Political Theory

Re: A Priorism and Politics

David B — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 04:07:46 GMT

By the way, while I think there may be other reasons, than the ones set forth here, here's a good link to a very serious and thorough criticism.

http://libertarian-left.blogspot.com/2008/09/overview-of-critique-of-molyneuxs.html

This criticism is from a philosophy student, from years ago. At a minimum it makes some obvious points which I was struggling to articulate on my first pass.

My favorite was his pointing out an issue with the way he was mixing up opposite and negation and acting as if they were the same thing.

Negation is to not do something, but opposite, is to truly do the opposite.

The opposite of stealing 100$ is to give 100$, not to not steal. Not stealing is a negation.

Re: A Priorism and Politics

David B — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 22:14:33 GMT

Stephen Adkins:

Thanks. I'd be interested to hear your response to his "two guys in a room" refrain. So, a certain behavior cannot be considered UPB unless it is universally preferable, and we can test this by considering just two guys in a room. If we want to see if rape is in accordance with UPB, we make it a moral good that "man should rape". However, we see that each individual is in a quandary since, by definition, rape is not consensual (as soon as there is consent it is just sex), and to resist morality is to be immoral, so each of the men in this room is simultaneously being moral and immoral. Therefore, we see that rape is not UPB, or, said another way, not raping is UPB.

I've been reading through and thinking about these very issues. There's something really, really tempting and yet I suspect insidious and inaccurate about the way he constructs his argument. In particular he says that UPB for it to be UPB must be the equivalent of a law of gravity.

That is my issue, he does the same thing about argumentation, and a couple of other things. Like that fact that I argue, means that I accept as a premise that Argumentation is a Universally Preferable Behavior. But also that it implies we assume that there is such a thing as objective truth. Now I'm not sure that's true that we assume that there's an objective truth.

Let me give an example, and it's based on his example. We assume that the earth is flat, as an implicit observation from experience. It's empirically true. And yet we found that this flatness is an illusion from context.

His entire argument feels like an attempt to break out of the box, so to speak, as opposed to what Mises did was accept the box, and explain the behavior of the box. (Praxeological Epistemology)

For example, he says again as a given that the senses give us objective information about reality... And yet we have tons of evidence, that actually the brain fools itself over and over again as a successful convenience. There are interpretation mechanisms in the brain that make inferences and do so all the time, based on some hardwired mechanisms that were sufficiently successful that they thrived and survived (evolutionarily) over and above other hardwiring which failed. But that doesn't mean the hardwired interpretation mechanisms reflect an objective reality, as much as successfully model objective reality. I think that's substatially different. And I'm concerned that this blurring that he's doing is acting like elite level philosophy brought down to the common man, without being good philosophy.

I'll continue to look at it.

For example if eating to survive is universally preferable, shouldn't we be eating all the time? Not eating at any point in time would be considered universally not preferable? That type of inversion isn't actually a correct inversion. This is a bait and switch. The fact that we must maintain a certain level of nutrients in the body in order to remain alive is true. But there is no Universally Preferable Behavior that describes the optimal level of nutrition for every human body. Because of multiple objective factors, and multiple subjective factors. He's trying to turn complex issues into simple issues when they aren't. His expansion of NAP for example, and then using his UPB to collapse seven possible axioms down to 3, is one of those issues where I think he's trying to hard to break out of the box.

I'm not going to disagree that not being raped is preferable to me. But the quandary of rape, is if someone wants to be raped... Hmm... there's a logical disconnect, in terms of the logic, and yet I've known women who had rape fantasies, and engaged in some troubling sexual activity.

Re: A Priorism and Politics

Stephen Adkins — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 21:24:51 GMT

Thanks. I'd be interested to hear your response to his "two guys in a room" refrain. So, a certain behavior cannot be considered UPB unless it is universally preferable, and we can test this by considering just two guys in a room. If we want to see if rape is in accordance with UPB, we make it a moral good that "man should rape". However, we see that each individual is in a quandary since, by definition, rape is not consensual (as soon as there is consent it is just sex), and to resist morality is to be immoral, so each of the men in this room is simultaneously being moral and immoral. Therefore, we see that rape is not UPB, or, said another way, not raping is UPB.

Re: A Priorism and Politics

David B — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 13:35:07 GMT

Personally, I think his breakthrough is more one generated by force of personality than it is by a logical breakthrough in his Ethics. He also hit on a hotbutton topic for him personally that happens to have an audience in young people. Namely the terroristic nature of some of the doctrines of religion and the damaging effects of many of the punishment norms that parents use in family units. If it was 20 years ago, I'd call him a secular cult leader, and this is from reading through the forums and interacting with some of the members. Some of the members display a level of hero-worship in some of their responses that would concern me if I saw my child falling into it.

I didn't get far enough with his philosophical discussion, he sells his book, and I wasn't in favor of buying something I had rejected as impossible previously. The way I have always viewed it is as I stated before, and is I believe informed by an understanding of Praxeology.

He argues for a Universally Preferable Behavior. Meaning that there are some ethical propositions which are always good for all people in all places. I don't understand how he argues around the finer points.

My view on the whole issue is that Ethics that look for an objective truth or this solution to the Is Ought Problem are observing an evolutionary selection mechanism in the technical implementation level, and trying to make it a law (theory level) instead of simply accepting localized superiority in the competition with competing ethical values which are less fit.

To put it in more pragmatic terms, lying is generally viewed as BAD, because of a very simple logical explanation. If I don't trust you, you are a risk I must account for in my plans. If I can count on your information as reliable, then I trust you and choose to work with you more often. You reduce my risks.

Lying will still be preferable in many circumstances. Never tell your wife that a dress makes her ass look fat.... If you like her ass that way in those jeans let her know, if it's becuse there's a certain fatness (or phatness) to it, that you like, then how you give that information to her is up to you. Some information is harmful to others and not necessary to disclose. So, the fitness of dishonesty will generally be low, but it will not always be less fit. This is IMO bounded to the field of Ethics, and the choice of means and ends is (not ought to be, but IS) up to the human actor who uses it.

Now what I did take away from Objectivism is the preeminence of reality. She, and Molyneux, correctly identify that one cannot arbitrarily choose which behaviors to engage in, the social implications of what you choose does alter the perception of others in your social circle. It does feedback to you within the context of those relationships. But mistaking that phenomena as some means of producing Universallly True Ethical Propositions is, IMO a mistake. It attempts to bridge the Epistemological and Praxeological box from within which we act, and that is a trap from which man CANNOT escape.

Dammit, I started to read his argument for Universally Preferable Behavior... I'll come back to this later and give you a more direct response.

Re: A Priorism and Politics

David B — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 22:22:41 GMT

Neodoxy:

"Yay... I reached top 500 status... Finally, I've been posting like mad to get there. I'd like to thank my mom and dad for their love of knowledge and imparting that to me, for encouraging me to think and learn, for embracing and encouraging my natural curiousity."

I'm sure that they're proud *sends complementary top 500 poster flowers* (if you get up to top 100 you get a free keychain :D). I'm trying to get up to top 50 but I have hella ways to go.

As for how you define ethics, are you saying that it's prescriptive in the sense of ascribing means towards certain ends? For instance eating poison is a bad way to stay healthy, so if you want to be healthy you should not ingest poison?

The flowers are lovely, thank you.

As to the question about ethics. Ethics as prescriptive in this case would NOT tell us how to achieve goals we desire. The subject of ethics as described historically is "What is the Good?" It getd divided into Meta-Ethics questions and Ethics questions. Meta-Ethics asks what does it mean to be good. Ethics asks is this Good. or some such.

My point is that without purposeful action, there is no question of good or bad. So while Mises points out rightly that knowledge has no basis for existing outside of the context of action and thus any valid epistemology must account for the role of action in its theory, so I would add that without action there is no question what is the good? What does it mean to be Good? and thus any valid study of Ethics must account for action.

Traditionally Ethics and Politics tend to bleed into each other. In my personal intellectual journey, I came to the point where I viewed both Ethics and Politics as normative. Now I categorically reject a Universal Good, due to a reduction issue which leads to an authority issue. I can't know what the right ends are for you. Science can't tell us what the right ends are. All attempts to do so result in a declarative statement that asks each individual to either accept it as an End or reject it as an End. I can't make you pick that end. That'a liberty objection. I can't control your mind, and I can't control your actions.

So, indirect influence is the only way. That's the reduction issue. Secondly the authority issue, why is your End right and my end wrong in a universal way? Why does my end supercede your end? I can't make an is argument that's true for all times an all places. This leads us to the social realm, where we have to stand together in groups wherein we align our ends, in order to pursue the cooperative behaviors which make life easier (in terms of overcoming the natural resistance that reality provides to the attainment of ends).

So, by my eye, there is a clear distinction between the individuals choosing of final ends or "the Good for Me", and a socially constructed/emergent final Ends that bind groups together. The way in which we cooperate and self-organize seems to me to be predicated on solving the Means/Ends mismatch in social groups. Think of it as impedance matching. That become the realm of Politics. The process of producing for oneself ultimate ends is the field of Ethics, the process of determining what is the Good is bounded to individual action.

Bam, I drop a line in the sand between the two normative disciplines Ethics bounded to the individual in isolation, and Political bounded to the social interaction. Now in saying this I don't mean that a man's Ethical system doesn't consider how he interacts with society or the consequences of his choices within a greater social context. I simply mean, that he determines for himself what he determines to be "The Good". If you value "lying", make your case, and good luck with that, I'll probably disagree.

Again, just to be even more clear, within a group there may be discussion of different ethical standards of the individuals. We may discuss and argue about the ends we wish to achieve within our cooperative endeavor, we may also argue about the means we wish to use, and the ethical implications that each of us use internally to justify such behaviors and such ends. These discussions may lead us into conflict.

Social norms play a role in both the internal ethics of the men who hold them and arise out of the internal ethical systems of the members of he social group. So, a specific political technology will arise out of the internal ethics of it's members as an emergent phenomena.

By breaking these various fields apart from each other and by dividing them into science and technology, my hope is to help drive forward the effecitveness of the technological solutions we put forward, and to better explain how these systems interact. Modern sociology is hopeless IMO, because it's mired in statistical questions, which don't really tell us anything because we don't have good science that explains the underlying phenomena that produces these macro-level statistical variations.

I like to think of it like germ theory. Before the theory of germs a scientist collecting data of people with battlefield injuries might have noticed that the use of clean water and soap had a strong correlation with reduced levels of wound infection. But he wouldn't know why. He would have produced a graph that showed that x% of wounds became infected when fresh water wasn't used to clean the wound, and x% of wounds became infected when water wasn't used to clean the wound. The germ theory proposed a solution to this observation. The statistics were neat, but didn't explain WHY. The accuracy of the germ theory lead to additional technological solutions that took advantage the logical conclusions of a germ theory of infections and disease.

Well, modern sociology, economics (not austrian) and politics are woefully ignorant of the implications of praxeology. But when I read the Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, for the first time I realized, that our Philosophy suffers too, because we hadn't applied the same logical insights into the fields of philosophy also.

Re: A Priorism and Politics

David B — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 21:38:13 GMT

gotlucky:

I think this is the main issue. Given that there are disputes, we can determine certain things. Clayton put it together nicely in his thread A Praxeological Account of Law.

But I think my original problem was with the idea that we can know without experience that there will be disputes. Even with scarcity, it seems like something we have to experience. Like I said, some people do sacrifice their lives for others. Some people don't. While we can imagine both possibilities, are they something we can know independantly of experience?

Ok, here's the point. It isn't whether or not we can know that disputes will occur, by seeing them in our experience. If we didn't see disputes we would have trouble identifying them. My point is the conditions for conflict exist in the praxeological a priori cateories of human action. Therefore, conflict is an a priori category. No one described and elucidated catallactics (indirect exchange) and all of it's a priori categories without looking at existing indirect exchange in the world with which the person already had experience. It's that the analysis by looking doesn't add any knowledge that isn't already present in the a priori categories deduced from human action and it's categories. It's a priori, because looking at the phenomena in reality can't introduce logical categories and knowledge that isn't already present, and more importantly can't be falsified through experimentation. That's why it's called "a priori knowledge". A priori knowledge doesn't depend on experience for it's truth value.

gotlucky:

I used the example of pigs flying as well. I can imagine a father sacrificing his life for his child, and I can imagine him not doing it. I can imagine pigs flying, and I can imagine pigs not flying. It seems to me, at least at first glance, that these are things that we have to experience in order to know.

A priori is knowledge is something other than imagining a technological solution. Gold as a medium exchange is a technological solution implemented according to the rules of catallactics, a flying pig is a technological solution implemented (or not) by the underlying biological, chemical, and physical laws of the universe. So, stable paper money would be the flying pig. Not paper money, stable fiat money :). I can know what it would take to create a flying pig from the laws of physics, biology, and chemistry. I can know what it takes to create a stable money from the laws of catallactics.

gotlucky:

They seem to be different than "bachelors are unmarried men". That is something that is independant of experience. Same with human action. You do not observe human action in order to know it. It is independant of it. It's essentially a description of purposeful choice versus instinctual or reflexive behavior. It's a definition. It separates the categories of behavior.

Actually I think this misstates Mises. Purposeful action is an ultimate given, we know it from experience. He makes the argument that it is illogical and impossible to prove otherwise because any attempt to do so would require his category of human action as he defined it. I'm not sure if he actually states that the ultimate given of human action itself is a priori, of if it's only all of the deductions that come from it. But be that as it may, I stand by my statement of an a priori category of conflict (I'll back off of the term dispute). We have to remember that givens may or may not apply to reality itself. I thought it was that logic gives us knowledge that is deduced from the assumptions, that this deduced knowledge was a priori. I'm not sure if a priori also applied to the assumptions,... hmm... this part confuses me a little. I've heard him insist to the reader, that reflection does not prove his category to be true, but that reflection should make it obvious to the reader that it is in fact so, and that the user cannot mentally comprehend or think about a human existence that did not have human action.

gotlucky:

Maybe we could say that there is voluntary and socially cooperative behavior, and there is coercive and socially adversarial behavior. Disputes fall into the category of socially adversarial behavior until they are resolved and cease to be disputes. Perhaps in this way we could say that the existence of disputes is a priori?

Let me know what you think.

So, one of the objections I have is that this metaphysical incompatibility between two different plans in two different minds, may not result in an action perceived socially. In other words, one or the other parties may see the incompatibility before the other and adjust the plan mentally. This is what we've called dispute avoidance. Does this constitute a technological solution to the problem? Do we discard this instance as irrelevant for these purposes?

I have reasons not to, mainly because I think it's beneficial to the society to avoid disputes where possible. One of the influences of social norms and laws would be to prevent such a conflict from requiring social actions (negotiation or arbitration) to resolve the incompatibility. This feedback effect of social norms and laws is I believe an important phenomena that needs to be acknowledged, accounted for, and analyzed in a proper praxeological analysis of Political Technology.

The reason we seek to resolve disputes through whatever means we use, is what I like to think of as the merge problem. We "merge" files in software development when you have two different developers work on the same file and one set of changes appear in the central repository before the other set of changes. Conflicts in this case occur when we both attempt to change the same lines of code in the same file.

Now prior to us developing tools that merged the differences, we had technology that obtained a lock on the file, and unless you'd reserved the file in it's current state and locked others out of accessing it, you could not change the file. More recently we realized that you could to optimistic merges. If we assume that the majority of changes don't occur in a conflicting manner you merge the changes through pattern recognition, you compare the incoming version to the verision it came form, and bring those modifications into the newer file. This has a negative side effect when changes occur to the same portions of the code. It requires conflict resolution.

Reality already does this for us in an automated way. Reality doesn't have a conflict issue. If our plans are incompatible and we "merge" them in reality, we get the same kind of result we get in our software dev systems. I result which doesn't fit the goals of either developer (or actor).

In reality, the merge usually results in consequences that are painful and expensive. Meaning they result in real conditions, that we now need to figure out how to "fix" because these new conditions are ones we don't want and wish to substitute with better conditions. New actions must be undertaken in order to sort it out. Laws, norms, property rights, etc. the entire political sphere is an emergent social phenomena that arises out of the preference of each individual encounter less risk in attaining their ends. In fact all scientific knowledge and human technology fits that same criteria.

So, avoidance = lower risk and lower overall costs to the individual, therefore avoidance would logically (apply evolutionary theory here) tend to be the preferred solution.

Another factor that I think would play a role is bias. Meaning the lack of neutral point of view. Enacted norms and laws will struggle mightily to avoid bias. We talk about egalitarianism in a negative way. One of the unique principles to come out of the Rights of Man and modern liberalism is this idea that all men are in fact equal before the law. But technological implementations will always struggle to retain a neutral bias.

The bias issue is I believe the major technical hurdle to a libertarian society. We want what we call equal status before the law, but it's damn near impossible to achieve.

Anarcho-capitalists rightly perceive the inherent problems with creating a state apparatus, as it allows the accumulation of bias, and a build up of such bias will naturally lead to self-destructive tendencies within the social group.

Marxists and socialists, correctly perceive that the unequal distribution of wealth creates unequal ability to exercise influence on the social institutions, and in particular in the political realm.

In the market, the unequal distribution of wealth is reinforced when it's healthy and rapidly reallocated when it's unhealthy. Meaning that those who accumulate wealth and are unable to acquire political protection, will only be able to maintain that wealth (relative to the rest of society) by creating additional wealth that benefits the rest of society also.

The inability to acquire biased results is the #1 goal I would have for a technological solution to the conflict problem. My next statement is a normative statement by the way. A neutral bias is the highest possible goal for a political technology, IF the highest possible level of health, wealth, and opportunity available to all members society is the goal.

This is the biggest hurdle to the achievement of such a society also. It requires us to override our built in value structure. We want what we want, and we want solutions that fit our ends. Therefore, instead of preferring unbiased political solutions, we will favor (at the micro level) biased solutions that are in our favor. And the uneven distribution of wealth increases the likelihood that a purchaser of dispute resolution sevices will be able to find and pay for a solution that is biased in his favor.

Now in saying this I hope to be clear, that this is going to be true for ALL political institutions we've ever seen. Including communist systems, and theoretical social democracies, and yes anarchist solutions also.

So if you ask me why I want to clear up this field of Politics, it's because this bias problem is one I don't know how to resolve such that we don't create periods of massive upheaval, violence and destuction. I strongly suspect that the solution is one of downsizing and redundancy: think secession, competing legal agencies, competing defense agencies. city-states, local governance, destroying corporate law (disconnection of liability from the individual, not the combination of resources mechanism). Private government (like old-style monarchies), loose confederations, etc. My best guess is embracing those as temporary but flawed technological institutions is the path forward for humanity. The question is how long will we remain mired in social sciences that produce the equivalent of 17th century medicine (meaning bonesaws and leeches...)

Hope that helps give a broader context to where I'm heading with this discussion of Politics. Economics is the science that shows us how to improve our lot. Politics is the framework that stabilizes and reduces risk such that the economics behaviors can flourish and raise our level of existence. I'm not willing to give up on the future of humanity yet. But I believe desparately that the future of humanity will be determined by our technological solutions to the political problems moreso than any other science and technology that we've ever developed.

Re: A Priorism and Politics

Stephen Adkins — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 20:37:49 GMT

I'm glad you brought up Molyneux. Would it be too much trouble fr you to show where the failure lies in his attempt? It's not that I don't believe you, it's just that to hear him talk he's made a breakthrough of seismic proportions and I'm not sure what to make of it.

Re: A Priorism and Politics

Neodoxy — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 20:22:52 GMT

"Yay... I reached top 500 status... Finally, I've been posting like mad to get there. I'd like to thank my mom and dad for their love of knowledge and imparting that to me, for encouraging me to think and learn, for embracing and encouraging my natural curiousity."

I'm sure that they're proud *sends complementary top 500 poster flowers* (if you get up to top 100 you get a free keychain :D). I'm trying to get up to top 50 but I have hella ways to go.

As for how you define ethics, are you saying that it's prescriptive in the sense of ascribing means towards certain ends? For instance eating poison is a bad way to stay healthy, so if you want to be healthy you should not ingest poison?

Re: A Priorism and Politics

David B — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 20:13:53 GMT

Stephen Adkins:

From T&H:

There is no such thing as a normative science, a science of what ought to be.

Can somebody talk about this point a little bit, or direct me to the best thread of which I'm sure there are dozens that deal with this topic? This is something I still know very little about it, nor do I even feel like I yet have the concepts well enough conceived in my mind to be able to form an opinion on the "natural law" or "rational ethics" questions. Thanks for any help.

I can give why I agree with Mises, but to understand the problem I think the best place to start might be something like the wiki page on the Is-Ought Problem.

Now, there are various mechanisms people have used to attempt to bridge this gap. In libertarian circles, Ayn Rand's Objectivism is one. More recently, Stephan Molyneux is attempting something similar.

However, I personally reject all attempts to do so, because I believe the realm of the normative arises in human action. In other words, choosing an end is the source of "should/shouldn't" our science tells us how things work, our subjectively determined ends tell us what we want. Should arises from an End sought, and until an End is preferred over and against other potential ends, should doesn't exist.

I believe however, that there is a prescriptive science of the normative. I would call that science Ethics. :) In other words, there is a scientific field that can make IS statements about how and why a man arrives at should/shouldn't. Ethics is also IMO muddy, because it doesn't recognize this dichotomy.

The proper hierarchy of philosophy is Metaphysics -> Epistemology -> Ethics (normative in it's tech, value-free in it's analysis) -> Politics (normative in tech, value-free in theory).

Acting man appears is a product of the metaphysical realm. But he interprets reality from the Epistemological realm, in acting he must choose, and uses knowledge to do so, what he values (as demonstrated through action produces the field of ethics), and how he manages balancing his values and actions in concert with other human beings is the field of politics. The action interface back to the metaphysical realm is the realm of the physical sciences. It's theory is an epistemological construct, and which technological products he produces and the ends at which he aims is are discussed at the individual level in the science of Ethics, and in the social realm via a science of Praxeology (economics and politics).

That's the way I organize these various fields in my head. I think the division between the fields of knowledge is interesting in one way, but it's all a product of the epistemological layer (what do we know, how do we know, what does it mean to be true). A diagram would probably make it more clear.

Because all of our science could be accurately described as an Epistemologically generated artifact of man's interaction with the Metaphysical realm (reality). This generated artifact is itself a product of the physical realm. (Epistemology is the recursive science.)

Re: A Priorism and Politics

David B — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 19:41:24 GMT

Yay... I reached top 500 status... Finally, I've been posting like mad to get there. I'd like to thank my mom and dad for their love of knowledge and imparting that to me, for encouraging me to think and learn, for embracing and encouraging my natural curiousity.

Re: A Priorism and Politics

David B — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 19:34:24 GMT

YES, YES, YES...

Thank you.

suuruna:

I don't know if it's just that I'm not experienced enough in philsophical discussions, or haven't studied it enough, but I have trouble understanding what the beef is that people have with the a priori aspect of Austrian methodology. It's totally possible I've just not been exposed to sophisticated enough arguments against it, but it seems like opponents see the word "a priori" and pounce on it like it's some juicy crack in the armor, going "Aha! Behold, assumptions! Surely this deduction method cannot inform us about the world, because it rests on such a flimsy foundation." I understand that assumptions do form a foundation that makes the deductions unuseful if they don't match the real world, but the assumptions that Austrian economists make are so solid and evident that I don't understand why merely pointing out their existence is considered a standalone argument against the school. It's not as if other economic schools don't make assumptions that are obviously FALSE, like that there is perfect knowledge in a system, or that the goods of an economy are made up of homogenous and infinitely divisible stuff. It's like the assumptions themselves don't matter, that it doesn't matter that "humans act" is a valid assumption for appilcation to reality, providing a strong logical foundation for deduction, or that perfect knowledge is not a valid assumption, explained away by seemingly appealing to the fact that it is being used in models that don't pretend to be logical in the first place. Sorry if that was off-topic, it's just davidb's talk of how taking certain things to be true, even if those things are false in the real world, does not make the conclusions or the way they were found wrong (just not applicable in the real world) reminded me of my own difficulty following arguments against Austrian methodology. If the conclusions reached by Austrian economists are to be criticized, it seems arguing against the assumption or against specific logical steps is the valid way to do it, not arguing against the concept of logical deduction itself.

In the world of philosophical thought and discussion, if I'm going to ask to be taken seriously, I can't simply ignore historical arguments about these situations. So, if I'm going to claim these to be true, I establish a basis for saying they are true. My argument about conflict generically being an a priori concept is that it's already present as a deduction from the existing concepts of Praxeology, which are deemed a priori. Therefore my category of conflict is also a priori, though in this case it's, I believe, a priori synthetic. So when one asks me questions like this, I don't think it's fair for me to say, I don't want to talk about it.

On the other hand I agree with your point which is, isn't there a level of silliness to arguing about these points... And on one level I'd agree, in particular because they aren't useful to me personally for my own edification. The usefulness to me is only in how responding to these questions helps me to convince others to take the ideas seriously, by not shying away from such criticisms.

suuruna:

Anyways, about the actual topic of the thread :P, is the idea to add to the pool of givens that there are two or more parties actively seeking incompatible states of reality, and from that gain some insight into situations in politics where that holds true?

Yes, I do hope to gain insights into situations in politics where this holds true. However, there are some additional points that I hope to make.

Politics is generially a fuzzy field. It's hard to reason about, and discuss because we're unclear on what it's about.
Politics arises out of this condition of conflict. It does not exist where there is no conflict, but where conflict exists, Politics is the theory and technology that man uses to manage it. In other words, you said "situations in politics where that holds true..." I would state it's only politics BECAUSE conflict exists. Otherwise, there's no norm, law, regulation to create, there's no punishment or jurisprudence to dispense, no "wrong" to "right".
Property is seen as a social phenomena, and criticized as exploitation. I believe a theory of conflict thus stated explains that it arises necessarily out of the actions of man in the face of scarcity. Man's attempts to create causal chains of events that satisfy his ends, lead him into conflict with his fellow man. Just as man uses theory and technology to overcome the resistance of the natural world to the satisfaction of his ends, so also man uses theory and technology to overcome the resistance or opposition of his fellow man to the satisfaction of his own ends. In modern social science the theory and technology are blurred, this makes the field difficult to navigate. It's like swimming in quicksand. I'd rather suck out the water and make a pool, leaving me with firm ground to stand on(theory), and a pleasant refreshing pool to swim in(technology).

There are others, but I believe that's a start. My #1 concern with the state of libertarian, anarcho-capitalist thought today is that we are viewed as misunderstanding the role of government in society. I'm concerned that we fail to accept and embrace that mechanisms for defining legitimate claims on property will always exist, and we cannot ignore that aspect of the real world. In addition, any technological solution we produce must necessarily embrace and address the violation of and enforcement of these claims. We can't gloss over it with a Non-aggression principle. We have to take it very seriously. I thoroughly embrace the idea of competing courts and competing defense agencies. But that's technology. In addition, we don't simply have to construct technological solutions, we have to also implement them from within the current technology. For example, I can design a bridge that is better than the bridge that currently exists, but if I can't build that bridge, because I don't know how to implement certain features using our current tools and processes, then it's a great design, but it will have to wait to be implemented until we can design and implement new building techniques and processes that can implement those features.

Here's an analogy: When I construct a technological device, it is not "value-free". It has a purpose. A gun has a purpose. Now there are various theoretical fields of the physical sciences which make value free statements about the nature of the universe, such that they can be used to analyze and predict the success of a specific technological design. But those sciences have NOTHING to say about the purpose of the device. They can only tell me whether or not the device will function in the manner I wish it to.

How would one therefore, construct a technological solution to the issues of politics? If one were to design such a system, using a theoretical science that gave me good value-free analysis of the consequences of that solution would be a good tool. Praxeology is that tool. In one place, I've seen Mises call Politics the social science of conflict and Economics the social science of cooperation. (that's a paraphrase). I agree on one level, though I don't think that conflict and cooperation are so blithely divided, I think there's a negotiative interactive feedback cycle that starts in the individual mind and is seen in action (by preferring the seeking of one end over another) but when multiple acting men pursue ends in an environment which CANNOT meet all persons ends at all times (i.e. the universe as we know it), conflict and all of it's categories appear. And I'm arguing that a Praxeological science of conflict IS the equivalent to a mature science of Politics.

suuruna:

I guess my first feeling when I was reading this is that politics and economics aren't separate, and that existing economic theories already inform politics by explaining e.g. the effects of certain political policies. Like, that the reason why different political agendas are incompatible is economic reasons already.

I agree they aren't separate, one of my major frustrations in reading Austrian Economics is that the framework within which exchange happens is one of property, and this cannot be blithely glossed over. A social mechanism for establishing a legitimate use claim MUST exist in any social group IF there is scarcity. We find many modern libertarian theorists arguing about a non-aggression principle without placing it into a value-free framework.

Aggression is not cleanly defined, and is subjectively determined. But it's the social technology that aggregates individual subjective values and desires to exclusive use of scarce resources that decides which claims are legitimate and which are not. The Non-aggression principle is interesting, but it tries to discard aggression as a valid means. I'm not saying I don't agree with it, but it's not rooted in normative space properly.

Mises clearly states that Ends are givens. We don't get to decide whether or not a person's ends are good or bad, that's a subjectively determined value judgment of the individual. Praxeology has nothing to say about the ends that man aims at. Praxeology as a science can only set about to accurately describe the logical consequences of the technology that man uses as means to those ends.

I, like so many others here, value freedom and equality before the law, and the rapid and universal improvement in the living conditions of all men. But that is an end, if someone else has another end, I want to know that this is true. What Mises got right was understanding that he didn't have to make men believe liberalism was "RIGHT". He simply had to show what the necessary consequences were of other economic theories and systems. He made huge strides. But he didn't have to cross the normative boundary and try to make the necessary ends into good or bad. He left that to the consumer of the science.

I'd like to divide the theory from the tech in the conflict space. We muddy the waters, because it is a necessarily muddy space. It's hard for man to divorce the logical framework of knowledge he uses to analyze the consequences of action from the ends which he values.

suuruna:

Do you have some idea of what kind of insights you are looking to gain? Is it some way of exploring the implications of different concepts of property and ownership, instead of stuff like the discussions about NAP or natural law?

Absolutely. I stated some of them above. Another example, Public ownership doesn't exist in practice. It's a complex set of norms about legitimate claims for individual use. In any dispute that arises in the realm of "public ownership", that dispute will devolve to some means of establishing which of two individual claims for use is deemed to be the legitimate one. And over and over and over. Natural Property Rights is a specific technology, there is a theoretical science behind it. Clearly stating the theorems and axioms of that science is my goal.

Re: A Priorism and Politics

suuruna — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 18:08:19 GMT

I don't know if it's just that I'm not experienced enough in philsophical discussions, or haven't studied it enough, but I have trouble understanding what the beef is that people have with the a priori aspect of Austrian methodology. It's totally possible I've just not been exposed to sophisticated enough arguments against it, but it seems like opponents see the word "a priori" and pounce on it like it's some juicy crack in the armor, going "Aha! Behold, assumptions! Surely this deduction method cannot inform us about the world, because it rests on such a flimsy foundation." I understand that assumptions do form a foundation that makes the deductions unuseful if they don't match the real world, but the assumptions that Austrian economists make are so solid and evident that I don't understand why merely pointing out their existence is considered a standalone argument against the school. It's not as if other economic schools don't make assumptions that are obviously FALSE, like that there is perfect knowledge in a system, or that the goods of an economy are made up of homogenous and infinitely divisible stuff. It's like the assumptions themselves don't matter, that it doesn't matter that "humans act" is a valid assumption for appilcation to reality, providing a strong logical foundation for deduction, or that perfect knowledge is not a valid assumption, explained away by seemingly appealing to the fact that it is being used in models that don't pretend to be logical in the first place. Sorry if that was off-topic, it's just davidb's talk of how taking certain things to be true, even if those things are false in the real world, does not make the conclusions or the way they were found wrong (just not applicable in the real world) reminded me of my own difficulty following arguments against Austrian methodology. If the conclusions reached by Austrian economists are to be criticized, it seems arguing against the assumption or against specific logical steps is the valid way to do it, not arguing against the concept of logical deduction itself.

Anyways, about the actual topic of the thread :P, is the idea to add to the pool of givens that there are two or more parties actively seeking incompatible states of reality, and from that gain some insight into situations in politics where that holds true? I guess my first feeling when I was reading this is that politics and economics aren't separate, and that existing economic theories already inform politics by explaining e.g. the effects of certain political policies. Like, that the reason why different political agendas are incompatible is economic reasons already. Do you have some idea of what kind of insights you are looking to gain? Is it some way of exploring the implications of different concepts of property and ownership, instead of stuff like the discussions about NAP or natural law?

Re: A Priorism and Politics

gotlucky — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 17:57:33 GMT

David B:

For example, IF someone engages in indirect exchange, we will see certain catallactic phenomena. That doesn't mean that indirect exchange happens or doesn't happen, it means (a priori) that IF it happens, we know logically things about it.

This makes perfect sense to me. But my original question in the other thread:

gotlucky:

But why do we have disputes? I don't see how that is a priori.

I think this is the main issue. Given that there are disputes, we can determine certain things. Clayton put it together nicely in his thread A Praxeological Account of Law.

But I think my original problem was with the idea that we can know without experience that there will be disputes. Even with scarcity, it seems like something we have to experience. Like I said, some people do sacrifice their lives for others. Some people don't. While we can imagine both possibilities, are they something we can know independantly of experience?

I used the example of pigs flying as well. I can imagine a father sacrificing his life for his child, and I can imagine him not doing it. I can imagine pigs flying, and I can imagine pigs not flying. It seems to me, at least at first glance, that these are things that we have to experience in order to know.

They seem to be different than "bachelors are unmarried men". That is something that is independant of experience. Same with human action. You do not observe human action in order to know it. It is independant of it. It's essentially a description of purposeful choice versus instinctual or reflexive behavior. It's a definition. It separates the categories of behavior.

Maybe we could say that there is voluntary and socially cooperative behavior, and there is coercive and socially adversarial behavior. Disputes fall into the category of socially adversarial behavior until they are resolved and cease to be disputes. Perhaps in this way we could say that the existence of disputes is a priori?

Let me know what you think.

Re: A Priorism and Politics

Stephen Adkins — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 16:39:01 GMT

From T&H:

There is no such thing as a normative science, a science of what ought to be.

Can somebody talk about this point a little bit, or direct me to the best thread of which I'm sure there are dozens that deal with this topic? This is something I still know very little about it, nor do I even feel like I yet have the concepts well enough conceived in my mind to be able to form an opinion on the "natural law" or "rational ethics" questions. Thanks for any help.

Re: A Priorism and Politics

Stephen Adkins — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 00:22:54 GMT

Liberalism was the first book I ever read by Mises; actually come to think of it it was the first LvMI book I ever read. Pretty sure most of it went over my head back then, but I remember really enjoying it.