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March 21, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
19:41
1311 Virtue, Values, UPB and Ownership - Alex's Review of our debate
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Hi, it's Steph. Hope you're doing well.
This is Alex, also known as Brain Police, on the FDR forums.
He wrote a blog post called Retrospective Thoughts on the Conversation with Molyneux, which I thought I would read here so that he has a chance to clarify his thoughts after our conversation, and I think it's well worth putting it forward to make sure that it's a balanced view.
So he wrote this on March 23rd, that's Monday, 2009.
He writes, This post is meant to express my after-debate thoughts and a clarification of my position.
I think it was more of a conversation than a debate.
We talked about libertarianism and philosophy, with the first half or so consisting more in epistemological and ontological concerns and emphasis on methodology.
Molyneux tends to go on tangents or to, quote, speechify sometimes, which kind of makes it hard to make or sustain a point when his tangent has taken it in a completely different direction.
That's in italics.
He also tends to make analogies that don't hold or are not relevant to your point.
For example, Molyneux made an analogy to the absurd scenario of sending someone a letter in the mail saying letters never get delivered.
When I was trying to question self-ownership, the analogy simply didn't fit or was not relevant to what I was talking about.
It's easy to take an opportunity to opine on what is obviously an absurdity, but it may not actually be analogous to what's in question.
Then this is a chapter title or a paragraph title.
What the hell does, quote, ownership mean?
I didn't fully express, he says, what my issues with UPB are, and we didn't really dig into the question of rights theory.
My objection to the concept of self-ownership has to do with how it tends to be used in rights theory.
I'm not denying that people have physiological control over their bodies.
I'm denying that the affirmation of this proves rights concepts.
This is what Hoppe's argumentation ethics claims to do.
I'm also claiming that, quote, ownership is really a metaphor here.
What Steph calls self-ownership, physiological control over one's body, is not the same thing as, quote, ownership, as I understand it, because, quote, ownership signifies something to be homesteaded, bought and sold, and surely libertarians do not intend to conceive of one's self, such as to literally be property in this sense.
Such ownership of the self is not the same as ownership over external objects.
These are different senses of the word ownership, by the very least.
I'm of the view that the, quote, property, in the descriptive sense of the word, of personhood is distinct from the property of ownership.
This is part of why I think that the statement, I don't own myself, is perfectly valid.
Personhood is internal to the subject, while ownership is relational between subject and object.
I can own things, but those things are not me by the very nature of ownership.
The self, or the person as a whole, this means both the mind and the body, is not literally owned, in my view, and it very well should not be.
Ownership does not refer to physiological control, which is what Molyneux is defining self-ownership to be, and this is where the confusion really stems from.
A slave master doesn't have direct physiological control over their slave, but the slave is, at least partially, owned by them.
And when I say that I own my car, for example, presumably I'm not claiming to have the ability to control it telepathically.
And just jumping in here, I completely agree with that, but we were only talking about self-ownership, at least to my understanding in the conversation, to continue with Alex's blog.
Molyneux also tried to point out that I'm too concerned with what other people think, that I may object, but other people may use this term differently, but what other people think doesn't matter.
Well, the entire point is that I myself am the other people in this discussion, and that Molyneux is not giving me a chance to express what I mean by my terms.
I'm expected to accept his definition of self-ownership in order for a debate to occur.
The entire point is that I don't define ownership as physiological or mental control.
When I say I don't own myself, I am not saying that I don't have the mental intentionality and physiological control.
I'm pointing out that this isn't the same thing as ownership.
Molyneux is conflating ownership with direct control in this way.
Since we understand ownership to refer to something other than direct control in this sense, then my statement that I don't own myself simply isn't even subject to the contradictions that Molyneux wants to point out.
That was a good 10 to 15 minutes of him avoiding my point in italics.
And I do apologize for that misunderstanding.
When you said other people may use this term differently, I really had no idea you were talking about yourself, because when you're talking, I mean, just for clarity's sake, when you're talking about yourself, it's usually good to use the term, I use this term differently,
because I can't judge what other people do or don't say, but we can certainly have a debate about what your opinions are, or what your arguments are, but I don't know when you say other people may use this term differently that the other people you're referring to Is yourself.
I'm sorry about that. I had no idea.
Furthermore, precisely what self is being referred to, self as body, self as mind, self as both body and mind, is often interchanged between different senses throughout the course of a discussion on self-ownership.
Which self is it then that we are speaking of?
Mullen, you seem to vaguely acknowledge the dualism problem without really solving it.
The closest he came to solving it was by proclaiming that the mind owns the body, but I don't find this to be sufficient, and I think that the term ownership can only be used metaphorically here at best.
The line between proclaiming that we are possessed by a spirit and proclaiming that the mind owns the body seems rather slim to me.
In the next chapter heading, What the hell does rights mean?
Whenever I actually did bring up the question of rights and prescriptive ethics, Molyneux seemed to mostly avoid addressing it.
A few times he denied that rights exist, but the sense in which he is making that claim, i.e.
that they do not tangibly exist, nor are they in a platonic realm of forms, Isn't in dispute and has nothing to do with the question at hand.
It's besides the point and begging the question.
This is also confusing because Molyneux actually does advocate rights concepts, so upon closer inspection it comes off as if he's just nitpicking.
Clearly he has a certain concept of liberty that is prescriptive, so I don't see the point of going over the fact that it isn't intrinsic.
Of course it isn't intrinsic.
And of course a rights claim isn't Sorry, typo.
Guaranteed to be respected, but that's entirely besides the point.
That rights aren't guaranteed to be respected or recognized is a separate question than the validity of prescriptive rights claims as such.
Rights concepts are not meant to be a description of properties of objects.
Molyneux's claims that he doesn't believe in rights is definitely a sleight of hand, much like his claim that the government doesn't exist.
Just before and after he nitpicked about rights in this way, he was essentially claiming that someone's denial of property rights affirms property rights.
But if by self-ownership and property rights Molyneux was claiming not to refer to prescriptive ethics at all, but a mere description of traits, then how can he simultaneously be claiming to be proving libertarian ethics?
And why would he be a libertarian in the first place if all he cares about is the description of traits?
Libertarian anarchism is not merely a description of traits, while it may integrate theories about what is into it and may be based on one to an extent.
It is not defined or understood as a mere description about what is.
It is to be understood as a prescriptive political philosophy.
Just to jump in, that's certainly true.
That's why I have a book called Universally Preferable Behavior.
It's about what is preferable.
And then he goes on With a new chapter heading, Ethics or Science?
What's somewhat perplexing is Molyneux's insistence on regarding UPB as if it is just a descriptive methodology when the main contention in question is in the realm of prescriptive ethics.
Molyneux seems to be putting himself forward as if he's just engaging in rigorous epistemological methodology.
It ends up being confusing because while he tends to defend UPB when it is questioned by acting like it isn't prescriptive, At the same time, he wants to claim that by using his methodology, one can validate ethical theories.
But it seems a little strange to say that a purely deductive and deconstructive methodology can validate ethics.
And it's as if Molyneux wants to both affirm and deny that he's doing ethical theory at the same time.
If UPB is just a scientific method or a description that has nothing to do with prescriptive ethics, italics, then I fail to see why it shouldn't lead us to moral nihilism.
And yet Molyneux is definitely not a moral nihilist.
But this is why I say it's all about the if-then.
But anyway, you already heard that.
To continue with Alex's blog, when he's questioned, it's almost as if he plays the role of moral nihilist as to deny that he engages in moralizing and to act like UPB is just like rigorous scientific description.
So when UPB is criticized, sorry, typo, Molyneux falls back on characterizing it as just science, an objective description of properties.
Of course, ethics is not science.
So how could he claim that UPB has anything to do with ethics at all?
If it's just a description of what is and nothing more, then it has nothing to do with ethics.
If it has something to do with ethics, then it cannot be just the scientific method.
If Molyneux really wants to be dealing with just the scientific method, then technically he shouldn't be talking about ethics at all.
For the scientific method isn't meant for ethical propositions.
It has nothing, at least directly, to do with the field of ethics at all.
There is no such thing as preferable behavior in terms of science.
Well, that's just not true.
Sorry to jump in. I mean, that's just frankly not true when I go into this in the book.
Of course there's such a thing as preferable behavior in terms of science.
It's called using the scientific method.
But anyway, he goes on.
This is the next chapter heading. Binaries and negativistic methodology.
When I brought up my problem with the idea of using a purely deductive and negativistic approach that just rules things out without providing a comprehensive positive case for anything, Molyneux seemed to miss the substance of the concern and talked in terms of the basic binary between truth and falsehood.
But what was in question was not the binary between truth and falsehood.
It was in the context of more specific questions in which there are a multitude of possible positions.
To give a contextual example, if our concern is with finding an answer in a panacea of property rights theories, the binary of property rights is valid versus property rights is invalid isn't really relevant.
The question at hand, in this case, is much more complicated than that.
The standard positions on a particular question may well be all false, or some may contain elements of both truth and falsehood, or there may even be no true answer to the question.
Not every question is strictly binary in the same way as the true false dichotomy is.
The fundamental true-false binary is besides the point.
For example, if I rule out a statement that eating apples is moral, that does not necessarily follow that the statement that eating apples is immoral is validated.
In this case, I would claim that eating an apple is neither moral or immoral.
My conception of morality doesn't even cover that question.
This is an example showing that not all binaries are true or false.
And I completely agreed with that in the conversation, but okay.
He goes on. Or we may Be presented with a false dilemma.
For example, the false dilemma of either the mind doesn't exist, eliminative materialism and epiphenomenalism, or the mind manifests the universe, solipsism and idealism.
In this case, I would claim that neither proposition is true.
For another example, if we rule out the statement that I am happy, it wouldn't necessarily follow that I am sad.
It's validated. Perhaps I feel neither happy or sad.
Or I don't think that either of them can be attributed absolutely to me in this scenario.
Hence the binaries that we may be presented with on many occasions, or many questions, may not mesh with the more fundamental true-false binary as such.
Dare I say that when we venture much beyond the true-false binary, many of the rest of the binaries don't hold us absolutes.
My concern is with the methodology that merely rules out positions and then accepts whatever is left without anything positive to prove it, and without investigating further, You might be able to collapse someone else's position as contradictory and proceed to rule it out, but that wouldn't necessarily be a proof of your position.
Neither would a contradiction between the behavior of someone who makes a proposition and their proposition necessarily disprove their position or prove yours.
Molyneux seems to deny that he does this with UPB, but I see some ways in which he may very well be doing it, due to the emphasis on the form of argument and the tendency to consider everything to be binary.
I think this avoids the detailed substance of concepts and propositions.
Well, I mean, this is the magic of, just to jump in, it's the magic of the word seems.
Seems to deny that he does this with UPB, but if you use the word seems, you don't actually have to provide proof or quotes from the book or anything, so I guess that's easy, it just seems a little lazy.
To continue with Alex's blog, he writes, so this is a chapter heading, universality and consistency.
Another issue I briefly touched on in the discussion but didn't get to explain I'm not sure why, we had an hour and a half, but didn't get to explain, is that consistent application of an ethic, strictly speaking, isn't what proves or disproves it.
You could theoretically consistently apply or universalize any rule you want.
Actually, I'm so sorry to interrupt again, just to mention, for those who may be hearing this without the podcast, yeah, I mean, he said slavery could be universalized, and we went through that in great detail, so I'm not sure what that means when he says he didn't get to explain it.
Anyway, You could theoretically consistently apply or universalize any rule you want.
The test of internally consistent application tells us nothing about the actual content of a premise.
One can consistently apply an incorrect premise.
One can have a consistently authoritarian philosophy and its problem would not be one of internal consistency, but the problem would be the premise itself.
The standard of consistent application alone cannot validate or invalidate an ethical theory because it has no bearing on the actual content of the ethical theory.
This is part of why I find UPB to be incomplete or lacking.
All it cares about is consistency in application of propositions.
But it can say nothing about the content of propositions as such.
That doesn't seem to get us anywhere.
And that's not true at all.
I mean, sorry to be the guy who wrote the book, but...
I absolutely talk about consistency with regards to reality, empiricism, and so on.
But anyway, to continue with his blog, Molyneux wants to claim that propositions such as theft is moral are not universalizable.
Sure they are. All you have to do is form a philosophy in which the rule is absolute.
I'm not sure that's a philosophy.
I think that's just a statement.
Sorry, typo.
One could theoretically form a philosophy in which theft is moral is a universal absolute.
Again, that's just a statement.
If the people proposing such an ethic end up not liking being stolen from or do not always steal everything, this wouldn't prove that their philosophy is internally inconsistent or that its content is incorrect.
It would prove that their behavior isn't consistent with their philosophy.
Once again, the contradictions that Molyneux often point out are not necessarily internal contradictions in a philosophy or premise, but a contradiction between theory and action.
And I say, so what? All you have proven at best is hypocrisy or dishonesty.
Molyneux seemed to want to distance himself from the idea that a contradiction between philosophy and action proves or disproves a philosophy.
Yet at the same time, he essentially went on to make use of that idea.
And almost seems to be trying to derive an ought from an is in the sense of claiming that a performative contradiction made by someone who is denying a certain ought is an affirmation of that ought.
Of course, Molyneux will then shrink back into acting as if all he's doing is engaging in the description of properties, not oughts.
Hence, he used an example of someone saying property rights are not valid or there should be no property rights and then being confused when the person then made the statement denying or questioning property rights towards...
Okay, you understand that.
I think you understand that from the conversation.
To continue. Implying that the person who made the statement questioning property rights has a sense of property rights in terms of being responsible for their own statements, which Molyneux would like to sum up as self-ownership.
But again, I say, so what?
My entire point is that this has no direct bearing on the truth value of their statement, so why bring up such examples other than as a slate of hand, an analogy to an absurdity that is beside the point?
Doesn't Molyneux realize that, quote, property rights is not the same thing as the fact of control?
If someone says property rights should not be recognized, the fact that they control property is a separate question from property rights as such, and their statement is not necessarily intended to deny the fact that people have property.
Property rights refers to an ought, not the mere fact that someone currently has property as such.
It's as if Molyneux is ignoring when terms are used descriptively and prescriptively, and treats prescriptive statements as if they are meant to be descriptive in the attempt to invalidate them.
It's as if I said, I shouldn't exist, and you responded with shock, saying, why do you deny your own existence?
Then when I tried to explain to you why I don't think I should continue existing, you kept harping on about how ridiculous it is to deny your own existence.
Now that's a valid analogy.
Next time, if I have an official video debate with Molyneux, sorry, just for those who don't know, we tried to have a video debate, but his technology didn't work.
If I have an official video debate with Molyneux, I'm going to have to be sure to bring these points up.
It seems like, whenever I started to explain my position or make a point, Molyneux would go on to make a tangential point that I don't disagree with in principle, such as pointing out basic performative contradictions in certain ontological claims, such as I don't exist, or screaming sound doesn't exist in someone's ear.
I fully agree with Molyneux that statements of that sort seem to be self-detonating, but those are not the propositions that I'm talking about.
And that is irrelevant to the question I'm exploring.
And that avoids expressing what my concern is.
It's as if he's trying to lead you into agreement with him on some basic point that isn't directly related to what you were disputing, almost to fool you into agreeing with him on what's in dispute.
But I'm not talking about ontological claims, and my dispute with UPB is not about ontology.
It's about analyzing, justifying, and invalidating prescriptive ethics.
And that's precisely what Molyneux largely avoided getting into in this discussion despite the fact that I kept trying to bring it up.
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