4293 David Gordon: The Molyneux Problem - Rebutted!
Stefan Molyneux, Host of Freedomain Radio - the largest and most popular philosophy show in the world - responds to David Gordon's critique of his book "Universally Preferable Behaviour.""Stefan Molyneux is a popular libertarian broadcaster who has in recent years acquired a considerable following. In Universally Preferable Behavior, he takes on an ambitious task. He endeavors to provide a rational basis for morality. Should he succeed, he would not only have achieved something of monumental importance; he would also have rendered a great service to libertarianism. Molyneux's system of morality has resolutely libertarian implications. If he is right, surely a time for rejoicing is at hand."It would be cruel to arouse false expectations, so I had better say at once that Molyneux does not succeed in his noble goal. He fails, and fails miserably. His arguments are often preposterously bad.David Gordon is a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He was educated at UCLA, where he earned his PhD in intellectual history. He is the author of Resurrecting Marx: The Analytical Marxists on Exploitation, Freedom, and Justice, The Philosophical Origins of Austrian Economics,An Introduction to Economic Reasoning, and Critics of Marx. He is also editor of Secession, State, and Liberty and co-editor of H.B. Acton'sMorals of Markets and Other Essays.Dr. Gordon is the editor of The Mises Review, and a contributor to such journals as analysis, The International Philosophic Quarterly, The Journal of Libertarian Studies, and The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics.▶️ Donate Now: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate▶️ Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.fdrurl.com/newsletterYour support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate▶️ 1. Donate: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate▶️ 2. Newsletter Sign-Up: http://www.fdrurl.com/newsletter▶️ 3. On YouTube: Subscribe, Click Notification Bell▶️ 4. Subscribe to the Freedomain Podcast: http://www.fdrpodcasts.com▶️ 5. Follow Freedomain on Alternative Platforms🔴 Bitchute: http://bitchute.com/stefanmolyneux🔴 Minds: http://minds.com/stefanmolyneux🔴 Steemit: http://steemit.com/@stefan.molyneux🔴 Gab: http://gab.ai/stefanmolyneux🔴 Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stefanmolyneux🔴 Facebook: http://facebook.com/stefan.molyneux🔴 Instagram: http://instagram.com/stefanmolyneuxSource: https://mises.org/library/molyneux-problemSoundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/stefan-molyneux/david-gordon-the-molyneux-problem-rebutted
Gonna have a look at an article that came out some years ago on Mises called The Molyneux Problem.
I did a response to this back in the day, but it got lost to the sands of time.
And it was written by a fellow named David Gordon.
Always reminds me of the Rockabilly singer Robert Gordon for some reason.
Anyway.
So there's a link to the book Universally Preferable Behavior, a Rational Proof of Secular Ethics, which is available for free.
And also if you wanted a summation of it that distills ten years of some fairly good criticism of the way I approached the theory of ethics, you can pick up Essential Philosophy, my most recent book, EssentialPhilosophy.com.
You can also watch it for free on YouTube here.
So he starts off by saying, Stefan Molyneux.
is a popular libertarian broadcaster who has, in recent years, acquired a considerable following.
In universally preferable behavior, he takes on an ambitious task.
He endeavors to provide a rational basis for morality.
Should he succeed, he would not only have achieved something of monumental importance, he would also have rendered a great service to libertarians.
Molyneux's system of morality has resolutely libertarian implications.
If he is right, surely a time for rejoicing is at hand.
Okay, so I mean just so you know how people write.
See, if you just dislike someone or you dislike a theory, you're set against it and you look for every conceivable weakness or flaw and that can be a very good service and a very fine thing to do.
If it's done honestly, right?
If it's done honestly.
If you cherry pick, if you avoid, like if you take one argument out of a chain of arguments and pretend it's isolated and disprove based on that.
Well, that's just has a smidge less integrity to it.
But the important thing, of course, is that you want to start talking about it's an ambitious task and so on.
And the reason you want to do that is, you know, Push down from a great height.
That's generally why you say that.
So he says, it would be cruel to arouse false expectations, so I had better say at once that Molyneux does not succeed in his noble goal.
He fails and fails miserably.
His arguments are often preposterously bad.
Now, this is a little three-year-old psychological trip called poisoning the well, which is you tell everyone how bad my arguments are, what an idiot I am, what a fool I am, how incompetent I am.
rather than providing evidence.
You don't let people think for themselves, right?
You tell them what to think.
So, yeah, fails miserably, arguments are often preposterously bad.
I don't know, this is kind of funny.
Okay, so he says, let us first be clear, in his own words on what Molyneux wishes to accomplish, and he gives me a quote, a quote from the book, he quotes from the book, the question before us is thus, can some preferences be objective, i.e.
universal?
When I talk about universal preferences, I'm talking about what people should prefer, not what they always do prefer.
Page 33, emphasis omitted, right?
So here's something that's interesting and should give you your warning that you may be in the presence of a squid-tongued sophist, which is... Why is he starting on page 33?
Let's go back up here.
I'm sorry.
The book is 134 pages.
I thought it was longer than that.
But anyway, the book is 134 pages in the one that he got.
That's 11 years ago.
Wow.
is 134 pages in the one that he got.
134 pages.
That's 11 years ago.
Wow.
134 pages.
And he's starting on page 33.
So yeah, he skipped over the first quarter of the book.
Ha!
Seems kind of interesting.
Okay, these preferences furthermore have to do with morality, behavior that can be forcibly imposed on people.
And he quotes me again, those preferences which can be considered binding upon others can be termed universal preferences or moral rules.
Right, so here, I got a 134 page book.
He's got one quote from page 33, one sentence or two, I guess.
And then he's got a quote from page 40.
I tried to choose my words very carefully.
I mean, you know, if the book started on page 40, I would have started the book on page 40.
It would be page 1 because this one goes up to 11.
Is there then behavior that in his sense universally preferable?
Okay.
Is there then behavior that is in his sense universally preferable?
Okay.
Our ever generous author.
Ooh, that's snark.
See, if you really better than someone, if you really can dominate someone, like I just did a debate with a fine young fellow about UPB, and, you know, you can be nice, you can be gentle.
If you're genuinely superior, you know, if you're Mike Tyson in his prime and you punch a girl guide, you don't need to do a victory dance as well.
You know, like if you're genuine.
So the snarkiness is a sign of weakness, just so you know that.
The snarkiness is a sign of weakness and it's a sign of bias.
So he says, our ever-generous author has an abundance of arguments in support of a positive answer to this question.
His first claim is that the very act of engaging in inquiry over the existence of universally preferable behavior suffices to answer the question in the affirmative.
Okay.
So, yes.
Now, an inquiry, it's interesting that he uses that word, right?
He doesn't say the word debate.
Which is the word that I use.
So why does he use the word inquiry rather than using the word debate?
Because an inquiry is tentative.
It is not usually conclusive, right?
So an inquiry is something that is very different from a debate.
A debate is when a loser, objective truth, absolutes, and so on.
He uses the word inquiry here to diffuse the pursuit of truth that a robust debate should include, right?
So that's very, very important to say inquiry, right?
So then he says, if I am engaged in a debate about this topic, must I not prefer truth to falsehood?
An attempt to deny this leads to a contradiction.
And he quotes me again from page 40.
If I argue against the proposition that universally preferable behavior is valid, I have already shown my preference for truth over falsehood, as well as a preference for correcting those who speak falsely.
So here's what's interesting, right?
I use the word argue and this fellow uses the word inquiry.
It's just important you watch out for these little tricks because it's probably an unconscious attempt to program you into a negative view.
So, Molyneux, and also, you know, when people just say Molyneux like last name, they're attempting to assert a kind of rhetorical superiority over the subject.
He doesn't say Mr. Molyneux, he doesn't say Stefan Molyneux MA, he just Molyneux, right?
It's just, you know, it happened in boarding school, I'm aware of it.
All right.
So he says here, Molyneux is certainly right that someone who wants to discover whether universally preferable behavior exists prefers, while trying to find the answer, truth over falsehood.
It's just not true.
But how does this generate a preference to correct others with mistaken views?
See, it's so obvious.
God.
See, I use argue.
I use debate.
Wants to discover.
Okay, so.
So, someone who wants to discover whether university preferable behavior prefers, while trying to find the answer, truth over falsehood.
Now that's just not true.
I mean this is just a false, false statement.
It's obviously false and it's lazy thinking.
It's not even thinking really.
It's just sophistry, right?
So have you ever had a debate like this?
So you, you, I have.
You go through a debate about whether the world is a sphere or the world is a tabletop and whether it's flat or whether it's round to use Some amateur nomenclature, right?
You go through this debate and you spend an hour convincing someone that the world is round and not flat.
And they agree.
Wow, you know, that's good arguments, I can't, you know, you're right about that, the math checks out, you know, I've had that experience, these videos prove it, and blah, blah, blah, right?
So then, five minutes after you have concluded the debate and they have accepted the world is round and not flat, they say, oh, but the world is flat.
As if you've never had That debate.
Do you then say, well, that's perfectly fine.
Yeah, you see, you accepting that the world is round was only within the confines of our debate.
Right after that debate, you can revert to your original erroneous belief that the world was flat.
It's no problem.
No one ever does that.
No one ever lives like that.
Nobody ever acts that way.
I mean, this is kind of funny, right?
So he says someone who wants to discover whether universally preferable behavior exists prefers, while trying to find the answer, truth over falsehood.
Is he saying that if they find the truth, which is universal and objective, then five minutes afterwards they can completely reject that truth, revert to their original false belief, and that's perfectly fine with everyone?
No, that's not it.
We discover a truth so that we can hold on to the truth, so we can keep the truth.
So it's not just during the debate that you have a preference for the truth.
Because if you only had a preference for truth during the debate, you know what you wouldn't do?
You wouldn't bother debating anyone.
Of course, right?
Because you could just revert to whatever you want after the debate, right?
Anyway.
I mean, it would be like saying, well, okay, if someone is studying to become a doctor, then their knowledge is valid and true.
And they're interested in being a doctor and interested in practicing medicine, but only during the time that they're in class.
Afterwards, their knowledge vanishes, everything they've learned vanishes.
You wouldn't go to school unless you were able to extract valuable knowledge that you could use for the rest of your life.
Anyway, so it's just not true.
All right.
Oh, but how does this generate a preference to correct others with mistaken views?
Now, you see, this is why This fellow, Gordon, this fellow, Gordon Gecko, David Gordon, this is why he has to get rid of my language, right?
Debate, right?
Argument.
And he has to substitute inquiry and stuff like that, right?
How does this generate to correct others with mistaken views?
Hello David!
I just used argument and debate.
Arguments and debates are around I'm right, you're wrong, I'm going to correct your views and you have the opposite view.
You have the opposite perspective.
You want to correct my views because I'm wrong and you're right.
So, I don't know.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and I'm going to say That this fellow, David Gordon, actually knows what a debate is.
Because, you know, he's kind of engaging in a debate with me, right?
Because he also doesn't say, well, I'm saying that Molyneux is wrong, but only for the duration... Sorry.
I'm sorry.
He's not saying, well, Molyneux is spectacularly wrong, but only while you're reading my article afterwards.
He's totally right.
He says I'm wrong in perpetuity.
I'm wrong objectively, absolutely, in perpetuity.
But now, you see, he's saying, well, the truth of the falsehood is only while you're trying to find the answer, only while you're... So, while he was reading my book, he thought it was spectacularly wrong.
Oh, and then I guess he wrote this article after he read my book, or skimmed it, or something like that.
So, it's just kind of funny.
You learn so much about people's self-knowledge by watching them try to debate.
So, How does this generate a preference to correct others with mistaken views?
I'm sorry, it's just, it's too wild.
Hello, David!
You want to look in the mirror here, brother?
At all?
You know, just a tiny little bit.
Analyze what you're doing.
See, this D. Gordon fellow, he has no idea how a preference for truth over falsehood could possibly generate a preference to correct others with mistaken views.
And he writes this in an article where he prefers truth over falsehood, where he's acting on a preference to correct others, i.e.
me with mistaken views.
Oh my.
God, it's crazy.
I'm in an...
I'm in an...
I don't know.
What could that be?
Why would you prefer truth over falsehood or correcting other people's views?
Molyneux is totally mistaken and I'm going to correct his mistaken views.
I'm sorry, I should have laughed better.
This is what passes for intellectualism these days.
Oh man.
Alright.
Let's get back to Bad Cop.
All right.
Molyneux wrongly supposes that if someone wants to discover the truth, he must be engaged in an actual debate with someone else.
Why must he?
Further, what has any of this to do with enforceable obligations, the ostensible subject of his inquiry?
All right.
See, I use the word.
I'm sorry to keep beating the same drum, but it's just like it's one paragraph apart.
People don't even see it, right?
I use the word.
ARGUE AGAINST THE PROPOSITION!
ARGUE AGAINST THE PROPOSITION!
I have to, like, muck it up, right?
DEBATE!
I'm engaged in a debate!
I'm arguing!
Which means I'm doing something interactive, right?
In the book I say.
If somebody doesn't ever voice their opinion, they're not part of the social construct of ideas.
They just, you know, like if you have a dream last night, You never tell anyone about it, it vanishes from your mind.
Yeah, I guess you had it, but it doesn't have any effect on the world in particular, right?
So anyway.
What does any of this have to do with enforceable obligations to the ostensible subject of his inquiry?
Now, I make this case very clear in the book.
So when he says he doesn't understand how correcting other people according to universal standards of truth is acting in any way congruent with universally preferable behavior.
If he just says, why, what does this have to do with anything?
It's like, you're just confessing that you don't understand the argument.
I mean, anyway, okay.
Molyneux has many more arguments to offer.
How can we deny the existence of universally preferable behavior?
He asks, does not life itself depend on it?
I like how he says like, Molyneux has many more arguments on offer.
Like, Molyneux has many more shoddy goods to sell you, Molyneux.
Molyneux has many more counterfeit bills with which to pretend to buy something.
I just, you know, it's just kind of funny.
So then he gives me a quote.
This is a quote from me, right?
No page reference here because it might be too easy to find the surrounding arguments.
So I say, thus, it is impossible that anyone can logically argue against universally preferable behavior, since if he is alive to argue, he must have followed universally preferable behavior, such as breathing, eating, and drinking.
Right.
Now, universally preferable behavior, we have to establish that it is a valid concept and then we can start turning it towards ethics.
But you have to establish this valid concept first.
Now, if somebody says there's no such thing as universally preferable behavior, but they have eaten and drank liquids and they're breathing, then they have followed universally preferable behavior in order to be alive.
Right?
So we've established that you can't argue against universally preferable behavior because you're only alive to argue Because you have followed universally preferable behavior.
Right?
That's not a proof of morality, it's just a proof that universally preferable behavior is a valid concept.
Anyway.
He says then, Is it not obvious that Molyneux has confused two different senses of universally preferable behavior?
Is it not obvious that Molyneux has confused two different senses of universally...
Is it not obvious that Molyneux has confused two different senses of universally perforable behavior?
Biological laws are, even as our author elsewhere realizes, descriptive regularities.
This is better than the New York comedy I went to the other night.
All right.
The reason why this is funny is he says, well, Molyneux has confused these two things.
Although elsewhere, he says that they're distinct.
No, see, I'm just typing away, and I'm like, huh, I just realized things.
I didn't write the book carefully, I didn't have notes, I didn't have a plan, I didn't edit religiously, I didn't, you know, have proofreaders, I didn't have other people give me feedback on the book to refine it, nothing!
I'm just, bleh, random word salad tossing all over the place, right?
So, I clearly say in the book, yeah, this is, these are descriptive regularities.
The biological laws are not moral laws, I get that.
So then he says, is it not obvious that Molyneux has confused two different senses of universally preferable behavior, even though in the book he completely distinguishes between them?
Molyneux fails utterly to show that acting in accord with such laws to keep oneself alive has anything to do with moral obligation.
information.
Now, the fact that he says I failed to do so, I don't know.
Did he not finish the book?
I guess he did, right?
But... And, see, I fail utterly.
This is another thing, too, right?
And I watch myself with these rhetorical excesses, you know, like... Disastrous!
Failure.
Fails utterly!
You know, it's just, it shows how angry people are when they're coming across this theory of ethics.
Because if the theory of ethics is true, if it's been 11 years, it is.
I've had so many debates about this.
Nobody has solved the, nobody's been able to oppose the foundational arguments.
This guy's doing a terrible job.
But nonetheless, I mean, I appreciate that he read the book, I guess.
So yeah, he says, he fails!
Okay, well, why don't you show me how I failed?
Molyneux is not, quote, content, sorry, is not content with, quote, proving that moral obligations exist.
So I point out that you can't argue against UPB if you're alive, because you followed UPB in order to be alive.
That just means that we have to accept that UPB is a valid concept.
That's all.
Now, once you accept that UPB is a valid concept, you can then go from the realm of is to the realm of ought.
And I talk about how you get there in the book.
So he's said here, biological laws, okay?
Biological laws, right?
And then he's switching over to moral obligations without any of my arguments as to how you get there, right?
All right.
He also has distinctive views about the nature of these obligations.
It's like, nope, I make a rational argument about the nature of these obligations.
Moral rules must be universal, in a very strong sense.
So he says, so he quotes from my book.
This is from page 44.
I also cannot logically argue that it is wrong for some people to murder, but right for other people to murder.
Since all human beings share common physical properties and requirements, proposing one rule for one person and the opposite for another is invalid.
It is like proposing a physics theory that says some rocks fall down while other rocks fall up.
Not only is it logical, it contradicts an observed fact of reality, which is that human beings as a species share common characteristics and so cannot be subjected to opposing rules.
Yep.
Now I give lots of examples and arguments and then talk about how this bridges to morality but you can't say that all lizards are cold-blooded except for red lizards which are warm-blooded because if they're warm-blooded then they're mammals, right?
So you can't just say there's a category and then just create arbitrary opposite things within that category.
You can't say lizards include lizards except for this one lizard who's the opposite of a lizard.
That it doesn't work, right?
So if you're going to say that human beings should not steal from other people, except for this group of human beings who can, then you don't, the category of human beings no longer is valid, right?
So anyway, now there's another thing too, which I talk, I talk about universality, right?
So once you have universality, the moment you propose a moral rule, Then it has to be universal, right?
Because it's enforceable and you can use self-defense to protect yourself against it.
So if you propose a moral rule that says human beings have the right to steal from each other, you can't sustain that moral rule because stealing is unwanted property transfer.
And if everyone, if your moral theory says that stealing is universally preferable behavior, then stealing ceases to exist as a category because I want you to take my property.
I want to take your property.
You want me to take your property and vice versa, right?
So the moment I want you to take my property, it's not stealing.
It's not stealing.
So like if I give $20 to a homeless guy on the street, he's not stolen from me because I want him to take my property.
So stealing cannot be universally preferable behavior.
The moment it becomes universally preferable, there's no such thing as stealing anymore.
Same thing with rape.
Rape is unwanted sexual contact, particularly intercourse.
But if you want someone to have sex with you, if rape is universally preferable behavior, it's a weird thing to say, but if it is, then everybody wants sexual activity and to commit sexual activity at the same time, which means that if you want sexual activity to be committed against you, it's not rape.
So, yeah.
If you have a category called human beings, you can't arbitrarily ascribe opposite properties to them, like the capacity to murder or the right to murder.
Molyneux offers no argument that rules of morality must respond only to the characteristics that define the human species.
Molyneux offers no argument that the rules of morality must respond only to the characteristics that define the human species.
I don't really know what that means, but let's see if it makes any sense when he goes forward.
If someone proposed the rule of the form, human beings who meet such and such requirements and not others may kill under the following circumstances, no doubt we should want to look at the reasons alleged for this claim very closely, but we could not dismiss the proposal outright because it draws a distinction between two classes of people.
Arbitrary appeals to the laws of physics or biology have nothing to do with the case.
Now, see this guy, Gordon, David Gordon, he's like a, he's an expert at debating.
He's an expert at debating.
He knows how to make a great case.
He knows how to rebut an argument, right?
So where's his argument here?
Human beings, let's say that redheads can murder, right?
Let's say that redheads can murder.
So he's saying redheads can... he says, well, if we have a rule that says redheads can kill before 9 a.m.
Right?
That would be a... redheads can murder before 9 a.m.
He says, well, we can't just dismiss that proposal outright.
We kinda can, man.
We really, really can.
Because why would only redheads be allowed to kill people?
You have to answer that question.
It's like saying, all human beings are mammals except for redheads who are rocks.
Well, if redheads are people, then they can't be rocks.
And if redheads are rocks, they can't be people.
So if you've got a category called people that includes redheads, you can't just have rocks.
I mean, this just doesn't work.
Try that in any other discipline other than ethics, right?
So if we say redheads can murder before 9 a.m., is that valid?
He says, well, we've got to look closely at that.
But we would not dismiss the proposal outright.
But it's not universal, right?
You're creating a rule, a universal rule, and then you're creating an exception to that rule.
Murder is wrong.
Ah!
Except for redheads before 9 a.m.
Why?
This is arbitrary.
And it's not a, it's a categorization error.
Anyway, I mean, I'm sure you get it.
It's pretty, pretty clear.
But this is his big, well, you know, we can't help it, right?
He's saying, I offer no argument.
Where's his argument?
Where's his argument that human beings can have the exact opposite moral rules?
Murder is bad, murder is fine.
The exact opposite moral rules while all being categorized as human beings.
Particularly because they're murdering other human beings.
It's kind of an opposite thing.
Well, thanks God Adams for it back there.
Alright.
He says, although I have so far been critical of Molyneux... No, just...
I'm happy to give him credit for an excellent idea.
He suggests that a good test for moral theory is its ability to arrive at the correct result for obvious cases like rape, murder, and theft.
If a theory cannot show that a rule that purported to make such conduct obligatory is ill-formed, the theory should be rejected.
I'm sorry, it just struck me.
All right.
So here, if a theory, okay, let me just make sure I get this all correct.
Sorry, my goose quinto vision is not serving this too well.
A good test of a moral theory is its ability to arrive at the correct result for obvious cases like rape, murder, and theft, right?
If a theory cannot show that a rule that purported to make such a conflict obligatory is ill-formed, the theory should be rejected.
So yeah, if you justify murder, the theory should be rejected.
And he says, that's a good idea.
That's actually not my idea.
That comes all the way back to Aristotle.
He says, if you've got a theory of ethics that can prove that rape is great, you've got to start again.
So it's interesting because he says that if you have a moral theory that justifies murder, well, the theory should be rejected.
He adopts my argument, which is an adoption of Aristotle's argument.
So he says, if your moral theory Justifies murder.
You should reject it.
Let's go back up one paragraph, shall we?
Sorry.
Don't they have editors?
Don't they have anyone?
Anyway.
So he says... Sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm breaking up.
He says, you've got to reject theories that justify murder.
Right up here he says, human beings may kill under the following circumstances.
Well, we can't reject that.
I'm sorry.
Like, genuine joy at foolishness is not an argument.
I'll be more professional from here on in.
Right, so, he says, well, no, you know, we're not going to dismiss the proposal outright that says murder is great.
Right?
Now, he would say, he might say, well, I'm talking about kill, not murder, but I talk about murder in the book, so he can't bring in killing here, which is complex self-defense or whatever, right?
Euthanasia, who knows, right?
So we're going to assume since I talk about murder and we talk about morals that kill here means murder.
So he says you can't reject a moral theory just because it justifies murder.
And now he says a theory that justifies murder should be rejected.
Like it's on the same screen here.
Would be.
I got it zoomed in a little here, right?
It's on the same screen?
On the same screen.
We can't reject a moral theory that says we can murder, some people can murder, but then he says, well, we got to reject a moral theory that says some people can murder.
Two paragraphs.
His arguments against the rule that mandates the mandated rape must be read to be believed.
Yeah, right.
So, just some snarky shit here.
So, this is it.
Molyneux Founders, he says, If rape is a moral good, then not raping must be a moral evil.
Thus, it is impossible for two men in the same room to both be moral at the same time, since only one of them can be a rapist at any given moment, and he can only be a rapist if the other man becomes his victim.
So, page 66.
So, this, you know, I went through the argument before.
Rape cannot be universally preferable behavior.
Not raping can be, because it can be achieved universally.
Anything which can't be achieved universally can't be universally preferable behavior, right?
You understand, right?
Like if you said every object falls to the ground, well, you got helium balloons, you got clouds, you got whatever, right?
And he can only be the rapist if the other man becomes his victim, right?
In other words, if the other man doesn't want him to rape, I use Bob and Doug homage to Bob and Doug McKenzie, but so he can only be the rapist if the other man becomes his victim.
So it's part of a larger argument, right?
So he's taken one little snip here, right?
Incredibly, incredibly, See, if you say incredibly, you've just, uh, you know, denied people.
Incredibly, Molyneux takes the rule he is considering to be one that requires people to be continuously engaged in rape.
Ha!
It's incredible!
It's incomprehensible!
When I have a book called Universally Preferable Behavior, and I say universally means all places and all times, if you say rape is universally preferable behavior, it requires people to be continuously engaged in rape.
Yes!
Because that's what universally preferable behavior means, as I explain in the book repeatedly.
It never occurs to him.
Never!
See, now he's a mind reader.
It just, it never occurred to me.
It never occurs to him to take the rule as mandating at some time or other you ought to attempt rape, an evil imperative that would escape his strictures.
Yeah, never occurred to me.
I don't deal with that in the book at all.
Of course I do.
But here he says, right, let's go back up.
Rape, murder, and theft should be rejected.
Now, he says conduct obligatory, but if it's allowed, people want to do it, right?
should be rejected.
But here he says, well, no, you can, you can do it.
Evidently, this construal would violate his bizarre requirements about universality and already required action that one is one that everyone must perform at the same time all the time.
Why is that a weird?
I don't understand.
Why is that a weird thing?
If you have a morally required action called don't murder?
Yeah, You know, you got to take issue, David, with the law itself, right?
Because the law says, you know, if you kill someone, if you murder someone, you're a murderer, man.
You don't say, well, you know, I got through 52 years of my life without killing anyone, without murdering anyone.
Like, no, it just takes one.
So, not murdering... I don't know, like... It's a weird thing!
That if you have a law against murder, you have to spend your whole life not murdering in order to fulfill that law.
If you have a law against... If you have a moral law against rape, you have to... You have to, like, not rape your whole life?
Wait, that's insane!
That's crazy!
I don't know what to say!
What do you say?
I didn't even know what to say.
All right.
So yeah, yeah, it's a morally required action.
You gotta, yeah, not raping.
And this is why moral actions are negative, not positive.
This is why respect, I can go through my whole life without robbing a bank, and I will, because, you know, I don't own a bank, right?
So yeah, I got through, I'm gonna go through my whole life without assaulting someone.
And you kind of have to, to not be guilty of assault.
Anyway, he deploys an analogous argument against the rule to make theft obligatory.
People could not always and everywhere steal.
He adds another consideration that is equally inept to learn.
So he says, in other words, working to gain control of a piece of property is only valid if you can assert your property rights over the stolen object.
No one will bother stealing a wallet if he has certain knowledge that it will be stolen from the moment he gets his hands on it.
Yeah, so a thief steals a car because he wants to keep the car and dump it in a chop shop or sell it or use it or something like that, right?
This last sentence is entirely reasonable, but it has no bearing on the rule mandating theft.
If people think that theft is obligatory, it by no means follows that anyone will succeed in taking away something you have stolen.
That's not my point.
My point is that the thief is contradicting himself because he is violating someone else's property.
So he says, uh, yeah, it's fine for me to violate someone else's property.
But then if somebody violates his property, so to speak, in other words, if he steals a car and then 10 minutes later, someone steals it from him, he'd be really mad, right?
It's just a, it's just a funny way of pointing out the contradiction, right?
Because if he says everyone should justly keep what they have stolen, then if someone steals the car from him, he should have no problem with it, right?
But he does.
It's just another way of pointing it out, right?
Besides his general characterization of moral rules, Molyneux has contributions as well to libertarian theory.
In his view, the efforts devoted to principles of homesteading have been unnecessary.
Once self-ownership is granted, nothing further is needed to justify property rights.
So he says, we do not need a homesteading theory or any other just acquisition approaches to justify property rights.
They're justified because anyone who acts in any way, shape, or form, including arguing, is axiomatically exercising 100% control over his own body and homesteading both oxygen and sound waves in order to make his case.
Yeah.
I take in air.
I have used food, shelter, whatever it is, right?
So in order to make the case, I've already taken control of various things in the world.
Now, that's not the whole argument.
Sorry, the whole argument is that if you own yourself, therefore you own the effects of your actions, right?
So if you punch some guy, it's not your hand that goes to jail.
It's like you own the bruise, you own the broken nose or whatever it is that you've created, right?
So we own ourselves, therefore we own the effects of our actions.
So this guy, this David Gordon fellow, he's responding to me because I wrote the book, right?
So he's saying, it's Stefan Molyneux's UPB theory, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
So I own the book, I own the effects of my actions, and so on.
So if we own ourselves, we own the effects of our actions, that's enough, right?
I mean, all these other homesteading things are not... So he's just taking part of the argument.
There is a slight problem with what we have been offered.
Let us grant him all he says about self-ownership and the use of oxygen and sound waves.
How magnanimous for you to accept reality.
He has given no account at all of how people initially gain title to physical objects external to their bodies.
No doubt, though, bearing in mind what he has already contributed to moral theory, we should not complain unduly of this omission.
So it's just your snarky, stupid tween shit, right?
How people initially gain title of physical objects external to their bodies.
But you see, and I point this out in the book, he's talking about my theory of UPB, so he's already accepting that I'm responsible for the effects of my actions.
We just have to look at what he's doing, we don't have to have any other homesteading theory.
Just, it simplifies, it clarifies, it captures, right?
He says, though he presents no theory of property acquisition, he does tell us the property rights are absolute.
And I quote, the problem with any theory that argues for less than 100% property rights is that it instantly creates a domino effect of infinite regression, wherein everybody ends up with infinitely small ownership rights over pretty much everything, which is clearly impossible.
So then he says, this is what I'm saying.
If, for example, somebody only has a 50% ownership share of property he acquires, then half of his property may be taken away.
The person who takes the other half is now subject to the loss of half of what he has acquired and so on indefinitely.
Far from being a consequence of the 50% ownership rule, the outcome Molyneux has conjured up contradicts it.
By hypothesis, the first person has half ownership in what he has acquired.
If this share is subject to further attrition, the original hypothesis has, without justification, been replaced with something else.
Far from being a consequence, Molyneux has conjured up contradicts it.
By hypothesis, the first person has half ownership in what he has acquired.
If this share is subject to further attrition, The original hypothesis is without justification being replaced with something.
No, so if you say everyone has 50% ownership in everything, then it all dilutes to nothing, right?
Because whatever you have, somebody else has 50%.
I don't know how to... It's clear, right?
Molyneux makes some good points against public education, he says, but he would not be Molyneux if he did not give us a bad argument as well.
Oh, so snarky.
Quote, this is my quote from the book, page 118.
Since public schools are funded through the initiation of the use of force, they are a form of forced association, which is a clear violation of the freedom of association validated by UPB, University of Pennsylvania.
He is, of course, right that public schools funded through taxation rest on the initiation of force, but it does not follow from such funding that students are required by compulsory attendance laws to attend them.
But that's... I don't even know what to say.
So, I say, since public schools are funded through the initiation of the use of force, they're a form of forced association.
If you force someone to pay for something they don't want to pay for, it's forced association.
Right?
Association can be economic as well as social, right?
So, what are the students required by compulsory attendance laws to attend them?
I don't bring that up.
Why is he bringing that up?
I don't know.
I do.
All right.
Despite the impression I have so far given Molyneux is by no means stupid, quite the contrary.
Ah, here's where he accuses me of being sophist, I bet.
Therein, I suggest, lies the source of the problems of his book.
Because of his facile intelligence, he thinks that he has a talent for philosophical argument and need not undertake the hard labor of learning how such arguments are constructed.
Unfortunately for him and his book, he is mistaken.
Yeah, no, I should do wonderful things like say that we should reject theories which justify murder and then say, well, we should really take a second look at theories that justify murder.
I should say that force stripping money from people to indoctrinate their kids, yeah, it's forced association.
Well, you know, not all places force the children to attend.
It's like, that's not my claim.
Anyway, it's, That's a lazy, puerile effort.
See, I can say that now, because I've kind of proved it and all that, but nonetheless, you know, I appreciate the reading.
It certainly is kind of fun to go through this stuff.
I wish it were higher quality in general, like I really do.
It's a shame, because really good debates are hard to come by.
So I'll put the link to this below.
You can check it out.
The author was David Gordon.
Mises.org.
And Stefanovic is out.
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