 Thank you. You are listening to truth over comfort podcast with Carlos Morales and Taryn Harris brought to you by the Blue Ridge Liberty Project Hey, everyone, this is Carlos Morales of truth over comfort. We can be found a truth over comfort net Sorry that we haven't had a new update recently I'm in the process of moving and I'm also in the process of getting some better mics So the sound might not be so great right now what I'm gonna be doing right now is a Reading of an article by a certificate seller. It's called argumentation ethics and liberty a concise guide Presently I'm working on a video that will be breaking down argumentation ethics, you know self ownership non-aggression principle and private property in 120 seconds and it turns out making something that concise can be a little bit of work So look out for that soon So the article starts Professor Hans Hermann Hoppe burst onto the austral libertarian scene in the late 1980s When he moved to the United States to study under and work with his mentor Murray Rothbard Since his arrival Professor Hoppe has produced a steady stream of pioneering contributions to economic and libertarian theory a Key contribution of Professor Hoppe is his provocative argumentation ethics defense of libertarian rights In setting the stage Hoppe first observes that the standard natural rights argument is lacking This is from Hoppe in the economics and ethics of private property It has been a common quarrel with the natural rights position Even on the part of sympathetic readers that the concept of human nature is far too diffuse and varied to provide a detriment set of contents of natural law Furthermore, its description of rationality is equally ambiguous and that it does not seem to distinguish between the role of reason and establishing empirical laws of nature on the one hand and normative laws of human conduct on the other Hoppe solution is to focus on the nature of argumentation instead of action in general Again, Hoppe states the praxeological approach solves this problem by recognizing that it is not the wider concept of human nature but the narrow one of propositional exchanges and argumentation which must serve as The starting point in deriving an ethic here He draws on the work of his PhD advisor the famous European philosopher Jürgen Habermas and fellow German philosopher Karl Otto Appell who had developed the theory of discourse ethics or argumentation ethics as Hoppe explains this basic approach Any true claim the claim connected with any proposition that is true objective or valid all the terms used synonymously here is and must be raised and settled in the course of an argumentation since it cannot be disputed That this is so as one cannot communicate and argue that one cannot communicate and argue and since it must be assumed That everyone knows what it means to claim something to be true One cannot deny this statement without claiming its negation to be true This very fact has been aptly called the a priori of communication argumentation. That is There are certain norms presupposed by the very activity of arguing a Palin and Habermas go on to argue that the ethics of presupposed as Legitimate by discourse as such justify the standard set of soft socialist policies But Hoppe or recognizing the value of the basic approach rejected their application of this theory and socialist conclusions Instead Hoppe took what was valuable in the April Habermas approach and melded it with Mesean Rothbardian insight to provide a praxeological discourse ethics twist on the standard natural law defensive rights in essence Hoppe's view is that argumentation or discourse is by its very nature a conflict-free way of interacting Which requires individual control scarce resources in genuine discourse the parties try to persuade each other by the force of their Argument not by actual force argumentation is a conflict-free way of interacting not in the sense that there is always Agreement on the things said but in the sense that as long as argumentation is in Progress it is always possible to agree at least on the fact that there is disagreement But the validity of what has been said And this is to say nothing else that a mutual recognition of each person's exclusive control over his own body must be Presupposed as long as there's argumentation Note again that it is impossible to deny this and claim this denial to be true without implicitly having to admit it's true Thus self ownership is presupposed by argumentation Hoppe then shows that argumentation also presupposed the right to own homestead its scarce resources as well the basic idea here is that the body is the Prototype of a scarce good for the use of which property rights i.e. rights of exclusive ownership Somehow have to be established in order to avoid clashes The compatibility of this principle with that of non-aggression can be demonstrated by the means of argumentum a contraria First it should be noted that if no one had the right to acquire and control anything except his own body Then we would all cease to exist in the and the problem of the justification of normative statements Simply would not exist The existence of this problem is only possible because we are alive and our existence is due to the fact that we do not indeed cannot Accept the norm outlawing property in other scarce goods Next and in addition to that of one's physical body hence the right to acquire such goods must be assumed to exist Hoppe then goes on to show following Rothbardian logic that the only ownership rule that is compatible with self ownership and the presuppositions of discourse is the Lockian original appropriation rule in His book review of man economy and liberty essays in honor of Murray and Rothbard hoppa pithley summarizes argumentation ethics approach as follows By engaging in discussion about welfare criteria that may or may not end up in agreement And instead result in a mirror agreement on the fact of continuing disagreements as in any intellectual enterprise An actor invariably demonstrates a specific preference for the first use first own rule of property acquisition as his ultimate welfare criterion Without it. No one could independently act and say anything at any time and no one else could act in Independently at the same time and agree or disagree independently with whatever had been initially said or proposed In it is the recognition of the homesteading principle which would make intellectual pursuits i.e. the independent evaluation of propositions and truth claims possible And by virtue of engaging such pursuits i.e by virtue of being an intellectual one demonstrates the validity of the homesteading principle As the ultimate rational welfare criterion hoppa Also gives credit to rothbard for recognizing in a brief passage the insights that hoppa later built on more systemically This defense of private property is essentially also rothbard's In spite of its formal allegiance to the natural rights tradition rothbard And what i consider as most crucial argument and defense of private property ethic not only chooses essentially the same starting point Argumentation but also gives a justification by means of the a priori reasoning almost identical to the one just developed To prove the point i can do no better than simply quote him Now any person participating in any sort of discussion including one on valleys is by virtue of so participating alive and affirming life For if he were really opposed alive, he would have no business continuing to be alive Hence the supposed opponent of life is really affirming it in the very process of discussion And hence the preservation and furtherance of one's life takes on the statue of an Incontestable axiom not surprisingly when hoppa's argumentation ethics appeared in the late 1980s E.g. in the libertarian supposium and other publications rothbard was excited by this new approach And a dazzling breakthrough for political philosophy in general and for libertarianism in particular He has managed to transcend the famous izzat fact valued economy that has plagued philosophy since the days of these Scholastics and that had brought modern libertarianism into a tiresome deadlock Not only that Hans hoppa has managed to establish the case for a narco capitalist locking rights in an Unpredictably hardcore manner One that makes my own natural law natural rights position seem almost wimpy in comparison Tentalizingly rothbard concludes this piece a future research program for hoppa and other libertarian philosophers would be a To see how far axiomatics can be extended into other spheres of ethics or b to see if and how This axiomatic could be integrated into the standard natural law approach These questions provide fascinating philosophical opportunities hoppa has lifted the american movement out of decades of steroid debate and deadlock And provided us a route for future development of the libertarian discipline since the advent of hoppa's breakthrough theory of right It has continued to gain attention and adherence as well as controversy I based my own related estoppel theory of libertarian rights on hoppa's work starting 1991 And ended up writing a detailed survey of related theories in new rationalist directions libertarian rights theory In the meantime other work has built on hoppa's monumental rights theory So much so that i've been tempted to collect material for an argumentation ethics reader And in the truth or over comfort net site, you'll be able to find all those Different sources for that particular project Also, if you all want to learn more about estoppel and libertarian ethics in general there is a libertarian ethics episode in which I break it down and I believe Somewhere in the early 20s. So definitely check that out. You can find on the truth over comfort net page Thank you for listening. Thank you stevan cancella for writing this great article. I will be back pretty soon. Bye. Bye