Talk:Argumentation ethics

what philosophers and ethicists think about this

would be interesting to see what philosophers and ethicists think about this. Currently, it seems to be economists only. Has there been any impact on the field of ethics outside of the economic subdomain? 194.94.96.194 (talk) 16:20, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Here You'll find some views. --MeUser42 (talk) 22:44, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

He asked for philosophers and ethicists, not for his fellow cabal in the mises institute. From my experience (which is pretty anecdotal) he is receiving the Rothbard treatment. That is to say that people with any background in philosophy aren't wasting their time with him.94.67.232.191 (talk) 15:53, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

my short edit

I edited the piece to indicate that responses to Hoppe's arugment have been varied among his fellow libertarian anarchists. I did this because 1) I think it is relevant that the reception is lukewarm even among academic who share his radical political views; and 2) Because all of the responses to Hoppe cited in the piece (both positive or negative) share his political views. This I think is noteworthy, as is the fact that -- despite the fact that the argument is allegedly "value free" -- no philosopher or logician outside of libertarian anarchism appears to take it seriously at all. Steeletrap (talk) 05:03, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Interesting point. Many of the Mises fellows call themselves philosophers and economists but are not considered such by non-Mises fellows in those fields. That's one reason there is such a short supply of secondary sources. SPECIFICO talk 05:10, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Just because they use different methodologies and come to different conclusions it does not mean that they are not philosophers or economists. --Cgtdk (talk) 13:00, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Don't shoot the messenger. If they called themselves neurobiologists, would that make them such? SPECIFICO talk 13:30, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

That Mises Institute scholars (or "scholars", as I would put it) are, at least on their wiki pages, only cited by each other is troublesome. That explains why their wiki pages are all so glowing. For instance, until I added the "criticism of false predictions and methodology" page to Robert P. Murphy's page (which cites J. Bradford DeLong and Paul Krugman, criticizing Murphy as an ideologue whose methodology is unscientific and uneconomic and whose economic predictions have been overwhelmingly false) there was no indication that he used a heterodox methodology and that many of his strident public predictions economics ehave been completely wrong. Steeletrap (talk) 15:15, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't know anything about Murphy's predictions, but the reason why the LvMI people are not cited much by mainstream economists and philosophers is because they are ridiculed by the mainstream. They are radicals and they reject the conclusions of mainstream philosophy and economics, but this does not mean that they are not serious scholars. However, I would like to note that I do not oppose your edit—it is indeed a more accurate description of the section's content. --Cgtdk (talk) 19:19, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

"I suppose the process of acceptance will pass through the usual four stages: (i) this is worthless nonsense; (ii) this is an interesting, but perverse, point of view; (iii) this is true, but quite unimportant; (iv) I always said so."--J. B. S. Haldane --80.212.195.138 (talk) 07:23, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

The reason that they aren't cited outside their circle isn't that they are radicals. There are plenty of radicals both on the left and the right that are cited by their peers and who are at least taken seriously enough to be criticised. Hell, Hoppe essentially plagiarised the framework for his ethics from Habermas and you can't quite say philosophers are not taking him seriously. Nozick was a right-libertarian and an anti-distributionist and of course he was taken seriously, because he made (at least) minimally respectable arguments. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.67.197.6 (talk) 15:59, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Hoppe draws on the work of his PhD advisor, Jürgen Habermas, and on the theory of "discourse ethics" or "argumentation ethics", developed by his fellow German philosopher Karl-Otto Apel.--80.212.195.138 (talk) 07:47, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Actually, some of the Mises affiliated writers are earnest scholars and economists, but many others are not, yet promote themselves as such. In terms of WP articles, balanced attempts to give good-faith summaries or limited quotes from primary sources seems OK. If anybody objects, they would be in a strong policy-based position to delete them, in which case the articles would be sparse or non-existent. The Mises institute does both good work and nonsense -- maybe the same as other such organizations but in a less successful ratio than many others, e.g. Cato Institute, AEI, Hoover, Brookings. With respect to "Argumentation Ethics" -- to characterize this as serious philosophy, social theory, economics, is preposterous. I mean, simple observation tells us that individuals may pretend to negotiate while simultaneously planning violence against their argumentation buddy. As Philosophy it's mimicking arguments from the time of Descartes and Berkeley. As economics, it begs the central Austrian theme that observed social and political institutions come about for specific reasons that should be the object of study rather than rejection out of hand. SPECIFICO talk 19:32, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

An argument which (only) gets by with a little help from Hoppe's Friends.

Apologies for the snarky title -- I hope it is a humorous way of conveying my bias, which should be considered by editors evaluating my change but should not serve as an a priori argument (lol) against my contributing to the article. I have made a substantial edit to the Argumentation Ethics Article (whose very existence on Wikipedia I consider to be absurd, but -- if it is to exist -- should at least conform with basic NPOV standards). My edit reflects that Hoppe's argument has 1) received virtually no attention from mainstream philosophers and actual trained logicians (despite purporting to be a value-free logical argument) and 2) that most of the responses -- all of the positive ones and (apparently) all of the negative -- cited in the current article, have come from Hoppe's colleagues at the Mises Institute, many of whom appear to be close personal friends of Hoppe. Before my edit (and one I made a few days ago) there was the absurdly misleading claim that "responses have varied" to argumentation ethics (from whom!? -- certainly not from trained logicians and philosophers), whereas the only people among whom "responses have varied" appear to be Hoppe's personal friends, co-workers, and ideological fellow travelers. Steeletrap (talk) 02:17, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Changed "responses" to "Responses from Colleagues"

I can't find a single link where any significant person(philosopher or otherwise)/RS NOT affiliated with the Mises Institute responds to Hoppe's argument. If such a link exists (it probably does -- although I can't find it easily with Google), it should be paraphrased and cited in the article, at which point the title can (and should) be changed simply to Responses. But as it is, it should read "responses from colleagues" for maximal specificity and accuracy, since we would not want our readers to think that anyone significant other than Hoppe's co-workers/journals published by his Institute have responded to the argument until that is verified. Steeletrap (talk) 06:10, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

I disagree with this change. Such sections are usually just called “Responses” and I can see no reason why we should deviate from this to serve your bias. By your logic, the “Foundation” section should be called “Praxeological foundation” since we would not want anyone to think AEs foundation was something else than praxeological. This is simply unnecessary. The “Foundation” section is about AEs foundation and the “Responses” section is about the responses to AE, regardless of the origin of the responses. However, mentioning in the section that the only notable responses have come from his associates would be fine (if that is the case). --Cgtdk (talk) 16:15, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't think your analogy works ("foundation" is question beginning (what foundation--?) in a way that "responses" isn't), but your concern seems reasonable. It can be changed to "responses" o long as we specify that his colleagues are the only responders. For the sake of harmony, I'll make an edit which does that (though I'd prefer that someone come up with a secondary source which addresses the argument that isn't a coworker of Hoppe's). Steeletrap (talk) 16:34, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

I know of at least three (elaborate) responses by non-LvMI people to argumentation ethics (two of them critical, one of them positive), but the people making them are hardly notable (though one of them is a pseudo-celebrity in the anarcho-capitalist community). Also, I apologize for the comment “I can see no reason why we should deviate from this to serve your bias”. I will try to be more friendly. --Cgtdk (talk) 16:49, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Surely some people on the Internet have responded to it. But we need notable and credible RS; if/when you find that, you definitely should cite it, and I will obviously have no objection. No worries, by the way, on the harsh comment; I am being snarky here (which is not just for my personal amusement, but also to honestly convey my bias against Hoppe and his argument) so am probably asking for it. But I think my changes to the page -- and my regarding it as absurd that the page even exists -- can be defended on strict notability grounds (credible/independent RS are required, yet this article is basically sourced by Hoppe's co-workers and personal friends) a manner independent of my biases. Steeletrap (talk) 17:32, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Characterizing the responders to Hoppe's essay as Mises types is giving only half the story. That is, Yeager is with Auburn U & UVa, Lomasky is UVa, Rasmussen is St. Johns U, Machan is Auburn U & Chapman U, Friedman (Milton's son) is Santa Clara U, Conway (if we have the right David Conway) is with a British think tank and his WP article shows no connection to LvMI, and van Dun is U of Ghent. So, can we simply say these guys are libertarian anarchist Mises hacks without mentioning their full time academic academic affiliations? – S. Rich (talk) 05:03, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Also, I'm uncomfortable with saying the argument received "virtually no" or "little" response from academia. Who are we to make this judgment? If we research and only find a few references, aren't we conducting our own survey? Where is the SECONDARY RS that says "Hoppe's hair-brained theory only got a minimal response....." or had minimal impact? There is such a thing as the h-index which counts up citations related to scientists & scholars, and there is even one related to economists. If we had a h-index-type number in the lowest range for the theory, then we could provide RS and say nobody paid attention to his ideas. Otherwise we've got to drop that line in the article. – S. Rich (talk) 06:19, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

If you are adamant on presenting the view that that "argumentation ethics" has received a significant hearing in mainstream philosophy, I'm not going to try to stop you. However if a tiny niche group (anarcho-capitalists/extreme libertarians) are the only people who have ever addressed it -- only two or three of whom, as far as I can tell, are philosophers with the training in logic to most expertly address such an argument -- then yes, "little attention" is appropriate, and it's preposterous to say otherwise. (Also see SPECIFICO's argument above; to the trained eye, it is "preposterous" to call this philosophy (just as it's preposterous to call astrology astronomy). Steeletrap (talk) 14:08, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Also: If you have found sources that are non-Mises who have addressed this, why not just cite them? I came across this page and saw that only Mises people, only one of whom is an actual philosopher/trained logician (and many of whom have no academic position), are presented in the text as having addressed this argument. I contextualized that fact. Obviously cite other notable people -- particularly philosophers, as their responses are likely to be particularly teling -- if they have addressed it, and there is no problem citing their academic credentials so long as you do not fail to note that they are Hoppe's co-workers (if indeed they are). (David Friedman, who is also a libertarian anarchist (albeit of a much more serious flavor than Hoppe), doesn't appear to think there is any chance whatsoever that the argument is true http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/On_Hoppe.html; the fact that basically no one (even ideological fellow travelers) appears buys into this stuff other than Hoppe's colleagues is telling and should certainly be in the piece). Steeletrap (talk) 14:15, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Adding to the list of critiques of Argumentation Ethics, this page has several: http://jamescarlin.wikidot.com/argumentation-ethics I agree that A.E. has received very little attention. Even within AnCap/Libertarian communities, it has only started receiving attention (within the community) recently as a result of it's highly passionate supporters, and it will likely be some time before it catches the eyes of persons who are not involved (in some way) in Libertarian communities. While some responses have been from colleagues, it would be a misrepresentation to categorically label all responders as "LVMI hacks" 66.69.205.40 (talk) 05:50, 25 May 2013 (UTC)JamesCarlin

Non-Mises libertarians on Argument

Another user on this page cited a bunch of notable non-Mises Institute affiliated libertarian scholars with credible academic affiliations. The list includes David Friedman, David Conway, Loren Lomasky, Leland B. Yeager, and Douglas Rasmussen. The problem is that, as the Kinsella article cited (oddly) fails to note, all of these people strongly disagree with Hoppe, with some of their responses bordering on outright mockery. Hoppe notes their disagreement (sometimes angrily, such as when he claims Loren Lomasky was "intimidated" by the book which contained "Argumentation Ethics"), in an article he has since removed from his website. (see: http://web.archive.org/web/20060326171923/http://www.hanshoppe.com/publications/econ-ethics-appx.pdf)

So yes: it can and should be noted that a half dozen hardcore libertarian academics (mostly economists), who are notable and are not Hoppe's colleagues/co-workers, responded (in what appears to be one to two issues of the anarchist magazine Liberty) to and sharply disagreed with the argument. But it needs to be noted that the vast majority of -- perhaps literally all -- notable figures who responded favorably are Hoppe's colleagues/co-workers. Steeletrap (talk) 14:41, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

A Google scholar search for "argumentation ethics" produced a hundred or so hits. Most of them refer to articles in libertarian journals (written by the usual suspects). I won't parse who's Misesian vs. non-Misesian or libertarian vs. non-libertarian. That's an editing task that needs a SME. But I do think we've got to be objective and balanced in the overall presentation. In this regard, my comments about the non-LvMI connections of the commentators is important. We cannot simply characterize them as Mises-connected people. A better approach would be to say "Various scholars commented on the theory in journals such as X (Mises.org), Y (Hoover Institution), and Z (Podunk University Law School)." Each of the major comments would need a citation. But adding a whole bunch of notes about commentators is not very helpful. The reader should learn what they said in a summarized fashion. (In fact, this article does a poor job in describing AE. Compare it to Discourse ethics.) – S. Rich (talk) 15:30, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

No disagreement there. Both scholarly affiliation (I believe I added the fact that Long is a Professor of Philosophy at Auburn Unviersity) and Mises Institute affiliation (if applicable) should be mentioned. But if only half a dozen or fewer philosophers/logicians have ever responded to it (all of whom, at least so far, strongly disagree with Hoppe), it seems odd to leave out the fact that, despite purporting to be a strictly logical/value free argument, every RS with formal expertise in logic thinks it's false. Steeletrap (talk) 15:36, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

"Purports" edit

My last edit (regarding "purports") cited WP:CLAIM. This was inaccurate. The correct guideline is WP:ALLEGED. – S. Rich (talk) 05:41, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Self-ownership and right-libertarianism

@Liberty5000: could you explain here why do you keep removing the fragment which clarifies that Hoppe's argument defends the right-libertarian interpretation of self-ownership? In your edit description you justify the removal claiming that not everyone agrees that so-called right-libertarianism is right wing, despite the fact that not only right-libertarianism is undoubtedly right-wing (I'm curious to learn who says otherwise?), the term "right wing" is currently not even mentioned in the article. Hoppe clearly combines self-ownership and private property, and therefore it is important to clarify that in the lead. I'm starting this discussion here so that other people can express their opinion. BeŻet (talk) 12:35, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

Merge

Curious the deletion discussion resulted with a "Merge"? Seeing as there were no votes for Merge, not even a vote for Deletion. Only support to keep. Mathmo ^Talk 12:04, 10 September 2021 (UTC)