Problems in Philosophy

I have only been studying philosophy, formally and informally, for about a year. In this time I have come across a wealth of theories, and formulated a few of my own. This also happens to be the period in which I have become a libertarian. First I was a mixed economy-ist, and although I certainly had problems accepting the neo-classical and Keynesian economic theory I was taught, due to the lack of an alternative, I generally took the mixed economy as inevitable and desirable. I thought that only certain changes need be made, and that the best way to make these changes was to work within the system - moreover I naturally saw democracy as the best system - rule by the people. I had had my socialist period at the age of 14. Anyway, I moved to minarchy, arguing to myself and others that anarchy would lead to "might is right" and gangsters. My arguments were unsophisticated, but people accepted them, because these are the same unsophisticated, emotive arguments I often hear now when arguing for a free society.

So that's some boring personal history. I'll try not to waste any more time. What I meant to get onto were the issues I find interesting and perplexing now, or at least the issues I find pertinent to a discussion of political philosophy. In a nutshell, these are the unjustifiability of any metaphysical or ethical theories. I can imagine that anyone reading this is long past the stage of actually believing such a thing as an objective morality could exist, let alone that it does exist or can be found - but this epiphany came to me fairly recently. It has profound implications on almost everything, but while it seems to destroy all systems, I think it takes more of a toll on some than others. It'll become clear what I mean.

In fact, it is probably blatantly obvious what I am getting at, at least with regards to ethics. If no one ethical theory can be proved, then why force yours on anyone else? This statement is seductive, but I think wrong. For example, it presupposes the existence of individual persons. In the words of a socialist I was having a debate with: "Of course individuals exist, I am one. You are another. I don't need to have faith in that , Individuals exist." I asked him to prove it, and despite his lack of a reply, I know he can't. Even if induction were a valid form of argument, he wouldn't be able to do it, because he's not really inducting. He has only had experience of one individual (and who is to say that he isn't merely a brain in a vat having experiences and even thoughts plugged in?), and knows nothing of the existence of other people. Do people ("characters") in dreams exist? Many of them seem to "prove" their individuality by acting as one might do in certain situations. But this is a well-trod argument and I add nothing to it by going over it again.

What I want to get to is that we cannot prove that individuals exist, and without this proof, how can we argue that third parties shouldn't interfere with other third parties. We have absolutely no evidence that these parties exist as individuals, feel the pain you feel, have similar experiences in similar situations etc. Even language fails to actually relate any meaning, as all linguistic terms are involved in a process of infinite referral with other objectively meaningless experiences and objects (are these themselves merely experiences?). Despite there being a huge and insurmountable boundary between is and ought, I think that this shows how metaphysics has such an important influence over ethics. If humans cannot be proven to exist as individuals, then how can we argue for individual liberty? If non-aggression is not objectively held as good, then how can we argue for non-aggression, and the complete respect of individual sovereignty? This seems to me to be a near-intractable problem for those who favour the free society, despite the fact that it also invalidates all other political philosophies (and not just libertarianism).

So what can a libertarian do? Well I think there is some sort of answer from epistemology. What can I be said to know? Strictly, nothing. Analytic propositions add nothing to one's knowledge, and empirical propositions have no validity whatsoever with regards to truth. These are the two traditionally accepted forms of "knowledge", but I think there is a third, and I think this third category of "knowledge" (and by the way, knowledge is merely a word I am using to explain the concepts I am trying to get across - as I have said, strictly, neither the previous mentioned "types" or the following "type" counts as knowledge proper) is what we derive from axiomatic assumptions. That assumptions are regularly made is beyond doubt. That they add to our view of the world, and allow us to live our lives is also beyond doubt. So they seem to be useful (although again, their utility cannot be proven, as there is no objective standard of utility to "hold them up against"). What I'm trying to say is: given that we cannot ever know the essence of existence and the universe, the only thing we can actually resort to is our intuition. What does the universe seem like? What seems right? By all means we should use our reason and logic, but no knowledge can come from experience or reason alone, nor from the two "sources" combined.

I did originally write something out as a conclusion, but I didn't like it and it was deleted. I think you can make your own conclusion.

But I do think it's useful to consider this:
I take it as an article of faith that humans exist as individuals (1)
I take it as an article of faith that only I can make claims on my body and personality without my consent, and equally, no individual can make claims on any other person without their consent, i.e. that each individual owns their person (2)

I cannot prove these, but surely, a theory based on two/three individual articles of faith (the possible third being an assumption about the ethical viability of original appropriation of unowned goods) is more persuasive to the metaphorical "man in the street" than the multitude of partially-conflicting and potentially irrational assumptions needed to justify socialism and quasi-socialism.

 

So there it is, my first blogpost. It can be viewed as self-contradictory, given what I said about the subjectivity of language, and it is certainly somewhat rambling and unattractive. But in the end, I'm somewhat proud of finally putting pen to paper. Having said that, it has thrown me into a mini-existential crisis. Thanks if you read it, please point out any errors I have made.

Published Wed, Mar 18 2009 8:18 PM by Thedesolateone
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Comments

# John said on 18 March, 2009 04:05 PM

Intruiging.

And may I congratulate you on having finally popped your cherry, in regards to the art of bloggery.

Although your arguments are insightful and well articulated, I would urge you to consider hypothetical theories as relevant as those which are reality based; if I can postulate the individual why can't i postulate his freedom?

Thanks,

John

# 02lawsonja said on 18 March, 2009 05:47 PM

I think you are on to something with the end remarks.

# Thedesolateone said on 18 March, 2009 06:32 PM

Well, as well as getting myself confused, I was arguing that we can postulate his freedom (my premise #2), but that without proving his existence as an individual, arguing for his freedom is ridiculous.

Thanks for the comment.

# Junker said on 20 March, 2009 05:47 PM

'Tis good that you write, Thedesolateone, if only for you to consider what you've written. Then, to see what comes back from others-- a part of the wheel of existence, real or assumed.

# jimmy said on 20 March, 2009 09:20 PM

I can see your reasoning with reagrds to doubting the existence of individuals etc. but I don't think there is any real gain in wandering down that path. As you say, we can only know how things seem and so a logical starting point, which you hint at, is to make some basic assumptions based on just that, such as 'yes there is a world around us' and 'yes we exist as individuals' etc.

This is more or less where Mises began as well. Mises starts Human Action with a bit of introspection - asking some questions about what it means to be human (as opposed to a mechanical automata) and essentially the science of Economics, for Mises, grows from there through the use of praxeological reasoning based on those few assumptions (humans act, they act to satisfy needs in the context of scarce resources that can be used to satisfy those needs etc.).

However to leap from there to assuming that "I can make claims on my body and personality without my consent, and equally, no individual can make claims on any other person without their consent, i.e. that each individual owns their person" is another thing entirely.

The "assumptions" of Mises are more or less just statements of fact... they are a description of what appears to be human nature, and indeed nobody seems to deny the basic premises of Mises' Human Action, which would tend to indicate that Mises was not alone in perceiving human nature to be this way... it is the common experience for all humans and hence his argument is valid for all humans who would accept these premises (everybody I ever met, for example).

Your assumption however (your second one), is a statement of the kind that you started out the blog post attacking - i.e. a statement of objective morality. There is no reason why anyone should accept this statement as true unless they share your objectives. For, implicit in your second statement are various logical conclusions that must necessarily follow and which will ultimately lead to the necessity for a liberterian minimalist state... which is fine, providing that's what you wanted in the first place.

A socialist can easily start with other "intuitive" assumptions of their own to justify their final conclusions - no doubt statements that focus more on equality and social responsibility than on the sovereignty of the individual.

Such arbitrary selection of premises is destined to fail from the outset, since each individual or group of individuals will simply choose the "basic premises" (i.e. moral framework) that "seem most intuitive" to them and which will ultimately lead, after a bit of surpurfluous pretend-logic, to the conclusions that they wanted to reach in the first place. None of the parties will agree and the argument will be settled, as always, by violence...

I don't think all is lost from the perspective of the liberterian. However, you are going to have to start with more fundamental premises (such as those of Mises) and reason your way from there to persuading the socialist that it is in HIS interests to adopt liberterian policies - to abstain from using violence to infringe upon your individual sovereignty. An example of an argument of this kind is the argument against theft - clearly it is in the short term interests of the individual theif to steal but most people can be reasoned with on this point and persuaded not to steal. In the long term, if everyone steals, everyone loses (since nobody is doing any producing - we'd basically regress to fruit picking monkeys). A reasoned argument for the organized use of violence (e.g. police) to try to prevent theft is not too difficult to formulate then (it takes a little bit of mental tap dancing, but could probably be done in 10 or 15 pages of fairly solid reasoning).  

The argument for liberterianism is much more complicated than the argument against theft though... and indeed I'm not entirely sure it's possible without making some subjective assumptions. For example, you might start with the subjective goal of wanting to bring about "an optimal system that maximized the satisfaction of people's needs, as an aggregate". With such a goal in mind you could easily make a case for liberteriansim from start to finish. But a socialist who starts instead with the goal of "aiming to achive the greatest equality in the distribution of wealth" will not accept such an argument because he will not accept your fundamental "should" (i.e. that we SHOULD aim to maximize the satisfaction of human wants - the socialist is not interested in maximizing satisfaction... he or she thinks we SHOULD be striving for a solution that maximizes equality rather than wealth - even if the result is sub-optimal in the eyes of the capitalist or the libertarian).

# Evan said on 22 March, 2009 07:20 PM

I think it is wise to consider the problem of skepticism at some point in ones life, however most people move past it fairly quickly (others don't, perhaps they find it aesthetically pleasing). The simple skeptical argument posits that we cannot know anything about the external world because we perceive it through our senses which are fallible/deceivable. But, eventually you should accept that there are some premises to any given piece of knowledge which cannot be proven from other premises. You can take premises past skepticism about the external world to skepticism about phenomenology. Forget "How do I know my senses don't deceive me?", ask "How do I know I am really thinking what I seem to be thinking?". This is a part of being human and having imperfect knowledge to be uncertain about things. The roots of skepticism come from ancient philosophers who wanted truths about the external world to be just as certain as mathematical formulas (true by definition). The problem is in the real world there are no definitions to run on. In the real world you cannot operate from simple hypotheses. Instead of asking the non-skeptic how they can claim to know things without knowing their premises, try asking (as GE Moore did) how the skeptic can claim that we have no knowledge.

Once you decide how to move past skepticism, then you can decide what political philosophy you prefer. Even if you are skeptical about knowledge you can be non-skeptical about justification and act "as if" there are really things in the external world. The true existence/non-existence of individuals has no bearing on the way that you would order things that "

"seem" to be individuals in a society. In that sense, I see no problem with solipsism if you are willing to act as if other individuals exist. I think, seeing as you are obviously interested in politics, that you may find yourself incapable of acting as if nobody else exists.

Don't let skepticism get the way of what you want to believe. A true skeptic only has belief to go on anyway.

# Thedesolateone said on 23 March, 2009 06:16 AM

Thanks for the comments.

@Both

I am not a skeptic. I believe in the external world, I generally use induction and intuition in my daily life etc. In fact, why would I have written this blog post if I was genuinely skeptical of your existence? I merely wrote this post as a foundation for the outgrowth of a "system". Seeing as no system can have any basis that is universally acceptable or provable through logic, I was trying to put across the idea that all systems are equally unjustifiable.

I have to go away for a sec now, but I will reply to the comments when I get back.

# Thedesolateone said on 23 March, 2009 07:53 AM

@jimmy

"The "assumptions" of Mises are more or less just statements of fact... they are a description of what appears to be human nature"

(1) If they were purely statements of fact, then how could they imply ought?

(2) Why is Mises' subjective interpretation of "human nature" to be taken as law?

(3) If they describe human nature, then why do so many individuals routinely act out of line with these "facts"?

I thank you for your reply, but you've committed a fairly resounding error of reasoning:

Utilitarianism - it is based on fundamentally unsound premises, which, even if we accepted them, would not allow us to use it in any practical situation (e.g. thieving does not make society demonstrably worse off; it may be your opinion that fruit-picking is worse than developed quasi-capitalistic interaction but you sure as hell have given no evidence that it is is).

# Thedesolateone said on 23 March, 2009 07:55 AM

Finally, I'd like to point out to jimmy that the whole point of my post was to show that our premises are no more objectively justifiable than those of a socialist (although socialism often has inner contradictions). And, as no is implies ought, there is nothing of our experience which implies any ethical system.

Thus, we must look to other means to create a system of metaphysics and ethics. I am interested as to whether any use could be made out of intuition.

# Andy said on 24 March, 2009 02:50 PM

I understand where you are coming from.  It seems that we must find an acceptable epistemology before we can make any meaningful ethical or metaphysical claims.  You write that metaphysical and ethical theories are unjustifiable, and by this I assume that you mean we cannot justifiably hold metaphysical or ethical beliefs.  I am not sure that this thesis is entirely correct.

It seems that by making this assertion you are holding a metaphysical belief, namely that no true metaphysical claims exist other than 'All metaphysical claims are unjustifiable'.  And this, of course, begs the question.  So at the very least, the skeptic must find justification for this claim before any meaningful discourse can take place.  It seems to me that the skeptic cannot avoid this problem by claiming that philosophical discourse is meaningless because in doing so he is engaging in philosophical discourse.  I heard somewhere that Aristotle may have pointed this out long ago in one of his lost works.  So, on to justification...

I would hate for this conversation to get bogged down in different theories of epistemic justification, but it seems that any theory of justification which holds that discourse is meaningful or intelligible all share a common characteristic.  They must all agree that the principles of inference are truth-preserving (or help us to arrive at the truth).  If one of us were to write an article arguing for any particular thesis, we (hopefully) explain our conclusions by showing the logical connections from our assumptions.  Now those assumptions may be false, and if our form is valid then the only way for someone to show that a valid argument is false is to prove the assumptions false.  But no matter what our theoretical position is, we all take for granted that certain logical rules preserve truth.  If we try to step outside of this framework and argue for or against the validity of basic logical rules, how do we get back in?  We must use the principles of inference; we must use those same basic logical rules.  How can we do so otherwise?  Any other method of reasoning, if it can even be called reasoning, would seem to be unintelligible.

This is basically the argument that C. S. Lewis gives against philosophical naturalism and materialism.  I do not know what your position is on these issues, but it seems that the skeptical journey you and many others have taken is due to the problems philosophical naturalism/materialism pose.  If I may, I would suggest C. S. Lewis's book Miracles (mainly ch. 3) and Victor Reppert's book C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea as a starting point in understanding the argument from reason and its consequences in epistemology.  I do not think that theism is required in order to accept the epistemic foundations they offer.  

# Evan said on 28 March, 2009 06:20 PM

> Seeing as no system can have any basis that is universally acceptable or provable through logic, I was trying to put across the idea that all systems are equally unjustifiable.

It seems to me that when you hold the opinion that "all systems are equally unjustifiable", you do so in only the broadest sense. I too am skeptical about objective morality, but the method of evaluating political/economic systems does not have to be objective (though many people try to do this). The answer is to examine a system teleologically (with a view to the ends it claims to satisfy).

For example, people advocate for the free market not because it is intrinsically good, but because it creates the most prosperity for the most people (and the most deserving people). Many advocates of socialism make a similar claim (that by spreading the wealth around, the average person will be much better off), but that claim ends up failing in the face of many local and historical evidence to the contrary, such as millions of people starving to death due to poor resource allocation.

So, the answer is not to be concerned with objective moral truth, but the subjective evaluation of political systems based on fundamental truths about economics.

# Thedesolateone said on 30 March, 2009 07:54 AM

@Evan

How does one judge prosperity? The action axiom is based on an un-provable premise. Thus, we cannot say for certain that the free market leads to overall "maximum" prosperity. Indeed, as Rothbard showed there is no way to measure prosperity anyway, and thus there is no way one can say that socialism is any better or worse than a free society in terms of prosperity. You may say that to you, the free market looks to provide higher levels of prosperity than any socialist system - but what if all the other individuals in the world (assuming their existence, of course) think that socialism brings the highest prosperity (meaning: they know the inevitable failures of socialism, its problems with calculation and incentives and so on, and yet think this is the most prosperous situation humanity can achieve)? Which of these is correct? As we know, there is no way of deciding, even with fixed moral rules - it is an entirely amoral issue (for this I am looking at the prosperity, and ignoring the definite moral issues, given libertarian ethics, of socialist plunder).

I hope that is a clear answer.

# Thedesolateone said on 30 March, 2009 08:03 AM

@Andy

(1) You're right that the claim "all metaphysical claims are unjustifiable" is self-refuting; if it is justifiable, then it is false, if it isn't justifiable, then it is false. However, perhaps if it were changed to: "only the metaphysical claim that no other metaphysical claims are justifiable is justifiable", then justified it, I would be more coherent. That I think I cannot do, as there will always be other routes to knowledge I had not previously considered.

(2) Show me how discourse is intelligible? (Of course, by engaging in it, perhaps I am contradicting myself, as I clearly do take it on faith that discourse is intelligible.)

(3) I understand what you're saying about logic/meta-logic, but I'm not sure how that fits in. Sorry for being thick, would you be able to explain?

(4) I will look into beg/borrowing/stealing/buying those books, thanks.