Mises and Rothbard on Ethics | David Gordon

all right I think we'll get started now I should tell you my voice hasn't gotten any louder over the past few days so let me know if you can't hear I do remember another story I think is from Noam Chomsky he once said that anyone who can't hear me please put up your hand and then he said that anyone who put up his hand is lying what I'm going to be talking today it's a comparison of loaded von Mises and Murray Rothbard on ethics mostly on the foundations of ethics and they'll be rather more of rothbard than Mises because Rothbart's position is a little harder to grasp Mises has very simple view it's easier to understand so I'll be concentrating more on Rothbard as you of course know Rothbard and Mises have very similar views about policy both very strongly support the free market there against socialism and government intervention in the economy there is of course the difference that Rothbard was an anarchist he thought we didn't need a government at all it was dangerous to have one and Mises wasn't but the state that Mises accepted was extremely limited one and I think one reason Mises didn't recognize the possibility of private competing defense agencies was when he thought of anarchism he was thinking of the anarchism he knew when he was younger where it was anarchism was considered very much a leftist move associated with the overthrow of capitalism of course he was opposed to that there are also differences in the conception of property rights but I'll get to those later the main differences between Mises and Rothberg have to do with the foundation of ethics the Rothbart in contrast with Mises thought that ethics is objective what what do I mean by this suppose we say that we ought to promote the free market if you hold ethics objective that's making a claim about what we ought morally to do it's an absolute judgment so this is what you should be doing namely promoting the free market it isn't making a claim of this kind if you have certain preferences say you want peace and prosperity then the way to do that is to promote the free market an objective ethical judgment would be one that's claimed that it's a true judgment justice say we would say it's true now that you're all in a room with the Mises Institute that isn't a matter of realizing preferences that you have you're coming to the lecture might be would be a good case in realizing your preferences but the fact that you're here is just a fact it isn't a expression of preference it's just the case so the view that moral judgments our objective would would be that moral judgments are true statements about the world of course they're not referring to physical objects if you say for example that killing people for fun is wrong that isn't when wrong doesn't refer to a physical object but nevertheless if you hold that moral judgments are objective it's true that killing babies killing babies for fun or killing people for fun is wrong in the same sense as factual judgments are true that at any rate is the claim of those who think that moral judgments are objectively true if one of the most important controversies in ethics is whether morality is objective in just this way as mentioned most philosophers would understand this question is the question means can moral judgments be true or false if you say no they can't be that's to accept to subjectivism of some sort example suppose I like vanilla ice cream as I in fact do I'd much rather have some ice cream now and give this lecture probably you would rather have ice cream then listen to this lecture even if even if in fact you don't like ice cream probably still be true so suppose then I like vanilla ice cream but you don't so neither of us is correct you're incorrect it's just you have a certain preference I have another preference so subjectivist think that moral judgments are like this all you can say is this person prefers this other people prefer something else so in the case I mentioned before they killing people for fun is wrong one hopes that everybody or nearly everybody would accept that they would but that would in the subjective view that would just be an expression of preference you wouldn't be able to save people who hold that killing people for fun is perfectly alright are mistaken it's just you might very well want to stay away from such people but they wouldn't be saying something that's false in the way that they would be say they say two plus two equals five they would just be mistaken about that so the subjectivist would say people who hold different moral make different moral judgments from the ones we make are not mistaken it's just they have different preferences and so we have to see exactly what the difference is between Mises and Rothbart about objectivity Mises thought that there are many judgments people make that have something to do with ethics that are true or false for example suppose you say the free market enables people are better consumers to retain their preferences because the producers will have a financial incentive to satisfy that statement it has is it has something to do with ethics because it's saying how people can realize their preferences but I mean his account it's perfectly true it isn't just a subjective judgment on his part of the free market has that characteristic it's something that is the case so what then is the difference between Mises and rock bar why is Mises a subjectivist where it's Rothbart isn't Mises thought that we can divide value judgments into ones that are judgments about a means to achieve an end and ones that are about ends themselves where there is no further and to which the that that end is perp is a means there in other words their ultimate ends there any such that if you say why do you want that that can't be answered that's just it suppose say I'm in pain I have a headache so you say I don't want to have a headache anymore so someone said well why don't you want to be in pain I might probably wouldn't be able to have an answer to that I would just say I don't like pain I don't want to be in pain that's it so what Mises holds is if for these ultimate ends it doesn't make sense to say that their objective in the sense that it's true or false that you should have them if we say people shouldn't should want to be a void pain that wouldn't make sense if you take that as meaning that's an objective matter of fact that they shouldn't want to avoid pain that's just a preference that people have nearly everybody has that preference but that doesn't make it objective just as we could give an example suppose there are very few people who like the tale of eating dirt so supposin nearly everybody has that preference that wouldn't make it on the subjectivist view a an objective statement that people should avoid the taste of dirt is just a preference that people have so rothbard disagrees with that he thinks that there at least some value judgments are objective in the straightforward sense in which judgments about fans true or false first in Rothbart view in the objective view it makes room for some value judgments that are just subjective you moral believing moral objectivity you've notice I'm being very careful not to call these people object to this because that's a particular philosophy so I buy believers in moral objectivity I don't believe in I'm not referring to Objectivist I'll mention a little bit later where the Objectivist fit in in this classification so someone who believes in moral objectivity could accept that there are preferences that are purely subjective with a Spanish philosopher Alfredo adores once said that everybody prefers either either apples or oranges someone who thought that was true wouldn't have to say it's an objective judgment that one is right and the other is wrong now if you take Mises view it seems very easy to understand it's something like people just have certain preferences then they would have a question however they savings preferences nearly everybody wants peace and prosperity according to Mises so then the question main question of ethics is how do we get peace and prosperity and the way we get it is through social cooperation through the free market that's the principal way we get this but Rothbard's view is a bit harder to understand because we wondered well how is it that value judgments ethical states being true or false we can understand say how factual judgments are true or false how we can say if I say there more than five people in this room we could see how that claim is true how it would correspond to reality but how can we show if we claim that ethical judgments are objective how can we show that they are true how do they correspond to reality so Rothbard does this by appealing to natural law you'll see you can't get away from natural law because in the class on constitutional law that Judge Napolitano is giving now he talks about natural law a great deal also so regardless of which session you want to you're not going to get away from natural law that isn't an natural law itself but it's in fact the caves now the version of natural law that rothbard appeals to is very close to the views developed by st. Thomas Aquinas so this raises a problem as you know Aquinas was a Catholic theologian who argued that natural law was part of divine law so this raised a question does accepting natural law met you two accepting the claims of particular religion or at least philosophical claims about God because the climate at least on Quietus is view natural law was part divine law now if you know that rothbard wasn't a religious believer you'll probably anticipate the answer to that question is no it doesn't commit you to this Robert points out that even though Aquinas thought natural law was part of God's law it depended only on human reason it wasn't dependent on accepting that biblical revelation so here Rafa is a court in accord with Aquinas himself because Aquinas said natural law is is the part of divine law you can deduce just by using reason and we find later on this view was held very famously by the Dutch legal theorist Hugo gross and earlier by Suarez Brosius had a sentence that was very quite notorious when he he gave it he said what we have been saying would have a degree of validity in if we could should concede that which cannot be conceded without the utmost wickedness that there is no God or the affairs of men are no concern to him so what Brosius was saying there is if there isn't a god of course he believed in God he was a theologian himself he was a held a variety of calop that kind of variety of counted he said Eva isn't a God this natural law would still be hold and that was Roth words for you at one point rothbard makes in this connection I think it's a very interesting one I I haven't seeing other writers mention this he draws an interesting parallel between divine command ethics and legal positivism divine command ethics is at least in certain version holds that ethics has no basis in reason it just consists of commands by God say you God has commanded we should do this or avoid doing that that's all there is to it so what Rothbard notes is that view that morals consists just of divine commands is very similar to the legal positivist view of law legal positivism was a movement that developed in England in the 19th century with the jurist John Austin and Hans Kelsen in the 20th century who was a great friend of Lord run wheezes held mystery work law law is just the command of the sovereign there isn't any basis for it other than what the legislature has decreed so all there is are decrees of the legislature that that's it there isn't any law if you you could hold on the positive view you could hold various make various ethical judgments you want about the law but they wouldn't be law themselves law is just command and the natural law of view is different natural law view is that laws have to conform to the dictates of reason so it's quite a different view incidentally if you if you're interested in Kelson there is a lecture on youtube that he gave at berkeley you can hear him lecturing he was he had been a professor at Berkeley he came there after a visit refugee from the Nazis and he taught at Berkeley for a long time and he you can hear him what lecture II had a very dramatic lecturing style unlike the present lecturer I sometimes I remember if one person Rhoda bucks wrote about my lecture style I I sound like droopy dog on sleeping pills I won't say what some of the other people nevermind that at so now if you take this view of natural law that they're supposed to be claiming that ethical judgments are objective how is it supposed to show this well how do you do that Rothbart appeals to notion of an essence what do we mean by this well you can divide properties of an object into two classes one class is the essential characteristics of the object what the object the campus of the object needs in order to be that object if it didn't have this characteristic it wouldn't be that object for example a water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen if you have some liquid that tastes a lot like water but isn't composed of hydrogen and oxygen it isn't water no matter how it tastes so being composed of hydrogen oxygen is an essential characteristic of water where I say something like having the salty taste might be true particularly samples of water but it wouldn't be an essential characteristic of water so it's not an essential property so we have been notion objects have essential properties now Rothbart following natural law tradition says that we can determine the essence of human beings just as we can for other things so it's not only that water other substances have essences but so do human being of course the the essence of human beings wouldn't consist entirely of being composed of hydrogen and oxygen all that would be included so you might say well isn't there an objection here wouldn't this kind of turn what the human essence says wouldn't that be a task for anthropology or one of the other signs of justice say determining what the essence of water is would be a matter of chemistry what does this have to do with ethics how would it tell us what we should do if we could find out here are the essential properties of human beings how would that tell us what people should do Rothbart answers this question by appealing to the concept of flourishing or happiness where this is to be understood not as a subjective feeling like this will make doing certain things will make you feel good but it's an objective view these things are required by the human essence in order for someone to flourish you need certain things in order to flourish that is dictated by human nature so so far were exactly parallel to Mises although Mises doesn't use the language of essences because what we're saying is if you want to flourish you should do such-and-such this is very much like Mises claimed if you want peace and prosperity you should favor the free market it's a hypothetical judgment if you want this then you should do then then means as well in fact everyone or nearly everybody has one phrase everyone except for a few anchorites which are Hermits one peace and prosperity so therefore you should favor the free market so we haven't really gotten a difference yet between Mises and Rothbart but here is the key differences Rothbart doesn't take human flourishing just as a mere hypothetical it's objectively true that this is a good you should want to flourish so if you don't you're wrong about it if you say well I just don't care about flourishing I don't care about what you say is flourishing you're wrong you're making a mistake in judgment according to Rothbart here Rothbart is differing with a beautiful osprey called usually called humans law and it's called Humes law because Hume was the one who wrote about it that seems quite a real good reason to call it Humes law on glass and leaves some people laugh today so Hume said from the particular judgments about matters of fact nothing follows about what ought to be the case you're not say well be example suppose we we say smoking causes lung cancer so does it follow that you shouldn't smoke humid saying no that doesn't follow because that's a judgment about what ought to be the case you you shouldn't smoke but from the factual claim smoking causes lung cancer nothing follows about what you should do and Rothbard's thinks it follows that at least that we ought to want what would make us flourish and what would be we can see some intuitive plausibility to Rothbard's claim support would it make sense say for someone to say well even though smoking causes lung cancer I don't care about getting lung cancer it might very well make sense for someone to say I'll take the risk of getting cancer because I just like smoking so much but would it make Century somebody to say I just don't care about getting cancer it would at least see maybe it doesn't it did remind me of it joke about how to when in the 1940s and 50s when studies were coming out about the bad effects of cigarette suggestion like how should cigarette companies counter that and one suggestion was they should have an advertising campaign cancer is good for you so this doesn't make really make sense so this is an illustration of of a natural law of view that given certain facts about human beings we do get objective judgments about what's good or bad for them so we have them the question what we're supposed to you accept Humes law how is it supposed to follow from the fact that we need to do certain things to flourishes we unconditionally ought to do these things most people certainly want to flirt but what if you don't suppose somebody respond - Rothman said well you're right if you want to flourish you should do these things but it's up to you to make that choice and this as I mentioned a number of times before this is Mises position and it's also Iran's view but it isn't standard natural law theory and what Rand held in here I'll make good on my promises I really do make good on my promises but this is one exception where I'm said I'll show how Rand objectivism fits into this scheme of classification Rand held their objective truths about what's good for you but you each person has a fundamental choice of whether he wants to live if you want to live meaning by that little is a rational being then you have to do certain things but that choice is up to you so that's a very different position from classical natural law theory so in the natural natural law theory what you ought to do isn't dependent on your choosing something you simply ought to do it that's it so it again to go over this one more time because it's a very essential point to note is if you have a choice that morality consists of hypothetical imperative if you choose to live you should do this but standard natural law theory isn't satisfied with it so how then as I say it seems like the hypothetical view is quite easy to understand because like if we have this preference this is what we should do but how non-hypothetical ahlet's rather harder to grasp how do we get these non hypothetical odds rothbard notes that living things have certain tendencies for example a normal cult will develop into a horse say a Colt didn't do that would be effective so a good horse would be one that developed normally or we could have all sorts of other examples say a a tree that grows the way tree do and it isn't stunted would be developing normally a tree that didn't would be defective so an animal or living organism should in quotation up in quotation mark develop according to its tendency this is what should means in the natural law of view is to develop in accord with your natural tendencies and we should on this if you want to flourish someone who didn't want to flourish would be abnormal so you can see how Rothbart the natural law supporters avoid counter Humes law remember Hume says well just from judgments about what's factually the case we can't derive all judgments and the natural law of you is yes you can because your defining ought in a certain way as following certain tendency so then you can derive the ought from me is because the tendencies are a matter of fact and they define what following sentences defines what should or ought judgments consist of now there's a famous objection to this style of argument which was advanced by G Moore and his famous in his principal ithaca which came out in 1903 this is what's called the open question argument suppose we ask ought we to do what we mean to flourish memory that's what the natural law supporters say we ought to do what we need to flourish well if aught means what we need to do to flourish the question would make no sense it would be like saying ought we to do what we ought to do it would make it but according to more the question does make sense we could say well why are we to do what we need to flourish the question makes sense so were said if the question makes sense then we can't say that that's just what what-o means that shows that there's some it that the meaning of art can't be defined actually what more thought was the meaning of good can't be defined but I'm just modifying the argument here to make it more relevant to this case so go over this point one more time it's a bit perhaps a bit difficult I suppose something we say well a triangle is a three-sided plane figure so suppose we say is well this is a three-sided plane figure but is it a triangle asking that wouldn't make sense because that's just what a triangle is so more said for any proposed definition of good for all you can't you can ask that question it does make sense so that shows you've got the wrong the wrong definition er that the term can't be defined just because asking that made sense so I have the answer but naturally the various answers people who support natural law could make that in fact that the question that would just claim the which I show people are familiar with the debt with the correct definition but it wouldn't show that the question fat does make sense it would just be say people or don't realize the truth of natural law theory now that's a explanation more the foundational issues involved in Rafah conception natural law now in Rothbart's own work in ethics he confined himself pretty entirely to political philosophy which in his view concerned only parts of ethics in rothbard view a political philosophy is confined to delimiting permissible use of force where we can include fraud there also so ethical issues that don't involve force aren't covered and political philosophy consists of what people's rights establish what people's rights are that give the claims they have it's permissible for them to use force to defend this separation of political philosophy in this way from other parts of ethics which they political philosophy is concerned with force perhaps of force a separate issue was developed by John Locke and Rothbart view was that Locke had extended classical natural law theory and important ways and this was one of the main ways and the German 19th century German an idealist philosopher yeah also held this view of political philosophy at least at some stages in his career so according to Rothbard we use reason to determine what we need to flourish and here's one difference from rothbard and Friedrich Hayek and Henry Hazlitt that hazlit and Hyatt placed a great deal great deal of stress on custom in in determining what to do saying Hayek particularly the fact that something is a long-established custom would give you substantial although not insurmountable reason to support that but something is established by customs so that gives you good reason to support that Rothbart tends to be more suspicious of custom we would think the precepts of political philosophy have to be deduced by reason and say if something was a common law tradition that wouldn't be enough to support it you would still have to evaluate it by by reason so they don't it just the fact that something is a long-established custom doesn't give it a presumption of true now what do we need in order to flourish Robert thinks every body needs to be a self owner each person has the right to decide what to do with his or her own body say example would be supposing we have this kind of case someone needs a kidney transplant you have two kidneys and you could get by with one this person really needs the kid so does this give him a claim on your kidney after all if he doesn't get it he's going to die and you can get along with just one of your own Rafa answer would be no you have the right of disposition over your body it's your body that's all there is to it now some people may try to make self ownership into philosophically problematic concept but it really isn't all it means is that each person should be in control of certain decisions about his own body such as the example of the kidney donation say another example would be having to give blood to the people there are philosophers David Millers and Oxford philosophy thinks it's perfectly all right tap compulsory blood donations but this is a very anti Rothbart view and so in what ways it seemed pretty unproblematic assump mean implies that the mind is separate from the body and owns it but this isn't what self ownership means it isn't it doesn't suggest any view about the relationship between the mind and the body it's simply a statement that each person should be in control of his own body so the self in self ownership is reflexive sake we say somebody lack self-esteem we don't mean the person self lacks esteem for something else name of the person's body we just mean that the person himself doesn't regard himself very highly so in like fashion a self owner controls certain aspects of himself but if you don't like the term some people will say well ownership involves a separation between owner and what so own and you can't separate yourself from your body in this way so I think so they don't like the term self ownership well it's perfectly all right if we don't want it use it they don't have to but I find this an odd objection because self ownership isn't a thing in the world it's a term invented for our convenience unlike water or human beings at the natural law he was right self ownership doesn't have an essence it's just a term people have introduced so Rothbart makes the claim for self ownership by contrasting it with alternative principles such as slavery which some people own others a system in which certain persons own parts of everybody else so in our Union slavery he takes it as obvious but slavery is wrong as well you just think about slavery you'll see that he's wrong so we Rothbart in this way is somewhat of a moral intuitionist he thinks we can grasp the truth about certain moral claim just by immediately say just the way saying we might if you say it's wrong to kill babies for fun and if somebody asks why is that true he would really be missing the point so given its a Horner ship rothbard proceeds to develop an account of how persons acquire property where land and other researchers start out unknown and people own their labor and when they mix the labor with unknown land or do somehow do something to the unknown rhesus researchers they acquire this in the property rights leave no room for a legitimate State now Mises is also thinks we need a legal system that gives people stable property rights it says the free market couldn't function how property rights but it doesn't follow from this that Mises amuses view that rights have to be acquired through homesteading as Rothbart says any stable system that permits the free market to operate will suffice so Mises doesn't take the rejects the Lockean account and in his view you think well property tiles can't be traced back to their original appropriate so in Roth boards and Mises view the real owners of productive property the masses of consumers who spending decisions determine gains and losses for these owners so a means essien could support a homesteading system is the best option but unlike Rothbart Amu's essien lee's himself wouldn't say people have a natural right to property so those I think are some of the basic differences and similarities between Mises and Ross right on ethics thank you [Applause] you

Channel: misesmedia

Views: 3,203

Rating: 4.9658117 out of 5

Keywords: Ethics, Mises, Rothbard, Gordon, Austrian School

Id: _Z821qPe2Zs

Length: 44min 50sec (2690 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 21 2018