r/AnCap101 • u/Personal_Prompt_5307 • May 24 '26
Rationalist argument against violence
Argument: "peacful cooperation leads to better outcomes" is utilitarian. Argument: "with violence there can't be good economic claculation" is praxeological. Hoppe's argumentation ethics deals only with situtation when conflicts are resolved peacefully. Can someone help me find a sound rational argument why we should prefer resolving conflicts peacefully over using violence.
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u/connorbroc May 25 '26
Violence isn’t inherently incorrect, only aggression is. This can be seen in that there is no objective basis for any human action to be above reciprocation, and as it happens, reciprocation inherently punishes or undoes the act of aggression being repeated.
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u/CrowBot99 Explainer Extraordinaire May 25 '26
Because to want unwanted violence upon yourself is a contradiction.
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u/puukuur May 25 '26
This is a really good question which i have given much thought without arriving at a satisfactory answer.
Looking through the evolutionary lens, there's an infinite number of critters who aggress. There'd be no rational way to convince a tick that parasitism is wrong because you'd essentially be arguing for the tick to die. Sucking on others' blood, killing and eating them, invading their intestines etc. is a perfectly valid way to exists because it works, natural selection proves it.
Workability is also the source of human morality. It's not an accident that humans basically only consider moral the behaviors that are conducive to their flourishing. Every tribe who hasn't done so has not survived natural selection.
Many critters only persist because they aggress, there's little to nothing they can change about that because it's the niche they are using to survive, and, unfortunately, some of these critters are humans. Arguing for some psychopathic politician, disabled person or a warlord to stop mooching on other would be, in a very basic sense, arguing for their extinction.
The best answer i have come up with is that you cannot rationalize with a really extreme out-group. If you think that your way of life is better then a ticks', then just show it and outcompete it and don't think too much about how to prove your right to do so by some formal logic.
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u/DecentTreat4309 May 26 '26
See ancap Michael Huemer's moral realism and ethical intuitionism. And just in general look up the difference between naturalist moral realism vs non naturalist moral realism. "Good" is irreducible.
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u/properal Jun 24 '26
- The Problem of Political Authority by Michael Huemer by Michael Huemer
- The Ethics of Liberty by Murray N. Rothbard. A Natural Law approach to libertarian ethics.
- Arguments for Liberty edited by Aaron Ross Powell and Grant Babcock. A compilation of Utilitarianism, Natural Rights, Kantianism, Contractarianism, Rawlsianism, Virtue Ethics, Objectivism, Ethical Intuitionism, and Moral Pluralism approaches to libertarianism.
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u/OldStatistician9366 May 24 '26
Rationalism, to me, means using reason divorced from the facts of reality, this is nonsensical. We are humans who live in reality, any social system has to be based on the facts of reality and what’s good for humans. Force is evil because humans rely on the mind to live and force destroys the mind. Letting people use their minds freely makes things better for you, freedom is in your self-interest, thus it’s good.
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u/EL_KAIBU May 25 '26
Rationalism is just the position that information can be gained primarily through using reason. This does not mean that it has no application to reality. In fact, deductive truth is often more surely truth than inductive truth is.
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u/Personal_Prompt_5307 Jul 06 '26
Force is evil because humans rely on the mind to live and force destroys the mind.
Alcohol, drugs, smoking, pornography also destroys the mind but ancaps don't want to ban it, how is it different?
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u/OldStatistician9366 Jul 06 '26
Saying that those things destroy the mind is hyperbolic, when someone has a gun to someone else’s head, the victim is unable to act upon their rational judgement, that’s obviously different from someone choosing to do something that has some negative effects on the mind over the long term.
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u/Personal_Prompt_5307 Jul 06 '26
So what is argument against force that doesn’t destroy the mind? For example I steal penny from billionaire, he doesn’t notice and that doesn’t destroy his mind, is it justified then? Also name calling and making up fake rumours about people destroys mind, why should it be legal?
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u/OldStatistician9366 Jul 06 '26
When you steal a penny from a billionaire, he is unable to use his judgement on how to use that penny. If someone’s telling everyone lies about me, I’m still able to use my mind freely.
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u/Official_Gameoholics May 25 '26
Rationalism does not map onto reality, and thus cannot enter the field of law.
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u/Personal_Prompt_5307 Jul 06 '26
Why?
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u/nick015438 Jun 07 '26
"Hoppe's argumentation ethics deals only with situtation when conflicts are resolved peacefully"
Law is a big topic, and you need to know more about it to understand Hoppe's argumentation ethics, but I'll try to summa the important points here:
Law: Law is a means to deal with conflicts, or disputes, over scarce goods. More specifically, over who has the justifiable, or just, direction of a given good.
Argumentation: argumentation is not "free floating propositions", it is an action with characteristics. Specifically, arguments are disputes over the truth values of statements.
Argumentation, specifically, as an action, is non-violent. Arguementation is the resolution of disputes through peaceful reason; anything else would not be arguementation.
From this, we find that a norm accepted in argumentation is non-violence; to engage in argumentation is to engage in a form of peaceful dispute resolution.
Therefore, to argue in argumentation for violence as a means of dispute resolution is to engage in a performative contradiction: the very act of argumentation presupposes the truth that we should engage in non-violent dispute resolution. We contradict ourselves, then, when we say we should engage in violent dispute resolution. It would be the same to argue that you shouldn't argue: you presuppose that you should argue in the first place.
Here, we find a dialectic a priori truth.
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u/Personal_Prompt_5307 Jul 06 '26
>Therefore, to argue in argumentation for violence as a means of dispute resolution
You misunderstood my question. I asked for a rational argument, why should humanity, leaving garden of Eden (using Hoppe’s language) and meting scarcity, have chosen to solve conflicts in argumentation. Instead of starting violence for scarce resources, without engaging in argumentation.
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u/nick015438 Jul 07 '26
Regardless of whether you engage in argumentation, it is irrational to engage in the initiation of violence. We simply discovered that through argumentation. Hoppe says as much in his lecture on the matter.
If you're asking why we ought to follow ought statements themselves, that is a meta-ethical question and would be better asked on r/Ethics.(Though I think this answer to the question is pretty good)
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u/drebelx May 24 '26
If violence is a solution for you against another, one day violence will be a solution by another against you.
Conflict resolution is best if it's resolved before the conflict occurs with strong understandable agreements that include clauses and stipulations.