Retrospective Thoughts On The Convo With Molyneux

[The podcast of the convo can be found here]

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 "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. 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 oppurtunity to opine on what is obviously an absurdity, but it may not actually be analagous to what's in question.

What The Hell Does "Ownership" Mean?

I didn't fully express 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 fact proves rights concepts (this is what Hoppe's argumentation ethics claims to do). I'm also claiming that "ownership" is really a metaphor here - what Stef calls "self-ownership" (physiological control over one's body) is not the same thing as "ownership" as I understand it because "ownership" signifies something to be homesteaded, bought and sold (and surely libertarians do not intend to concieve of one's "self" as such 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 "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.

Molyneux also tried to point out that I'm too concerned with what other people think - that I may object "but other people my 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 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. Once 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 contradiction that Molyneux wants to point out. That was a good 10-15 minutes of him avoiding my point!

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? Molyneux seemed to vaguely aknowledge 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.

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 beside 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 gauranteed to be respected, but that's entirely beside the point. That rights aren't gauranteed 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 claim 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 is 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 a 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 understood to be a prescriptive political philosophy.

Ethics or Science?

What's somewhat perplexing is Molyneux's insistance 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 foreward 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 its 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 the scientic method or a description that has nothing to do with prescriptive ethics, then I fail to see why it shouldn't lead us to moral nihilism - and yet Molyneux is definitely not a moral nihilist.

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 critisized, 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 just with "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.

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" vs. "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 very well all be 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 itself is. The fundamental true/false binary is beside the point. For example, if I rule out the statement that "eating an apple is moral", it does not necessarily follow that the statement that "eating an apple 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".

Or we may be presented with a false dilemma. For example, the false dilemma of either "the mind doesn't exist" (eliminative materialism and epiphenominalism) 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" is validated. Perhaps I feel neither happy or sad, or I don't think that either of them can be attributed absolutely to me in the scenario. Hence, the binaries that we may be presented with on 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 as absolutes.

My concern is with a 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 contradictary 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.

Universality and Consistency

Another issue I briefly touched on in the discussion but didn't get to explain is that consistant application of an ethic, strictly speaking, isn't what proves or disproves it - you could theoretically consistantly 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 consistantly authoritarian philosophy and its problem would not be one of internal inconsistency but the problem would be the premise itelf. 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.

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. On could theoretically form a philosophy in which "theft is moral" is a universal absolute. 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 inconsistant 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 not be property rights" and then being confused when the person they made the statement denying or questioning property rights towards ignores them or responds to someone else - 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 sleight of hand, an analogy to an absurdity that is beside the point? Doesn't Molyneux realize that "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 asking me "why do you deny your own existance?". 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 existance.

Now that is a valid analogy!

Next Time?

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 tangental 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 addressing 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 are 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 (he kept shifting the discussion towards ontology and description).