentation. All arguing is acting and every arguer knows what it is to act, but only very few actions are argumentation. Second, even most of our speech acts, that is acts accompanied by words, are not argumentation. The employment of language for other non argumentative purposes also comes before and is presupposed by argumentation. Third, in fact most of the time we do not speak at all when we act. We act silently and silent action too becomes before and is presupposed by argumentation. And fourth, argumentative discourse is rare and has the unique purpose and aim of resolving disagreements regarding the truth of certain propositions or the validity of certain arguments. Now, elaborating on all these points. First, since most of you are familiar with Mises' work, I can be brief regarding the first point. Arguing is a special case of acting. Everything that can be stated about actions in general applies also to the special case of argumentation. Like all actions, for instance, argumentation takes place in time and space and is constrained by scarcity and time. Argumentation too is a motivated purposeful activity and so on and so on. But, as I said, not at all action is argumentation. Argumentation is an activity sui generis. Second, while arguing is also a form of communicative, that is language using action, aimed at the successful coordination of actions of the community of speakers, most communicative action is non-argumentative, that is speech that is not concerned with the clarification of truth claims. In fact, even the request or the suggestion to enter into an argumentation is apparently not itself a right or wrong proposition or argument, but it is simply a request or a suggestion, which demonstrates that non-argumentative communication comes and must have been learned temporarily and logically prior to argumentation. Most fundamentally, before we can ever engage in argumentation, we must already know and have learned at a minimum how to use words to call upon someone and how to point out or draw attention or refer to something to be done or to be expected. It would be senseless to denies this, because the proponent of this argument must already presuppose precisely these abilities as an a priori given both for himself as well as for his opponent. The a priori of argumentation then implies as its logical and practical or praxeological presupposition and foundation an a priori of communicative action. Analytically, in any type of human speech or speech act or communicative action, we can distinguish two categorically distinct parts or constituents. On the one hand, all speech has a propositional part. Therein something is stated regarding certain facts, what it is that we are talking about. And on the other hand, every speech has what is called an illocutionary or performative part, whereby the speaker places the propositional part of his speech into a social or interactive context, commenting so to say to other speakers what to make of it. Some propositional content, the same propositional content for instance, like this is a banana, can be presented in various performative modes such as is this a banana, I promise you this banana, this is my banana, take this banana, I'm telling you a story about a banana, I'm ordering you to get rid of this banana and so forth. Speaking then is always more than a mere statement of facts, facts being what the proposition is about. It involves always and invariably that a given propositional content is uttered and placed in some specific performative mode. Accordingly, the success or the failure of a communicative action aimed at coordination depends on a two-fold accomplishment. The understanding of the speech's propositional content and the acceptance of the modus of proposing what you are saying. Coordination is successful if I ask you to bring me a banana and you bring me one. It is unsuccessful if you don't know the meaning of banana or bring and you bring me a teddy bear instead or you respond to my question by saying for instance I'm 60 years old which would indicate that you haven't understood the entire purpose of my speech. Likewise, coordination is unsuccessful if you understand what I say but you reject my proposal and reply for example I don't take orders from you or I have no time or you simply walk away from me. Moreover and more importantly unsuccessful coordination or discoordination can take two possible forms or outcomes. Simple disappointment or serious conflict. After you disappointingly walked away from my request and my speech act has failed we both go about our daily business as before silently. I was the means under my control and you was a means under your control. This is a case of disappointment. A conflict on the other hand results if instead of you bringing me a banana which would be a successful communication or walking away from me which would be a disappointing communication you respond for example by taking a pocket knife against my protestation out of my hand or you pull my hair. As well conflict results if I respond to your disappointing refusal by following you against your protestations into your house the house that you previously had under of which you had previously undisputed control in both cases we would clash because we want to employ the very same means namely the knife the hair the house for incompatible purposes because of the scarcity of physical means only one purpose can be realized and fulfilled and we must then clash. Now let me pause here for a moment for a few critically important empirical observations. The achievements of the social sciences are often belittled or even ridiculed and in view of much if not most of contemporary academic sociology this assessment is certainly well deserved yet this should not blind us toward noticing some rather obvious facts. It must surely come as reassuring and refreshing to observe that much if not most of our communicative action our speech acts is successful both in being understood and in being accepted for what it is. Far more communication is successful than not and if communication is not successful and fails to reach its end of interpersonal coordination these failures are mostly merely disappointments failed communication in the form of conflict is a comparatively rare occurrence and its notoriety is derived precisely from this rarity by and large we are amazingly successful as speakers in bringing about coordination and if speaking is and does for us in the social world made up of other people and their actions what engineering is and does for us in the natural world made up of stones and plants and animals and their behavior then we must actually come to the conclusion that we are quite successful as social engineers namely as people affecting coordination by words and speech more over even if communicative action sometimes fail to attend coordination we have a method of learning and improving it we can try to clarify our words by engaging in some playful activity where we learn how words are applied in certain contexts and so forth I will not go into detail as far as this is concerned now I will come back to the subject of argumentation but before first some attention must be given also to silent or speechless actions and the categorically distinct purpose of communicative action versus instrumental action most of what we do in our lives is silent or speechless action in fact just as communicative action comes before and is presupposed by argumentation so silent action also comes before and is presupposed by communicative action on the one hand this is revealed by the fact that as children we learn to act before we learn to speak and use words to identify and describe our actions as actions and on the other hand it is revealed by the fact that however important communicative action may otherwise be in human life acting men cannot live off and sustain his life from words alone he must first transform nature to produce material goods for the ultimate purpose of consumption in order to then find the time to engage in communication or argumentation getting dressed cooking eating walking working observing planting harvesting building measuring counting cutting cleaning repairing driving drinking and so forth are all examples of silent action in all of these activities we follow methodically ordered practical recipes of how to use scarce physical means in order to reach an anticipated goal namely being dressed having cooked having eaten and so forth if asked and on reflection we could give an account of our actions in terms of meaningful words and sentences about their purposes about the means we used and about the recipes we followed and applied in using such means and other speakers could in principle understand this account because we are all united in a common language learned through a common practice in what Wittgenstein called language games but we are silent because we judge the success or the failure of our actions as independent of any communicative effort otherwise communication would have to be part of the recipe leading to success we stay silent because we deem the success of our actions as dependent solely on us as if we were the only person on earth as if we stood in a purely monological relationship to the world and were the sole judge of success and failure as already noted every instrumental or speechless activity involves the use of scarce physical means in reach and under our control with the purpose of transforming or rearranging the physical material world around us into another more highly valued anticipated future arrangement or configuration of his material surroundings in this we are always guided by some ideas or knowledge in the form of action recipes if we reach our goal our recipes are considered correct and the knowledge contained in them can be said to be true if he fails if he fail and do not reach our goal the recipes are obviously incorrect and our knowledge is considered false or insufficient interestingly in the wake of the writings of such prominent intellectual figures as Willard von Quine or Thomas Kuhn or Paul Feierabend the relativism and skepticism that is characteristic of much of the philosophy of the social sciences has also taken increasingly hold in the philosophy of the natural sciences even in the natural sciences these authors at least claim in their various ways there exists no rock solid foundation and no systematic and methodical progress and hence the possibility of any growth of knowledge must be considered doubtful or put in in doubt instead these authors make much of what they call the indeterminacy of translation of ontological relativity of the incommensurability of paradigms and of methodological anarchism in light of what has already been noted about the role of knowledge as a mental tool in the pursuit of successful instrumental action and the intentional transformation of nature into culture these relativistic views however popular or fashionable they may be today must be considered fundamentally mistaken indeed as i'm going to show in a moment they should strike one as being nothing short of absurd for one it would seem to be obvious that most and increasingly more of the world around us is not raw nature or nature given environment but is made up instead of manufactured goods or means we are surrounded by houses and streets farms factories tables chairs toasters telephones pipes wires cars boats napkins toilet paper and on and on almost never in our daily lives do we encounter raw nature what we encounter almost exclusively instead is a world of man-made culture of artificial objects designed for a definite purpose importantly but regularly overlooked by a relativistic philosophers of the natural sciences also the natural scientists particularly do not approach nature with his the natural scientists do not approach nature with his bare hands as it were but with the help of purposefully manufactured goods to make his nature observations he employs man-made surfaces planes rulers lines points angles circles curves clocks scales calculators microscopes telescopes burners x-ray machines thermometers and so forth without these instruments there would be no observation and without the proper functioning of these instruments his observations would not be scientific observations as well whenever the natural scientist conducts an experiment he must so as to isolate the effect of one variable on another hold other variables constant that is he must artificially design and arrange nature in order to only then generate his data and again these data are scientific data only if the experiment was designed and conducted properly indeed even plain or raw observations such as an eyewitness account for instance require that the observer is properly placed or situated vis-a-vis the observed object and hence his observations too are artificially or purposefully created generate regenerated data moreover empirically equally obvious most of our actions involving manufactured means and most of the natural scientists manufactured data turn out to be working and valid most of the products used in our daily lives work precisely as they are intended to do the house does give shelter the toaster toasts the telephone rings and transmits distance sounds the car drives on streets made for driving the chair allows us to sit down the table stands still and provides a plain surface the wire serves as a fence or transmits electricity the pipe holes air water oil or gas inside and so on and so on the recipes leading up to these products then must be obviously correct recipes what these recipes tell us must be true knowledge of nature and its way because it leads us to instrumental success and judged by the great and increasing number and variety of different artificially manufactured objects all around us we must obviously have discovered increasingly more correct recipes and accumulated increasingly more correct recipes and knowledge of nature so much for the skepticism about the achievements of the natural scientist i think this is just laughable this whole fashion of course it is also true that we sometimes fail in our instrumental actions the house the chair or the table collapse the telephone remains silent the wire breaks or the pipe leaks we fail to reach our purposes however even in the comparatively rare case when we do not reach our our goal we do not only immediately recognize that we failed we also ascribe this failure solely to us an authority or incorrectly applied recipe that is to our deficient knowledge or its incorrect application we do not blame nature nature as i have mentioned before is the way it is what distinguishes a working house chair table toaster car boat or whatever from a broken one is not nature or the laws of nature they hold true and apply to both functioning and broken implements equally but what distinguishes that is the presence of a human purpose that is the fact that only a standing house a standing chair or table or a toasting toaster and a swimming boat are judged by us a success whereas a broken one is considered to be a failure both success and failure then are due to us and to our correct or incorrect construction recipes all this applies also to the natural scientist his instruments his manufactured surfaces rulers circles clocks scales calculators thermometers and so forth to mostly work and function the way that they are supposed to do the ruler rules the circle circles the clock clocks and the calculator calculates likewise the natural scientists design and construction of controlled experiments is routinely successful the construction recipes for these instruments and artificial arrangements then must be correct and the knowledge embodied in them must be true it is also possible of course even if comparatively rare that the natural scientists instruments fail to do what they are intended to do the ruler the circle the clock the calculator the thermometer are broken one experiment has spun out of control however in this case the natural scientist too is not only to find out quickly that he failed he also knows that the failure lies with him and his faulty or incorrectly applied construction recipe the broken ruler the broken circle or calculator are just as much part of nature and behave in accordance with natural laws as are a properly functioning ruler circle or calculator it is only the natural scientists depending on the purpose of his research that makes a distinction between broken and properly functioning implements the ruler does not know as it were how to measure and the calculator does not know how to calculate that is to distinguish correct from incorrect measurements and calculations as the existence of broken rulers and broken calculators conclusively demonstrates it is the scientists who knows how to correctly measure and calculate and thus also to distinguish between faulty and functioning rulers and calculators similarly it is only the scientist and not the experiment itself that determines whether something was a successful replicable experiment or not moreover whenever the natural scientists instruments his ruler circle calculator and so forth fail or his experiment go awry he in particular also knows where the failure lies and what needs to be improved or repaired in the construction recipes of his tools or his experimental design to repeat truth and through seeking then our method and our means for the attainment of our ends that is of instrumental success we do not seek the truth on sich we seek the truth because it leads to and is a requirement of success the more true recipes we know the more actions we can successfully perform now come to the fourth point so this brings me back to argumentation as an activity sui generous although the recipes we follow in our silent action can be right or wrong we rarely if ever argue whether they are one or the other if they are right they lead to success and if they are wrong they lead to failure the decision is always easy the proof is in the pudding lengthy public trials a la galilei are not needed to decide in the field of manufacturing and engineering there is no need for a public debate about what recipe to follow in constructing a plain surface a ruler a triangle a circle a clock a brick a wall a house and so forth everyone can try and see the consequences for himself and because of this intimate connection of truth and success new and improved recipes once they become known are quickly without much or even any discussion frictionless if you will adopted by other actors as in their own interest of success a need for any lengthy discussion regarding the truth claims of various recipes that is for argumentation arises typically only in connection with conflict that is the first time we seriously discuss and debate matters of truth whether or not something is really true is in discussions concerning matters of justice of right and wrong you and I want to use one and the same good for incompatible purposes plain communication has failed to achieve coordination we clash but we can still argue in in any case it is impossible to argue consistently that is without falling into a contradiction that we cannot do anything about our apparent discoordination except to fight we can do something else as this very argument in claiming itself to be true manifestly and conclusively demonstrates we can describe the actions leading to our conflict verbally and we can identify two incompatible truth claims as a source of our conflict namely you are the proper owner of the good in question the knife the hair the house or whatever and hence your plan comes to execution versus I am the proper owner of these object and hence my plan comes to execution and is implemented by means of words then we can institute a trial conducted in a public language in which we present our rival truth claims with a purpose of finding a definitive answer of yes or no true or false right or wrong that is the true recipe that will restore coordination and prevent future conflict and we have discovered such an answer which explains why conflicts are comparatively rare in our lives and the overwhelming bulk of our actions whether communicative or silent runs peacefully even if sometimes disappointingly the recipe concerns the proper or the right or the true or the correct ownership exclusive control of scarce physical means it prescribes that proper ownership of means or property is to be established solely through first that is unopposed or conflict free appropriation and subsequent transformation of such means or else through a mutually agreed upon and because of that likewise unopposed transfer of property from one actor to another always in all of our actions and all of your actions employ only such means that you have first unopposed appropriated and produced or that you have received in a mutually agreed upon exchange from others who had unopposed possession of the same good of the good in question before you if you follow this recipe the world will still be full of surprises and disappointments but all conflicts can be avoided from the beginning of mankind until its very end that we indeed know the correct recipe of conflict avoidance is revealed in the fact that in our daily lives we routinely abstain from interfering with the use of means that are already under the visible or noticeable control of someone else and restrict our actions that exclusively to means that we already have control of however this knowledge is largely habituated and subconscious it is only upon reflection that is in speaking about actions and typically motivated by some rare event of conflict that we cannot only verbalize and formulate these rules or this rule but that we can recognize further so what is called transcendental argument that this very rule is already implied in or more correctly presupposed by argumentation that is that we follow this rule is what makes argumentation as an action sui generous at all possible and hence that its truth and validity as a recipe of engineering social coordination cannot be argumentatively denied without falling into a performative contradiction argumentation is a purposeful activity it is not aimless free-floating sounds it is speech acts aimed at coordination more specifically it is speech acts aimed at coordination by means of nothing but arguments but as an action argumentation also involves the employment of scarce physical means first and foremost among these means is our physical body both the proponent and the opponent of an argument must make use of their bodies to generate their arguments and engage in argumentation I must use my body and you must use yours and my proper ownership of my body and your proper ownership of your body cannot be argumentatively disputed without falling into contradiction for to argue back and forth and impute the arguments to you or to me as my arguments or as your arguments you and I must recognize each other's proper ownership of our distinct and separate physical bodies moreover both your bodies both our bodies are already naturally appropriated in that only I can control my body directly at will and that only you can control your body directly on the other hand I can control your body and you can control my body only indirectly by using our indirect or directly controlled bodies first this demonstrates the practical and logical or praxeological priority of direct appropriation above and before indirect appropriation to claim in an argument then that I am the proper owner of your body or you of you of my body involves a performative contradiction because I must presuppose that I am the proper owner of my body with which I produce my arguments and that you are the proper owner of your body which which with which you produce your arguments to impute an argument to me or to you the means employed to produce this argument must be mine or yours too and something else beside each person's proper ownership of his naturally appropriated physical body is presupposed by argumentation you and I have already acted silently or communicatively long before we ever engaged in argumentation prior to any argumentative encounter you and I you and I have with the help of our respective bodies and unopposed either by you or me already appropriated produced exchanged consumed or accumulated countless goods we could not be engaged in argumentation now without such prior activities and prior possessions they make our present argumentation at all possible accordingly we must admit and cannot deny without performative contradiction that prior and ultimately first possession is the proper route to ownership of scarce physical means in presenting our arguments back and forth you and I affirm that we are not only the proper owner of our naturally owned and directly controlled physical bodies with which we produce these arguments but also of all the things that you or I have previously prior to our argument and unopposed by you or me purposefully done or produced indeed to argue consistently to the contrary that property be established and determined by disputed later and ultimately last possession is literally impossible we would have no feet or ground on which to stand on and make our arguments neither you nor I can have ever acted silently and on our own or separately from one another side by side sometimes maybe disappointingly but in any case without conflict philosophical analysis and confirms and reinforces our intuition we have indeed a perfect and unfailing recipe of how to avoid conflict and thus systematically improve coordination and we have a perfect recipe to resolve each and every conflict should it still occur and with this recipe we have also a true and unfailing criterion of justice that is of deciding between just or true versus unjust or false ownership claims and determining how to restore justice if injustice has occurred not everything is open to dispute in an argument over conflicting ownership claims the validity of the priority principle of just acquisition itself cannot be argumentatively disputed for without it any argumentation between you and me would be impossible under dispute then can only be the application of this principle in particular instances and with respect to particular specific means there can be dispute about whether or not you or I have misapplied the principle in some instances and with regard to particular means we can disagree as to the true facts of the case who was where and when and who had possession of this or that at such and such a time or place and it can be at times tedious and time-consuming to establish and sort out these facts however just as a principle is beyond dispute so is the procedure was a recipe of sorting out the relevant facts and reaching a conclusion the procedure is logically dictated by the principle in every case of conflict brought to a public trial of arguments the presumption is always in favor of the current owner and mutates mutantes the burden of proof to the contrary is always on the opponent of some current state of affairs and of current possessions the opponent must demonstrate that he contrary to current appearance that he has a possessive claim on some specific good that is older and dated prior to the current owner's claim and hence that he has been dispossessed by the current owner if and only if the opponent can successfully demonstrate this um must the questionable possession be restored as property to him on the other hand if the opponent fails to make his case then not only does the possession remain as property with the current owner but the current owner in turn has acquired a possessive claim against his opponent for the current owner's body and time was misappropriated by the opponent during his failed and rejected argument he could have done other preferred things with his body time except accept argumentatively defend himself against his opponent now let me formulate a brief conclusion what i've tried to do here is to refute the naturalist or behaviorist who wants to explain men or the nature of men fully and exclusively in terms of the natural sciences and more specifically and importantly also to refute the skeptic who claims there is no such thing as a constant and unchanging human nature and immutable laws of men um who i have argued instead that we do know and that you cannot without performative contradiction deny knowing quite a few a priori truths about men once spelled out these truths appear almost self-evident and trivial but their recognition has important philosophical consequences we cannot deny that we can argue with each other in a common and public language that we can communicate with each other that we can coordinate our actions by means of words and can become better or more successful in our attempts at communicative coordination in learning how to speak better how to use our words more properly and clearly with that we can immediately dispose of all talks of solipsism of other egos or ultra subjectivism and all Hobbesian ruminations of a war of all against all as idle mental gymnastics or pseudo problems because whoever writes about these matters refutes himself by virtue of the fact that he writes and argues his case in a public language and thus shows himself to be a cultured and socialized person neither a solipsist nor a wolf further we cannot deny that we can act in silence alone and without any communicative purpose whatsoever because we have acted alone before we started to talk with each other and we can stop talking again that in doing so we employ directly and indirectly appropriated goods with the purpose of producing some more highly valued future goal or good that we follow recipes or how to do rules in the pursuit of this good whatever it may be that these recipes can lead to either success or failure and hence given their purpose are objectively true or false recipes and that we can learn from our successes or failures and methodically improve our recipes by means of successive experimentation that is by trying them out this refutes as I said before all of these fashionable talk about methodological anarchism in determinacy of translation incommensurability of paradigms and so forth and finally we cannot deny that we know the true recipe of how to avoid conflict and how to resolve it if it should still occur we can distinguish between unopposed prior possessions as argumentatively justifiable possessions or as property versus opposed letter positions as argumentatively unjustifiable dispositions or theft and that we know how to restore justice if injustice has occurred and this refutes all talk about cultural and ethical relativism of legal positivism and of might makes right and with this I will do what I talked about resort to silent action thank you very much