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March 21, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:29:43

1310 Virtue, Values, UPB and Ownership - Debate

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	Okay, sorry about that, Alex.
	I think we are all set.
	Finally, we're ready to roll.
	Thank you so much for taking the time.
	It's obviously a pleasure to talk with you.
	I've always enjoyed your thought-provoking posts at Radio.
	And I guess you've had some deep thoughts about ethics and property rights and self-ownership and so on.
	And if I remember rightly, you had some thoughts about UPB in particular, which I thought would be worth talking about to see what holds up and what doesn't, since refining and improving theories is the key, right? So I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about your history with these kinds of topics and where you come from and all that kind of stuff.
	Well, you kind of alluded a little bit to, in general, I guess you could more broadly say that I've just had somewhat of a paradigm shift in terms of how I view libertarianism, and I've rethought some of my previous positions, and considered that there are certain things taken for granted, perhaps, in libertarian philosophy that might need to be rethought in general.
	But what specifically are you asking me in terms of, like, do you want me to tell you a brief overview of my history in terms of where my head's at?
	That would be great. It's always good to get to know a little bit about someone before engaging in the fun act of debating.
	Well, I don't exactly know where to start with that.
	Well, let's start with the paradigm shift that you were talking about just now.
	Well, I think part of that paradigm shift was my own transference towards more of a left-libertarian-friendly point of view, even though I had generally been part of the anarcho-capitalist position for a while.
	And in some sense, semantics aside, some might say I still do.
	However, I've rethought some of my views on property in particular, And the relationship between corporate power and the state in a way that's more conventional towards a left libertarian view.
	Yeah, you mentioned something about my sort of recent video on corporatism that it seemed more sympathetic to the left libertarian view, if I remember rightly.
	Yes. Yeah, I mean, certainly when you come out of the Rand philosophy, there is this sort of halo around business that it seems to take a lot of empirical evidence to crush and Unfortunately, there seems to be no shortage of empirical evidence in that realm about the corrupting nature of state and corporation.
	And Rand said it too, that the state and economics need to be separated as much as...
	Religion and the state needed to be as well.
	Yes. It's a separate question, the extent to which she was true to that, but yes.
	Right. Well, we just talk theory, right?
	Nobody's perfect in practice, right?
	But we're just in the theory.
	And that, of course, it took me a while to sort of get the corporations, state entities.
	Anyway, so, but back to you.
	So you've had some sort of shift towards this left libertarianism.
	Among other things. It's not strictly in terms of that though.
	Also just general shift in the view of perhaps like philosophical foundations for libertarianism.
	Whereas beforehand I held more of what might be called an axiomatic approach and now I've kind of turned against an axiomatic approach to libertarianism.
	And the axiomatic approach is self-ownership and the non-aggression principle or property rights and the non-aggression principle Are just self-evident, and if you don't accept that, then there's no meaningful discussion possible, and therefore we just take those as given, and you have had less internal success with that view for yourself.
	Is that right? Sort of.
	For me, it's more like...
	The way the concepts are related, I think of it differently now.
	For example, the non-aggression principle, I don't think it's really an axiom because it's not irreducible.
	I don't like the idea of using something like the non-aggression principle as sort of a vague maxim, which we treat as self-evident, but then we don't really specify what we really mean by it.
	Well, and of course, if it's an axiom, But it's not irreducible, then there's no way to say what we really mean by it, right?
	Like A is A, we know what we mean by that because it's an axiom and you can't reduce it, right?
	But something which has flavors of opinion built in will always be open to interpretation and it's in many ways then not dissimilar to a religious doctrine, right?
	You could say that.
	My problem is just sort of surrounding, like using the non-aggression principle as an example, like the vagueness of just stating, you know, like no man should initiate force against another person.
	Like most people intuitively are going to agree with that, but then of course as we see, like they don't actually consistently apply that, and they don't have a very consistent definition for what constitutes initiating force, so things get confused.
	Right, I mean some people would say that...
	Poverty is the initiation of force against children, and therefore we should have a welfare state, like it becomes a real problem, right?
	Yeah, I've seen people argue that it's implicit in argumentation itself, that you're initiating coercion is...
	The very definition of coercion is to basically make a proposition.
	Right, right. And that's pretty out there, but...
	Yeah, I agree that libertarianism is really great.
	Libertarianism is fantastic with pretty lofty concepts, but then when it gets right down to metaphysics and epistemology, I've always...
	Well, I shouldn't say I've always, but once I really began to grind down in the bowels of Of that kind of thinking, I found that there were deficiencies that at least weren't satisfactory to me, but maybe it sounds like you went through a similar thing.
	Yes, probably.
	And of course, you know, we have the great challenge as thinkers of massive, catastrophic and perpetual failure, right?
	So that's usually a good place to start when it comes to looking at problems with a philosophy and Is, you know, if we're right, then why do we get our asses kicked so perpetually, right?
	Yeah, that's a good question.
	That's what's been bugging me for years, right?
	I mean, it's like, it's great to be right, but wouldn't you like to be right and actually get some shit done at the same time rather than just spend hundreds of years failing perpetually to convince anyone about any goddamn thing that's of use?
	And I think it comes back to this issue that Whenever you say it's an axiom, and yet it's not irreducible, you are basically just planting a flag in a cloud and saying, I like this cloud, so this is where I'm going to be.
	And it doesn't convince anyone who's not already sort of sympathetic to the notion, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, that makes sense.
	There's no point convincing people who are already sympathetic, because obviously there's not that many of us who have this inner blood, so to speak.
	And if we can't, If we can't, in a sense, force other people to accept the truth through, you know, just absolutely ironclad logic, then, you know, we all like ice cream, right?
	Right. But part of my concern is also with just, like, perhaps, I think some libertarians perhaps don't, aren't as consistent as they'd like to think they are.
	Like, perhaps there are more radical implications of this than people think.
	Sorry, this meaning what?
	In libertarianism in general.
	Sorry, I just want to make sure I understand what you mean.
	More radical implications of libertarianism as a whole or NAP or something else?
	In general, yes.
	Yes, to all. Okay, got it.
	It's either more radical implications or just...
	Like, I think people tend to take the preconceived biases from before they were libertarian with them, and that confuses matters.
	And then we end up with a lot of internal conflicts in libertarianism that shouldn't be necessary.
	What do you mean? You mean sort of left-right libertarianism, monarchism, anarchism?
	That's... That's part of it, yes.
	But not just a left-right thing, but just in terms of how one philosophically founds.
	Like a bunch of libertarians might agree on the same principle, but have completely different takes on how it's founded.
	And that in turn may lead to different implications for how the principles are understood.
	So libertarianism ends up having its own internal philosophical conflicts.
	Well, and again, that is religious in nature, right?
	I mean... All religious people believe in God, let's say, and they all have different ideas of what that God is and how that God, you know, manifested or whatever.
	And a witch doctor will say, you know, the tides come and go at this rate because of the, you know, out of belching of the gods in the ocean or whatever, whereas the scientists will say it's the pull of the moon or whatever.
	And they're coming to the same conclusions that But using different approaches, and that's a big problem in my opinion.
	I mean, libertarianism is a set of conclusions that should start from philosophical premises.
	There's no such thing as a libertarian, in my opinion.
	There is only people who are valid, accurate, or true in their philosophical statements.
	I believe that the consistent application of philosophical methodologies leads you to things like...
	The non-aggression principle and in property rights and atheism and things like that.
	So libertarianism is...
	Like we say, I'm a scientist.
	We don't say, I'm into string theory.
	Because string theory or super string theory should be simply a conclusion that is arrived at through an examination of reason and evidence.
	Libertarianism as a set of conclusions should not be where anybody makes their home, as a thinker, in my opinion.
	What do you mean exactly, like nobody makes their home?
	Well, it's the result of a methodology.
	Right, I could agree with that.
	And if we're all into the same methodology and we all end up with the same conclusions, that's great.
	But to say, I'm into these conclusions means you're putting the cart before the horse.
	We should be into reason and evidence.
	And, you know, hopefully all arrive at the same or very close to the same conclusions.
	But to put your flag in the ground in terms of conclusions, which is what libertarianism is, I think, is mistaken.
	Because it should be an effect of the methodology, not a set of conclusions that you grab and then vaguely justify.
	Yeah, I think I see your point in that way.
	I could also see your point in terms of concept formation.
	Like, you don't just... You know, you shouldn't just grab a conclusion and then try to rationalize it after the fact, although that occurs to an extent with libertarians.
	I mean, I think that's a human curse and blessing, right?
	We all, you know, we all, hey, this girl's really hot, let me invent a good personality for her, right?
	Right. I mean, I think we all have that, but that's why we need philosophy, right?
	Because we have bias, right?
	Yes, I agree.
	And I think I agree with your basic point in the sense that Obviously, hopefully these conclusions are the result of a methodology or a more comprehensive underlying philosophy, basically.
	I'm totally with you on that point.
	Yeah, and where you end up with wildly divergent, and even within libertarianism, there's some pretty wildly divergent views, right?
	I mean, there's religious fundamentalists and strong atheists, right?
	And there are left libertarians who apparently want to Have a big vat of group hugging and beard growing in a commune and then there's the right-wing libertarians who, I don't know, want to eat the poor and stuff.
	There seems to be a pretty wild divergence and the big tent.
	Philosophy actually means that there's no philosophy because you simply cannot apply the same methodology and end up with opposite conclusions.
	That's one of the things about logic, right?
	I mean, you just can't.
	It's like you have a computer program that then, you know, you put the same variables in and you get completely different outputs out.
	I mean, quantum mechanics does not work at the political level, right?
	So the Big Ten philosophy dilutes the movement to the point where everything just looks like an opinion within libertarianism and libertarianism to the people outside the movement just looks like another damn opinion.
	And I think that's a real shame.
	I agree with you.
	I think the big tent has been too big in some ways, although there are semantic issues in which there could be some reconciliation, I think, that isn't there.
	It seems to me that what you're talking about is sort of similar to...
	Like what Walter blocks into.
	He says he's a plumb-line libertarian.
	He says he's centrist in that way, and then we should have a big tent, and libertarianism is completely neutral to cultural questions.
	I don't necessarily agree with that.
	I think you can reach some certain anti-authoritarian cultural positions from libertarian philosophy, and I don't think that you should necessarily be dedicated to neutrality for its own sake to the point of undermining any underlying philosophy and so a problem I've had with some libertarians is what I see is a tendency to be sort of too thin in that sense where you're just um oh it doesn't matter what your preferences are like you could do whatever you want like that seems to eradicate the distinction between like rational anarchy and just some sort of like Like,
	I think there's a difference between a contextual pluralism and just an open-ended pluralism.
	And I have a problem with the open-ended pluralism where you don't really have any principles at all in the end, like you're saying.
	Like, it's not a philosophy at all.
	Right. Then you're...
	But when you want to do headcount, right?
	When it's quantity, not quality, then that's the great temptation.
	And that, of course, is the curse of politics, right?
	With politics, you need a lot of people.
	And when you have a lot of people, you get a lot of errors, right?
	And that's the problem, right?
	I mean, the political angle, the political desire within libertarianism has, you know, hey, got a pulse?
	Don't like the government? In you come, right?
	And that is not a methodology, right?
	That's just a headcount. Yeah, it seems a little too flimsy.
	Well, and it doesn't work, right?
	Yeah, it definitely doesn't work.
	If you're talking about Political libertarianism in general, definitely.
	I have an apolitical view on that, and you've definitely generally been espousing what I would call an apolitical libertarian view.
	Actually, I'm more anti-political than apolitical, but yes, absolutely.
	I'm not agnostic that way.
	I'm not agnostic about too many things, I suppose.
	So, I mean, it sounds like we've gone through a similar kind of thought process with regards to this and said, you know, No matter how tantalizing the conclusions are.
	And Lord, don't we all want people to not initiate the use of force to solve complex social problems just to take an easy one, right?
	We would all love that.
	And we want that...
	That conclusion is so delicious.
	It's such a mirage to think that we can grab it without the methodology.
	But every time we try and grab it without a strict methodology...
	It evaporates. It vanishes.
	We think we're diving into water and we come up spitting out sand, right?
	It's a really tragic mirage that we keep thundering up to hand out this candy and it just evaporates like nothing, right?
	And that's why, for me at least, I had to sort of break down my attachment to the conclusions and say, well, what if none of it's true, right?
	What if it's all nonsense?
	And let's start with nothing, right?
	Or there might be a sense in which, you know, maybe you still clung to like a certain false dichotomy, and there was actually a synthesis or reconciliation to make, but you were overlooking it because you were too dedicated to the conclusion for its own sake, basically.
	Yeah, no, that's very true, and I think that when you have doubt, right, and I was very, I don't say I was an objectivist, because there's just one part of, it was a very, very influential part of But the problem is that if you have doubts within yourself,
	you know, especially if they're deeply buried, then you kind of need other people to accept your conclusions in order to overcome the doubt that kind of hangs around in there.
	And that kind of comes across, no matter how much you try and hide it, to people who are, you know, perceptive and so on, that you need them to join you because you have doubts.
	And I didn't I don't want to have that anymore.
	So I scrubbed it all away and tried to build up again from scratch.
	Some people think it was a good approach and some people think it was a bad approach and some people think it was a stone evil approach.
	But that was the goal and it certainly did help me enormously in terms of feeling that I was standing not on the sort of jostling dinghies of conclusions but that I had a sort of oil derrick of You know, methodology going up.
	Sorry to mix my metaphors terribly.
	And it sounds like, I mean, it sounds a little bit like that's an approach that has been part of your thinking as well.
	Not my conclusions, right?
	Or maybe the conclusions are similar, and not my methodology even, but the need for that, you know, start with nothing and go where the reason and evidence leads you.
	Yes. Are you referring specifically to UPB or more generally, just like your whole thought process in general?
	Well, I mean, the whole thought process in general, though, UPB was my way of, you know, starting with nothing and getting to what I believe are valid ethics.
	But yes, it was really starting from nothing.
	And, you know, putting aside everyone's opinions, Including my own, as best as I could.
	And then saying, okay, you know, let's just look at the facts and not what people use rhetorical flourishes to impress upon me, but let's just start with the facts.
	And of course, since you can't escape the is-ought dichotomy, although, I mean, it is, I think, quite true to say that The is-ought dichotomy does not itself escape the is-ought dichotomy, right?
	Well, you can't...
	I'm sorry? Yeah, it's kind of a funny thing to say, but I think I get your point.
	Well, just very briefly, it's like, if you say you can't get an ought from an is, then you're already getting an ought from an is.
	That you ought not to say that you can get an ought from an is.
	Because there is no ought, therefore you should...
	So you're already getting an ought from an is.
	Well, yeah, if you turn the dichotomy into a rule, yeah, I see what you're saying.
	To the point at which you were basically establishing a rule that...
	Well, it's a fact.
	I mean, it is a fact that there are no ethics in nature.
	I mean, they don't exist.
	I mean, to me, that's, you know, you can't...
	Unless you're going to take the platonic route and give concepts some sort of metaphysical or ontological existence, which I can't do because reason and evidence, and I'm a ruthless empiricist, for better or for worse, then...
	Yeah, you can't escape the fact that there are no rules.
	There are no ought.
	But then when you say, okay, well you can't say that there's, you can't get an ought from an is, you're automatically creating an ought, right?
	Which is you ought not to do that.
	And so it's one of these, and this is sort of right down at the core of the logical challenges when it comes to the complete lack of values in reality, and yet the inability to discuss anything without...
	I mean, that's the real challenge, right?
	I think it's kind of...
	I guess what you're talking about would be the fact that there's no intrinsic value in that sense.
	You know, like nature doesn't have ethics in that sense, and obviously something isn't intrinsically good or bad in that sense, I don't think.
	I hope I'm with you up until this point.
	Well, I mean, the way that I anchor myself in this stuff is to return to the scientific method, right?
	The scientific method doesn't exist in nature, but that does not mean that it's subjective.
	I agree with you.
	A problem that I've had with certain people who've turned towards moral nihilism is that they'll be like, oh, well, rights don't exist, for example.
	And I'll agree with them, and I'll be like, well, strictly speaking, I can't point you to a right.
	But that doesn't mean that they're useless.
	It's like, well, technically numbers don't exist in tangible form, but that doesn't mean that mathematics is invalid.
	So I agree with you that it doesn't follow from that sort of nominalism, if you will, that everything is purely subjective per se or that it doesn't matter.
	Right, and the only way to, at least that I've, and I completely agree with you, the only, it doesn't mean that you're right or I'm right, it just means that we think we're right together, which is good.
	And the only way that I've been able to rescue values from either the platonic fantasy that they exist somewhere, we saw them before we were born, Or the moral nihilism, which basically says that everything is an illusion, right? Is to say, well, yeah, we have concepts that describe things in objective reality.
	And then if you get the lunatic who doesn't believe in objective reality, then I try not to argue with people's drug trips, right?
	It doesn't really help, right?
	Because then I say, well, do I exist?
	Well, I don't know. It's like, well, let me save you the trouble of finding out and I'll talk to someone who's not insane, right?
	But... So as to say, well, we have these concepts, and if you want to say something true about reality, then you have to use science.
	You can't use Fluffy the Pegasus that lives under your couch, right?
	You can't use Zeus.
	You can't use hand puppets or chicken entrails or anything, right?
	If you want to say something valid about the universe, then you have to use the scientific method.
	And if you don't want to say something valid about the universe, then you don't have to use the scientific method.
	But it's that if, right?
	Because the whole problem with the ought and the is is that the ought says, if you think that the oughts exist in reality, you're saying there's no if, right?
	There's no if then, right?
	Because that's Hume's thing, right?
	It's to say there's no ought from an is, and therefore everything is an if then, right?
	If you want to do this, then you, if you want to say something that's true, then you have to use logic Or evidence or whatever.
	Yeah, well, I guess in that sense you could derive an ought from an if.
	And hopefully your if is grounded in something, at least, then I could see value in that.
	Because hopefully you have to ground your ifs.
	It's not just a complete conjecture.
	No, it's not. And the reason for that is that concepts are imperfectly derived from reality, right?
	I mean, in other words...
	Reality is not capable of error, right?
	I mean, but we are, right?
	And so our concepts are imperfectly derived from reality.
	You know, concepts like truth or science or logic or, you know, correct or incorrect or whatever.
	And so, sorry, there's that fundamental question around compared to what, right?
	So if I want to say something that's true, it's like, well, true compared to what?
	Well, true compared to empiricism or evidence and true compared to a false statement that I might be making because my mind can make mistakes.
	Yes.
	I think there might be one sense in which I might disagree with your emphasis on the scientific method, which is in the sense that, well, the scientific method has to be grounded on something.
	So in a sense, it's like I wouldn't necessarily say that the scientific method alone is what we would have to rely on.
	I agree. Yes, I agree.
	And of course, you can do some wonderful stuff in mathematics without ever building a bridge, right?
	And you can do some wonderful stuff in logic.
	You know, men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal.
	That's not science, that's logic, right?
	So I agree with you.
	The scientific method is a good way of explaining it to people, but it's not the only thing that we can do with philosophy.
	I agree with you there.
	Yeah, I just wanted to try to establish that point, because I do object to what's been called scientism, which is sort of the view that the natural sciences are the only arbiter of truth, and I don't think that's, strictly speaking, I don't think that's true, actually.
	There are plenty of things outside of the natural sciences that still have truth values.
	Yeah, I would certainly say that.
	Logic, of course, and higher mathematics or more abstract mathematics being two examples.
	And there's no way to scientifically really to prove whether a movie is good or not.
	But that doesn't mean that all movies are equal, right?
	No, of course not.
	No. That's one thing.
	I think there's a difference between acknowledging the existence of perspective and all things being equal.
	It's like, yeah, this person has a different perspective, but that doesn't mean my perspective is equal to theirs.
	So I think there's a distinction between, like, relativism and, I don't know what to call it, but the acknowledgement of perspective.
	Right, right. Well, I mean, it takes somewhat of an intellectual and emotional maturity to say, just because not everything is black and white doesn't mean that everything is the equal shade of grey, right?
	Right.
	People want it to be one or the other rather than have the challenge of attempting to define it, which is really tough, right?
	Yes.
	And the other problem with scientism also tends to be pretty ruthlessly results-oriented or utilitarian.
	I mean, you can hear the argument that people say, well, science is valid because it has produced better things than religion.
	Whatever, right?
	It's like the excrement of science smells better than the excrement of religion, and that's how we know it's true.
	And that, to me, is not...
	That's an argument from a fact rather than...
	And that's, of course, subjective, right?
	Because every time we say science produces good things, people say, well, I know lots of people who are really happy who are religious.
	It doesn't get you anywhere, right?
	Yeah, that's an old argument about the people really being happy who are religious.
	Right, and it's self-reporting, right?
	My wife, of course, practices psychology, and that is the great challenge of self-reporting.
	Are you happy? Yeah.
	Well, compared to what?
	Compared to who? For how long?
	And is it even real? And all that kind of stuff, right?
	Ask someone on heroin, they'll say the same thing.
	That doesn't mean it's healthy.
	And so that, I mean, it sounds like, you know, we have that kind of curiosity, restlessness, and constant desire to To work the methodology rather than the conclusions.
	And although it's, for me, almost impossible not to get to attach to conclusions that I believe come out of a rational methodology, it is still, you know, it is always an essential process to go back and to revisit, right, the things that we're all so capable of error and bias and preference that that's why we need philosophy so much, right?
	So, even though I'm obviously attached to UPB, I would hate to choose between UPB and my daughter.
	Don't make me! I'm just kidding. But, I mean, I'm attached to it, obviously, because, you know, it's...
	But, UPB is, to me, more a methodology than a conclusion, and that's...
	Unfortunately, I didn't make that point clear enough in the book, right?
	Yeah, and you're correct about...
	Yeah, it does seem more like a methodology than a conclusion.
	Yeah. Yeah, and I mean, we hope that the methodology produces conclusions that make sense, and you can't use UPB to prove that rape is great, right, or murder is great, or rationally consistent, or whatever, right, true.
	And so, in a sense, UPB can't be overturned because it is a rational methodology, and of course, I'm not going to say in any way, shape, or form that I've invented any kind of rational methodology, but I think taking the approach that I have to ethics is, you know, maybe mildly innovative or whatever, but...
	If it turns out that there is some way to disprove some of the conclusions in the book, that to me is great, because it means that the methodology is holding.
	Well, it seems to me that...
	I critiqued UPB a little bit a couple months ago on my blog, but one of the first things that I criticized about it was it seemed to me like all it could do is disprove things.
	In and of itself, it doesn't seem to me like it makes a positive case.
	It's more like you're ruling out the alternatives, and hopefully what you have left is something that's the most rational ethic.
	However, I don't think it necessarily by itself is a positive proof.
	And that was one of the initial problems I had with it.
	Okay, and let's talk about that.
	I mean, that would not be a proof of UPB, but it would be a drag, right?
	And it would require that you have to eliminate every other direction before you finally go north or whatever, right?
	Which would be kind of inefficient.
	So I'm certainly happy to talk about that.
	Do you want to talk about that a little more?
	Do you want to hear what I think about it?
	Whatever you like. I'm not sure.
	I mean, it seems to me that, like I said, the methodology seems to rule out things, but then I don't see how you could necessarily jump from ruling out those things to absolute affirmation of a particular premise, necessarily. Right, right.
	Okay, so... My two-bit response, which is probably something you thought of a million times already, but I'll just throw it out, and you can tell me then to go beyond grade two, is that if you eliminate the moral proposition that murder is good, then, or, you know, the initiation of violence is good, and you then eliminate it from aesthetically preferable actions, right, because you can't avoid it and this kind of stuff, then you have,
	by eliminating the statement that violence is good, and eliminating it from neutral by eliminating the statement that violence is good, and eliminating it from neutral or APA behaviors, then you end up with violence is bad, and you could say, well, that's a negative proof, but what it means is that then you should respect people's
	I mean, as a result, you end up with every statement that's negative in ethics is a positive statement, right, just flipped on its head, right, so if I say, well, property, you have to, you can't violate property rights, that sounds like a negative statement, but then it's equally true to say you must respect property rights. but then it's equally true to say you must respect Thank you.
	Right. I guess the problem for me is I don't see such statements as refuting themselves necessarily.
	Tell me what you mean by refuting themselves?
	I just don't follow the statement.
	Or self-detonating, like as you would say.
	So let's take property, right?
	So if somebody says, you know, we should not respect property rights.
	Is that... That would be a statement, right?
	Property rights are immoral or we should not respect property rights or we should never have property rights or something, which would be a kind of moral claim.
	It would be a sort of moral theory, right?
	Sure. But I wouldn't say that the mere utterance of that statement disproves it, I guess.
	And that's part of what I was arguing about when I was critiquing Hans Hermann Hoppe's argumentation ethics.
	But I think there's some similarity to UPB in terms of that emphasis on the form of the argument rather than the content.
	Yes, and I'm tragically unaware of...
	I've ordered a box of Hoppe's books and I've been baby and blah blah blah.
	Anyway, I've been really meaning to...
	To read up on it, because, I mean, I've heard there's some parallels, which, of course, would be fantastic.
	But, well, I mean, if someone says, this would sort of be my response, whether it's valid or not, let me know what you think.
	But if you and I and someone else are in a room, and you say we should not respect property rights, and I turn and respond, not to you, but to the other person in the room, that would be kind of disconcerting to you, right?
	Sure. Because you'd say, well, why are you responding to him, right?
	I made the argument, right?
	Yes. You see where I'm going, right?
	I think I see where you're going.
	Yeah, so I would say, no, you didn't make the argument, right?
	And you would say, but I did make the argument, right?
	Yes. Right, so say, well, that's self-ownership, right?
	I made the argument, right?
	I used my larynx, I used my body, I used my tongue and lips and blah blah blah, or I gestured or put on a puppet show or something.
	I made the argument, which is why you should respond to me and not someone else.
	And again, that doesn't prove the whole thesis, but it at least means that the person says, I made the argument, therefore you should respond to me, because I owned the argument, I owned the argument, and therefore you should respond to me.
	Well, yeah, I don't think that necessarily disproves their argument, though.
	Or, I think it reveals hypocrisy.
	I'll definitely say that.
	Well, it means that you can't, because the person is exercising self-ownership to make an argument against ownership.
	And that doesn't mean that they're completely wrong and that we can just dust our hands and do a little victory dance, but it means that they have a A problem to overcome up front, right?
	Here's my problem.
	And for me, it's a dichotomy, actually, like in this scenario.
	I think it's important to distinguish between The fact that people have physiological control over themselves and self-ownership as an ethic, which is usually meant to signify personal sovereignty.
	It's a rights claim.
	The right to not have your body interfered with is different.
	Yeah, I don't believe in those rights or anything, but go on.
	Which rights? Well, I don't believe that anyone has a right to not be stabbed.
	I mean, I don't even know.
	I mean, there's no shield, right?
	There's no shield belt. There's no, like, magical glowing thing that rights give you that breaks off daggers coming at you or stops bullets, right?
	These rights seem to me like unicorns.
	They're just, you know, or like constitutions.
	You know, look, it's the magic spell paper that stops bullets in governments, right?
	It just seems like a lot of magical thinking.
	I think human beings have properties, but I don't think that human beings have rights.
	They don't exist at all.
	I agree with you, strictly speaking, but my problem is the entire point here is to prove prescriptive ethics.
	The entire point is we're supposed to be proving that someone ought not to have their body interfered with.
	No, no, no. That's certainly not UPB, for sure.
	I mean, I understand that that's most people's approach to ethics, but I think that can't be done.
	I think that simply can't be done, at least.
	If it can be done, I've never found a way to do it, and I've never read anyone who's found a way to do it.
	I shouldn't say it can't be done, I just can't imagine how it could be.
	Well, then what are you trying to prove is what I would wonder.
	Well, what I'm trying to prove is that if you want to say something that is true about preferable behavior of any kind, then your theory has to be logically consistent.
	And hopefully in accordance with Empirical facts, right?
	So if you want to say something true about the universe, you have to have a logically consistent theory.
	And if your theory is not logically consistent, then no one has to go any further, right?
	Like if I'm going to say, oh, let's build this bridge, and I've made a huge error in my math at the very beginning in calculating the tensile strength, nobody says, well, let's go ahead and see how the bridge holds up, because everybody knows that No matter what happens, it's not correct, and it has to be fixed before we go any further, right? But when we get to this level of propositions, I don't think what's being proven is that someone's statement is internally inconsistent.
	The inconsistency is between their philosophical proposition and their behavior, perhaps.
	But to me, that's where the inconsistency is.
	Well, I would say that you can't exercise self-ownership To deny self-ownership.
	That to me is directly analogous to me writing you a letter and dropping it in the mail saying that mail never gets delivered.
	That would be an illogical thing to do.
	What is self-ownership?
	Like, I don't think I believe in self-ownership.
	Well, sorry, but we can get into that in a sec, but just to stay on this point for a second, right?
	Like, if I sent you an email saying emails never get delivered, that would make no sense, right?
	Yes, but... Wait, say it again?
	If I send you an email, and in the subject line it says, this email is my proof to you that emails never get delivered.
	Obviously, it's never going to reach you.
	If I'm right, it's never going to reach you.
	It would be an illogical thing to do, right?
	Yes, I don't think that's necessarily analogous to certain moral propositions.
	No, no, I agree. I mean, I agree with you.
	We're just one step at a time, right?
	For example, I think that the sort of performative contradiction thing that's going on here works more in the realm of epistemic and ontological claims, but it starts to break down for moral claims.
	If I scream in your ear that sound doesn't exist, obviously it's just ridiculous.
	Right, but we're not anywhere to morality yet, right?
	We're just building one step, right?
	Sure. Right. I'm just trying to say that it seems to me that these performative contradictions work more for epistemic claims.
	Like, I don't exist. Like, I would be affirming my own existence from the perspective of someone who saw me make that statement.
	It would just be silly and self-detonate in that sense.
	Right. And I agree with you.
	And, you know, if I say there's no such thing as truth, then I'm making a truth statement.
	So we understand those things all self-detonate for sure, right?
	Although with the truth thing, it depends on what you mean by the term truth, but yes.
	But yeah, I mean, just in the common usage, right, it would be a sort of contradictory thing to say, right?
	In the sense that, yeah, if you're going to really try to prove your statement...
	Right, and the I don't exist statement and yelling at someone that sound doesn't exist, we understand that those...
	It doesn't mean...
	That sound doesn't exist, right?
	I mean, it doesn't mean that maybe sound doesn't exist, it's all a fantasy, right?
	But what it means is that the person who yells in your ear that sound doesn't exist either is aware of the contradiction within the statement or is not, right?
	Sure. Now, if the person is aware of the contradiction within the statement and does not address it, In making the statement, then that's kind of sleazy, right?
	It's kind of manipulative. Yeah, sure.
	And if they're not even aware of the contradiction in the statement, then they're not kind of bright enough to argue with, right?
	Perhaps. If they yell at you that sound doesn't exist, and they have no idea that what they're doing is a contradiction, Then you're kind of arguing science with a Stone Age witch doctor, right?
	Yeah, I would probably burst out laughing if someone said that to my face.
	Right, and again, it doesn't prove anything, but it does raise the question of, is the person aware of the contradiction?
	Now, maybe they have some very clever way that I can't imagine of solving the contradiction, but the question is, Are you aware of the, not you, but is that person aware of the contradiction?
	Sure. Now, again, it's not like self-ownership is not a right.
	To me, it's a property of a human being.
	And if someone says to me, I do not have self-ownership, They are exercising self-ownership to deny self-ownership.
	It just means that they have a problem that they have to solve.
	Now, either they know that that's a problem they have to solve, or they don't, right?
	I don't think I own myself.
	I think I am myself.
	Like, I think self-ownership suffers from a dualism.
	And I think that there's a difference between, like, are you defining self-ownership as the fact that I purposefully act or as my physiological control over my body?
	Well, only you can make you talk, right?
	I can't control your larynx.
	I can put a gun to your head or whatever, but I can't control your larynx and make you talk.
	Only you can, right? That's a physiological, biological, neurological fact, right?
	Yeah. Yes, but I think that's very different than what most libertarians are talking about when they say self-ownership.
	They're thinking of a right.
	No, no, no. I'm not talking of right, because rights don't exist.
	What I'm saying is that human beings...
	Our only Ethernet, we do not have Wi-Fi.
	We can't be controlled from outside ourselves.
	There is no remote control for human beings.
	Our neurological system is entirely bundled within our spine.
	Only you can make your body move.
	So you're defining self-ownership as an intrinsic fact of human existence.
	Saying we have self-ownership is like saying we have a kidney.
	It's not really open to debate, as far as I can see.
	I mean, someone can debate it, but then they face the problem of saying...
	I don't control my larynx, and using their larynx to make that statement.
	I mean, that's a self-detonating.
	We can understand that. If I say, I don't control my larynx, then clearly I've just contradicted myself, right?
	In a sense, yes.
	Wait, wait. Okay. Tell me in what sense I haven't contradicted myself, because maybe I... My problem is, like, the sense in which this term self-ownership is used.
	Yes, but I'm just talking about what we're talking about here, right?
	I mean, I agree that other people would...
	I hope we're not, right?
	But if I say, I don't control my larynx, I can't control my larynx, I have no control over my larynx, that's a contradiction, right?
	Sure. It would seem to be a performative contradiction.
	You kind of don't want to say yes to this, right?
	Because that seems pretty clear to me, and maybe I'm missing something, right?
	I think that's different than the more general notion of self-ownership.
	Yes, but I'm just talking about not the more general, but this is what we're talking about here.
	I can't speak for everyone else, and hopefully I can't speak for people who've made mistakes, right?
	But just what we're talking about here in terms of the self-ownership.
	Again, I'm not saying this proves self-ownership beyond any shadow of a doubt, but there definitely is a contradiction in saying I don't control my larynx, right?
	Yeah, I don't think there's the same contradiction in saying I don't own myself.
	Okay, so yourself would be what?
	Me. Me means what, right?
	Does it mean your body? Both.
	The whole. Sorry, both.
	I just said the body. What is the other?
	I was assuming you were going to go mind-body.
	Both. Okay, yeah.
	I mean, to me, the mind is what owns.
	The body is what is owned.
	But that doesn't particularly matter.
	Like, the car is not the driver kind of thing.
	But that's not hugely important.
	Yeah. But I would say that you certainly have control over your body.
	And of course not all of your body.
	I can't will my kidneys to stop, right?
	But you have control over the philosophical aspects of your body, right?
	You have control over your hands and you have control over your voice and so on, right?
	Yes, we have physiological control over our bodies.
	Yeah, and excluding Tourette's syndrome and so on, right?
	Go ahead. But yeah, so if somebody is using their body to say, is exercising exclusive control over his body, which is kind of redundant because there is no non-exclusive control over the body.
	Nobody else can, right?
	I can lend you my car, not my voice, right?
	But if someone says...
	If someone exercises control over his body to say that I cannot exercise control over my body, or I do not exercise control over my body, that doesn't work, right?
	I agree, although I don't think...
	When someone denies self-ownership, they might not necessarily be arguing against the fact that you have control over your own body so much as something else does.
	They might be denying that your body is something that's owned, strictly speaking.
	I guess the problem that I run into with the concept of self-ownership is regarding the body as something that's owned.
	I would say that nobody owns me.
	I would be prone to say, instead of saying I own myself, in effect what I want to say is nobody owns me or nobody should own me.
	Sorry, nobody owns you, but you own you, right?
	I am me. I don't own me, I am me, is what I would say.
	At the end of the day, there's a unified whole in this sense, and that's the sense in which I think we run into a dualism problem, because it's like, well, if we're talking about ownership here, who's the owner?
	How could I be both the owner and the owned at the same time?
	If I own it, then it's not me.
	If I'm owned, then I'm owned by someone else.
	So it seems like There's this weird dualism that comes into play with the concept of self-ownership as it's often used.
	Right. Now, I mean, the challenge that I have in this aspect of the conversation or a request that I would make is that if you and I are having a debate and what you seem to have a tendency of doing, if you don't mind the observation, and it's not a criticism, it's just an observation, is that we have a debate and then you say, but other people might use the term differently, right?
	Right. My reason for saying that is because you might not be actually arguing against the intent of their argument.
	Well, but it's you and I who are debating, right?
	I mean, if you bring in everyone who might be making mistakes or who might define things differently, we're not going to get very far, right?
	I'm just saying that it seems like we need to more clearly define our terms so that we don't end up basically thinking that we just, you know, quote-unquote pwned someone when we didn't actually address the content of their argument at all because the meanings of the terms are different or the intention is not picked up.
	No, and I agree, but would you say that you and I, like when we talk about the use of the larynx, that we understand what we're talking about, right?
	Generally, I would hope.
	Right, so if other people might misunderstand, that's their job to talk about or whatever.
	And this doesn't mean that either of us is right or wrong, but it's just that if we have to bring in other people who might be making mistakes or interpret things differently, it stalls us getting anywhere, in my opinion.
	Yeah, it's just a problem with the way I phrased it, basically.
	But I may as well have just said myself.
	But... And it certainly is true, just to reinforce a point that you're making, or at least I think that you're making, it certainly is true that there is a kind of dualism, right?
	I mean, I own my larynx, I am not my larynx, right?
	But if you take away every organ from me, I no longer exist, right?
	And yet, you know, I am not my kidney.
	And I certainly do understand that there is the challenge of The mind and the brain, which is really, you know, you take out the brain, there's no self-ownership, right?
	You're owned by, I don't know, the guy who's harvesting your organs in a bathroom stall in Tijuana or something, right?
	So it really comes down to the brain.
	And yes, so we say, well, I own my larynx, but if my larynx gets removed for some horrible reason, then I still can write and I still am who I am, right?
	So I understand that there is a challenge and it sort of comes down to a platonic essence, right?
	What is the last thing you can take Away from me and I'm no longer me.
	And it really would be my video card.
	But that's perhaps another debate.
	I think that some sort of what's called monism, although not all versions of it, solves that problem.
	And I think perhaps maybe John Searle's on the mind.
	I don't know how familiar you are with him.
	That might get around that problem.
	But it just seems to me that Obviously, the mind and the body are interconnected on some level.
	What is my mind without the rest of the physiological functions of my body to keep it intact?
	What is my body without my mind to control it?
	To me, the mind is just an effect of the brain, the way that gravity is an effect of mass.
	It's just something that we talk about, an invisible effect of particular conglomeration of matter and energy.
	But obviously I'm no neuroscientist, so that's just a complete nonsense.
	Yeah, I couldn't go into the details about that myself.
	And again, this is not to prove anything, but if somebody comes up to me and says, I don't own my larynx, I'm not responsible for what comes out of my larynx, and expects me to respond to him, then he's contradicting himself, or his argument contains a very significant contradiction.
	If I point out this contradiction and the person says, oh, yes, but I have a great solution for that, which is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, then great, you know, right?
	Then he's aware and, you know, I would hope that he would bring that up up front because it is such an obvious contradiction.
	And if he doesn't bring it up up front, it seems kind of sleazy and tricky.
	And this has nothing to do with you, you understand.
	This is just a theoretical guy, right?
	So that's my sort of approach to this question.
	It's just, look, If someone puts a massive hunk and wet fart of a contradiction right there on the table, then I'm sort of curious as to whether or not they notice that, right?
	And if they don't notice it, I'll point it out.
	And then I see sort of what they do with that.
	And if they just dodge or fog or avoid...
	And again, this is nothing... I'm enjoying our chat.
	This has nothing to do with you, right?
	Then I'm aware that they're either being manipulative or they're dishonest or they're, you know, kind of retarded, right?
	In which... In which case there's no, you can't have good barter with somebody who's got counterfeit currency, right?
	It just doesn't work, right?
	They just don't engage, right?
	Yes, I agree with the spirit of what you're saying.
	I guess the thing is, like when people, like what Hans Hermann Hoppe's argumentation ethics said, The basic notion is that if I make the statement, I don't own myself, self-ownership has just been proven.
	But he's also saying that the entire system of libertarian ethics is proven implicitly in argumentation.
	And that just seems really ridiculous to me, because it's like, you don't even have to prove libertarian ethics.
	You could just be like, well, you've just proven me by arguing with me.
	I don't have to make a positive case at all.
	You could just, like, sort of brush off people's statements and ignore the content of their statements and just act like, by arguing against libertarian ethics, they're arguing against some sort of ontological fact at the level of existence itself.
	Yeah, I don't—again, I'm no expert on his ethics, right?
	But my first response to that would be something like—it would be sort of twofold.
	The first would be, what if I just create a rule?
	It's sort of like the Kantian thing, right?
	The categorical imperative— What if I create a rule, which seems to be the rule in society that the most eloquent person wins, right?
	Then, you know, the argumentation ethics, you know, I'm more eloquent and I'm funnier or whatever, so whoever that is wins, right?
	Then the debate, I'm happy to enter into a debate because I'm going to win because of my charm or whatever, right?
	This is not me, right? This is an argument.
	That would sort of be one aspect.
	The other thing is that, well, what do you do with somebody who doesn't debate but just knocks you over the head and takes your wallet, right?
	That's a good question as well.
	Hopefully you defend yourself if you can.
	Well, but the point is, like, if you have to debate to prove ethics, the whole problem with ethics is that the problem with ethics is the people who don't debate, not the people who do debate, right?
	In a sense, yes.
	Although there's the people who do debate and they're totally wrong, but at least they're debating.
	Right. I mean, look, if all the government did was send me syllogisms, I'd be okay, right?
	Right? It's the guys who are going to shoot me if I don't pay my taxes that is the essence of the problem, and they're not into debating with me, right?
	Yes. So I don't see how...
	To me, that just seems like it's, well, you know, if you have people who won't use force, they've just proven that they won't use force.
	Great! But the problem in the world is the people who use force, right, and don't want to debate, right?
	Yes. Although, on the other hand, there's also the problem that you've talked about yourself before about...
	The degree to which those who give philosophical legitimacy to it, you know, kind of feel that as well, on top of that.
	Oh, yes, no, I completely agree.
	And I'm sure that, you know, I don't know much about Dr.
	Hoppe, but I'm sure he would say, well, yeah, but you're looking at an effect rather than a cause.
	But to me, this just comes perilously close to the core problem of ethicists, right, which is that people who debate and want to be reasonable, generally, Are not bad or evil people to begin with, right?
	Whereas... Well, yeah, in general, right?
	I mean, it wasn't like Bush went over to Iraq and debated with Saddam Hussein, right?
	I mean, so the people who want to debate and use reason and evidence, however badly or manipulatively, they tend not to be that bad of people.
	So basically, we are oncologists who avoid everyone who might have cancer, right?
	We only treat healthy people, right?
	That's the problem with...
	And of course, UPB attempts to overcome that in various ways, but...
	So again, the idea is simply that...
	I shouldn't say simply.
	It's not a simple idea.
	But the idea is that, yeah, there are some self-detonating statements.
	And if you want to say something about preferable behavior, then what you say has to be logical and empirical and consistent, right?
	So if someone steals your watch and then says, well, there's no such thing as property rights, then they should have no problem with you taking the watch back.
	And in fact, they should never, to be logically consistent with their own theory, they should never have stolen your watch to begin with because someone who steals your watch is doing so on the expectation that they will get to keep or sell or have some sort of property right, so to speak, over your watch, right? - It seems to go back to the problem I was having before though, where it's like, I see what you're saying, and it's like, yeah, they're hypocrites, but...
	No, no, no, sorry, not hypocrites.
	The theory is incorrect.
	See, I don't think the theory is incorrect because their behavior contradicts it, though.
	I agree with you that the theory is incorrect, but I don't think that the contradiction with their behavior disproves the theory, I guess.
	Well, no, but if you steal my watch...
	And then you sell my watch, right?
	Then you are exercising property rights at the same time that you're denying property rights, right?
	Sure, but that doesn't prove property rights.
	No, no, no, it doesn't prove because there's no such thing as proving property rights to me because there is no such thing as property rights.
	But any theory about property must be logically consistent if it's going to be valid.
	And if it's not logically consistent, Then it's invalid.
	And to my mind, if somebody's behavior is completely at odds with the theory that they are proposing as preferable, as ethical, as right, as universal behavior, then I just...
	I mean, that just comes...
	It doesn't mean that the theory is wrong, right?
	You can be a 300-pound guy with an exquisite knowledge of nutrition, right?
	But if someone says...
	This is noble, virtuous, true, honorable, magnificent behavior and is consistently doing the exact opposite.
	I'm just going to assume that they don't have a clue about ethics, right?
	And they may talk a good talk or whatever, right?
	But, I mean, I just look for it in action.
	And this is not really part of UPB. This is just something that I just generally look for, right?
	I mean, that if somebody says, I know all about ethics, You know, dental hygiene and taking care of my teeth, right?
	And they open their mouth and they have these Gollum stumps or something, you know, then, yeah, maybe they do, but, you know, who's going to bother spending time to investigate the claim in any great detail, right?
	Yeah, I can see why you would say that.
	I guess the thing for me is these seem to be more like issues of psychology and character.
	It definitely is revealing about somebody's character if their behavior is inconsistent in that way.
	Right, and just to be clear, you can't talk the thief out of stealing by pointing out the contradiction in what he's doing, right?
	Probably not. Yeah, he's going to pull the Walt Whitman.
	Oh, you say I contradict myself very well, and I contradict myself, right?
	I'm still going to take your watch, right?
	But it's people who propose theories of ethics.
	It is incumbent upon ethicists, I would say, even more so than it is incumbent upon engineers and mathematicians and scientists to have the basics of logical consistency in their theories.
	I mean, to me, right?
	Because I mean, as I talk about in the book, if an engineer puts up a shoddy bridge, you know, a couple of dozen, a couple of hundred people might die, right?
	When ethicists put out communism, right?
	Or fascism or whatever, right?
	You can get like 50 million people killed, right?
	And so ethicists have to, have to observe the basic principles Laws of rigor, logic, and evidence when putting forward ethical theories.
	And if someone puts forward an ethical theory that says stealing is good, and then you say, well, stealing is both an affirmation and a denial of property rights simultaneously, and therefore you have a logical problem, then the ethicist has to say, oops, my bad. Let me go back and work on that.
	And if the ethicist doesn't do that, Then he's an asshole, frankly, and a hugely dangerous parasite on humanity.
	Because when you screw up ethical theories, the bodies pile higher than Mount Everest, right?
	So an ethicist or anybody who talks about virtue and the right way to do things in society and what I would call universally preferable behavior, I don't fault someone who has a really complex ethical theory and then there's some problem at the end,
	right? But if at the very beginning They're both affirming and denying the exact same value, saying that this behavior is, you know, respecting property rights is good and violating property rights is good, right? Which is the basis of statism, right?
	Then they owe it to humanity because they're putting themselves in the ultimate doctor's position, which is to be an ethicist, to at least get the basics right, to at least not, you know...
	Not trip the moment they get out of the gate.
	And that's sort of where UPP really aims its crosshairs at and says, you know, come on.
	I mean, you've got to get the basics right.
	It's got to be universal.
	You can't have one rule for people in Afghanistan and another rule for people in Syria, an opposing rule, right?
	I mean, if you go to a physics convention and you say, well, this experiment only works in Switzerland and not Sweden, they'd laugh at you, right?
	The thing is, I'm sort of a universalist of a sort, at least in terms of, like, if you're going to say that individuals have something like property rights, then all individuals must have property rights.
	You can't just create a separate class of people who the rule doesn't apply to.
	I understand that.
	It seems to me, though, that when we get into the content of rules, it's like, well, there are plenty of un-libertarian rules that could be Consistently applied, but that wouldn't mean that they're the correct rules for a society.
	Such as? Anything, conceivably.
	We could theoretically consistently apply something that violates liberty, and it would be consistent in that sense.
	But like what? Anything.
	I mean... Slavery, if we could, in theory, say that slavery is moral and universalize it.
	But we couldn't do that consistently, right?
	It couldn't be universalized, slavery.
	In terms of the practicality of doing that?
	No, just in terms of the theory, right?
	Because if you're going to say that A ball will roll down a slight incline and so will a cube, right?
	Then you have a problem, right?
	Because a cube is different properties than a ball, right?
	So you can say, well, lizards are cold-blooded and mammals are warm-blooded.
	And what you're doing is you're creating categories that are based on empirical and factual differences, right?
	Yes. And so if you have...
	The capacity for ownership must come from the capacity for self-ownership.
	In fact, there's no such thing as ethics without self-ownership because nobody's responsible for any actions then, right?
	I mean, we punish a murderer or we provide sanctions against a murderer because he owns the murderer as a product of his labor, so to speak.
	So by self-ownership, you really just mean free will and responsibility then, basically?
	No, by self-ownership, I mean the biological fact, right?
	Because I'm an empiricist first and foremost.
	The biological fact...
	That I don't have control over your spinal column, right?
	Okay, so it's more, like we said before, the physiological control over the body than...
	Right, for sure. Sort of overlap with free will, if you want, but whatever.
	Yeah, so if you're going to say, well, human beings have self-ownership, which of course is the only way to make an argument, and if you say, right, we've been through that, then human beings have self-ownership, then to be owned by another human being is in direct contradiction...
	To being self-owned, right?
	Because I own myself because I have control over my spinal cord, to take a simple way of looking at it.
	But I don't have control over your spinal cord, and therefore I don't own you, right?
	Just biologically. I don't own you, certainly not in the way that I own myself, right?
	I pay you 50 bucks to wash my car, whatever.
	I'm renting you on your free will or whatever, right?
	It seems to me that, like, the ownership...
	Sorry, let me just finish this argument, then you can tell me how I'm completely out of luck, but...
	So you can't consistently apply self-ownership to a situation of slavery, because you're saying some people own themselves and other people own other people.
	You could say we own chimpanzees, right?
	Because chimpanzees are physiologically different.
	We could say that the retarded or the insane have fewer rights of self-ownership because they are distinct, measurable physiological differences.
	But where there aren't distinct, measurable, and significant physiological differences, i.e.
	interspecies or significantly reduced capacity, then you can't just create different rules.
	Then you're saying both a ball and a block roll down a slight incline, which doesn't work, right?
	What occurred to me, though, is that slavery is an example.
	By slavery, we don't tend to refer to the fact that I have direct physiological control over your body.
	A slave technically has self-ownership, then, by that definition, because the slave has physiological control over their body.
	It's just that, in spite of that, their lives are controlled by other people.
	Yes, and so what is the difference between the slaves and these other people that justifies such opposing characteristics?
	Oh, definitely. It just seems a little odd to me, though.
	If what we mean by self-ownership is physiological, it's like, well, then self-ownership is some sort of inherent trait of everyone, then we're not dealing with ethics at all here, then.
	We're just describing traits of people.
	Well, sure, but that's because you can't get the ought from the is, right?
	So you have to describe what is, right?
	Sure. And since I'm this annoying empiricist, I'll start with With the facts, right?
	And I'm not owned by a ghost that Jesus laid like an egg in my brain, right?
	I'm the physiological reality of my existence.
	So I don't think that you could create a universal and consistent rule which divides humanity arbitrarily, obviously, into two groups, right?
	The owned and the owners.
	Because that's just... That's like saying, well, some of these chickens are reptiles and some of them are fish.
	Or some of these chickens are avian and some of them are mammals.
	If you get a bunch of chickens and you go to a biology conference and you say, half of these chickens are birds and half of them are lizards, what response would you get?
	I understand your point in terms of fundamental properties, there's no difference between these groups.
	So you can't create opposing rules for them.
	Do that in physics. You can't say some of these rocks are subject to gravity and some of them aren't, right?
	You can't take the same entities and create arbitrary and opposing rules.
	I mean you can, but you're wrong, right?
	In that sense, any kind of notion of inequality of rights, I suppose, would basically have to rely on the premise that a certain group of people have some inherently different property.
	That's the only way you could try to argue for that, basically.
	And since that premise is false, yeah, I don't think you could have a sensible argument for inequality of rights in that sense.
	Right. And I know that you were just playing devil's advocate here, right?
	But the amazing thing to me, Alex, is this, that, you know, thousands of years ago, the pre-Socratics were able to identify and discriminate between thousands of species of plants, between plants and animals, between animals and fish and fish and birds, and had really complex zoological classifications, which were You know, amazingly detailed and, you know, often incorrect and various who didn't have microscopes or DNA or whatever, right?
	But they were able to do that.
	And yet, in the modern world, ethicists can't do that with human beings.
	It just blows my mind just how primitive and superstitious the field of ethics is.
	Yeah, well...
	It's like we're biologists who throw chickens in With tripods, giraffes, and ghosts, and call it a rational system of classification.
	Sorry, go ahead. It seems to me that part of the problem is that a lot of ethics relies on a certain notion of human nature that's just wacky.
	That's one of the problems I have with Rand's ethics, actually.
	She has this notion that you have to live as a man qua man.
	And my response to that is, how could I possibly not live as a man qua man?
	I think you can get operations, but sorry, go on.
	They get an apple core, you see?
	Anyway, sorry, go on.
	It's just like, we take this, we create a romantic ideal of what man is, and And then that's how we define human nature.
	And then we say you sin against human nature.
	We form an ethics that says that, you know, you sin against human nature when you do this, this and that.
	I don't think that works.
	No, human nature is just one of these wonderful tools that you can mean anything you want, right?
	It's human nature to be helpful, so let's have a welfare state.
	It's human nature to care for children, so let's have public education.
	It's human nature to be aggressive, and that's why we have wars.
	It's just having your own little personal ghost or deity that you can ascribe any motive you want to.
	Anyway, sorry, go on.
	I guess I just don't like the...
	There's a certain aspect of humanism that I don't like, even secular humanism, which I see as sort of the idealization of man in general, or human.
	And then you use that as a basis for your ethics.
	And even Rand falls prey to this.
	Like... You know, like her egoism has certain merits, I think, but it's based on, it's really not pure self-interest in any genuine sense.
	You're supposed to be ethical towards the ideal of, her ideal of man.
	Right, which is half reason and half art, right, I mean?
	Yes. And, I mean, I've got a whole video on the Randian thing, so I won't go into it here, other than just mention this, you know...
	Life of reason is that which grants man the greatest success in life and so on and blah, blah, blah.
	Empirically, that's just nonsense, right?
	I mean, the Bush clan breed like rabbits and own hundreds of millions of dollars and they're stone evil, right?
	I mean, it's just empirically not true.
	Empirically, evil is highly lucrative and enormously successful.
	And in terms of, you know, you can say, well, but they're not happy.
	It's like, but try telling them that, right?
	I mean... That's fine for you to say they're not happy or me or whatever, right?
	And I don't think that they are deep down, but clearly they believe that they're happy and they believe that the acquisition of more power and money is going to make them happier and telling them that they're not just doesn't get anywhere.
	That's actually one of the problems I ran into debating Q-Tron, man.
	He kept insisting that the morality guarantees happiness, and he even said an evil person is going to have a miserable life, and I'm like, well, that just doesn't hold.
	There are evil people, by your own definition of evil, who are getting by just fine, and there are Yeah, I mean, you'd be a virtuous guy who stubs his toe, right? At least you're unhappy for five minutes, right?
	I mean, I believe that in general, reason equals virtue equals happiness, but there aren't any guarantees, right?
	I mean, nutrition plus exercise equals health, but you can still get hit by a bus or get some freaky cancer, right?
	Right, there's no absolute correlation between them.
	No, and I genuinely believe that people who lead evil, destructive, and corrupt lives are unhappy, but it doesn't matter because they don't know that and they wouldn't admit that and they won't change their ways.
	That's called defensiveness, right?
	And so it doesn't matter whether they are objectively unhappy or not because the point is that they're never going to change based on that standard, right?
	Sure. I mean, you can't cure lepers if they think they're healthy, right?
	And if they think your cure is going to kill them, right?
	I mean, you might be right, but it doesn't matter.
	They're still not going to take any pill, right?
	You're basically talking about self-delusion.
	Yeah, for sure, for sure. And the impenetrable nature of those self-delusions should be enormously evident to libertarians who have burned up years trying to convince people to so little effect, right?
	Yes. Although I do think that, you know, I don't like the reliance on happiness because it's such a subjective or vague concept.
	And it's self-reporting, right?
	Yes. I mean, sorry, just very, very briefly, I mean, say, well, religion is irrational.
	If I say reason equals virtue equals happiness and religion is irrational, then all religious people should be unhappy, right?
	And then you go to a religious person who says, "No, I'm happy," and it's like, "Well, now what?" So it doesn't work.
	But anyway, sorry, go on.
	Well, I was just going to say that in spite of that, I do think that consequences are relevant.
	I'm not a utilitarian, but I think that consequences are relevant in the formation of ethics.
	Like, I don't think We could completely divorce ethics from consequences.
	Like, imagine, like, if I held to a principle regardless of consequences and it ended up being that, you know, it destroyed my very life or, you know, humanity as such.
	Yeah, no, I don't think, yeah, absolutely.
	I think that you can't judge the value in advance by consequences.
	Because that's just an argument for the stimulus package, right?
	If we don't do this, we're going to die, right?
	I mean, people just make up the worst case scenarios to get their point across.
	But consequences certainly are relevant, right?
	Which is why UPB has that last third where I say, okay, well, here's the framework.
	Let's put some ethical theories through and see if we come up with stuff that makes no sense, right?
	And... More along the lines of what you call the argument from a fact, I guess?
	Yeah, I mean, you can't...
	To me, you can't judge the truth or falsehood of a proposition by its effect, right?
	Not strictly speaking, but it is relevant.
	Yes, but that's right, but you can't be blind to its effect, right?
	That to me would... I mean, you can't say that the welfare state is wrong because there are more poor people now than before, right?
	To me, that doesn't matter.
	But it's not irrelevant, because if it's logically wrong, then it should fail, right?
	Let me put it this way.
	I would say that that's a secondary reason to be against it.
	But the more primary reason is the means themselves.
	Yeah, yeah. If we know that violence always achieves bad things, except for a few people, whatever, right?
	If we say, well, violence achieves the opposite of what you want, then the violence is a bad thing to do, right?
	And obviously, I think UPB does a pretty good job of holding up the NAP. I mean, however, it's not obviously exhaustively defined, because that would be volumes.
	But if we say, well, violence achieves bad things, and here's why, and the theory, and the ethics, and so on, then yes, for sure, we should then say, and here's some examples, right?
	Sure. One of the issues with the NAP that I've recently been talking about is Shades of interpretation among libertarians of the NAP. Obviously, there's sort of a spectrum somewhere between pacifisms, obviously, on one end. On the other end, we have something like objectivism, maybe.
	Then there are different positions in between.
	I've been trying to specify what is a tight view of the NAP, because I think there needs to be a coherent, tight view of what constitutes the initiation of violence versus defense.
	Yeah, like, did Ayn Rand have something against Islamic people that I missed in all of her books that they have to be blown up repeatedly?
	I just, I missed that whole thing.
	Maybe there's a book I've never read of hers called Kill the Arabs.
	I don't know. But it seems like a shame the way that's all gone.
	I mean, that's a real mess there.
	I mean, good God. That might be more, you know, Leonard Peacoff or whatever who...
	Now runs the Ayn Rand Institute.
	That's a shame, too. Like, I thought, I mean, I've only read two of his books, right?
	The Objectivism one, which I thought was pretty tough going.
	It was pretty dry. And his Ominous Parallels, which I thought was a really good book.
	But, like, anyway, like Nathaniel Brandon, they did their best work when they were still hanging out with Rand, right?
	I mean, because she was a pretty fertile person to be around intellectually.
	And their writing was a lot better when they were around her as well, because she was a very good writer, but...
	But yeah, that is a real shame.
	And there is, of course, a lot of divergence.
	But you would expect there to be a lot of divergence if people are picking conclusions that suit their personalities rather than grinding their exhaustive way through a methodology or at least accepting a methodology that is dominant.
	Yes. I think part of the problem is, as I said before, people take their preconceptions prior to becoming libertarians with them.
	And that covers their libertarianism.
	Someone might already have a preference for certain forms of organization or something, but then that blinds them to perhaps the degree to which the forms of organization they like are reliant on violence.
	Like the corporations thing.
	I've had very long, drawn-out conflicts with certain libertarians about the corporations issue because They don't see any relation to violence with that.
	So, like, certain libertarians, I think, end up being apologists for things like corporations, even though they're nominally anarchist libertarians.
	It's like, well, geez, you need to understand the connection between these things more, and consequences does seem to become very relevant there, because it's the consequence of violence that is being pointed out.
	Right. I mean, the corporations are a state-created and maintained entities, and the state doesn't do anything without some ugly thing going on in the back room, right?
	Yeah. I mean, it is just a union for the rich, right?
	And unfortunately, it's doing a lot more for the rich than the unions for the poor are doing, which is also inevitable, given the relationship between money and political power.
	But this theory and action thing is always a big problem.
	I remember it even way back in the day, first reading...
	I think Ayn Rand gave an address to the West Point graduates at one point, which to me is completely bizarre.
	It's like Eliot Ness, you know, giving an address to the graduating Hitman Mafia class, right?
	It just is completely bizarre because she's like, well, the government is immoral and the initiation of the use of force and so on, right?
	And then to go and to talk to the primary Hitman of the statist powers that be...
	And praise their dedication and this and that.
	But I guess she has the fantasy, right?
	That they're staunch defenders who, you know, eat only the food they grow and protect the sheeple that live in the borders or whatever.
	And it is a real tragedy, right?
	That she doesn't understand that the people she's talking to are paid by the very taxation she decries as immoral, right?
	I mean, it's Even if they are defenders, they're only defenders because they've attacked the citizenry first, right?
	Or the police have, right?
	And that kind of stuff is really tough, right?
	To see that because, you know, nobody has to be perfect, but at least let's hope you get some of the basics right in terms of action and theory.
	Yes. Although it's not just about action and theory.
	Even sort of like realizing the full implications of your own theory.
	And specifying it more.
	I think there's a lot of vagueness problem with the non-aggression principle.
	People tend to treat it as axiomatic...
	But then they don't specify it enough, and it's like, well, what's your definition of defense?
	Do you think that if some child runs across my lawn, I could just shoot him?
	I've seen some libertarians argue that that's okay.
	Yeah, and so you get these people who won't define it at all, and then you get the other, you know, ultimate anal libertarians who are like, okay, you're in a plane.
	One of the wings has fallen off, and there are three guys holding onto the other wing, and then there's one guy in the cockpit who's fainted, but there's another guy who might be able to play it, who fly it, because he flew Microsoft Flight Simulator for two years, and you've got another guy who's on the ground control, but he's a statist.
	Like, they come up with these absolutely mind-blowingly, staggeringly complex, never-ever-going-to-happen-in-a-million-lifetimes kind of situations and say, okay, go, right?
	How does your ethics handle this situation, right?
	And that, to me, is, you know, kind of silly, right?
	Like, we're kind of in a war zone, and we're medics, right?
	people coming in holding their limbs with bits falling off all over them and tripping over their own intestines, then we're basically being asked to attend a lecture that says, you know, well, what if someone has a hangnail at the same time that they're on the mirror base station and all they have to fix themselves is a toenail clipper, how would you solve that?
	It's like, you know, let's deal with that when we've dealt with some of the people tripping over their own intestines, perhaps, right?
	Sure.
	It just, yeah, you're talking about like lifeboat scenarios.
	I mean, I think lifeboat scenarios can be, or put it this way, circumstances can be relevant, but it's just ridiculous to just toss some never-going-to-happen scenario at someone and be like, therefore, your ethics are invalid.
	Yeah, and I like them.
	They're like Sudoku, right?
	I like them. They're good intellectual exercises, and they can test theories, right?
	For sure, right? But...
	The thing is, we're not at Einsteinian physics yet.
	We're still at Newtonian physics.
	That gets us across the ocean.
	You know, we're not getting to Jupiter, right?
	Yet, right? So, I don't think that we need to necessarily fuss at the absolutely fuzzy, never-going-to-happen edges of the theory as a core focus, as an intellectual exercise, as a dessert after the main course.
	It seems like a fun thing to do, but there is that quagmire that...
	And to me, it's a kind of venom.
	It's a kind of paralytic.
	It's like, let my spider of lifeboat scenarios bite you and then paralyze you so you can't get anything done.
	It just seems a little bit...
	Right. That's not...
	On the other end, I don't think it's wise to necessarily...
	I've seen some libertarians completely brush off any kind of circumstantial scenario and be like, well, it doesn't matter.
	I think there are answers to some of these scenarios.
	Yes, I agree. And I've gone down that quagmire.
	and with some, I think, some productive results.
	And it has been an enjoyable exercise.
	But I'm always, you know, again, I have this image, rightly or wrongly, of like, you know, surgeon on a battlefield, right?
	And, you know, I don't necessarily want to get into the most esoteric kind of operations when bodies are fallen all over the place, right?
	Yeah, you want to address the basics first, I would suppose.
	Yeah, that doesn't mean that, you know, I'm not just sawing off legs so to speak, right? I still have to improve my skills, but To me, it's more of a hobby than a main course, if that makes sense.
	Sure. I don't want to keep you up all night, and we've also been talking for a long time.
	I just wanted to say that I Really, you have enjoyed the conversation.
	That's good. You haven't disappointed, right?
	Your intellect is fierce and sharp and enjoyable to interact with.
	How was the experience of the conversation for you?
	It was fine.
	There were a few things I might have wanted to talk about that I didn't, but it went where it went.
	Well, you know, work on your webcam thing, and, you know, we can certainly do this again.
	I certainly enjoyed it, and for me, it's nice to talk about...
	I don't get enough of a chance, really, to talk that much about ethics these days, right, as you know from the show, right?
	The non-aggression principle that people are interested in talking about tends to be more around their personal relationships, which, you know, is totally fine and is where the rubber meets the road in terms of Philosophy in action, but I surely do really enjoy the theory and I certainly do appreciate having the chance to discuss it at this length with you.
	Well, thanks for the chance to talk.
	Yeah, and give me a holler when you get your webcam-y thing sorted out, and if you need one, I'd be happy to ship you one.
	I've got one sitting in a cupboard that is not doing anyone any good, so let me know.
	What, a webcam? Yeah, yeah, a webcam, so just let me know and I can ship you one.
	I have another webcam and another computer, so if I'm to talk to you on video, I should probably use the other computer for it.
	It's just not working on this one.
	Yeah, give it a shot, because I know that the ethics debates have been quite popular on the FDR channel.
	I mean, because I did one with Exomniverse and Qtron Man.
	Anyway... So I think it would be a very productive and enjoyable.
	I mean, as I've talked about, to me, a debate is more around exploring, you know, various ideas, not like, you know, win-lose kind of thing, right?
	No, it should be more of Socratic of, like, figuring out what the other person's position is and exploring.
	Right, right, for sure, for sure, because, I mean, I try not to debate with people I don't respect their minds and methodology, and since I have with yours, I certainly do appreciate the chance, and I'll send you a copy of this, I assume, but tell me if I'm wrong, that this is okay for me to post once I add your social security number to the end.
	Post on YouTube?
	No, to just post as a podcast.
	Give you the link. I know that you frequent a lot of forums that I don't, and if you wanted to post it there too, I think it's been a very...
	You totally have permission to release it as a podcast or whatever you want.
	Excellent. Okay. Well, I appreciate that, and I'll send you the link.
	Let me know when your webcam's up, and we can do it again.
	All right. And I make no intellectual property claims anyways, so...
	Oh, good. Fantastic.
	That's good to have that in...
	Not writing, but audio, I suppose.
	All right, Matt. Thanks, Alex, again.

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