Find counter arguments by entering NameVs… or …VsName.
The author or concept searched is found in the following 58 entries.
| Disputed term/author/ism | Author |
Entry |
Reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abortion | Thomson | Singer I 132 Abortion/J. J. Thomson/P. Singer: Thought experiment: Imagine that you should be connected to the blood circulation of a seriously ill, famous violinist for 9 months in order to save his life. After that, your help is no longer needed. All the music lovers of the whole world are watching. Thomson: When you wake up in the hospital (kidnapped by music lovers to help the violinist) and find yourself in this situation, you are not morally obliged to let the violinist use your body. It may be a generosity on your part - but it is not morally wrong to reject it.(1) Singer: Thomson's conclusion does not depend on the fact that the violinist came into his circumstances involuntarily. Thomson also expressly states that the violinist has a right to life, but this right does not include the right to use another body, even if one dies without this help. Singer: the parallel to rape is obvious. Singer I 133 For the sake of the argument, we assume that the embryo is considered a fully developed human being. Question: can Thomson's argument be extended to cases of pregnancy that are not based on rape? This depends on whether the theory behind it is well-founded. For example, could I force my favorite movie star to save my life? Thomson/Singer: it does not say that although I have a right to life, I would always be forced to take the best path or to do what would have the most pleasant consequences. Solution/Thomson: instead, it accepts a system of rules and obligations that allows us to justify our actions regardless of their consequences. Cf. >Consequentialism, >Deontology. P. SingerVsThomson/UtilitarianismVsThomson, J. J./Singer, P: in the case of the violinist, the utilitarianism would reject Thomson's theory. Singer I 308 In this way, utilitarianism would also reject Thomson's position on abortion. >Utilitarianism, >Preference utilitarianism. 1. Judith J. Thomson, "A Defense of Abortion" in: Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1971. |
ThomsonJF I James F. Thomson "A Note on Truth", Analysis 9, (1949), pp. 67-72 In Theories of Truth, Paul Horwich Aldershot 1994 ThomsonJJ I Judith J. Thomson Goodness and Advice Princeton 2003 SingerP I Peter Singer Practical Ethics (Third Edition) Cambridge 2011 SingerP II P. Singer The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically. New Haven 2015 |
| Actions | Austin | II 36f Action/Ryle/Austin: actions are very different - szneezing, to win wars: life is not simply a sequence of actions. - Excuse does not match every verb - a way to characterize actions - e.g. "voluntarily". AustinVsRyle: this is not a characteristic of actions such as "truth," not of assertions - rather a name of a dimension. >Voluntarily/Ryle. |
Austin I John L. Austin "Truth" in: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 24 (1950): 111 - 128 In Wahrheitstheorien, Gunnar Skirbekk Frankfurt/M. 1977 Austin II John L. Austin "A Plea for Excuses: The Presidential Address" in: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 57, Issue 1, 1 June 1957, Pages 1 - 3 German Edition: Ein Plädoyer für Entschuldigungen In Linguistik und Philosophie, Grewendorf/Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 |
| Acts of Will | Geach | I 251f Vs"Acts of Will"/Geach: attribution of responsibility instead of causality (GeachVs)-Vs: "ascription theory" ("ascriptivism", Oxford). Ascriptivism/Oxford: Thesis: saying that an action is voluntary is not a description of the action, but an attribution. "All he said"/Oxford: Thesis: this would not be about description but about "confirmation". >Everything he said is true. GeachVs: such theories can be invented by the dozen. - The actual distinction to be observed is the one between naming and predication. >Naming, >Predication. VsAscription Theory: condemning a thing by calling it "bad" must be explained by the more general concept of predication, and such predication can also be done without condemnation. Neither can "done deliberately" be characterized by attribution of responsibility or "being imposed" without describing the act as such first. Cf. >Prescriptivism, cf. >"voluntarily"/Austin. |
Gea I P.T. Geach Logic Matters Oxford 1972 |
| Agreement | Buchanan | Boudreaux I 58 Agreement/Buchanan/Boudreaux/Holcombe: A market order works well when the cooperation of only a few individuals is needed for them to achieve their goals. The protective state is sufficient to ensure an environment in which people interact with each other voluntarily, for their mutual benefit. >State/Buchanan, >Market/Buchanan, >Liberalism/Buchanan. When a large group of individuals is required to accomplish some goals, such as producing the public works that Adam Smith mentioned, the productive state has a potential role to play at coordinating the actions of everyone in the large group. Buchanan uses the same benchmark of mutual agreement to evaluate the role of government. Individuals should be in agreement on the government’s actions. Is it ethical for governments to coerce people into paying taxes, or to force them to obey government regulations? Buchanan argued that if government actions are truly in the public interest, people would agree to grant the government that coercive power. Taking this concept of mutually agreeable exchanges to the large-numbers case and to the coercive actions of government was a big part of Buchanan’s lifetime research program. Boudreaux I 59 He said, “Improvement in the working of politics is measured in terms of the satisfaction of that which is desired by individuals, whatever this may be, rather than in terms of moving closer to some externally defined supra-individualistic idea” (Buchanan, 1986)(1). >Exchange, >Liberty/Buchanan. Boudreaux I 77 Agreement/Buchanan/Boudreaux/Holcombe: Problem: In reality no [social] contract exists. People living under the jurisdiction of a government are subject to that government’s mandates without necessarily having agreed to them. Even if in principle they would agree, they had no actual opportunity to express their agreement or disagreement. This fact leaves two big questions for the social contractarian. First, in what sense could people be said to be in agreement with a social contract when there is no actual agreement? Second, what can usefully be said about the terms of that contract? Anarchy: In The Limits of Liberty(2) Buchanan began his approach to answering these questions by imagining Hobbesian anarchy. The relevance of this hypothetical journey to anarchy is that people in that situation lose all social status. In an anarchic condition, there are no social or economic institutions that determine how people interact with one another. No one is a legislator, a corporate CEO, a Princeton alumnus, a factory worker, or a welfare recipient. To design institutions that create social order and a foundation for productive activity, people hypothetically bargain with each other in a situation of relative equality. Buchanan imagined individuals negotiating a social contract from Hobbesian anarchy, and he imagined the likely outcome of such a negotiation. >Thomas Hobbes, cf. >Veil of ignorance/Rawls, >John Rawls. There is uncertainty about the detailed terms of an actual renegotiated social contract, but Buchanan argues that an individual hypothetically agrees with a social contract if its terms fall within the bounds of what might reasonably be expected as a result of such a negotiation from anarchy. Buchanan built his social-contractarian framework on this foundation of hypothetical unanimous agreement reached from anarchy. He counts people as being in agreement with the social contract if they would agree under these hypothetical conditions. Taxation: We could imagine, for example, that some financially secure individuals in the real world would not agree to a highly progressive tax system that would transfer a lot of their income to people with lower incomes. But in the hypothetical state of anarchy, people would be very uncertain about their income levels once a social contract was negotiated and life commenced under it. If those individuals would agree, while in a hypothetical state of anarchy, to income transfers under the social contract, then they are in agreement with such transfers in the real world, according to Buchanan’s criterion. Cf. >Anarchism, >Market anarchism, >Agreement, >Negotiations, >Contracts, >Contract theory. Boudreaux I 78 Thought experiments/fictions/Buchanan: Such mental exercises do not actually identify specific terms of the social contract. Buchanan recognized that we cannot know which particular contractual terms all individuals in hypothetical anarchy might agree to. But reasoning in this way can give some idea of the general “appropriate” scope of government. For example, because ( …) almost everyone would agree that people should not murder each other, the social contract would certainly empower government to prosecute and punish murderers. Almost as uncontroversially, most people would agree that a majority should not be empowered, absent good reasons, to appropriate the property of a minority - and so the social contract would feature restrictions on such majoritarian actions. 1. Buchanan, James M. (1986). “The Constitution of Economic Policy.” Nobel Prize Lecture (December 8), Stockholm, Sweden. 2.Buchanan, James M. (1975). The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan. University of Chicago Press. |
EconBuchan I James M. Buchanan Politics as Public Choice Carmel, IN 2000 Boudreaux I Donald J. Boudreaux Randall G. Holcombe The Essential James Buchanan Vancouver: The Fraser Institute 2021 |
| Assertibility Conditions | Searle | VII 101 Searle: assertibility conditions are not the same as truth conditions: e.g. the use of "voluntarily" (> Ryle-Austin-Searle-Hare-Cavell-Fodor; see SearleVsAustin). VsUse Theory: use is too vague. The circumstances are beyond the language. >Truth condition. VII 96 Intention/Searle: thesis: the strangeness or deviation that is a condition for the utterance: "X was done intentionally", provides at the same time a reason for the truth of the utterance of: "X wasn't done on purpose." Condition of assertiveness: it is the condition of utterance for one assertion precisely because it is a reason for the truth of the others. >Assertibility condition. >Truth conditions/Searle, >Conditions of satisfaction/Searle, >Assertibility. |
Searle I John R. Searle The Rediscovery of the Mind, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1992 German Edition: Die Wiederentdeckung des Geistes Frankfurt 1996 Searle II John R. Searle Intentionality. An essay in the philosophy of mind, Cambridge/MA 1983 German Edition: Intentionalität Frankfurt 1991 Searle III John R. Searle The Construction of Social Reality, New York 1995 German Edition: Die Konstruktion der gesellschaftlichen Wirklichkeit Hamburg 1997 Searle IV John R. Searle Expression and Meaning. Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts, Cambridge/MA 1979 German Edition: Ausdruck und Bedeutung Frankfurt 1982 Searle V John R. Searle Speech Acts, Cambridge/MA 1969 German Edition: Sprechakte Frankfurt 1983 Searle VII John R. Searle Behauptungen und Abweichungen In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 Searle VIII John R. Searle Chomskys Revolution in der Linguistik In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 Searle IX John R. Searle "Animal Minds", in: Midwest Studies in Philosophy 19 (1994) pp. 206-219 In Der Geist der Tiere, D Perler/M. Wild Frankfurt/M. 2005 |
| Business | Rothbard | Rothbard III 426 Business/Rothbard: In a jointly owned firm, instead of each individual capitalist’s making his own investments and making all his own investment and production decisions, various individuals pool their money capital in one organization, or business firm, and jointly make decisions on the investment of their joint savings. >Saving, >Investments, >Production/Rothbard, >Production structure/Rothbard. The firm then purchases the land, labor, and capital-goods factors, and later sells the product to consumers or to lower-order capitalists. >Market/Rothbard, >Factors of production/Rothbard, >Capital goods/Rothbard. Thus, the firm is the joint owner of the factor services and particularly of the product as it is produced and becomes ready for sale. The firm is the product-owner until the product is sold for money. Rothbard III 427 The individuals who contributed their saved capital to the firm are the joint owners, successively, of: (a) the initial money capital – the pooled savings, (b) the services of the factors, (c) the product of the factors, and (d) the money obtained from the sale of the product. Evenly Rotating Economy: In the evenly rotating economy, their ownership of assets follows this same step-by-step pattern, period after period, without change. In a jointly owned firm, in actual practice, the variety of productive assets owned by the firm is large. >Capital structure/Rothbard, >Evenly Rotating Economy/Rothbard. Production: Any one firm is usually engaged in various production processes, each one involving a different period of time, and is likely to be engaged in different stages of each process at any one particular time. A firm is likely to be producing so that ist output is continuous and so that it makes sales of new units of the product every day. It is obvious, then, that if the firm keeps continually in business, its operations at any one time will be a mixture of investment and sale of product. Its assets at any one time will be a mixture of cash about to be invested, factors just bought, hardly begun products, and money just received from the sale of products. The result is that, to the superficial, it looks as if the firm is an automatically continuing thing and as if the production is somehow timeless and instantaneous, ensuing immediately after the factor input. RothbardVs: Actually, of course, this idea is completely unfounded. There is no automatic continuity of investment and production. Production is continued because the owners are continually making decisions to proceed; if they did not think it profitable to do so, they could and do at any point alter, curtail, or totally cease operations and investments. And production takes time from initial investment to final product. >Time/Rothbard. Types of assets owned by any firm: Rothbard III 428 A. Money B. Productive Assets (Melange of factors, such as land and capital goods, embodying future services (…); various stages of product; the completed product.) On this entire package of assets, a monetary evaluation is placed by the market. Owners: On what principle do the individual owners mutually apportion their shares of the assets? It will almost always be the case that every individual is vitally interested in knowing his share of the joint assets, and consequently firms are established in such a way that the principle of apportionment is known to all the owners. Problem: (…) [here] there [is] no principle whereby any man’s share of ownership could be distinguished from that of anyone else. A whole group of people worked, contributed their land, etc., to the production process, and there [is] no way except simple bargaining by which the income from the sale of the product could be apportioned among them. >Loans/Rothbard, >Credit/Rothbard, >Interest rates/Rothbard. Rothbard III 601 Business/business income/Rothbard: (…) is there a function which owning businessmen perform, (…) beyond the advancing of capital or possible managerial work? The answer is that they do execute another function for which they cannot hire other factors. It goes beyond the simple capital-advancing function, (…). For want of a better term, it may be called the decision-makingfunction, or the ownership function. The decision-making factor is necessarily specific to each firm. We cannot call what it earns a wage because it can never be hired, and thus it does not earn an implicit wage. We may therefore call the income of this factor, the "rent of decision-making ability.“(1) Rothbard III 602 Granting that the "supramarginal" (i.e., the Iower-cost) firms in an industry are earning rents of decision-making ability for their owners, what of the "marginal" firms in the industry, the "high-cost" firms just barely in business? Are their owners earning rents of decision-making ability? Many economists have believed that these marginal firms earn no such income, just as they have believed that the marginal land earns zero rent. We have seen, however, that the marginal land earns some rent, even if "close to" zero. Similarly, the marginal firm earns some rent of decision-making ability. We can never say quantitatively how much it will be, only that it will be less than the corresponding "decision rents" of the supramarginal firms. Rothbard III 603 The belief that marginal firms earn no decision rents whatever seems to stem from two errors: (1) the assumption of mathematical continuity, so that successive points blend together; and (2) the assumption that "rent" is basically differential and therefore that the most inferior working land or firm must earn zero to establish the differential. We have seen, however, that rents are "absolute" - the earnings and marginal value products of factors. >Rent/Rothbard. There is no necessity, therefore, for the poorest factor to earn zero, as we can see when we realize that wages are a subdivision of rents and that there is clearly no one making a zero wage. And so neither does the marginal firm earn a decision rent of zero. Rothbard III 609 Vertical integration: Vertical integration occurs when a firm produces not only at one stage of production, but over two or more stages. For example, a firm becomes so large that it buys labor, land, and capital goods of the fifth order, then works on these capital goods, producing other capital goods of the fourth order. In another plant, it then works on the fourth-order capital goods until they become third-order capital goods. It then sells the third-order product. Vertical integration, of course, lengthens the production period for any firm, i.e., it lengthens the time before the firm can recoup its investment in the production process. The interest return then covers the time fort wo or more stages rather than one.(2) Rothbard III 612 External market: if there were no market for a product, and all of its exchanges were internal, there would be no way for a firm or for anyone else to determine a price for the good. A firm can estimate an implicit price when an external market exists; but when a market is absent, the good can have no price, whether implicit or explicit. Any figure could be only an arbitrary symbol. Not being able to calculate a price, the firm could not rationally allocate factors and resources from one stage to another. (…) complete vertical integration for a capital-good product can never be established on the free market (above the primitive level). For every capital good, there must be a definite market in which firms buy and sell that good. It is obvious that this economic law sets a definite maximum to the relative size of any particular firm on the free market.(3) >Coase theorem, >Free market/Rothbard. Because of this law, firms cannot merge or cartelize for complete vertical integration of stages or products. Because of this law, there can never be One Big Cartel over the whole economy or mergers until One Big Firm owns all the productive assets in the economy. The force of this law multiplies as the area of the economy increases and as islands of noncalculable chaos swell to the proportions of masses and continents. As the area of incalculability increases, the degrees of irrationality, misallocation, loss, impoverishment, etc., become greater. Under one owner or one cartel for the whole productive system, there would be no possible areas of calculation at all, and therefore complete economic chaos would prevail.(4) Rothbard III 644 Business/size/Rothbard: We do not know, and economics cannot tell us, the optimum size of a firm in any given industry. The optimum size depends on the concrete technological conditions of each situation, as well as on the state of consumer demand in relation to the given supply ofvarious factors in this and in other industries. >Economy/Rothbard. Rothbard III 645 The large firm will be able to purchase heavily capitalized machinery and to finance better organized marketing and distributing outlets. All this is quite clear when thousands of individuals pool their capital into the establishment of a steel firm. But why may it not be equally true when several small steel firms merge into one large company? It might be replied that in the latter merger, particularly in the case of a cartel, joint action is taken, not to increase efficiency, but solely to increase income by restricting sales. Yet there is no way that an outside observer can distinguish between a “restrictive” and an efficiency-increasing operation. >Mergers/Rothbard, >Cartels/Rothbard. Rothbard III 646 Technology/investments: (…) technological factors in production can never be considered in a vacuum. Technological knowledge tells us of a whole host of alternatives that are open to us. But the crucial questions - in what to invest? how much? what production method to choose? - can be answered only by economic, i.e., by financial considerations. >Observation/Rothbard. 1. For an interesting contribution to the theory of business income, though not coinciding with the one presented here, see Harrod, “Theory of Profit” in Economic Essays, pp. 190–95. Also see Friedman, “Survey of the Empirical Evidence on Economies of Scale: Comment.” 2. Vertical integration, we might note, tends to reduce the demand for money (to “turn over” at various stages) and thereby to lower the purchasing power of the monetary unit. For the effect of vertical integration on the analysis of investment and the production structure, see Hayek, Prices and Production, 2nd ed. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1935. Reprinted by Augustus M. Kelley, 1967. pp. 62–68. 3. On the size of a firm, see the challenging article by R.H. Coase, “The Nature of the Firm” in George J. Stigler and Kenneth E. Boulding, eds., Readings in Price Theory (Chicago: Richard D. Irwin, 1952), pp. 331–51. In an illuminating passage Coase pointed out that State “planning is imposed on industry, while firms arise voluntarily because they represent a more efficient method of organizing production. In a competitive system there is an ‘optimum’ amount of planning.” Ibid., p. 335 n. 4. Capital goods are stressed here because they are the product for which the calculability problem becomes important. Consumers’ goods per se are no problem, since there are always many consumers buying goods, and therefore consumers’ goods will always have a market. |
Rothbard II Murray N. Rothbard Classical Economics. An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Cheltenham 1995 Rothbard III Murray N. Rothbard Man, Economy and State with Power and Market. Study Edition Auburn, Alabama 1962, 1970, 2009 Rothbard IV Murray N. Rothbard The Essential von Mises Auburn, Alabama 1988 Rothbard V Murray N. Rothbard Power and Market: Government and the Economy Kansas City 1977 |
| Carbon Price Strategies | Stavins | Stavins I 153 Carbon Pricing Policy Instruments/Carbon price strategies/Aldy/Stavins: We consider five generic policy instruments that could conceivably be employed by regional, national, or even subnational governments for carbon pricing, including carbon taxes, cap-and-trade, emission reduction credits, clean energy standards, and fossil fuel subsidy reduction. (…) however [there are also] Stavins I 154 conventional environmental policy approaches, namely, command-and-control instruments, which have dominated environmental policy in virtually all countries over the past four decades. Command-and-Control Regulations: command-and-control regulatory standards are either technology based or performance based. Technology-based standards typically require the use of specified equipment, processes, or procedures. In the climate policy context, these could require firms to use particular types of energy-efficient motors, combustion processes, or landfill-gas collection technologies. Performance-based standards are more flexible than technology-based standards, specifying allowable levels of pollutant emissions or allowable emission rates, but leaving the specific methods of achieving those levels up to regulated entities. >Command-and-Control-Regulations/Stavins. Stavins I 155 Carbon Taxes: In principle, the simplest approach to carbon pricing would be through government imposition of a carbon tax (Metcalf, 2007)(1). The government could set a tax in terms of dollars per ton of CO2 emissions (or CO2-equivalent on greenhouse gas emissions) by sources covered by the tax, or—more likely—a tax on the carbon content of the three fossil fuels (coal, petroleum, and natural gas) as they enter the economy. The government could apply the carbon tax at a variety of points in the product cycle of fossil fuels, from fossil fuel suppliers based on the carbon content of fuel sales (“upstream” taxation/regulation) to final emitters at the point of energy generation (“downstream” taxation/regulation). >Carbon Taxation/Government policies, >Carbon Taxation/Fankhauser, >Carbon Taxation/Stavins. Stavins I 157 Cap-and-Trade Systems: A cap-and-trade system constrains the aggregate emissions of regulated sources by creating a limited number of tradable emission allowances—in sum equal to the overall cap—and requiring those sources to surrender allowances to cover their emissions (Stavins, 2007)(2). Cap-and-trade sets an aggregate quantity, and through trading, yields a price on emissions, and is effectively the dual of a carbon tax that prices emissions and yields a quantity of emissions as firms respond to the tax’s mitigation incentives. >Cap-and-Trade Systems/Stavins. Stavins I 159 Emission-Reduction-Credit Systems: An emission-reduction-credit (ERC) system delivers emission mitigation by awarding tradable credits for “certified” reductions. Generally, firms that are not covered by some set of regulations—be they command-and-control or market-based — may voluntarily participate in such systems, which serve as a source of credits that entities facing compliance obligations under the regulations may use. Individual countries can implement an ERC system without having a corresponding cap-and-trade program. While ERC systems can be self-standing, as in the case of the CDM [Clean Development Mechanism], governments can also establish them as elements of domestic cap-and-trade or other regulatory systems. These ERC systems—often referred to as offset programs—serve as a source of credits that can be used by regulated entities to meet compliance obligations under the primary system. >Emssion-Reduction-Credit System/Stavins Clean Energy Standards: The purpose of a clean energy standard is to establish a technology-oriented goal for the electricity sector that can be implemented cost-effectively (Aldy, 2011)(3). Under such standards, power plants generating electricity with technologies that satisfy the standard create tradable credits that they can sell to power plants that fail to meet the standard, thereby minimizing the costs of meeting the standard’s goal in a manner analogous to cap-and-trade. Stavins I 161 A clean energy standard represents a de facto free allocation of the right to emit greenhouse gases to the power sector. >Clean Energy Standards/Stavins. Eliminating Fossil Fuel Subsidies: Phasing out fossil fuel subsidies can represent significant progress toward “getting prices right” for fossil fuel consumption, especially in some developing countries, where subsidies are particularly large. Imposing a carbon price on top of a fuel subsidy will not lead to the socially optimal price for the fuel, but removing such subsidies can deliver incentives for efficiency and fuel switching comparable to implementing an explicit carbon price. >Eliminating Fossil Fuel Subsidies/Stavins. Cf. >Emission permits, >Emission reduction credits, >Emission targets, >Emissions, >Emissions trading, >Climate change, >Climate damage, >Energy policy, >Clean Energy Standards, >Climate data, >Climate history, >Climate justice, >Climate periods, >Climate targets, >Climate impact research, >Carbon price, >Carbon price coordination, >Carbon price strategies, >Carbon tax, >Carbon tax strategies. 1. Metcalf, G. E. (2007). A proposal for a U.S. carbon tax swap (The Hamilton Project Discussion Paper 2007-12). Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. 2. Stavins, R. N. (2007). A U.S. cap-and-trade system to address global climate change (The Hamilton Project Discussion Paper 2007-13). Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. 3. Aldy, J. E. (2011). Promoting clean energy in the American power sector (The Hamilton Project Discussion Paper 2011-04). Washington, DC: The Hamilton Project. Robert N. Stavins & Joseph E. Aldy, 2012: “The Promise and Problems of Pricing Carbon: Theory and Experience”. In: Journal of Environment & Development, Vol. 21/2, pp. 152–180. |
Stavins I Robert N. Stavins Joseph E. Aldy The Promise and Problems of Pricing Carbon: Theory and Experience 2012 |
| Categorization | Gadamer | I 433 Categorization/Gadamer: the logical scheme of induction and abstraction [is] very misleading in that there is no explicit reflection in the linguistic consciousness on what is common between different things, and the use of words in their general meaning does not understand what is named and designated by them as a case subsumed under the general. The generality of the genre and the classificatory formation of concepts are quite far removed from the linguistic consciousness. >Language use, >Generality, >Generalization, >Classification, >Order, >Concepts, >Similarity, >Properties, >Word meaning. When someone transfers an expression from one to the other, he or she is looking at something in common, but it does not necessarily have to be a generic commonality. Rather, he or she is following his or her expanding experience, which preserves similarities, be they of factual appearance or of significance to us. This is the genius of the linguistic consciousness that it knows how to express such similarities. We call this its basic metaphor, and it is important to recognize that it is the prejudice of a non-linguistic logical theory when the figurative use of a word is reduced to an improper use.(1) Cf. >Metaphors. Generalization: (...) thinking [can turn to] a reserve that language has made for it for its own instruction.(2) Plato expressly did this with his "flight into the Logoi"(3). Gadamer: But also the classificatory logic ties in with the logical advance that language has accomplished for them. >Categories/Aristotle. 1. That's what L. Klages saw in particular. Cf. K. Löwith, Das Individuum in der Rolle des Mitmenschen, 1928, pp. 33ff (and my review in Logos 18 (1929), pp. 436-440; Vol. 4 of the Ges. Werke). 2. This image appears involuntarily and thus confirms Heidegger's statement of the proximity of meaning between legein = to say and legein = to read together (first in "Heraklits Lehre vom Logos" commemorative publication for H. Jantzen). 3rd Plato, Phaid. 99 e. |
Gadamer I Hans-Georg Gadamer Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik 7. durchgesehene Auflage Tübingen 1960/2010 Gadamer II H. G. Gadamer The Relevance of the Beautiful, London 1986 German Edition: Die Aktualität des Schönen: Kunst als Spiel, Symbol und Fest Stuttgart 1977 |
| Coase Theorem | Rothbard | Rothbard III 612 Coase theorem/Rothbard: if there were no market for a product, and all of its exchanges were internal, there would be no way for a firm or for anyone else to determine a price for the good. A firm can estimate an implicit price when an external market exists; but when a market is absent, the good can have no price, whether implicit or explicit. Any figure could be only an arbitrary symbol. Not being able to calculate a price, the firm could not rationally allocate factors and resources from one stage to another. (…) complete vertical integration for a capital-good product can never be established on the free market (above the primitive level). For every capital good, there must be a definite market in which firms buy and sell that good. It is obvious that this economic law sets a definite maximum to the relative size of any particular firm on the free market.(1) >Business/Rothbard. Because of this law, firms cannot merge or cartelize for complete vertical integration of stages or products. Because of this law, there can never be One Big Cartel over the whole economy or mergers until One Big Firm owns all the productive assets in the economy. The force of this law multiplies as the area of the economy increases and as islands of noncalculable chaos swell to the proportions of masses and continents. As the area of incalculability increases, the degrees of irrationality, misallocation, loss, impoverishment, etc., become greater. Under one owner or one cartel for the whole productive system, there would be no possible areas of calculation at all, and therefore complete economic chaos would prevail.(2) >Cartels, >Free market/Rothbard. 1. On the size of a firm, see the challenging article by R.H. Coase, “The Nature of the Firm” in George J. Stigler and Kenneth E. Boulding, eds., Readings in Price Theory (Chicago: Richard D. Irwin, 1952), pp. 331–51. In an illuminating passage Coase pointed out that State “planning is imposed on industry, while firms arise voluntarily because they represent a more efficient method of organizing production. In a competitive system there is an ‘optimum’ amount of planning.” Ibid., p. 335 n. 2. Capital goods are stressed here because they are the product for which the calculability problem becomes important. Consumers’ goods per se are no problem, since there are always many consumers buying goods, and therefore consumers’ goods will always have a market. |
Rothbard II Murray N. Rothbard Classical Economics. An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Cheltenham 1995 Rothbard III Murray N. Rothbard Man, Economy and State with Power and Market. Study Edition Auburn, Alabama 1962, 1970, 2009 Rothbard IV Murray N. Rothbard The Essential von Mises Auburn, Alabama 1988 Rothbard V Murray N. Rothbard Power and Market: Government and the Economy Kansas City 1977 |
| Collective Action | Buchanan | Boudreaux I 73 Collective action/Buchanan/Boudreaux/Holcombe: „Collective action is viewed as the action of individuals when they choose to accomplish purposes collectively, rather than individually, and the government is seen as nothing more than the set of processes, the machine, which allows such collective action to take place.“(1) Individuals engage in market exchange because it is mutually advantageous for them to do so. (…) individuals often work together through collective organizations to carry out those mutually advantageous activities. Some organizations, such as clubs and firms, are voluntary, but other kinds of collective action are taken through government. >Clubs, >Organizations, >Utility, >Government, >Politics. Government/Buchanan: When government is used ideally, people exchange with each other politically in order to accomplish ends that they could not accomplish individually or through market exchange. >Market/Buchanan. Boudreaux I 74 Government consists of a set of institutions that, if well-designed, enable large numbers of individuals to engage in exchange collectively for their mutual benefit. In Buchanan’s division of government activities into the protective state and the productive state, it is the productive state that best embodies his idea of politics as exchange. One hopes that the activities of the protective state meet with the approval of each and every one of the state’s citizens. State/Hobbes/Buchanan: Buchanan shared Thomas Hobbes’s view that without the protective state, life would be a war of all against all. To create the protective state, individuals agree only to not violate each other’s rights, with the state enlisted to enforce this agreement. The productive state does more than the protective state. As Buchanan envisioned it, the productive state arises from an agreement among citizens to pool their resources to collectively produce goods and services that would be difficult to produce individually or through standard market activity. In the real world, people have not agreed to the activities of the state. Under what conditions could people be depicted as being in agreement with institutions to which they have not actually agreed? Solution/Buchanan: Buchanan extended the market-exchange logic - one in which all parties to an exchange voluntarily agree to it - to collective activity y. The activities of the state would benefit everyone if everyone agreed to them. Boudreaux I 75 It follows that the voting rule that would make political exchange fully analogous to market exchange is unanimity. Despite the widespread tendency to view the ideal of democracy as embodied in simple majority-rule voting, Buchanan understood majority rule as being just one of many possible and justifiable political decision-making rules. >Voting/Buchanan. Individualism: Buchanan’s insistence that all political activity ultimately be grounded in unanimous consent follows from his individualistic approach. >Individualism/Buchanan. 1. Buchanan, James M., and Gordon Tullock (1962/1999). The Calculus of Consent. Liberty Fund. |
EconBuchan I James M. Buchanan Politics as Public Choice Carmel, IN 2000 Boudreaux I Donald J. Boudreaux Randall G. Holcombe The Essential James Buchanan Vancouver: The Fraser Institute 2021 |
| Consumption Function | Keynesianism | Rothbard III 861 Consumption function/Keynesianism/Rothbard: The stability of the passive consumption function, as contrasted withthe volatility of active investment, is a keystone of the Keynesian system. This assumption is replete withso many grave errors that it is necessary to take them up one at a time. Consumption function/RothbardVsKeynesianism/VsConsumption function: (a) How do the Keynesians justify the assumption of a stable consumption function (…)? One route was through "budget studies" - cross-sectional studies of the relation between family income and expenditure by income groups in a given year. This is supposed to intimate that those doing the "dissaving," i.e., the dishoarding, are poor people below the subsistence level who incur deficits by borrowing. But how long is this supposed to go on? >Hoarding/Keynesianism. RothbardVsKeynesianism: How can there be a continuous deficit? Who would continue to lend these people the money? It is more reasonable to suppose that the dishoarders are decumulating their previously accumulated capital, i.e., that they are wealthy people whose businesses suffered losses during that year. (b) Aside from the fact that budget studies are misinterpreted, there are graver fallacies involved. For the curve given by the budget study has no relation whatever to the Keynesian consumption function! The former, at best, gives a cross section of the relation between classes of family expenditure and income for one year; the Keynesian consumption function attempts to establish a relation between total social income and total social consumption for any given year, holding true over a hypothetical range of social incomes. At best, one entire budget curve can be summed up to yield only one point on the Keynesian consumption function. Budget studies, therefore, can in no way confirm the Keynesian assumptions. Rothbard III 862 (c) Another very popular device to confirm the consumption function reached the peak of its popularity during World War II. This was historical-statistical correlation of national income and consumption for a definite period of time, usually the 1930's. This correlation equation was then assumed to be the "stable" consumption function. Errors in this procedure were numerous. RothbardVs: In the first place, even assuming such a stable relation, it would only be an historical conclusion, not a theoretical law. In physics, an experimentally determined law may be assumed to be constant for other identical situations; in human action, historical situations are never the same, and therefore there are no quantitative constants! Conditions and valuations could change at any time, and the "stable" relationship altered. There is here no proof of a stable consumption function. RothbardVs: Moreover, a stable relation was not even established. Income was correlated with consumption and with investment. Since consumption is a much larger magnitude than (net) investment, no wonder that its percentage deviations around the regression equation were smaller! >Consumption/Keynesianism, >Investment/Keynes, >Interest/Keynesianism. Time/ex ante/ex post/RothbardVsKeynesianism: Thirdly, the consumption function is necessarily an ex ante relation; it is supposed to tell how much consumers will decide to spend given a certain total income. Historical statistics, on the other hand, record only ex post data, which give a completely different story. For any given period of time, for example, hoarding and dishoarding cannot be recorded ex post. In fact, ex post, on double-entry accounting records, total social income is always equal to total social expenditures. Yet, in the dynamic, ex ante, sense, it is precisely the divergence between total social income and total social expenditures (hoarding or dishoarding) that Plays the crucial role in the Keynesian theory. (1) Rothbard III 863 (d) Actually, the whole idea of stable consumption functions has now been discredited, although many Keynesians do not fully realize this In fact, Keynesians themselves have admitted that, in the long run, the consumption function is not stable, since total consumption rises as income rises; and that in the short run it is not stable, since it is affected by all sorts of changing factors. RothbardVs: But if it is not stable in the short run and not stable in the long run, what kind of stability does it have? (e) it is instructive to turn now to the reasons that Keynes himself, in contrast to his followers, gave for assuming his stable consumption function. It is a confused exposition The "propensity to consume" out of given income, according to Keynes, is determined by two sets of factors, "objective" and "subjective." Rothbard: It seems clear, however, that these are purely subjective decisions, so that there can be no separate objective determinants. 1. See Lindahl, "On Keynes' Economic System - Part I," Economic Record (May 1954). p. 169 n. Lindahl shows the diffculties of mixing an ex post income line with ex ante consumption and spending, as the Keynesians do. Lindahl also shows that theexpenditure and income lines coincide ifthe divergence between expected and realized income affects income and not stocks. Yet it cannot affect stocks, for, contrary to Keynesian assertion, there is no such thing as hoarding or any other unexpected event leading to "unintended increase in inventories." An increase in inventories is never unintended, since the seller has the alternative of selling the good at the market price. The fact that his inventory increases means that he has voluntarily invested in larger inventory, hoping for a future price rise. 2. Summing up disillusionment withthe consumption function are two significant articles: Murray E. Polakoff, "Some Critical Observations on the Major Keynesian Building Blocks," Southern Economic Journal, October, 1954, pp. 141-51; and Leo Fishman, "Consumer Expectations and the Consumption Function," ibid., January, 1954, pp. 243-51. |
Rothbard II Murray N. Rothbard Classical Economics. An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Cheltenham 1995 Rothbard III Murray N. Rothbard Man, Economy and State with Power and Market. Study Edition Auburn, Alabama 1962, 1970, 2009 Rothbard IV Murray N. Rothbard The Essential von Mises Auburn, Alabama 1988 Rothbard V Murray N. Rothbard Power and Market: Government and the Economy Kansas City 1977 |
| Contracts | Durkheim | Habermas IV 122 Contracts/Law/Durkheim/Habermas: for the transfer of property, inheritance is historically the norm. The competing form of acquisition or divestiture is the contract that is considered a status change. The contract adds new relationships to existing relationships. The contract is therefore a source of variations, which presupposes an earlier legal basis with a different origin. The contract is preferably the instrument with which the changes are implemented. He himself cannot form the original and fundamental foundations on which the law is based. (1) Problem: how can a contract bind the parties when the sacred basis of law has been removed? Solution/Hobbes/Weber/Habermas: the standard answer since Hobbes and up to Max Weber is that modern law is compulsory law. Habermas IV 123 DurkheimVsHobbes/DurkheimVsWeber/Habermas: Durkheim is not satisfied with that. Obedience must also have a moral core. The legal system is in fact a part of a political order with which it would fall if it could not claim legitimacy. (See Legitimacy/Durkheim). Legitimacy/Civil Law/Durkheim/Habermas: Problem: a contract cannot contain its own bases of validity. The fact that the parties voluntarily enter into an agreement does not imply the binding nature of this agreement. The contract itself is only possible thanks to a regulation of social origin. (2) 1. E. Durkheim, Lecons de sociologie, Physique des moeurs et du droit. Paris 1969, S. 203f ; (engl. London 1957). 2. E. Durkheim, De la division du travail social, German: Über die Teilung der sozialen Arbeit, Frankfurt, 1977, S. 255. |
Durkheim I E. Durkheim The Rules of Sociological Method - French: Les Règles de la Méthode Sociologique, Paris 1895 German Edition: Die Regeln der soziologischen Methode Frankfurt/M. 1984 Ha I J. Habermas Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne Frankfurt 1988 Ha III Jürgen Habermas Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns Bd. I Frankfurt/M. 1981 Ha IV Jürgen Habermas Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns Bd. II Frankfurt/M. 1981 |
| Cost Principle | Rothbard | Rothbard III 922 Cost Principle/taxation/Rothbard: A uniform tax [e.g., for police protection] would be below market price in the dangerous areas and above it in the peaceful areas. To approach neutrality, then, a tax would have to vary in accordance with the costs of services and not be uniform.(1) This is the neglected cost principle of taxation. >Neutral taxation/Rothbard, >Neutral taxation/Economic theories. RothbardVsCost principle: The cost principle, however, is hardly neutral either. Apart from the inexorable taxpayer—tax-consumer problem, there is, again, the problem of how a "service" is to be defined and isolated. >Service/Rothbard. What is the "service" of redistribution from Peter to Paul, and what is the "cost" for which Peter is to be assessed? >Bureaucracy/Rothbard. VsCost principle: And even if we confine the discussion to such common services as police protection, there are grave flaws. 1) In the first place, the costs of government (…) are bound to be much higher than those of the free market. 2) Secondly, the State cannot calculate well and therefore cannot gauge its costs accurately. Thirdly, costs are equal to prices only in equilibrium; since the economy is never in equilibrium, costs are never a precise estimate of what the free-market price would have been. 3) And finally, as in the equal tax, and in contrast to the free market, the taxpayer never demonstrates his benefit from the governmental act; it is simply and blithely assumed that he would have purchased the service voluntarily at this price. >Benefit principle/Rothbard, >Progressive tax/Rothbard, >Excess Profits Tax/Rothbard, >Poll tax/Rothbard. 1. We are not here conceding that "costs" determine "prices." The general array of final prices determines the general array of cost prices, but then the viability of firms is determined by whether the price that people will pay for their particular products will be enough to cover the costs, which are determined throughout the market. |
Rothbard II Murray N. Rothbard Classical Economics. An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Cheltenham 1995 Rothbard III Murray N. Rothbard Man, Economy and State with Power and Market. Study Edition Auburn, Alabama 1962, 1970, 2009 Rothbard IV Murray N. Rothbard The Essential von Mises Auburn, Alabama 1988 Rothbard V Murray N. Rothbard Power and Market: Government and the Economy Kansas City 1977 |
| Crises | Rothbard | Rothbard III 535 Crises/Rothbard: The case of the retrogressing economy is [an] example of what we may call a crisis situation. A crisis situation is one in which firms, in the aggregate, are suffering losses. The crisis aspect of the case is aggravated by a decline in production through the abandonment of the highest production stages. The troubles arose from “undersaving” and “underinvestment,” i.e., a shift in people’s values so that they do not now choose to save and invest enough to enable continuation of production processes begun in the past. We cannot simply be critical of this shift, however, since the people, given existing conditions, have decided voluntarily that their time preferences are higher, and that they wish to consume more proportionately at present, even at the cost of lowering future productivity. Once an increase to a greater level of gross investment occurs, therefore, it is not maintained automatically. >Economy/Rothbard, >Productivity/Rothbard, >Capital consumption/Rothbard, >Production structure/Rothbard, >Economic cycles/Rothbard. Rothbard III 852 Crises/Business cycles/Rothbard: Historical events can be explained by laws of praxeology, which isolate causal connections. >Praxeology/Rothbard. Some of these events can be explained (…): a general price rise could result from an increase in the supply of money or from a fall in demand, unemployment from insistence on maintaining wage rates that have suddenly increased in real value, a reduction in unemployment from a fall in real wage rates, etc. >Money supply, >Demand for money, >Wages, >Unemployment. Free market: But one thing cannot be explained by any economics of the free market. And this is the crucial phenomenon of the crisis: Why is there a sudden revelation of business error? >Free market/Rothbard. Crisis: Suddenly, all or nearly all businessmen find that their investments and estimates have been in error, that they cannot sell their products for the prices which they had anticipated. This is the central problem of the business cycle, and this is the problem which any adequate theory of the cycle must explain. Interventions/pattern: (…) since the eighteenth century there has been an almost regular pattern of consistent clusters of error which always follow a boom and expansion of money and prices. In the Middle Ages and down to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, business crises rarely followed upon booms in this manner. They took place suddenly, in the midst of normal activity, and as the result of some obvious and identifiable external event. Thus, Scott lists crises in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England as irregular and caused by some obvious event: famine, plague, seizures of goods in war, bad harvest, crises in the cloth trade as a result of royal manipulations, seizure of bullion by the King, etc.(1) >Interventions, >Interventionism. But in the late seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there developed the aforementioned pattern of the business cycle, and it became obvious that the crisis and ensuing depression could no longer be attributed to some single external event or single act of government. >Depression. „Overoptimism“/“overpessimism“: We must search for the objective reasons that cause businessmen to become "overoptimistic." And they cannot be found on the free market.(2) >Business cycle/Schumpeter. 1. Cited in Wesley C. Mitchell, Business cycles, the Problem and lts Setting (New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1927), pp. 76-77. 2. See V. Lewis Bassie: The whole psychological theory of the business cycle appears to be hardly more than an inversion of the real causal sequence. Expectations more nearly derive from objective conditions than produce them.... It is not the wave of optimism that makes times good. Good times are almost bound to bring a wave of optimism with them. On the other hand, when the decline comes, it comes not because anyone loses confidence, but because the basic economic forces are changing. (V. Lewis Bassie, "Recent Development in Short-Term Forecasting," Studies in Income and Wealth, XVII [Princeton, N.J.: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1955), 10-12) |
Rothbard II Murray N. Rothbard Classical Economics. An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Cheltenham 1995 Rothbard III Murray N. Rothbard Man, Economy and State with Power and Market. Study Edition Auburn, Alabama 1962, 1970, 2009 Rothbard IV Murray N. Rothbard The Essential von Mises Auburn, Alabama 1988 Rothbard V Murray N. Rothbard Power and Market: Government and the Economy Kansas City 1977 |
| Definiteness | Searle | V 226 Determinable/Searle: something that can be determined, corresponds to "classified", "estimates", "evaluate" or "consider". Determined: that something is determined, corresponds to "recommend", "praise", "boast" or "recognize". Searle: we assume relations between words instead of meaning (e.g."voluntary"). Cf. >determinates/determinables, >"voluntarily", >Identification, >Individuation. |
Searle I John R. Searle The Rediscovery of the Mind, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1992 German Edition: Die Wiederentdeckung des Geistes Frankfurt 1996 Searle II John R. Searle Intentionality. An essay in the philosophy of mind, Cambridge/MA 1983 German Edition: Intentionalität Frankfurt 1991 Searle III John R. Searle The Construction of Social Reality, New York 1995 German Edition: Die Konstruktion der gesellschaftlichen Wirklichkeit Hamburg 1997 Searle IV John R. Searle Expression and Meaning. Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts, Cambridge/MA 1979 German Edition: Ausdruck und Bedeutung Frankfurt 1982 Searle V John R. Searle Speech Acts, Cambridge/MA 1969 German Edition: Sprechakte Frankfurt 1983 Searle VII John R. Searle Behauptungen und Abweichungen In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 Searle VIII John R. Searle Chomskys Revolution in der Linguistik In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 Searle IX John R. Searle "Animal Minds", in: Midwest Studies in Philosophy 19 (1994) pp. 206-219 In Der Geist der Tiere, D Perler/M. Wild Frankfurt/M. 2005 |
| Descriptions | Cavell | II 212 Description/Action/Language/Cavell: Actions that are normal do not allow any special descriptions. >"Voluntarily", >Voluntarily/Ryle, >Voluntarily/Austin, >Actions, >Intention, >Description levels. |
Cavell I St. Cavell Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen Frankfurt 2002 Cavell I (a) Stanley Cavell "Knowing and Acknowledging" in: St. Cavell, Must We Mean What We Say?, Cambridge 1976, pp. 238-266 In Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen, Stanley Cavell Frankfurt/M. 2002 Cavell I (b) Stanley Cavell "Excursus on Wittgenstein’s Vision of Language", in: St. Cavell, The Claim of Reason, Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy, New York 1979, pp. 168-190 In Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen, Stanley Cavell Frankfurt/M. 2002 Cavell I (c) Stanley Cavell "The Argument of the Ordinary, Scenes of Instruction in Wittgenstein and in Kripke", in: St. Cavell, Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism, Chicago 1990, pp. 64-100 In Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen, Davide Sparti/Espen Hammer (eds.) Frankfurt/M. 2002 Cavell II Stanley Cavell "Must we mean what we say?" in: Inquiry 1 (1958) In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 |
| Desert Theories | Lamont | Gaus I 227 Desert Theories/Lamont: Desert theories differ about what should be the basis for desert claims. The three main categories are: Gaus I 228 1) Productivity: people should be rewarded for their work activity with the product of their labour or value thereof (Gaus, 1990(1): 410—16, 485-9; Miller(2), 1976; 1989(3); 1999(4); Riley, 1989(5)). 2) Effort: people should be rewarded according to the effort they expend in contributing to the social product (Sadurski, 1985)(6). 3) Compensation: People should be rewarded according to the costs they voluntarily incur in contributing to the social product (Carens, 1981(7); Dick, 1975(8); Feinberg, 1970(9); Lamont, 1997(10)). Desert theorists in each category also differ about the relationship between luck and desert. All desert theorists hold that there are reasons to design institutions so that many of the gross vagaries of luck are reduced, but theorists diverge with respect to luck in the genetic lottery. >Desert/Political philosophy, cf. >Inequlities/Resource-based view (RBV), >Distributive Justice/Resource-based view (RBV). Desert theorists, because of their emphasis on outcomes being tied to people's responsibility rather than their luck, view with concern how much people's level of economic benefits still depends significantly on factors beyond their control. UtilitarianismVsDesert theories: By contrast, utilitarians consider this of no moral consequence since, for them, the only morally relevant characteristic of any distribution is the utility resulting from it. This gap between the desert and utilitarian theorists, and hence between the general public and utilitarian theorists, is partly attributable to differences in empirical views. Desert theoriesVsUtilitarianism:. Desert theorists are much more likely to view people as signifi- cantly responsible for their actions and want to give effect to that responsibility by reducing the degree to which people's life prospects are influenced by factors beyond their control. Utilitarianism: Utilitarians are more likely to see people as largely the products of their natural and social environment, and so not responsible for many of their actions in the first place. On the latter view, the point of reducing the effect of luck is less attractive. Scheffler: But, as Scheffler (1992)(11) points out, the general population has a noticeably more robust view of the responsibility of people than many academic theorists. >Distributive Justice/Libertarianism. 1. Gaus, Gerald F. (1990) Value and Identification. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2. Miller, David (1976) Social Justice. Oxford: Clarendon. 3. Miller, David (1989) Market, State, and Community. Oxford: Clarendon. 4. Miller, David (1999) Principles of Social Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 5. Riley, Jonathan (1989) 'Justice under capitalism'. In John H. Chapman, ed., NOMOS xrxl: Markets and Justice. New York: New York University Press, 122—62. 6. Sadurski, Wojciech (1985) Giving Desert Its Due. Dordrecht: Reidel. 7. Carens, Joseph (1981) Equality, Moral Incentives and the Market. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 8. Dick, James C. (1975) 'How to justify a distribution of earnings'. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 4: 248—72. 9. Feinberg, Joel (1970) Doing and Deserving. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 10. Lamont, Julian (1997) 'Incentive income, deserved income, and economic rents'. Journal of Political Philosophy, 5 (1): 26-46. 11. Schemer, Samuel (1992) 'Responsibility, reactive attitudes, and liberalism in philosophy and politics'. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 21 (4): 299-323. Lamont, Julian, „Distributive Justice“. In: Gaus, Gerald F. & Kukathas, Chandran 2004. Handbook of Political Theory. SAGE Publications |
Gaus I Gerald F. Gaus Chandran Kukathas Handbook of Political Theory London 2004 |
| Economic Ethics | Rothbard | Rothbard III 712 Economic Ethics/Rothbard: The economist qua economist can have no quarrel with a man who voluntarily comes to the conclusion that it is more important to preserve union solidarity than to have a good job. But there is one thing an economist can do: he can point out to the worker the consequences of his voluntary decision. >Trade Unions/Rothbard, >Minimum wages/Rothbard. Entrepreneurship: Similarly, the capitalist-entrepreneur does not need the economist to tell him what acts will be profitable or unprofitable. He can see and test them by means of his profits or losses. But for a grasp of the consequences of acts of governmental intervention in the market or ofunion activity, knowledge of praxeology is requisite.(1) >Praxeology/Rothbard. Economics cannot itself decide on ethical judgments. But in order for anyone to make ethical judgments rationally, he must know the consequences of his various alternative courses of action. In questions of government intervention or union action, economics supplies the knowledge of these consequences. Knowledge of economics is therefore necessary, though not suffcient, for making a rational ethical judgment in these fields. >Ethics, >Decision making, >Decisions. As for unions, the consequences of their activity, when discovered (e.g., displacement or unemployment for oneself or others), will be considered unfortunate by most people. Therefore, it is certain that when knowledge of these consequences becomes widespread, far fewer people will be "prounion" or hostile to "nonunion" competitors.(2) >Unemployment/Rothbard. 1. See Murray N. Rothbard, “Mises’ Human Action: Comment,” American Economic Review, March, 1951, pp. 183–84. 2. The same is true, to an even greater extent, of measures of governmental intervention in the market. |
Rothbard II Murray N. Rothbard Classical Economics. An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Cheltenham 1995 Rothbard III Murray N. Rothbard Man, Economy and State with Power and Market. Study Edition Auburn, Alabama 1962, 1970, 2009 Rothbard IV Murray N. Rothbard The Essential von Mises Auburn, Alabama 1988 Rothbard V Murray N. Rothbard Power and Market: Government and the Economy Kansas City 1977 |
| Economic Growth | Conservatism | Rothbard III 968 Economic growth/Conservatism/Rothbard: [there is a] result of a critical error made by "right-wing" economists in their continuing debate with their "left-wing" opponents. Freedom/utilitarianism: Instead of emphasizing freedom and free choice as their highest political end, the rightist economists have stressed the importance of freedom as a utilitarian means of encouraging saving, investment, and therefore, economic growth. Income tax: (…) conservative opponents of the progressive income tax have often fallen into the trap oftreating saving and investment as somehow a greater and higher good than consumption, and therefore of implicitly criticizing the free market's saving/consumption ratio. Rothbard: Here we have another example of the same lapse into an implicit, arbitrary criticism of the market. LeftistsVsRightists: What the modern "leftist" proponents of compulsory growth have done is to use the venerable arguments of the conservatives as a boomerang against them, and to say, in effect, to their opponents: "Very well. You have been maintaining that saving and investment are of critical importance because they lead to growth and economic progress. Fine; but, as you yourselves implicitly grant, the free market's proportion of saving and investment is really too Slow. Why then rely upon it? Why not speed up growth by using government to coerce even more saving and investment, to speed up capital further?" Rothbard: It is evident that conservatives cannot counter by reiterating their familiar arguments. The proper comment here is the analysis we have been expounding - in short: (a) By what right do you maintain that people should grow faster than they voluntarily wish to grow? (b) Compulsory growth will not benefit the whole of society as will freely chosen growth, and it is therefore not "social growth"; some will gain - and gain at some distant date - at the expense of the retrogression of others. (c) Government investment or subsidized investment is either malinvestment or not investment at all, but simply waste assets or "consumption" of waste for the prestige of government offcials. >Economic growth/Rothbard, >Government policy/Rothbard, >Government services/Rothbard, >Government spending/Rothbard, >Bureaucracy/Rothbard. |
Rothbard II Murray N. Rothbard Classical Economics. An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Cheltenham 1995 Rothbard III Murray N. Rothbard Man, Economy and State with Power and Market. Study Edition Auburn, Alabama 1962, 1970, 2009 Rothbard IV Murray N. Rothbard The Essential von Mises Auburn, Alabama 1988 Rothbard V Murray N. Rothbard Power and Market: Government and the Economy Kansas City 1977 |
| Emission Reduction Credits | Stavins | Stavins I 159 Emission-Reduction-Credit Systems/ERC/Aldy/Stavins: An emission-reduction-credit (ERC) system delivers emission mitigation by awarding tradable credits for “certified” reductions. Generally, firms that are not covered by some set of regulations—be they command-and-control or market-based — may voluntarily participate in such systems, which serve as a source of credits that entities facing compliance obligations under the regulations may use. Individual countries can implement an ERC system without having a corresponding cap-and-trade program. A firm earns credits for projects that reduce emissions relative to a hypothetical “no project” baseline. In determining the number of credits to grant a firm for a project, calculation of the appropriate baseline is therefore as important as measuring emissions. VsEmission-Reduction-Credit: Dealing with this unobserved and fundamentally unobservable hypothetical baseline is at the heart of the so-called “additionality” problem. While ERC systems can be self-standing, as in the case of the CDM [Clean Development Mechanism], governments can also establish them as elements of domestic cap-and-trade or other regulatory systems. These ERC systems—often referred to as offset programs—serve as a source of credits that can be used by regulated entities to meet compliance obligations under the primary system. >Carbon Pricing/Stavins. >Emission permits, >Emission reduction credits, >Emission targets, >Emissions, >Emissions trading, >Climate change, >Climate damage, >Energy policy, >Clean Energy Standards, >Climate data, >Climate history, >Climate justice, >Climate periods, >Climate targets, >Climate impact research, >Carbon price, >Carbon price coordination, >Carbon price strategies, >Carbon tax, >Carbon tax strategies. Robert N. Stavins & Joseph E. Aldy, 2012: “The Promise and Problems of Pricing Carbon: Theory and Experience”. In: Journal of Environment & Development, Vol. 21/2, pp. 152–180. |
Stavins I Robert N. Stavins Joseph E. Aldy The Promise and Problems of Pricing Carbon: Theory and Experience 2012 |
| Entrepreneurship | Mises | Rothbard III 515 Entrepreneurship/Mises/Rothbard: The market is no respecter of past laurels, however large. Moreover, the size of a man’s investment is no guarantee whatever of a large profit or against grievous losses. Capital does not “beget” profit. Beyond the market process of penalization, we cannot condemn the unfortunate capitalist who suffers losses. He was a man who voluntarily assumed the risks of entrepreneurship and suffered from his poor judgment by incurring losses proportionate to his error. Outside critics have no right to condemn him further. As Mises says: „Nobody has the right to take offense at the errors made by the entrepreneurs in the conduct of affairs and to stress the point that people would have been better supplied if the entrepreneurs had been more skillful and prescient. If the grumbler knew better, why did he not himself fill the gap and seize the opportunity to earn profits? It is easy indeed to display foresight after the event.“(1) 1. Mises, Planning for Freedom, p. 114. |
EconMises I Ludwig von Mises Die Gemeinwirtschaft Jena 1922 Rothbard II Murray N. Rothbard Classical Economics. An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Cheltenham 1995 Rothbard III Murray N. Rothbard Man, Economy and State with Power and Market. Study Edition Auburn, Alabama 1962, 1970, 2009 Rothbard IV Murray N. Rothbard The Essential von Mises Auburn, Alabama 1988 Rothbard V Murray N. Rothbard Power and Market: Government and the Economy Kansas City 1977 |
| Everyday Language | Cavell | I (a) 39 Skepticism/everyday language/Cavell: one usually assumes that the reference to the everyday language refutes skepticism. Vs: this can be refuted itself. We have to deal with the everyday language, when it is interpreted as the source of independent data, independently of certain philosophical positions or theories. I (a) 40 Otherwise the skeptic would be accused, in a biased way, that the obvious conflict between words and the world would be unclear to him or that he would not be able to address this conflict. Skepticism/Cavell: a serious refutation must show that the person who is as capable of understanding English as we are and knows everything we know has no real use for the words of the everyday language. >Skepticism. How can you show that? A decisive step would be to be able to show the skeptic (also the one who one has inside oneself) that you know what his words say in his opinion. (Not necessarily what they mean according to his opinion, as if they had a special or technical meaning). So we need to understand his position from within. I (a) 41 Skepticism/everyday language/Cavell: the reference to the ordinary language does not refute the skeptic: 1. will not surprise him; 2. one is obviously misunderstanding him. Regarding the use of the language, we agree anyway. >Language use, >Meaning, >Reference. --- II 170 Everyday language/Cavell: here there are three possible types to make statements about them: Type I statement: "We say ...... but we do not say ...." Type II statement: The addition of type I statement by explanations. Type III statement: Generalizations. Ryle: Thesis: when we use the word "voluntarily", it is with an action that we would not normally do. >"voluntarily"/Ryle. II 172 Cavell thesis: Native speakers generally do not need to know what they can say in their language. They, themselves, are the source of such statements. MatesVs intuition and memory in terms of correct speech. CavellVsMates: Intuition is also not necessary at all. I do not need to remember the hour I learned something and not a perfect memory for my speaking. One does not remember the language; it is spoken. >Memory. II 173 CavellVsRyle: requires an explicit explanation (type II statement): for this he is generally also authorized, but precisely in relation to his example "voluntarily", the generalization fails: II 174 E.g. Austin: a voluntary gift. >"voluntarily"/Austin. |
Cavell I St. Cavell Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen Frankfurt 2002 Cavell I (a) Stanley Cavell "Knowing and Acknowledging" in: St. Cavell, Must We Mean What We Say?, Cambridge 1976, pp. 238-266 In Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen, Stanley Cavell Frankfurt/M. 2002 Cavell I (b) Stanley Cavell "Excursus on Wittgenstein’s Vision of Language", in: St. Cavell, The Claim of Reason, Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy, New York 1979, pp. 168-190 In Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen, Stanley Cavell Frankfurt/M. 2002 Cavell I (c) Stanley Cavell "The Argument of the Ordinary, Scenes of Instruction in Wittgenstein and in Kripke", in: St. Cavell, Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism, Chicago 1990, pp. 64-100 In Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen, Davide Sparti/Espen Hammer (eds.) Frankfurt/M. 2002 Cavell II Stanley Cavell "Must we mean what we say?" in: Inquiry 1 (1958) In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 |
| External Benefit | Rothbard | Rothbard III 1032 External benefit/Rothbard: the problem of external benefits (…) [is] the major justification for government activities expounded by economists.(1) VsExternal benefit/Rothbard: Where individuals simply benefit themselves by their actions, many writers concede that the free market may be safely left unhampered. But men's actions may often, even inadvertently, benefit others. While one might think this a cause for rejoicing, critics charge that from this fact flow evils in abundance. A free exchange, where A and B mutually benefit, may be all very well, say these economists; but what if A does something voluntarily which benefits B as well as himself, but for which B pays nothing in exchange? >Free market/Economic theories. 1. The problem of "external costs," usually treated as symmetrical with external benefits, is not really related: it is a consequence of failure to enforce fully the rights of property. If As actions injure B's property, and the government refuses to stop the act and enforce damages, property rights and hence the free market are not being fully defended and maintained. Hence, external costs (e.g., smoke damage) are failures to maintain a fully free market, rather than defects of that market. See Mises, Human Action, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1949. Reprinted by the Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1998. pp. 650-53; and de Jouvenel, "Political Economy of Gratuity," pp. 522-26. |
Rothbard II Murray N. Rothbard Classical Economics. An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Cheltenham 1995 Rothbard III Murray N. Rothbard Man, Economy and State with Power and Market. Study Edition Auburn, Alabama 1962, 1970, 2009 Rothbard IV Murray N. Rothbard The Essential von Mises Auburn, Alabama 1988 Rothbard V Murray N. Rothbard Power and Market: Government and the Economy Kansas City 1977 |
| External Economies | Rothbard | Rothbard III 1038 External Economies/Rothbard: An important case of external benefits is "external economies," which could be reaped by investment in certain industries, but which would not accrue as profit to the entrepreneurs. >External benefit/Rothbard. There is no need to dwell on the lengthy discussion in the literature on the actual range of such external economies, although they are apparently negligible. Protective tariff/Pigou: The suggestion has been persistently advanced that the government subsidize these investments so that "society" can reap the external economies. Such is the Pigou argument for subsidizing external economies, as well as the old and still dominant "infant industries" argument for a protective tariff. Free market/RothbardVsPigou: The call for state subsidization of external economy investments amounts to a third line of attack on the free market, i.e., that B, the potential beneficiaries, beforced to subsidize the benefactors A, so that the latter will produce theformer's benefits. For the first and second attac see Free market/economic theories. This (…) line is the favorite argument of economists for such proposals as government-aided dams or reclamations (recipients taxed to pay for their benefits) or compulsory schooling (the taxpayers will eventually benefit from others' education), etc. The recipients are again bearing the onus of the policy; but here they are not criticized for free riding. They are now being "saved" from a situation in which they would not have obtained certain benefits. RothbardVs: Since they would not have paid for them, it is diffcult to understand exactly what they are being saved from. Costs: The third line of attack therefore agrees with the first that the free market does not, because of human selfishness, produce enough external-economy actions; but it joins the second line of attack in placing the cost of remedying the situation on the strangely unwilling recipients. Coercion: If this subsidy takes place, it is obvious that the recipients are no longer free riders: indeed, they are simply being coerced into buying benefits for which, acting by free choice, they would not have paid. Rothbard III 1039 RothbardVs: The absurdity of the third approach may be revealed by pondering the question: Who benefits from the suggested policy? The benefactor A receives a subsidy, it is true. But it is often doubtful if he benefits, since he would otherwise have acted and invested profitably in some other direction. The state has simply compensated him for losses which he would have received and has adjusted the proceeds so that he receives the equivalent of an opportunity forgone. Therefore A, if a business firm, does not benefit. As for the recipients, they are being forced by the state to pay for benefits that they otherwise would not have purchased. How can we say that they "benefit"? A standard reply is that the recipients "could not" have obtained the benefit even if they had wanted to buy it voluntarily. Secondly, there is no reason Why the prospective recipients could not have bought the benefit. In all cases a benefit produced can be sold on the market and earn its value product to consumers. |
Rothbard II Murray N. Rothbard Classical Economics. An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Cheltenham 1995 Rothbard III Murray N. Rothbard Man, Economy and State with Power and Market. Study Edition Auburn, Alabama 1962, 1970, 2009 Rothbard IV Murray N. Rothbard The Essential von Mises Auburn, Alabama 1988 Rothbard V Murray N. Rothbard Power and Market: Government and the Economy Kansas City 1977 |
| Externalities | Buchanan | Boudreaux I 45 Externalities/Buchanan/Boudreaux/Holcombe: An externality exists when the actions of some people impose costs or convey benefits to others not involved in those actions. One common example is smoke from a factory that pollutes the air that nearby individuals breathe. The typical remedy suggested by economists is to tax the externality-generating activity, or if that is not feasible, to impose a regulation that reduces the external cost - the cost that’s imposed on third parties. Buchanan’s views on the existence of externalities conform to those of mainstream economists, but he departed from those scholars on the desirable remedies for externalities. He maintained that when externalities cause resources to be used inefficiently, individuals have an incentive to find ways to remedy these inefficiencies on their own. If some people impose external costs on others, both parties have an incentive to negotiate to remedy those inefficiencies on their own. Boudreaux I 46 Clubs/Buchanan: There is a parallel between Buchanan’s views on externalities and his theory of clubs - the latter being, (…) an explanation of how people voluntarily form clubs to produce collectively consumed goods. >Clubs/Buchanan. In both cases there is the prospect that resources can be allocated more efficiently, with all parties able to adjust their actions to create mutual gains. Because externalities are rarely global in nature, Buchanan’s discussion of federalism reveals that it is possible for people to have the option of moving out of jurisdictions where external costs are high and into jurisdictions where these costs are lower. Taxation: Also important to keep in mind is that using taxes or regulation to mitigate externalities brings its own problems. Buchanan noted that the theoretical remedies recommended by economists would work only if industries are what economists call “perfectly competitive.” >Taxation/Buchanan, >Perfect competition/Buchanan. Externalities might result in inefficiencies, but there is no guarantee that matters would be improved by a government-directed remedy. (…) this fact did not lead Buchanan to advocate against all government responses to pollution and other externalities, but it did prompt him to advise politicians and the public to temper their enthusiasm about governments’ abilities to improve matters with interventions. Costs: Of course, the problem with externalities, as the name suggests, is that resources are used in ways that some affected persons don’t bargain for - as happens, for example, when a factory emits pollutants into the air that is breathed by all the town’s residents and, thus, harms these residents. Boudreaux I 47 If (say) the town council had a clear property right in the town’s airspace, the factory could negotiate with the council and offer to pay to it a sum to compensate the town for whatever amount of pollution the factory emits. Such a bargain would benefit both the town and factory. Property: But if there is no clear definition of property rights in the air, then the factory will be reluctant to negotiate with the town council. It will likely simply continue to pollute without the town being compensated to bear the cost of the pollution. Clearly defined property rights thus promote bargaining to mutual advantage -that is, toward greater efficiency of resource use - while the absence of such rights stymies such bargaining. Buchanan/Tullock: In The Calculus of Consent, Buchanan and Tullock say „If property rights are carefully defined, should not the pure laissez-faire organization bring about the elimination of all significant externalities? … After human and property right are initially defined, will externalities that are serious enough to warrant removing really be present? Or will voluntary co-operative arrangements among individuals emerge to insure the elimination of all relevant external effects?“ (Buchanan and Tullock, 1962/1999(1): 44) Boudreaux I 48 Politics: A central reason for Buchanan’s caution in recommending government intervention to remedy externalities was his recognition that democratic politics carries with it a built-in externality. If one thinks of an externality as a third-party effect - that is, some people impose costs unilaterally on others - one should then see that when collective decisions are made by majority rule, the majority imposes external costs on the minority. The majority gets what it wants, forcing the minority to accept what it, the minority, does not want. This reality further reinforced Buchanan’s reluctance to recommend government remedies for externalities. Government action would replace one externality with another. This point warrants emphasis: politics contains a built-in externality. Government policies apply to everyone, whether or not they agree, unlike market exchange which only takes place if and when all parties to the exchanges agree. The nature of government means that whatever it does, it unilaterally imposes costs on some people. As Buchanan explains, „The minimum-size effective or dominating coalition of individuals, as determined by the voting rule, will be able to secure net gains at the expense of other members of the political group.… In the simple majority-rule model, this involves, in the limit, fifty plus percent of the total membership in the dominating coalition and fifty minus percent, of the total membership in the losing or minority coalition.“ (Buchanan, 1999(2): 64-65) Buchanan’s point is partly theoretical. This outcome could happen. But his point is also partly practical. If democratic political institutions could be used in this way, individuals then in fact have incentives to use them this way because they can. It is naïve to think that some people can possess the power to manipulate the political process for their own gain without understanding that some people actually will exercise this power in that way. Boudreaux I 49 Government action/Buchanan: This reasoning points directly to Buchanan’s overall approach to analyzing political action. Economists, even in the twenty-first century, tend to evaluate government action as if government officials apolitically implement optimal public policies. Economists derive the theoretical optimal allocation of resources and then assume that government will act to achieve this optimal allocation. BuchananVsTradition: Buchanan’s fundamental contribution was to note that just as resources are not typically allocated in markets with perfect efficiency, neither are they typically allocated by government with perfect efficiency. >Government policy/Buchanan. Boudreaux I 51 In drawing a parallel between market failure and government failure, Buchanan’s insight is that democratic political systems create their own inevitable externalities. Some people can use the system to impose costs on others. >Government failure/Buchanan. 1. Buchanan, James M., and Gordon Tullock (1962/1999). The Calculus of Consent. Liberty Fund. 2. Buchanan, James M. (1999). The Logical Foundations of Constitutional Liberty. Liberty Fund. |
EconBuchan I James M. Buchanan Politics as Public Choice Carmel, IN 2000 Boudreaux I Donald J. Boudreaux Randall G. Holcombe The Essential James Buchanan Vancouver: The Fraser Institute 2021 |
| Fairness | Rawls | I 108 Fairness/Principles/Rawls: our principles of justice concerned institutions and the basic structure of a society. When it comes to individuals, the principle of fairness is relevant. I 110 Individuals/Principles: this is, among other things, about what obligations we have. However, a certain basic structure of a company to be established is assumed from the outset. Rawls: here it can be interpreted without major distortions in such a way that the duties and tasks presuppose a moral conception of institutions, and that the content of equitable institutions must therefore be determined before demands can be made on individuals. I 111 Right/legality/conformity/Rawls: intuitively, we can say that the notion of being right is synonymous with one's being consistent with those principles which, in a society's initial state, would be recognised as being applied to the relevant problems. If we accept that, we can equate fairness with rightness. Individuals/fairness: first of all, we must distinguish between obligations and natural duties. >Duties, >Natural duties. Principle of fairness: requires a person to fulfil his obligations as established by an institution, under two conditions: 1) The institution is fair, i. e. the institution fulfils the two principles of justice >Principles/Rawls. I 112 2) The arrangement has been voluntarily approved. This means that those who have agreed have a right to expect this from others who benefit from this arrangement(1). >Reciprocity. It is wrong to assume that justice as fairness or contract theories would generally follow that people have an obligation to unjust regimes. >Justice. VsLocke/Rawls: Locke in particular was wrongly criticized for this: the necessity of further background assumptions was overlooked(2). >J. Locke, >Contract Theory, >Contracts. 1. See H.L.A. Hart „Are There Any Natural Rights?“, Philosophical Review, Vol. 64, (1955) p. 185f. 2. See Locke's thesis that conquest does not create justice: Locke, Second treatise of Government, pars. 176, 20.) |
Rawl I J. Rawls A Theory of Justice: Original Edition Oxford 2005 |
| Golden Rule | Hobbes | Höffe I 220 Golden Rule/Hobbes/Höffe: Hobbes' second "Law of Nature", a variant of the Golden Rule, explains: "Everyone should voluntarily renounce his right to everything [in the natural state], if he deems it necessary for the sake of peace and self-defence" (Leviathan, chap. 14). By continuing this law, Hobbes anticipates Kant's principle of mutual restriction of freedom: "and he should be satisfied with as much freedom towards others as he would grant others against himself" (ibid.). >Peace/Hobbes, >Reason/Hobbes, see >Categorical Imperative. |
Hobbes I Thomas Hobbes Leviathan: With selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668 Cambridge 1994 Höffe I Otfried Höffe Geschichte des politischen Denkens München 2016 |
| Government Debt | Buchanan | Boudreaux I 13 Government debt/Buchanan/Boudreaux/Holcombe: „The essence of public debt, as a financing institution, is that it allows the objective cost of currently financed expenditure projects to be postponed in time. For the taxpayer, public debt delays the necessity of transferring command over resource services to the treasury.“ James M. Buchanan, “Confessions of a Burden Monger” (1964)(1). Boudreaux I 14 [It was a] consensus by mid-twentieth century economists that debt-financed projects are paid for by citizen-taxpayers at the time the projects are undertaken rather than by future generations. „New orthodoxy“/Buchanan: Buchanan called [this]“the new orthodoxy.” It was an orthodoxy because it was widely taken to be obviously true, and it was new because it sprung from Keynesian economics, which in 1958 was only 22 years old. Tradition: Until John Maynard Keynes published his General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money in 1936(2), most economists - from Adam Smith in the mid-eighteenth century through economists in the early twentieth century - understood that the costs of government projects funded with debt are passed on to the future generations who, as citizen-taxpayers, must repay the debt. KeynesianismVsSmith, Adam: This understanding was rejected by the new orthodoxy ((s) Keynesianism) and replaced with the insistence that projects funded with borrowed money are, just like projects funded with currently collected taxes, paid for at the time the projects are undertaken. The new orthodoxy does recognize that debt financing nevertheless leaves a legacy for future citizen-taxpayers. In the case of [a] hypothetical hydroelectric dam built in 2021 with borrowed funds, citizens are obliged in 2051 to repay the debt that was incurred 30 years earlier. To do so they must, in 2051, pay more in taxes or suffer cuts in government programs (or some combination of the two) (…). Boudreaux I 15 But, the new orthodoxy continues, if the bond is owned and submitted for redemption by nationals, then apart from some relatively negligible costs incurred in carrying out the process of transferring the funds from citizen-taxpayers to citizen-bondholders, redemption imposes no net burden on nationals. Although those citizens who pay the debt are worse off as a result of paying more in taxes or receiving less in government services, other citizens - those who receive repayment of the debt - are better off by the same amount. Just as a household is made neither richer nor poorer if a wife transfers money to her husband, a nation is made neither richer nor poorer if one group of citizens transfers money to another group of citizens. Using the phrase that mid-1950s economists employed to describe this situation, nationals in 2051 might say, “We owe it to ourselves.” BuchananVsNew orthodoxy/BuchananVsKeynesianism: According to Buchanan, the new orthodoxy’s fatal flaw is its insistence that the costs of debt financing are incurred in the periods when the debt-financed programs are undertaken. Boudreaux I 16 And if this insistence is wrong, then the older, pre-Keynesian understanding is correct that programs funded with debt today are paid for by citizen-taxpayers tomorrow. Therefore, by using debt to finance government programs, we, today’s citizen-taxpayers, can indeed consume at the expense of our children and grandchildren. >Public finance, >Interest rates, cf. >Time/Rothbard. Solution/Buchanan: The key insight in Buchanan’s criticism of the new orthodoxy and, hence, of his revitalization of the older, classical view is the realization that creditors who lend money to the government do so voluntarily. But these creditors lend to the government only because they believe that the interest payments they will receive in exchange make such loans worthwhile for them. These creditors are not the purchasers of the debt-financed projects; instead, they are purchasers of future interest payments that make it worthwhile for them to sacrifice their consumption today. Thus, debt-financed government projects are not paid for by the government’s creditors. After all, the very reason the government in 2021 borrows the funds to build the dam is to relieve today’s citizen-taxpayers from having to pay for it. Yet someone has to pay for the dam! Who? Buchanan’s answer is that the dam is paid for by citizen-taxpayers in 2051, who are obliged to repay the debt. >Taxation. KeynesianismVsBuchanan: Adherents of the new orthodoxy respond by saying that if the debt is repaid to fellow citizens, there is no net reduction in aggregate national wealth. The repayment, they maintain, is merely a transfer, as if from the left hand to the right. BuchananVsVs: Buchanan, however, argued that this reasoning is mistaken. If the creditors in 2021 had not loaned [the money] to the government, they would have done something else with their money - something else of nearly equivalent value to lending to the government - such as, for instance, lending [the money] to private companies. >Time preference, >Opportunity costs. Credit/repayment: Buchanan assumed, not unrealistically, that credit markets are competitive. From this assumption it follows that the attractiveness to creditors of lending to the government is only marginally greater than (that is, is largely equivalent to) the attractiveness of using their money in other ways. And so when in 2051 the government’s creditors are repaid, they are made no better off (or worse off) than they would have been had they used their money differently in 2021. Repayment of the debt does not make the repaid creditors anything but marginally richer than they would have been had they instead invested their money in alternative projects. But repayment does make the citizen-taxpayers who foot the bill poorer by the full amount of the repayment. >Credit. Boudreaux I 19 Note that Buchanan’s argument that each debt-financed project is paid for by the future citizen-taxpayers who must service the debt holds regardless of whether the project is wasteful or productive. Debt/taxation/Buchanan: Buchanan’s argument should not, therefore, be interpreted as counselling against any and all debt financing. He explicitly recognized that it is appropriate to finance some projects with debt rather than with current taxation. Projects that yield benefits to future citizen-taxpayers are appropriately paid for by those future taxpayers rather than by current taxpayers who derive no benefits from such projects. In such cases, debt financing is a vehicle for handing the bill to those who will receive the benefits. Free rider/Buchanan: This ability of current taxpayers to use debt financing to free-ride on the wealth of future generations led Buchanan to worry that government today will both spend excessively and fund too many projects with debt. >Moral hazard. Boudreaux I 20 Democracy/Buchanan: Tomorrow’s citizen-taxpayers, after all, are not today’s voters. Thus, the interests of these future generations are under-represented in the political process. To reduce the magnitude of this problem, Buchanan endorsed constitutional rules that oblige governments to annually keep their budgets in balance. Constitution/Buchanan: His fear that the opportunity for debt financing of government projects and programs would be abused was so acute that it led him to endorse a balanced-budget amendment to the US Constitution. His participation in a political effort to secure such an amendment is one of the very few specific, ground-level policy battles that he actively joined. >Constitution/Buchanan. Boudreaux I 21 Government Debt: When analyzing the activities of government, the costs and benefits of government policies fall on individuals, not on aggregates or groups. The argument that domestically held public debt is no burden because “we owe it to ourselves” is revealed as fallacious once we recognize that the aggregate – ourselves - is really composed of many individuals, some of whom will pay the taxes to finance the debt repayment, and some of whom will receive the proceeds when they redeem the bonds they hold. 1. Buchanan, James M. (1964). “Confessions of a Burden Monger”. Journal of Political Economy Vol. 72, No. 5 (Oct., 1964), pp. 486-488. 2. Keynes, J. M. [1936] The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. London: Macmillan. Mause I 279 Government Debt/Buchanan: Question: Is it basically acceptable for citizens to give their representatives the opportunity to deficit finance their budgets? (Prerequisite: the Ricardian Equivalence Theorem does not apply; see Terminology/Economic Theories). Brennan/Buchanan: No: Deficit financing would be systematically used to finance expenditures beyond the desired level and past the tax resistance of citizens.(1) >Generational Justice/Diamond, Equivalence Theorem/Barro. See also BuchananVsBarro. 1. Geoffrey Brennan & James M. Buchanan, The power to tax. Analytical foundations of a fiscal constitution. Cambridge 1980. |
EconBuchan I James M. Buchanan Politics as Public Choice Carmel, IN 2000 Boudreaux I Donald J. Boudreaux Randall G. Holcombe The Essential James Buchanan Vancouver: The Fraser Institute 2021 Mause I Karsten Mause Christian Müller Klaus Schubert, Politik und Wirtschaft: Ein integratives Kompendium Wiesbaden 2018 |
| Government Spending | Rothbard | Rothbard III 910 Government spending/Rothbard: There has (…) been a great amount of useless controversy about which activity of government imposes the burden on the private sector: taxation or government spending. A. Taxation/government spending: It is actually futile to separate them, since they are both stages in the same process of burden and redistribution. Example: (…) suppose the government taxes the betel-nut industry one million dollars in order to buy paper for government bureaus. One million dollars' worth of resources are shifted from betel nuts to paper. This is done in two stages, a sort of one-two punch at the free market: first, the betel-nut industry is made poorer by taking away its money; then, the government uses this money to take paper out of the market for its own use, thus extracting resources in the second stage. Society: [For the society] both sides of the process are a burden. In a sense, the betel-nut industry is compelled to pay for the extraction of paper from society; at least, it bears the immediate brunt of payment. Partial equilibirum/prices: However, even without yet considering the "partial equilibrium" problem of how or whether such taxes are "shifted" by the betel-nut industry onto other shoulders, we should also note that it is not the only one to pay; the consumers of paper certainly pay by finding paper prices raised to them. B. The process can be seen more clearly if we consider what happens when taxes and government expenditures are not equal, when they are not simply obverse sides of the same coin. a) New money: When taxes are less than government expenditures (and omitting borrowing from the public for the time being), the government creates new money. It is obvious here that government expenditures are the main burden, since this higher amount of resources is being siphoned off. In fact, as we shall see later when considering the binary intervention of inflation, creating new money is, anyway, a form of taxation. >Inflation/Rothbard. b) Deflation: But what of that rare case when taxation is higher than government spending? Say that the surplus is either hoarded in the government's gold supply or that the money is liquidated through deflation (…). >Deflation/Rothbard. Thus, assume that $ is taken from the betel-nut industry and only $ 600,000 is spent on paper. In this case, the larger burden is that of taxation, which pays not only for the extracted paper but also for the hoarded or destroyed money. While the government extracts only $ 600,000 worth of resources from the economy, the betel-nut industry loses $ 1 of potential resources, and this loss should not be forgotten in toting up the burdens imposed by the government's budgetary process. In short, when government expenditures and receipts differ, the "fiscal burden" on society may be very approximately gauged by whichever is the greater total. Rothbard III 911 Budget: Since taxation cannot really be uniform, the government in its budgetary process of tax-and-spend inevitably takes coercively from Peter to give to Paul ("Paul," of course, including itself). Distribution/redistribution: In addition to distorting the allocation of resources, therefore, the budgetary process redistributes incomes or, rather, distributes incomes. For the free market does not distribute incomes; income there arises naturally and smoothly out of the market processes of production and exchange. Thus, the very concept of "distribution" as something separate from production and exchange can arise only from the government's binary intervention. >Interventions/Rothbard. Utilitarianism: It is often charged, for example, that the free market maximizes the utility of all, and the satisfactions of all consumers, only "gives a certain existing distribution of income." But this common fallacy is incorrect; there is no "assumed distribution" on the free market separate from the voluntary activities of every individual's production and exchange. The only given on the free market is the property right of every man in his own person and in the resources which he finds, produces, or creates, or which he obtains in voluntary exchange for his products or as a gift from their producers. >Free market/Economic theories. Rothbard III 938 Government spending/government expenditure/Rothbard: Government expenditures(1) are a coerced transfer of resources from private producers to the uses preferred by government offcials. It is customary to classify government spending into two categories: resourceusing, and transfer. 1) Resource-using expenditures frankly shift resources from private persons in society to the use of government: this may take the form of hiring bureaucrats to work for government - which shifts labor resources directly - or of buying products from business firms. 2) Transfer payments are pure subsidy spending - when the government takes from Peter to pay Paul. It is true that, in the latter case, the government gives "Paul" money to decide the allocation as he wishes, and in a sense we may analyze the two types of spending separately. Rothbard: But the similarities here are greater than the differences. For, in both cases, resources are seized from private producers and shifted to the uses which government offcials think best. After all, when a bureaucrat receives his government salary, this payment is in the same sense a "transfer payment" from the taxpayers, and the bureaucrat is also free to decide how further to allocate the income at his command. In both cases, money and resources are shifted from producers to nonproducers, who consume or otherwise use them.(2) >Bureaucracy/Rothbard, >Taxation/Rothbard. RothbardVsTradition: This type of analysis of government has been neglected because economists and statisticians tend to as- sume, rather blithely, that government expenditures are a measure of its productive contribution to society. In the "private sector" of the economy, the value of productive output is sensibly gauged by the amount of money that consumers spend voluntarily on that output. Curiously, on the other hand, the government's "productive output" is gauged, not by what is spent on government, but by what government itself spends! Government spending: No wonder that grandiose claims are often made for the unique productive power of government spending, when a mere increase in that spending serves to raise the government's "productive contribution" to the economy.(3) Rothbard III 939 Measuring/economics: What, then, is the productive contribution of government? Since the value of government is not gauged on the market, and the payments to the government are not voluntary, it is impossible to estimate. It is impossible to know how much would be paid in to the government were it purely voluntary, or indeed, whether one central government in each geographical area would exist at all. Rothbard III 940 Private sector/government: Since, then, the only thing we do know is that the tax-and-spend process diverts income and resources from what they would have been doing in the "private sector," we must conclude that the government's productive contribution to the economy is precisely zero. Gorvernment investments: In short, a characteristic of an investment expenditure is that the good in question is not being used to fulfill the needs of the investor, but of someone else - the consumer. Yet, when government confiscates resources from the private market economy, it is precisely defying the wishes of the consumers; when government invests in any good, it does so to serve the whims of government offcials, not the desires of consumers. Therefore, no government expenditures can be considered genuine "investment, and no government-owned assets can be considered capital. >Subsidies/Rothbard, >Transfer payments/Rothbard, >Government Services/Rothbard, >Resource-using activities/Rothbard, >Government policy/Rothbard. 1. Government expenditures are made from government revenue. 2. It may be objected that while bureaucrats may not be producers, other "Pauls" who receive subsidies on occasion are basically producers on the market. To the extent that they receive subsidies from the government, however, they are being nonproductive and living off the producers by compulsion. What is relevant, in short, is the extent to which they are in a relation ofState to their fellow men. We might add that, in this work, the term "State" is never meant in an anthropomorphic manner. "State" really means people acting toward one another in a systematically "stateish" relationship. I am indebted to Mr. Ralph Raico, of the University of Chicago, for the "relation of State" concept. 3. Originally, (…) Simon Kuznets contended that only taxes should gauge the government's productive output, thus measuring product by revenue as in the case of private firms. But taxes, being compulsory, cannot be used as a productive gauge. In contrast to the present method of national income accounting, Kuznets would have eliminated all government deficits from its "productive contribution." |
Rothbard II Murray N. Rothbard Classical Economics. An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Cheltenham 1995 Rothbard III Murray N. Rothbard Man, Economy and State with Power and Market. Study Edition Auburn, Alabama 1962, 1970, 2009 Rothbard IV Murray N. Rothbard The Essential von Mises Auburn, Alabama 1988 Rothbard V Murray N. Rothbard Power and Market: Government and the Economy Kansas City 1977 |
| Income Distribution | Rothbard | Rothbard III 920 Income Distribution/Rothbard: {Some authors believe that a neutral taxation has no influence on the income distribution.] This assumes, ot course, no disincentive effects ot the tax on the various individuals or, rather, equiproportional disincentive effects on each individual in the society - a most unlikely occurrence. Problem: (…) the trouble is that this "solution" misconceives the nature of what a neutral tax would have to be. For a tax truly neutral to the free market would not be one that left income patterns the same as before; it would be a tax which would affect the income pattern, and all other aspects of the economy, in the same way as ifthe tax were really a free-market price. Prices: (…) we must surely realize that when a service is sold at a certain price on the free market, this sale emphatically does not leave income "distribution" the same as before. For, normally, market prices are not proportional to each man's income or wealth, but are uniform in the sense of equal to everyone, regardless of his income or wealth or even his eagerness for the product. A Ioaf of bread does not cost a multimillionaire a thousand times as much as it costs the average man. Market/production/economy: If, indeed, the market really behaved in this way, there would soon be no market, for there would be no advantage whatever in earning money. The more money one earned, the more, pari passu, the price of every good would be raised to him. Therefore, the entire civilized money economy and the system of production and division of labor based upon it would break down. Taxation neutrality: Far from being "neutral" to the free market, then, a proportional income tax follows a principle which, if consistently applied, would eradicate the market economy and the entire monetary economy itself. Poll tax/Head tax: It is clear, then, that equal taxation of everyone - the so-called "head tax" or "poll tax" - would be a far closer approach to the goal of neutrality. But even here, there are serious flaws in its neutrality, entirely apart from the ineluctable taxpayer-tax-consumer dichotomy. For one thing, goods and services on the free market are purchased only by those freely willing to obtain them at the market price. Since a tax is a compulsory levy rather than a free purchase, it can never be assumed that each and every member of society would, in a free market, pay this equal sum to the government. In fact, the very compulsory nature of taxation implies that far less revenue would be paid in to the government were it conducted in a voluntary manner. Rather than being neutral, therefore, the equal tax would distort market results by imposing undue levies on at least three groups of citizens: the poor, the uninterested, and the hostile, i.e., those who, for one reason or another, would not have voluntarily paid these equal sums to the government. >Cost Principle/Rothbard, >Benefit principle/Rothbard. |
Rothbard II Murray N. Rothbard Classical Economics. An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Cheltenham 1995 Rothbard III Murray N. Rothbard Man, Economy and State with Power and Market. Study Edition Auburn, Alabama 1962, 1970, 2009 Rothbard IV Murray N. Rothbard The Essential von Mises Auburn, Alabama 1988 Rothbard V Murray N. Rothbard Power and Market: Government and the Economy Kansas City 1977 |
| Inflation | Rothbard | II 160 Inflation/Rothbard: Great Britain suspended specie payments indefinitely so as to permit the Bank of England, and the banking system as a whole, to maintain and greatly expand the previously inflated system of fractional reserve banking. Accordingly, the bank was able to greatly inflate credit and the money supply of notes and deposits. >Gold standard/Rothbard, >Central banks/Rothbard, >Bullionism/Rothbard. Rothbard III 990 Def Inflation/Rothbard: The process of issuing pseudo warehouse receipts or, more exactly, the process of issuing money beyond any increase in the stock of specie, may be called inflation.(1) Def Deflation/Rothbard: A contraction in the money supply outstanding over any period (aside from a possible net decrease in specie) may be called deflation. Clearly, inflation is the primary event and the primary purpose of monetary intervention. There can be no deflation without an inflation having occurred in some previous period of time. Interventions: A priori, almost all intervention will be inflationary. For not only must all monetary intervention begin with inflation; the great gain to be derived from inflation comes from the issuer's putting new money into circulation. >Quasi-money/Rothbard, >Money/Rothbard, >Money substitutes/Rothbard. Money supply: The increasing money supply is only a social waste and can only advantage some at the expense of others. And the benefits and burdens are distributed as just outlined: the early-comers gaining at the expense of later-comers. Credit expansion/Rothbard: If inflation is any increase in the supply of money not matched by an increase in the gold or silver stock available, the method of inflation just depicted is called credit expansion - the creation of new money-substitutes, entering the economy on the credit market. As will be seen below, while credit expansion by a bank seems far more sober and respectable than outright spending of new money, it actually has far graver consequences for the economic system, consequences which most people would find especially undesirable. This inflationary credit is called circulating credit, as distinguished from the lending of saved funds - called commodity credit. Rothbard III 991 Prices/New equilibrium: (…) prices will not have increased uniformly in the new equilibrium; the purchasing power of the monetary unit has fallen, but not equiproportionally over the entire array of exchange-values. Since some prices have risen more than others, therefore, some people will be permanent gainers, and some permanent losers, from the inflation.(1) Victims of inflation: Particularly hard hit by an inflation, of course, are the relatively "fixed" income groups, who end their losses only after a long period or not at all. Pensioners and annuitants who have contracted for a fixed money income are examples of permanent as well as short-run losers. Life insurance benefits are permanently slashed.(2) Rothbard III 992 Investment/consumption: Inflation also changes the market's consumption/investment ratio. Superficially, it seems that credit expansion greatly increases capital, for the new money enters the market as equivalent to new savings for lending. Since the new "bank money" is apparently added to the supply of savings on the credit market, businesses can now borrow at a Iower rate of interest; hence inflationary credit expansion seems to offer the ideal escape from time preference, as well as an inexhaustible fount of added capital. Actually, this effect is illusory. On the contrary, inflation reduces saving and investment, thus Iowering society's standard of living. It may even cause large-scale capital consumption. 1) In the first place, as we just have seen, existing creditors are injured. This will tend to discourage lending in the future and thereby discourage saving-investment. 2) Secondly (…) the inflationary process inherently yields a purchasing-power profit to the businessman, since he purchases factors and sells them at a later time when all prices are higher. The businessman may thus keep abreast of the price increase (we are here exempting from variations in price increases the terms-of-trade component), neither Iosing nor gaining from the inflation. But business accounting is traditionally geared to a world where the value of the monetary unit is stable. Rothbard III 993 Capital goods: Capital goods purchased are entered in the asset column "at cost," i.e., at the price paid for them. When the firm later sells the product, the extra inflationary gain is not really a gain at all; for it must be absorbed in purchasing the replaced capital good at a higher price. Inflation, therefore, tricks the businessman: it destroys one of his main signposts and leads him to believe that he has gained extra profits when he is just able to replace capital. Accounting error: The accounting error stemming from inflation has (…) economic consequences. The firms with the greatest degree of error will be those with capital equipment bought more preponderantly when prices were Iowest. If the inflation has been going on for a while, these will be the firms with the oldest equipment. Their seemingly great profits will attract other firms into the field, and there will be a completely unjustified expansion of investment in a seemingly high-profit area. Conversely, there will be a deficiency of investment elsewhere. Allocation: Thus, the error distorts the market's system of allocating resources and reduces its effectiveness in satisfying the consumer. The error will also be greatest in those firms with a greater proportion of capital equipment to product, and similar distorting effects will take place through excessive investment in heavily "capitalized" industries, offset by underinvestment elsewhere.(3) >Credit expansion/Rothbard, >Time preference/Rothbard, >Money supply/Rothbard. Rothbard III 1018 Inflation/Rothbard: When the government and the banking system begin inflating, the public will usually aid them unwittingly in this task. The public, not cognizant of the true nature of the process, believes that the rise in prices is transient and that prices will soon return to "normal." Hoarding: (…) people will therefore hoard more money, i.e., keep a greater proportion of their income in the form of cash balances. >Hoarding/Rothbard, >Cash balance/Rothbard. Demand for money/prices: The social demand for money, in short, increases. As a result, prices tend to increase less than proportionately to the increase in the quantity of money. Government: The government obtains more real resources from the public than it had expected, since the public's demand for these resources has declined. Eventually, the public begins to realize what is taking place. Government: It seems that the government is attempting to use inflation as a permanent form of taxation. But the public has a weapon to combat this depredation. Consumption: Once people realize that the government will continue to inflate, and therefore that prices will continue to rise, they will step up their purchases of goods. For they will realize that they are gaining by buying now, instead of waiting until a future date when the value of the monetary unit will be Iower and prices higher. In other words, the social demand for money falls, and prices now begin to rise more rapidly than the increase in the supply of money. Hyperinflation: When this happens, the confiscation by the government, or the "taxation" effect of inflation, will be Iower than the government had expected, for the increased money will be reduced in purchasing power by the greater rise in prices. This stage of the inflation is the beginning of hyperinflation, of the run-away boom.(4) Demand for money: The Iower demand for money allows fewer resources to be extracted by the government, but the government can still obtain resources so long as the market continues to use the money. Prices: The accelerated price rise will, in fact, lead to complaints of a "scarcity of money" and stimulate the government to greater efforts of inflation, thereby causing even more accelerated price increases. Flight from money: This process will not continue long, however. As the rise in prices continues, the public begins a "flight from money," getting rid of money as soon as possible in order to invest in real goods - almost any real goods - as a store of value for the future. Prices: This mad scramble away from money, Iowering the demand for money to hold practically to zero, causes prices to rise upward in astronomical proportions. The value of the monetary unit falls practically to zero. The devastation and havoc that the runaway boom causes among the populace is enormous. Society: The relatively fixed-income groups are wiped out. Production declines drastically (sending up prices further), as people lose the incentive to work - since they must spend much of their time getting rid of money. The main desideratum becomes getting hold of real goods, whatever they may be, and spending money as soon as received. Market: When this runaway stage is reached, the economy in effect breaks down, the market is virtually ended, and society reverts to a state of virtual barter and complete impoverishment.(5) Commodities are then slowly built up as media of exchange. The public has rid itself of the inflation burden by its ultimate weapon: Iowering the demand for money to such an extent that the government's money has become worthless. When all other limits and forms of persuasion fail, this is the only way - through chaos and economic breakdown - for the people to force a return to the "hard" commodity money of the free market. Rothbard III 1021 Interventions: Movements in the supply-of-goods and in the demand-for-money schedules are all the results of voluntary changes of preferences on the market. The same is true for increases in the supply of gold or silver. But increases in fiduciary or fiat media are acts of fraudulent intervention in the market, distorting voluntary preferences and the voluntarily determined pattern of income and wealth. Def Inflation/Rothbard: Therefore, the most expedient definition of "inflation" is: an increase in the supply of money beyond any increase in specie.(6) Rothbard III 1022 RothbrdVsGovernment policies: The absurdity of the various governmental programs for "fighting inflation" now becomes evident. Most people believe that government offcials must constantly pace the ramparts, armed With a huge variety of "control" programs designed to combat the inflation enemy. Yet all that is really necessary is that the government and the banks (…) cease inflating.(7) Inflationary pressure: The absurdity of the term "inflationary pressure" also becomes clear. Either the government and banks are inflating or they are not; there is no such thing as "inflationary pressure."(8) 1. Cf. Mises, Theory of Money and Credit. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1953 and 1957 Reprinted by Liberty Fund, 1995. pp. 140-42. 2. 1081 The avowed goal of Keynes' inflationist program was the "euthanasia of the rentier." Did Keynes realize that he was advocating the not-so-merciful annihilation of some of the most unfit-for-labor groups in the entire population - groups whose marginal value productivity consisted almost exclusively in their savings? Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1936. Reprinted by Prometheus Books, 1997. p. 376. 3.For an interesting discussion of some aspects of the accounting error, see W.T. Baxter, "The Accountant's Contribution to the Trade Cycle," Economica, May, 195 5 , pp. 99-112. Also see Mises, Theory of Money and Credit, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1953 and 1957. Reprinted by Liberty Fund, 1995. pp. 202-04; and Human Action, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1949. Reprinted by the Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1998. pp. 546 f. 4. Cf. the analysis by John Maynard Keynes in his A Tract on Monetary Reform (London: Macmillan & Co., 1923), chap. ii, section 1. 5. On runaway inflation, see Mises, Theory of Money and Credit, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1953 and 1957. Reprinted by Liberty Fund, 1995. Mises, Richard von. Probability, Statistics, and Truth, 2nd ed. New York: Macmillan, 1957. Reprinted by Dover Publications, 1981. pp. 227-31. 6. Inflation is here defined as any increase in the money supply greater than an increase in specie, not as a big change in that supply. As here defined, therefore, the terms "inflation" and "deflation" are praxeological categories. See Mises, Human Action, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1949. Reprinted by the Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1998. pp. 419-20. But also see Mises' remarks in Aaron Director, ed., Defense, Controls, and Inflation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952), p. 3 n. 7. See George Ferdinand, "Review of Albert G. Hart, Defense without Inflation," Christian Economics, Vol. III, No. 19 (October 23, 1951). 8. See Mises in Director, Defense, Controls, and Inflation, p. 334. |
Rothbard II Murray N. Rothbard Classical Economics. An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Cheltenham 1995 Rothbard III Murray N. Rothbard Man, Economy and State with Power and Market. Study Edition Auburn, Alabama 1962, 1970, 2009 Rothbard IV Murray N. Rothbard The Essential von Mises Auburn, Alabama 1988 Rothbard V Murray N. Rothbard Power and Market: Government and the Economy Kansas City 1977 |
| Justice | Thomas Aquinas | Höffe I 149 Justice/Thomas/Höffe: Thomas Aquinas places [the concept of] justice (iustitia) (...) between prudence (prudentia) and courage (fortitudo). Thomas Aquinas per Aristotle: In terms of content, he follows Aristotle's differentiations made in the book of justice of Nicomachian ethics. >Ethics/Aristotle. In doing so, he introduces two distinctions that have since been canonical and effective far beyond Thomism(), the linguistic origin by Thomas Aquinas is unknown to many: A. General justice: (iustitia generalis, not: universalis) means a comprehensive righteousness which voluntarily fulfills all that is required by law and custom. >Customs/Morality. Iustitia particularis: [here we are concerned] with questions where insatiability threatens, namely questions of honour, money or self-preservation. Distributive justice: Within special justice, the allocation of honor and money, which allows for certain inequalities, distributive justice (iustitia distributiva), is set off against regulatory justice (iustitia commutativa). Iustitia commutativa: (...) is responsible for two areas, voluntary exchange, business transactions and civil law, and can be called "distributive justice" here, but only here. >Inequalities. B. Secondly, there is the criminal law with its restorative or corrective justice (iustitia correctiva). >Laws. 1.Summa IIa Ilae qu. 58 und 61 |
Höffe I Otfried Höffe Geschichte des politischen Denkens München 2016 |
| Language | Cavell | I 185 Language/Universals/Wittgenstein/Cavell: we project words from one context to the next, but without relying on any definitions or rules. For the most part (not always) we do not need universals as a fundamentalist premise. >Meaning, >Word meaning, >Reference, >Sentence meaning, >Speaking, >Communication, >Universals. Skepticism here would only look for new universals here. >Skepticism. I 186 Language learning/language acquisition: the entry into our culture is not guaranteed by something essential. >Language acquisition. I 187 The projection is instead guaranteed by our agreement in the judgment. >Judgments. Our words occur in an unlimited number of cases and projections, and their variance is not arbitrary. --- II 189 Language Philosophy/Cavell: this is not so much about revengeing sensational offenses against the intellect, as to remedy its civilian misconduct. We must return tyrannizing ideas (such as existence, certainty, identity, reality, truth ...) to their specific contexts in which they function normally, so that they can function normally without corrupting our thinking. >World/thinking, >Language behavior. Language/World/Cavell: the transition from language to the world occurs imperceptibly when Austin says "We can voluntarily make a gift" (general statement) is a "material mode" (Mates) for "The gift was made voluntary" (special case). |
Cavell I St. Cavell Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen Frankfurt 2002 Cavell I (a) Stanley Cavell "Knowing and Acknowledging" in: St. Cavell, Must We Mean What We Say?, Cambridge 1976, pp. 238-266 In Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen, Stanley Cavell Frankfurt/M. 2002 Cavell I (b) Stanley Cavell "Excursus on Wittgenstein’s Vision of Language", in: St. Cavell, The Claim of Reason, Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy, New York 1979, pp. 168-190 In Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen, Stanley Cavell Frankfurt/M. 2002 Cavell I (c) Stanley Cavell "The Argument of the Ordinary, Scenes of Instruction in Wittgenstein and in Kripke", in: St. Cavell, Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism, Chicago 1990, pp. 64-100 In Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen, Davide Sparti/Espen Hammer (eds.) Frankfurt/M. 2002 Cavell II Stanley Cavell "Must we mean what we say?" in: Inquiry 1 (1958) In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 |
| Legitimacy | Durkheim | Habermas IV 123 Legitimacy/Civil Law/Durkheim/Habermas: Problem: a contract cannot contain its own bases of validity. The fact that the parties voluntarily enter into an agreement does not imply the binding nature of this agreement. The contract itself is only possible thanks to a regulation of social origin.(1) >Contracts, >Contract theory. This regulation, for its part, cannot be an expression of mere arbitrariness, not based on the factuality of state authority. >Arbitrariness. Solution/Durkheim: the rights that have their origin in things were dependent on the religious nature of these things. Thus, all moral and legal relations (...) owe their existence to a sui generis force that is inherent in either the subjects or the objects and that forces respect. Question: how can two decisions originating from two different subjects have a greater binding force, simply because they are identical?(2) >Agreement. Solution/Durkheim: contracts have the binding character due to the legitimacy of the legal regulations on which they are based. And these only apply Habermas IV 124 as legitimate because they express a general interest. Criterion/Durkheim: that the contract is moral is only guaranteed due to the fact that no side is favoured.(3) >Justice. DurkheimVsWeber/Habermas: Durkheim is not - like Max Weber - concerned here with material justice, but with the fact that the obligatory character of contracts cannot be derived from the arbitrariness of the interest-led agreement of individuals. >Interest. 1. E. Durkheim, De la division du travail social, German: Über die Teilung der sozialen Arbeit, Frankfurt, 1977, p. 255. 2. E. Durkheim, Lecons de sociologie, Physique des moeurs et du droit. Paris 1969, p. 205. (engl. London 1957). 3. Durkheim (1969) p. 231. |
Durkheim I E. Durkheim The Rules of Sociological Method - French: Les Règles de la Méthode Sociologique, Paris 1895 German Edition: Die Regeln der soziologischen Methode Frankfurt/M. 1984 Ha I J. Habermas Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne Frankfurt 1988 Ha III Jürgen Habermas Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns Bd. I Frankfurt/M. 1981 Ha IV Jürgen Habermas Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns Bd. II Frankfurt/M. 1981 |
| Liberalism | Buchanan | Boudreaux I 57 Liberalism/Buchanan/Boudreaux/Holcombe: Buchanan described an ideal of classical liberalism that “is built on the central, and simple, notion that ‘we can all be free’… A motivating element is, of course, the individual’s desire for liberty from the coercive power of others - an element that may be almost universally shared.” Liberty is an end in itself. This desire for freedom complements the operation of the market mechanism as a way for individuals to cooperate to achieve their individual goals. >Individuals/Buchanan. Market/Buchanan: Buchanan saw the market mechanism as a spontaneous order in which individuals cooperate for the mutual gain of all who engage in voluntary exchanges. Those exchanges further the welfare of the individuals who participate in them; the evidence being that they voluntarily choose to exchange. Thus, Buchanan says, “For the scientist in the academy, understanding such principles does, or should, translate into reasoned advocacy of classical liberal policy stances” (Buchanan, 2000(1): 114). Armed with an understanding of economics, Buchanan saw a scientific basis for promoting a classical-liberal social order. By allowing individuals the liberty to make their own choices, and by enabling them to cooperate with others to achieve their goals, individuals are best able to improve their own welfare while not infringing on the liberty of others to do likewise. The social sciences, which study how people interact with each other, treat liberty as an instrumental value - that is, as a means to a higher end. About this treatment of liberty Buchanan wrote: Boudreaux I 58 „Classical liberals themselves have added confusion rather than clarity to the discussion when they have advanced the claim that the idealized and extended market order produces a larger “bundle” of valued goods than any socialist alternative. To invoke the efficiency norm in so crude a fashion as this, even conceptually, is to give away the whole game.“ (Buchanan, 2000(1): 116) Buchanan understood the strong temptation to make this efficiency argument. Boudreaux: It is, after all, correct. But to make this argument shifts the terms of the debate to that of socialists and other critics of the market order. Yes, a market order is indeed more productive. Yet for Buchanan the ultimate and sufficient justification for a market order is that it is essential to protect individual liberty. Ultimately, individuals want to make their own choices. They do not want others to tell them what to do. Fortunately, a market order allows them to make their own choices. In addition, a market is more productive than is a system in which some persons force their decisions on others. But this efficiency advantage should not distract the classical liberal from advocating liberty as a fundamental value. 1. Buchanan, James M. (2000). “The Soul of Classical Liberalism,” Independent Review (Summer). |
EconBuchan I James M. Buchanan Politics as Public Choice Carmel, IN 2000 Boudreaux I Donald J. Boudreaux Randall G. Holcombe The Essential James Buchanan Vancouver: The Fraser Institute 2021 |
| Luxury Consumption | Hayek | Rothbard III 986 Luxury consumption/Hayek/Rothbard: (…) consumption [is ] the very goal of the entire economic system; let us note two stimulating contributions in recent years on hidden but important functions of luxury consumption, particularly by the "rich." Hayek: F.A. Hayek has pointed out the important function of the luxury consumption of the rich, at any given time, in pioneering new ways of consumption, and thereby paving the way for later diffusion of such "consumption innovations" to the mass of the consumers.(1) de Jouvenel: And Bertrand de Jouvenel, stressing the fact that refined esthetic and cultural tastes are concentrated precisely in the more affluent members of society, also points out that these citizens are the ones Who could freely and voluntarily give many gratuitous services to others, services which, because they are free, are not counted in the national income statistics.(2) >Affluent society/Galbraith. 1. Hayek, Constitution of Liberty, pp. 42 ff. As Hayek puts it: A large part of the expenditure of the rich, though not intended for that end, thus serves to defray the cost of the experimentation With the new things that, as a result, can later be made available to the poor. The important point is not merely that we gradually learn to make cheaply on a large scale what we already know how to make expensively in small quantities but that only from an advanced position does the next range of desires and possibilities become visible, so that the selection of new goals and the effort toward their achievement will begin long before the majority can strive for them. (Ibid., pp. 43-44) Also see the similar point made by Mises 30 years before. Ludwig von Mises, "The Nationalization of Credit" in Sommer, Essays in European Economic Thought, pp. 111 f. And see Bertrand de Jouvenel, The Ethics of Redistribution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952), pp. 38 f. 2. De Jouvenel, Ethics of Redistribution, especially pp. 6 7 ff. If all housewives suddenly stopped doing their own housework and, instead, hired themselves out to their next-door neighbors, the supposed increase in national product, as measured by statistics, would be very great, even though the actual increase would be nil. For more on this point, see de Jouvenel, "The Political Economy of Gratuity," The Virginia Quarterly Review, Autumn, 1959, pp. 515 ff. |
Hayek I Friedrich A. Hayek The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents--The Definitive Edition (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, Volume 2) Chicago 2007 Rothbard II Murray N. Rothbard Classical Economics. An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Cheltenham 1995 Rothbard III Murray N. Rothbard Man, Economy and State with Power and Market. Study Edition Auburn, Alabama 1962, 1970, 2009 Rothbard IV Murray N. Rothbard The Essential von Mises Auburn, Alabama 1988 Rothbard V Murray N. Rothbard Power and Market: Government and the Economy Kansas City 1977 |
| Markets | Buchanan | Boudreaux I 57 Market/Buchanan/Boudreaux/Holcombe: Buchanan saw the market mechanism as a spontaneous order in which individuals cooperate for the mutual gain of all who engage in voluntary exchanges. Those exchanges further the welfare of the individuals who participate in them; the evidence being that they voluntarily choose to exchange. Thus, Buchanan says, “For the scientist in the academy, understanding such principles does, or should, translate into reasoned advocacy of classical liberal policy stances” (Buchanan, 2000(1): 114). Armed with an understanding of economics, Buchanan saw a scientific basis for promoting a classical-liberal social order. By allowing individuals the liberty to make their own choices, and by enabling them to cooperate with others to achieve their goals, individuals are best able to improve their own welfare while not infringing on the liberty of others to do likewise. The social sciences, which study how people interact with each other, treat liberty as an instrumental value - that is, as a means to a higher end. About this treatment of liberty Buchanan wrote: Boudreaux I 58 „Classical liberals themselves have added confusion rather than clarity to the discussion when they have advanced the claim that the idealized and extended market order produces a larger “bundle” of valued goods than any socialist alternative. To invoke the efficiency norm in so crude a fashion as this, even conceptually, is to give away the whole game.“ (Buchanan, 2000(1): 116) Buchanan understood the strong temptation to make this efficiency argument. Boudreaux: It is, after all, correct. But to make this argument shifts the terms of the debate to that of socialists and other critics of the market order. Yes, a market order is indeed more productive. Yet for Buchanan the ultimate and sufficient justification for a market order is that it is essential to protect individual liberty. Ultimately, individuals want to make their own choices. They do not want others to tell them what to do. Fortunately, a market order allows them to make their own choices. In addition, a market is more productive than is a system in which some persons force their decisions on others. But this efficiency advantage should not distract the classical liberal from advocating liberty as a fundamental value. >Agreement/Buchanan. Boudreaux I 97/98 Market/Buchanan/Boudreaux/Holcombe: Buchanan insisted that the focus of economic analysis should be on markets, that is, on institutions of exchange, rather than on resource allocation. Buchanan says of economists who “are wholly concerned with the allocation of scarce resources among competing ends or uses… that theirs is not legitimate activity for practitioners of economics, as I want to define the discipline” (Buchanan, 1964(2): 216). The reason Buchanan insisted on this distinction (…) is that to conceive of economic activity as an exercise in resource allocation is to unwittingly assume that society is rather like a giant sentient individual with preferences all its own. Given its preferences and its income, society has only one “correct” way to “choose” - that there is one optimal allocation of resources. Society/Buchanan: But, (…) society is not a giant sentient individual with its own preferences and brain for choosing. Society is the complex interactions of many individuals each in pursuit of his or her own goals. Solution/Buchanan: An “economy,” Buchanan observed, is the name that we give to the on-going process of many different individuals (and other organizations, including households and firms) pursuing their own individually chosen goals but with no overarching shared goal such as “the goal of the national economy.“(3) Boudreaux I 99 „The market or market organization is not a means toward the accomplishment of anything. It is, instead, the institutional embodiment of the voluntary exchange processes that are entered into by individuals in their several capacities. This is all there is to it. Individuals are observed to cooperate with one another, to reach agreements, and to trade. The network of relationships that emerges out of this trading process, the institutional framework, is called “the market.” It is a setting, an arena, in which we, as economists, as theorists (as “onlookers”), observe men attempting to accomplish their own purposes, whatever these may be.“ (Buchanan, 1964(4)). 1. Buchanan, James M. (2000). “The Soul of Classical Liberalism,” Independent Review (Summer). 2. Buchanan, James M. (1964). “What Should Economists Do?” Sothern Economic Journal (January). 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid, p. 219 |
EconBuchan I James M. Buchanan Politics as Public Choice Carmel, IN 2000 Boudreaux I Donald J. Boudreaux Randall G. Holcombe The Essential James Buchanan Vancouver: The Fraser Institute 2021 |
| Meaning (Intending) | Cavell | I 14 To mean/meaning/Cavell: There is a difference between the meaning of the words we use and what we mean when we give them a voice. >Speaking, >Implicature. Thesis: Our ability to mean what we say is dependent on two characteristics of our situation: 1. from the everydayness, the ordinariness of the resources at our disposal. 2. from the fact that we are the ones that access these resources. >Convention, >Community, >Understanding. We sometimes achieve or sometimes we do not achieve to mean what we say with our words! --- II 168 Cavell thesis: what we usually say and mean can have a direct and profound control over what we can say and mean in the philosophical sense. II 205 To mean/must/Cavell: this is not about reproducing the meaning as what you "must mean". Intension is not a substitute for intention. >Intension, >Intention. Cavell Thesis: Still, if we say "we must something", we imply that we are convinced of it, although it is not analytically, it is necessarily true! >Analytical, >a priori, >necessarily. Truth/Necessity/Cavell: if truth (with Aristotle) means: From what it is to say that it is, Then necessary truth is From what is, to say what it is. ((s) How it is done). But it is a profound prejudice to mean that it was a matter of content. It does not apply to all statements, but to those who are concerned with actions, and therefore have a rule description complementarity. >Truth. II 207 Necessity/Language/Cavell: 1. it is perfectly correct that the German language could have developed differently. 2. There is no way out when you say "I can say what I want, I do not always have to use the normal forms". You do not want to argue that you can talk without the language providing the possibility for this? II 208 E.g. A baker could use "voluntarily" and "automatically" synonymously. If it then follows that the professor does not understand the baker, then the professor would not understand another professor any more! >Language use, >Speaking. II 208 Method/Mates: Grewendorf/Meggle S 160): two methods: 1. Extensional: one brings out the meaning of a word by finding out what it has in common with other cases of its use. >Extension. 2. Intensive method: one asks the person concerned what he means. >Intension. II 209 Language/Cavell: it is not the case that we always know only by empirical investigations what words mean. We could not then come to generalizations. For example, half of the population could use "voluntarily" and "automatically" without any difference, but it does not show that the two are synonymous, but that both apply to the action of the person in question! II 210 It may be that the baker even insists that the two words mean the same. One could then argue: "You can say it, but you cannot mean it!" "You cannot mean what you would mean if you had chosen the other wording." Why is the baker not entitled to his argument then? >Assertibility. II 211 To a philosopher we would say in this situation (> Humpty Dumpty): 1. That he limits his expressive possibilities. 2. That he has a shortened theory of what it means to do something. Likewise, the philosopher who asks in everything: "analytical or synthetic?" has a shortened concept of communication. >Communication. II 213 Language/Cavell: The error is based on the assumption that the normal use of a word represents a function of the internal state of the speaker. To mean/Cavell: the false assumption that a statement about what we mean is synthetic comes from the fact that we believe that it describes the mental processes of a speaker. In reality, it is about the use of language. >Mental states, >Mind. For example, to a child, we might say, "You do not know, you believe it". The child learns the word usage. II 215 To mean/Cavell: there is no such activity as finding out what I mean with a word. But there is a finding out what a word means. >Language acquisition. |
Cavell I St. Cavell Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen Frankfurt 2002 Cavell I (a) Stanley Cavell "Knowing and Acknowledging" in: St. Cavell, Must We Mean What We Say?, Cambridge 1976, pp. 238-266 In Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen, Stanley Cavell Frankfurt/M. 2002 Cavell I (b) Stanley Cavell "Excursus on Wittgenstein’s Vision of Language", in: St. Cavell, The Claim of Reason, Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy, New York 1979, pp. 168-190 In Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen, Stanley Cavell Frankfurt/M. 2002 Cavell I (c) Stanley Cavell "The Argument of the Ordinary, Scenes of Instruction in Wittgenstein and in Kripke", in: St. Cavell, Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism, Chicago 1990, pp. 64-100 In Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen, Davide Sparti/Espen Hammer (eds.) Frankfurt/M. 2002 Cavell II Stanley Cavell "Must we mean what we say?" in: Inquiry 1 (1958) In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 |
| Monopolies | Rothbard | Rothbard III Competition/monopolies//Rothbard: (…] a common worry of economic writers: What if the average cost curve of a firm continues to fall indefinitely? Would not the firm then grow so big as to constitute a "monopoly"? There is much lamentation that competition "breaks down" in such a situation. 1) Competition: Much of the emphasis on this problem comes, however, from preoccupation with the case of "pure competition," (…) is an impossible figment. 2) Secondly, it is obvious that no firm ever has been or can be infinitely large, so that limiting obstacles - rising or less rapidly falling costs - must enter somewhere, and relevantly, for every firm.(1) 3) Thirdly, if a firm, through greater effciency, does obtain a "monopoly" in some sense in its industry, it clearly does so, in the case we are considering (falling average cost), by Iowering prices and benefiting the consumers. And if (as all the theorists who attack "monopoly" agree) what is wrong with "monopoly" is precisely a restriction of production and a rise in price, there is obviously nothing wrong with a "monopoly" achieved by pursuing the directly opposite path.(2) Rothbard III 660 Monopolies/monopoly prices/VsMonopolies/VsMonopoly/Rothbard: Despite the fact that monopoly problems occupy an enormous quantity of economic writings, little or no clarity of definition exists. Erroneous definition: A common example of a confused definition is: "Monopoly exists when a firm has control over its price." RothbardVs: This definition is a mixture of confusion and absurdity. In the first place, on the free market there is no such thing as "control" over the price in an exchange; in any exchange the price of the sale is voluntarily agreed upon by both parties. No "control" is exercised by either party; the only control is each person's control over his own actions -stemming from his self-sovereignty - and consequently his control will be over his own decision to enter or not to enter into an exchange at any hypothetical price. There is no direct control over price because price is a mutual phenomenon. On the other hand, each person has absolute control over his own action and therefore over the price which he will attempt to charge for any particular good. Rothbard III 662 Monopoly price: (…) it is completely false to say that the [small] farmer and [Henry] Ford differ in their control over price. Both have exactly the same degree of control and of noncontrol: i.e., both have absolute control over the quantity they produce and the price which they attempt to get(3) and absolute noncontrol over the price-and-quantity transaction that finally takes place. The farmer is free to ask any price he wants, just as Ford is, and is free to lookfor a buyer at such a price. He is not in the least compelled to sell his produce to the organized "markets" if he can do better elsewhere. Every producer of every product is free, in a free-market society, to produce as much as he wants of whatever he possesses or can purchase and to try to sell it, at whatever price he can get, to anyone he can find.(4) Market price/Rothbard: Who officially “sets” the price in any exchange is a completely trivial and irrelevant technological question—a matter of institutional convenience rather than economic analysis. Rothbard III 664 Brand name/brand awareness/competition/Rothbard: One common objection is that Ford is able to acquire "monopoly power" or "monopolistic power" because his product has a recognized brand name or trademark, which the wheat farmer has not. RothbardVs: This, however, is surely a case of putting the cart before the horse. The brand name and the wide knowledge of the brand come from consumers' desire for the product attached to that particular brand and are therefore a result of consumer demand rather than a pre-existing means for some sort of "monopolistic power" over the consumers. Rothbard III 671 Definition of monopoly/Rothbard: Before adopting this definition of monopoly as the proper one, we must consider a final alternative: the defining of a monopolist as a person who has achieved a monopoly price (definition 3; (definition 1: „there is only one seller of a good“)). This definition 3 has never been explicitly set forth, but it has been implicit in the most worthwhile of the neoclassical writings on this subject. >Monopoly price/Rothbard, >Monopoly price/Economic theories. Rothbard III 692 Scarcity of production factors/Rothbard: (…) the attempt to establish the existence of idle resources as a criterion of monopolistic "withholding" of factors [is not] valid. Idle labor resources will always mean increased leisure, and therefore the leisure motive will always be intertwined with any alleged "monopolistic" motive. It therefore becomes impossible to separate them. The existence of idle land may always be due to the fact of the relative scarcity of labor as compared with available land. This relative scarcity makes it more serviceable to consumers, and hence more remunerative, to invest labor in certain areas ofland, and not in others. 1. On the “orthodox” neglect of cost limitations, see Robbins, “Remarks upon Certain Aspects of the Theory of Costs.” 2. Cf. Mises, Human Action, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1949. Reprinted by the Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1998. p. 367. 3. We are, of course, not considering here particular uncertainties of agriculture resulting from climate, etc. 4. For further discussion, see Murray N. Rothbard, “The Bogey of Administered Prices,” The Freeman, September, 1959, pp. 39–41. |
Rothbard II Murray N. Rothbard Classical Economics. An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Cheltenham 1995 Rothbard III Murray N. Rothbard Man, Economy and State with Power and Market. Study Edition Auburn, Alabama 1962, 1970, 2009 Rothbard IV Murray N. Rothbard The Essential von Mises Auburn, Alabama 1988 Rothbard V Murray N. Rothbard Power and Market: Government and the Economy Kansas City 1977 |
| Necessity | Cavell | II 177 Language/Necessity/Cavell: Question: are there logical requirements or only empirical findings? (Cavell thesis: (according to Fodor): logical necessities do consist in language philosophy). Cavell: logical necessities do not exist between language and world but only between sentences. The opportunity in which we express a sentence (circumstances) cannot be regarded as part of meaning or logic. >Cicrumstances, >Language use, >Meaning, >Sentence meaning. II 178 To mean/Must/Necessity/Language/Cavell: e.g. "He would not say that unless he meant ..." >Meaning/Intending/Cavell, >Convention, >Implicature. If we assume that the speaker and we already understand the meaning and use of an expression, one could conclude: II 170 1. the pragmatic implications are unrestricted and therefore any deviation is possible. 2. there are restrictions of use, then a) since all necessity is logical, the "pragmatic implications" are "quasi-logical implications", b) then there must be a "third kind of logic", since the pragmatic implications cannot be deductively constructed. c) there is also a non-logical necessity. II 180 Necessity/Language/Cavell: it must now be argued that from the fact that an expression is used in its usual way, something follows: it entitles one to draw certain conclusions. Learning what these implications are is a part of learning the language itself. Full understanding is implicit understanding. >Learning, >Language acquisition. II 200 Must/Cavell: when I say "You must ..." and if that is correct and appropriate, then nothing you can do proves that I am wrong. >Imperative/Cavell. II 201 Should/Cavell: when I say that you should return the borrowed money, it only makes sense if there could be a reason to suppose that the money was perhaps a present. >Sense. This is an analogy to the distinction between a mere execution of an action and a good execution. cf. >"voluntarily"/Austin. |
Cavell I St. Cavell Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen Frankfurt 2002 Cavell I (a) Stanley Cavell "Knowing and Acknowledging" in: St. Cavell, Must We Mean What We Say?, Cambridge 1976, pp. 238-266 In Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen, Stanley Cavell Frankfurt/M. 2002 Cavell I (b) Stanley Cavell "Excursus on Wittgenstein’s Vision of Language", in: St. Cavell, The Claim of Reason, Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy, New York 1979, pp. 168-190 In Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen, Stanley Cavell Frankfurt/M. 2002 Cavell I (c) Stanley Cavell "The Argument of the Ordinary, Scenes of Instruction in Wittgenstein and in Kripke", in: St. Cavell, Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism, Chicago 1990, pp. 64-100 In Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen, Davide Sparti/Espen Hammer (eds.) Frankfurt/M. 2002 Cavell II Stanley Cavell "Must we mean what we say?" in: Inquiry 1 (1958) In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 |
| Negation | Searle | V 171 Negation/Searle: the philosophers have long abandoned the idea that there are irreducible negative sentences >Existence statement. V 219 Negation/Searle: the negation of certain sentences such as "He doesn't know if he is in pain" are simply wrong, not as is sometimes assumed, neither true nor false. >Truth value gap. But if they are wrong, does their negation not have to be true? --- IV 113 Negation/metaphor/Searle: the negation is just as metaphorical! >Metaphor/Searle. --- VII 91 Negation/Searle: the negation of an A-word (for an activity that one can sensibly call "voluntary") is not again an A-word! For example: I did not buy my car voluntarily, I was forced to do so. I did not come voluntarily, I was dragged here. He doesn't know if the object in front of him is a tree. There is considerable asymmetry between A words and their opposite or negation. >"Voluntarily". VII 95 SearleVsAustin: Austin's thesis ("No modification without aberration”) does not even go over sentences: making an assertion means committing oneself to something that is the case. If the possibility that the facts do not exist is excluded, it is pointless. Austin's slogan should be reformulated too: "No remark that is not remarkable," or "Not an assertion that's not worth asserting." Negation/Searle: the opposite of a standard condition is not itself a standard condition. Therefore, no A condition is required for the utterance of a negation of an A proposition. A-phrases mark standard situations, but their negations do not. A-condition: an A-condition is normally a reason to assume that the negation of the A proposition is true. Generally, only where there is a reason to assume that a standard situation could have been a non-standard situation, the remark that it is a standard situation makes sense. >Sensible/senseless, >truth value gaps. |
Searle I John R. Searle The Rediscovery of the Mind, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1992 German Edition: Die Wiederentdeckung des Geistes Frankfurt 1996 Searle II John R. Searle Intentionality. An essay in the philosophy of mind, Cambridge/MA 1983 German Edition: Intentionalität Frankfurt 1991 Searle III John R. Searle The Construction of Social Reality, New York 1995 German Edition: Die Konstruktion der gesellschaftlichen Wirklichkeit Hamburg 1997 Searle IV John R. Searle Expression and Meaning. Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts, Cambridge/MA 1979 German Edition: Ausdruck und Bedeutung Frankfurt 1982 Searle V John R. Searle Speech Acts, Cambridge/MA 1969 German Edition: Sprechakte Frankfurt 1983 Searle VII John R. Searle Behauptungen und Abweichungen In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 Searle VIII John R. Searle Chomskys Revolution in der Linguistik In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 Searle IX John R. Searle "Animal Minds", in: Midwest Studies in Philosophy 19 (1994) pp. 206-219 In Der Geist der Tiere, D Perler/M. Wild Frankfurt/M. 2005 |
| Peace | Nietzsche | Höffe I 375 Peace/Nietzsche/Höffe: Even if wars between peoples will continue to exist, peacetime, according to Nietzsche, allows the genius to blossom(1). Later, however, in the volume II of "Human, All Too Human" (No. 284)(2), he mocks the so-called peace that prevailed at that time, imputing to the neighbors an aggressiveness that one denies for oneself. A true peace rests on a "peace of mind," in which a victorious people voluntarily proclaims: "We break the sword". >Politics/Nietzsche. 1. F. Nietzsche, Fünf Vorreden zu fünf ungeschriebenen Büchern. 1872. III. „Der griechische Staat“. 2. F. Nietzsche, Menschliches, Allzumenschliches – Ein Buch für freie Geister. 1878-1880 |
Nie I Friedrich Nietzsche Sämtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe Berlin 2009 Nie V F. Nietzsche Beyond Good and Evil 2014 Höffe I Otfried Höffe Geschichte des politischen Denkens München 2016 |
| Planning | Rawls | I 408 Plan/life plan/planning/Rawls: A person's life plan is rational, if and only if 1. it is one of the plans that is consistent with the principles of rational decision when applied to all relevant characteristics of the person's situation. 2. if this plan is one of those that could be chosen by the person voluntarily in the consciousness of all relevant facts, taking into account the consequences. >Rationality. I 409 A person's interests and goals are rational if and only if they are communicated to the person through a plan that is rational to the person. >Goals, >Interest. It is important that the principles do not always allow for a single plan. The class of approved plans is maximum in the sense that each plan in the quantity is superior to a plan outside the quantity. Good/The good/Rawls: the definition of a rational plan is crucial to defining what can be considered good, because a rational life plan marks the fundamental point of view from which all a person's value judgments arise and must ultimately be consistent. >The good. Def Happiness/happiness/Rawls: someone is happy when their plans are fulfilled or are going to be fullfilled. >Happiness. I 410 Planning/Rawls: the structure of plans is characterized by a lack of information and by the mirroring of a hierarchy of needs. In planning we organize our activities in a temporal sequence(1). I 411 We must weigh up different needs in terms of their importance and possible incompatibilities. There will then be a hierarchy of subordinate plans. >Rational Choice/Rawls, >Desire. I 413 It looks as if extreme long-term decisions, such as career choice, are culture-dependent. However, the fact that we all have to make such decisions is culturally independent. >Decisions, >Decision Theory. The borderline case that we have no plan at all and let things come to us does not have to be irrational. >Irrationality. Principle of inclusion/inclusiveness: always choose the plan that covers most objectives. Combined with the principle of efficient resources, this principle chooses the most comprehensive plan and the most far-reaching resources. Together with the principle of greater probability, the plan chosen is the one that covers most objectives and has a chance of success. >Rational Decision/Rawls. I 414 Principle of inclusiveness/Aristoteles/Rawls: We can use the Aristotelian principle to argue for inclusiveness: that it corresponds to a higher-order human interest to train and take advantage of the most complex combinations of abilities. I 417 Rationality/Sidgwick/Rawls: I take an approach from Sidgwick(2): if we could foresee all the relevant information about our future situation, we would choose what we can then consider as an individual asset. >H. Sidgwick. I 426 Def Aristotelian Principle/Terminology/Rawls: that is what I call the following principle: ceteris paribus means that people enjoy the exercise of their abilities, and all the more so the more they realize these abilities and the more challenging (complex) they are(3)(4)(5)(6). I 429 Rawls: The principle formulates a tendency and shows no pattern of how to make a choice. I 430 Skills/Rawls: if we assume that people gain skills while pursuing their plans, we can adopt a chain by using n-1 skills in the nth activity. According to the Aristotelian principle, people then prefer to use as many skills as possible and tend to ascend in the chain. 1. See J. D. Mabbott,"Reason and Desire", Philosophy, vol. 28 (1953). 2. See H. Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, 7th. ed., London, 1907, pp. 111f. 3. Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, bk. VIII, chs. 11-14, bk X. chs 1-5; 4. See W. F. R. Hardie, Aristote's Ethical Theory, (Oxford, 1968), ch. XIV; 5. G. C. Field, Moral Theory (London, 1932), pp. 76-78; 6. R. W. White, "Ego and Reality in Psychoanalytic Theory", Psychological Issues, vol. III (1963), ch. III and pp. 173-175,180f. |
Rawl I J. Rawls A Theory of Justice: Original Edition Oxford 2005 |
| Police Interrogations | Social Psychology | Parisi I 133 Police interrogations/Social Psychology/Nadler/Mueller: In the United States, physical force is no longer permitted in interrogations - the law requires confessions to be given voluntarily. Today, about half of all interrogations produce incriminating statements (Kassin et al., 2007(1); Schulhofer, 1987(2); Thomas, 1996(3)). Given that confessing to a crime is "an exceedingly self-defeating proposition, regardless of one's actual guilt" (D. Simon, 2012)(4), social psychologists have been interested in investigating why so many suspects choose to confess. More importantly, why do suspects confess to crimes they did not commit? False confessions: In most cases, the answer lies in the psychological pressures brought to bear in modern interrogation procedures. In one experiment, 36% of guilty suspects and 81 % of innocent suspects agreed to waive their right to remain Parisi I 134 silent and talk to police (Kassin and Norwick, 2004)(5). Of those who agreed to waive their right to remain silent, most guilty suspects did so to avoid looking suspicious. Most innocent suspects did so because they felt they had nothing to hide. Deception: A large body of literature reporting tests of people's ability to detect deception has demonstrated that people on average perform no better than chance, and with few exceptions trained offcers perform at the same level as laypersons, albeit with high levels of confidence (Bond and DePaulo, 2006(6); Kassin, 2008(7); Kassin Meissner and Norwick 2005(8). Meissner and Kassin 2002(9). D. Simon 2012(4). Vrij, Edward, and Bull, 2001)(10). Because police investigators have trouble distinguishing between true and false confessions, they have little reason to stop an interrogation until the confession is obtained. Bias: Generally, once people form an impression, they are motivated to verify it rather than disconfirm it (Rosenthal and Jacobson, 1968(11); Snyder and Swann, 1978(12)), and the tendency to try to confirm guilt holds true in the interrogation room - when interrogators already believe that a suspect is guilty, they are more likely to use aggressive tactics like the presentation of false evidence and promises of leniency (Kassin, Goldstein, and Savitsky, 2003)(13). >False confessions/Social psychology. 1. Kassin, S. M., R. A. Leo, C. A. Meissner, K. D. Richman, L. H. Colwell, A.-M. Leach, and D. L. Fon (2007). "Police Interviewing and Interrogation: A Self-Report Survey of Police Practices and Beliefs." Law and Human Behavior 31 381-400. doi:10.1007/s10979-006-9073-5. 2. Schulhofer, S. J. (1987). "Reconsidering Miranda." University of Chicago Law Review 54: 435. 3. Thomas, G. C. I. (1996). "Plain Talk about the Miranda Empirical Debate: A Steady-State Theory of Confessions." UCLA Law Review 43:933. 4. Simon, D. (2012). In Doubt: The Psychology of the Criminal Justice Process. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 5. Kassin, S. M. and R. J. Norwick (2004). "Why People Waive Their 'Miranda' Rights: The Power of Innocence." Law and Human Behavior 28(2): 211—221. 6. Bond, C. F. and B. M. DePaulo (2006). "Accuracy of Deception Judgments." Personality and Socia Psychology Review doi:10.1207/s15327957pspr1003 2. 7. Kassin, S. M. (2008). " The Psychology of Confessions." Annual Review of Law and social science 4(1): 193-217. doi:10.1146/annurev.1awsocsci.4.110707.172410. 8. Kassin, S. M., C. A. Meissner, and R. J. Norwick (2005). "'I'd Know a False Confession if I Saw One': A Comparative Study of College Students and Police Investigators." Law and Human Behavior 29(2): 211-227. doi:10.1007/s10979-005-2416-9. 9. Meissner, C. A. and S. M. Kassin (2002). "'He's Guilty!': Investigator Bias in Judgments of Truth and Deception." Law and Human Behavior 26(5):469-480. doi:10.1023/ A:1020278620751. 10. Vrij, A., K. Edward, and R. Bull (2001). "Police Offcers' Ability to Detect Deceit: The Benefit of Indirect Deception Detection Measures." Legal and Criminological Psychology 6(2): 185-196. doi:10.1348/135532501168271. 11. Rosenthal, R. and L. Jacobson (1968). "Pygmalion in the Classroom." The Urban Review 3(1): 16-20. doi:10.1007/BF02322211. 12. Snyder, M. and W. B. Swann (1978). "Hypothesis-Testing Processes in Social Interaction." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 36: 1202-1212. 13. Kassin, S. M., C. C. Goldstein, and K. Savitsky (2003). "Behavioral Confirmation in the Interrogation Room: On the Dangers of Presuming Guilt." Law and Human Behavior 27(2): 187-203. Nadler, Janice and Pam A. Mueller. „Social Psychology and the Law“. In: Parisi, Francesco (ed) (2017). The Oxford Handbook of Law and Economics. Vol 1: Methodology and Concepts. NY: Oxford University Press |
Parisi I Francesco Parisi (Ed) The Oxford Handbook of Law and Economics: Volume 1: Methodology and Concepts New York 2017 |
| Political Institutions | Acemoglu | Acemoglu I 79 Political institutions/Acemoglu/Robinson: The political institutions of a society are (...) the rules that govern incentives in politics. They determine how the government is chosen and which part of the government has the right to do what. Political institutions determine who has power in society and to what ends that power can be used. Absolutist institutions: If the distribution of power is narrow and unconstrained, then the political institutions are absolutist, as exemplified by the absolutist monarchies reigning throughout the world during much of history. Pluralistic institutions: political institutions that distribute power broadly in society and subject it to constraints are pluralistic. Instead of being vested in a single individual or a narrow group, political power rests with a broad coalition or a plurality of groups. Acemoglu I 86 Absolutism: In an absolutist regime, some elites can wield power to set up economic institutions they prefer. Would they be interested in changing political institutions to make them more pluralistic? In general not, since this would only dilute their political power, making it more difficult, maybe impossible, for them to structure economic institutions to further their own interests. Pluralism: The people who suffer from the extractive economic institutions cannot hope for absolutist rulers to voluntarily change political institutions and redistribute power in society. The only way to change these political institutions is to force the elite to create more pluralistic institutions. >Pluralism. ((s) For problems in relation to pluralism see >Pluralism/Acemoglu.) |
Acemoglu II James A. Acemoglu James A. Robinson Economic origins of dictatorship and democracy Cambridge 2006 Acemoglu I James A. Acemoglu James A. Robinson Why nations fail. The origins of power, prosperity, and poverty New York 2012 |
| Practise | Socrates | Bubner I 25 Ethics/Practise/Socrates/Bubner: no one acts voluntarily badly! Therefore, to act well, means simply: to act with consideration. >The Good/Socrates. Whoever acts badly is subject to deception. Talking about each other is not meant to increase knowledge, but to affect the living people, so that they are strengthened in their original action intentions. Bubner: This argument is not intellectualistic, how many critics of Socrates have objected. |
Bu I R. Bubner Antike Themen und ihre moderne Verwandlung Frankfurt 1992 |
| Production Theory | Marx | Kurz I 171 Production theory/Marx/Kurz: (…) Marx had made an important analytical advance over Smith and Ricardo in the analysis of the wage-profit relationship by recapturing the circularity aspect of production (which had been present in the physiocrats, but was somewhat lost by Smith and Ricardo). Kurz I 175 „No capitalist ever voluntarily introduces a new method of production, no matter how much more productive it may be, and how much it may increase the rate of surplus-value, so long as it reduces the rate of profit. Yet every such new method of production cheapens the commodities. Hence, the capitalist sells them originally above their prices of produc- tion, or, perhaps, above their value. He pockets the difference between their costs of production and the market-prices of the same commodities produced at higher costs of production. He can do this, because the average labour-time required socially for the production of these latter commodities is higher than the labour-time required for the new methods of production. His method of production stands above the social average. But competition makes it general and subject to the general law There follows a fall in the rate of profit - perhaps first in this sphere of production, and eventually it achieves a balance with the rest which is, therefore, wholly independent of the will of the capitalist.“ (Marx [1894] 1959, 264-265)(1) >Rate of profit/Marx. K. Marx. [1894] 1959. Capital. Vol. 3. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Cf. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ (21.11.2024) Kurz, Heinz; Salvadori, Neri 2015. Revisiting Classical Economics: Studies in Long-Period Analysis (Routledge Studies in the History of Economics). London, UK: Routledge. |
Marx I Karl Marx Das Kapital, Kritik der politische Ökonomie Berlin 1957 Kurz I Heinz D. Kurz Neri Salvadori Revisiting Classical Economics: Studies in Long-Period Analysis (Routledge Studies in the History of Economics). Routledge. London 2015 |
| Rules | Cavell | II 184 Rules/Cavell: contrary to a widespread idea rules do not always have something to do with commands. Thesis: there is a complementarity of rules and determinations. II 185 You can describe an actual action, or perform it according to rules. II 186 Now one can say according to binding rules that it is wrong (an abuse) to say "I know it" if one is not sure. The only relevant condition is that one speaks grammatically correct. It follows, however, that our statements S, T, and T' are not only non-analytic, but also not synthetic! (not like, for example, the synthetic statement that someone who dresses himself voluntarily dresses himself). For example, the determination in question are similar to "The future will be the past" but: If the future is not "like" the past, no one will be surprised by that. II 196 Rule/determination/Cavell: there is a complementarity between the two. How could we overlook it? Because of the false assumption that a rule must be in imperative ("You should") instead of simply describing how something is done. II 197 Rule/Cavell: I do not deny that they can never be associated with imperatives, but only that this is always possible. E.g. Chess: I probably forget to say "J'adoube", so I have to be brought to do it... II 198 ...but I do not forget how the trains are made. I do not have to be brought to do this. Cf. >Chess. II 201 Rule/Principle/Cavell: Difference: Rules say how to do a thing, Principles tell you how to make a thing good! >Principles, cf. >Laws. |
Cavell I St. Cavell Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen Frankfurt 2002 Cavell I (a) Stanley Cavell "Knowing and Acknowledging" in: St. Cavell, Must We Mean What We Say?, Cambridge 1976, pp. 238-266 In Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen, Stanley Cavell Frankfurt/M. 2002 Cavell I (b) Stanley Cavell "Excursus on Wittgenstein’s Vision of Language", in: St. Cavell, The Claim of Reason, Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy, New York 1979, pp. 168-190 In Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen, Stanley Cavell Frankfurt/M. 2002 Cavell I (c) Stanley Cavell "The Argument of the Ordinary, Scenes of Instruction in Wittgenstein and in Kripke", in: St. Cavell, Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism, Chicago 1990, pp. 64-100 In Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen, Davide Sparti/Espen Hammer (eds.) Frankfurt/M. 2002 Cavell II Stanley Cavell "Must we mean what we say?" in: Inquiry 1 (1958) In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 |
| Social Contract | Locke | Höffe I 251 Social Contract/Locke/Höffe: Among the obligations that prevail in Locke's pre-contractual natural state is the right, in the absence of public authority, to punish the violation of the relevant divine and natural commandments itself. Locke sees the only way out of leaving the natural state in the establishment of a political or civil society(1). Cf. >State/Locke. Religious Reasons/Höffe: (...) Locke's legitimation [still contains] pre-modern elements, with which the philosopher, despite his appreciation of reason and experience, methodically never sufficiently emancipated himself from his puritanical origin. State: (...), for the establishment of a state, the concept of contract (...) takes on its most important role. 1) It explains the origin of state power, 2) determines its function and 3) defines its limits. All three tasks are combined in the raison d'être of the state, in the defence against all external and internal Höffe I 252 dangers that threaten the basic goods of citizens, life, freedom and property. >Property/Locke. Liberalism: With its typically liberal purpose of averting danger and the associated protection of property, Locke answers the question he poses himself: What motive induces purpose-rational persons who seek to maximize the benefits defined in terms of freedom to voluntarily renounce their natural freedom and power and submit to the fetters of a legal and state order that henceforth regulates what they do and do not do by force? Locke's answer: To overcome the dangers of partiality and powerlessness, private justice is abolished in favour of a common impartial arbitrator who decides according to fixed rules. Problem: (...) a twofold legal uncertainty (...): people do not always have enough power to enforce their rights and if they do have the power, they run the risk of taking too much. 1. J. Locke, Second treatise of Government, 1689/90, Chap. VII. |
Loc III J. Locke An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Höffe I Otfried Höffe Geschichte des politischen Denkens München 2016 |
| Social Goods | Hardin | Shirky I 51 Social goods/Commons/Garrett Hardin/Shirky: Hardin used the term "The Tragedy of the Commons"(1) for the problem that when it comes to the use of common goods such as fish stocks or pastureland, those who miss out and wait until it is their turn and therefore try to get a bigger share for themselves. This leads to overfishing of fish stocks, for example. One reason for antisocial behaviour is that sheep "do not drive themselves to the market". ((s) An added value must therefore be generated). Shirky I 53 In connection with the tragedy of the common land, there is the fact that no one pays taxes voluntarily. >Taxation. 1. Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162 (3859), December 13, 1968, pp. 682-83. - www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_tragedy_of_the_commons.html). |
EconHardin I Garrett Hardin Living within Limits: Ecology, Economics, and Population Taboos Oxford 1995 Shirky I Clay Shirky Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations New York 2009 |
| Social Goods | Minimal State | Gaus I 121 Social goods/public goods/Minimal state/Gaus/Mack: the market anarchist and the minimal statist share a crucial premise, namely, that the value to individuals of their receipt of protective services will motivate almost everyone to pay for those services. >Minimal state/Gaus, >Society/Minimal state. Protection/individual liberty: the shared premise is that the protection of rightful claims is a standard economic good which people will voluntarily pay for to the extent that they value it. Unfortunately, however, important parts or aspects of the protection of rightful claims are not like standard economic goods; important parts or aspects of the protection of rightful claims are public goods. Gaus: The crucial feature of a public good is that, if the good is produced, it will not be feasible to exclude individuals who have not paid for that good from benefiting from it. >Social goods. The nonexcludability of these goods provides people with an incentive not to purchase them. Rational individuals confront a multi-person case of the well-known >prisoner’s dilemma (...).The parties thus end up at a Pareto-inferior result (...). >Pareto-Optimum. Mack, Eric and Gaus, Gerald F. 2004. „Classical Liberalism and Libertarianism: The Liberty Tradition.“ In: Gaus, Gerald F. & Kukathas, Chandran 2004. Handbook of Political Theory. SAGE Publications. |
Gaus I Gerald F. Gaus Chandran Kukathas Handbook of Political Theory London 2004 |
| Socialization | Developmental Psychology | Corr I 182 Socialization/Developmental psychology/Rothbart: conscience altered depending on the fearfulness of the child. Beyond the inhibitory control provided by fear, later developing Effortful Control makes a crucial contribution to socialization. Effortful Control is defined as the ability to inhibit a prepotent response and to activate a non-prepotent response, to detect errors and to engage in planning. As executive attention skills develop in the second or third years of life and beyond, individuals can voluntarily deploy their attention, allowing them to regulate their more reactive tendencies (Posner and Rothbart 2007(1); Ruff and Rothbart 1996(2)). In situations where immediate approach is not allowed, for example, children can inhibit their actions directly and also limit their attention to the rewarding properties of a stimulus, resisting temptation and delaying gratification. Research indicates some stability of individual differences in effortful control during childhood. For example, the number of seconds delayed by pre-school children while waiting for rewards that are physically present predicts parents’ reports of children’s attentiveness and ability to concentrate as adolescents (Mischel, Shoda and Peake 1988(3)). A lack of control in pre-school has also been identified as a potential marker for lifecourse persistent antisocial behaviour (Moffitt et al. 1996(4)) and the inattentive-disorganized symptoms of ADHD (Nigg 2006)(5). >Social learning, >Social behavior, >Stages of development. 1. Posner, M. I. and Rothbart, M. K. 2007. Educating the human brain. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association 2. Ruff, H. A. and Rothbart, M. K. 1996. Attention in early development: themes and variations. New York: Oxford University Press 3. Mischel, W., Shoda, Y. and Peake, P. K. 1988. The nature of adolescent competencies predicted by preschool delay of gratification, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 54: 6687–96 4. Moffitt, T. E., Caspi, A., Dickson, N., Silva, P. and Stanton, W. 1996. Childhood-onset versus adolescent-onset antisocial conduct problems in males: natural history from ages 3 to 18 years, Development and Psychopathology 8: 399–424 5. Nigg, J. T. 2006. Temperament and developmental psychopathology, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 47: 395–422 Mary K. Rothbart, Brad E. Sheese and Elisabeth D. Conradt, “Childhood temperament” in: Corr, Ph. J. & Matthews, G. (eds.) 2009. The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press |
Corr I Philip J. Corr Gerald Matthews The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology New York 2009 Corr II Philip J. Corr (Ed.) Personality and Individual Differences - Revisiting the classical studies Singapore, Washington DC, Melbourne 2018 |
| State (Polity) | Buchanan | Brocker I 568 State/Buchanan: Buchanan's approach leads to a separation of law and state. The state only stands for the validity of the legal system. See Constitution/Buchanan. According to Buchanan, the state becomes the embodiment of the arbitrator who controls the parties, assuming that everyone tries to cheat. (1) Buchanan cites the universal desire for disarmament as the reason for the conclusion of contracts in order to reduce costs. Brocker I 569 Protective State/Buchanan: a protective cover to ensure the exchange of private goods. Problem: this does not secure the handling of public goods. Productive State/Buchanan: Question: Which regulatory system must be introduced to ensure the possible and reasonably desired improvement in the situation compared to natural distribution or to a society consuming only private goods? Solution/Buchanan: the post-constitutional contract (which presupposes the constitutional contract to secure private property) creates a genuinely political system for the creation and distribution of public goods. >Majorities/Buchanan, >Public Goods. Brocker I 570 Amartya SenVsBuchanan: this is precisely what reinforces existing inequalities: because the burdens on the financing of public goods beyond legal protection also affect those who do not benefit from them.(2) 1. James M. Buchanan, The Limits of Liberty. Between Anarchy and Leviathan, Chicago/London 1975. Dt.: James M. Buchanan, Die Grenzen der Freiheit. Zwischen Anarchie und Leviathan, Tübingen 1984, S. 96f. 2. Amartya Sen, Collective Choice and Social Welfare, San Francisco u. a 1970, S. 25 Wolfgang Kersting, „James M. Buchanan, Die Grenzen der Freiheit“ in: Manfred Brocker (Hg.) Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Das 20. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt/M. 2018 Boudreaux I 21 State/Buchanan/Boudreaux/Holcombe: „The state has its origin in, and depends for its continuance upon, the desires of individuals to fulfil a certain portion of their wants collectively. The state has no ends other than those of its individual members and is not a separate decision-making unit. State decisions are, in the final analysis, the collective decisions of individuals.“(1) Government Debt/Boudreaux/Holcombe: When analyzing the activities of government, the costs and benefits of government policies fall on individuals, not on aggregates or groups. The argument that domestically held public debt is no burden because “we owe it to ourselves” is revealed as fallacious once we recognize that the aggregate—ourselves—is really composed of many individuals, some of whom will pay the taxes to finance the debt repayment, and some of whom will receive the proceeds when they redeem the bonds they hold. Boudreaux I 74 State/Buchanan/Boudreaux/Holcombe: Ideally, the outputs of the productive state result from collective agreement in which individuals exchange their tax payments for the collectively produced outputs - outputs such as pollution abatement, roads, and municipal parks. Problem: But how can citizens determine the size and range of duties of the productive state that will be most welfare-enhancing? How can they ensure that the state does what the people wish it to do and only what they wish it to do? (…) Buchanan’s answer was to limit the activities of the state to those that command agreement from all of its constituents. But this benchmark of consensus on state activities presents a challenge. >Agreement/Buchanan, >Democracy/Buchanan, >Government/Buchanan. In the real world, people have not agreed to the activities of the state. Under what conditions could people be depicted as being in agreement with institutions to which they have not actually agreed? >Solution/Buchanan: Buchanan extended the market-exchange logic - one in which all parties to an exchange voluntarily agree to it - to collective activity >Collective Action/Buchanan. 1. James M. Buchanan, “The Pure Theory of Government Finance: Suggested Approach” (1949) |
EconBuchan I James M. Buchanan Politics as Public Choice Carmel, IN 2000 Brocker I Manfred Brocker Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Das 20. Jahrhundert Frankfurt/M. 2018 Boudreaux I Donald J. Boudreaux Randall G. Holcombe The Essential James Buchanan Vancouver: The Fraser Institute 2021 |
| State Capitalism | Rothbard | Rothbard III 966 State capitalism/Rothbard: (…) "capital" is not just a homogeneous blob that can be added to or subtracted from. Capital is an intricate, delicate, interweaving structure of capital goods. All of the delicate strands of this structure have to fit, and fit precisely, or else malinvestment occurs. Free market/VsState capitalism: The free market is almost an automatic mechanism for such fitting; (…) the free market, with its price system and profit-and-loss criteria, adjusts the output and variety of the different strands of production, preventing any one from getting long out of alignment.(1) Government investments: But under socialism or with massive government investment, there is no such mechanism for fitting and harmonizing. Deprived of a free price system and profit and-loss criteria, the government can only blunder along, blindly "investing" without being able to invest properly in the right fields, the right products, or the right places. A beautiful subway will be built, but no wheels will be available for the trains; a giant dam, but no copper for transmission lines, etc. These sudden surpluses and shortages, so characteristic of government planning, are the result of massive malinvestment by the government.(2) >Socialism/Mises, >Socialism, >Soviet Union/Rothbard, >Communism. 1. Cf. L.M. Lachmann, Capital and Its Structure. Also see P.T. Bauer and B.S. Yamey, The Economics of Underdeveloped Countries (London: James Nisbet and Co., 1957), pp. 129 ff. 2. On the subject of compulsory saving and government investment, see the noteworthy article of P.T. Bauer, "The Political Economy of Non-Development" in James W. Wiggins and Helmut Schoeck, eds., Foreign Aid Reexamined (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1958), pp. 129-38. Bauer writes: „... if development has meaning as a desirable process, it must refer to an increase in desired output. Governmental collection and investment of saving effect production which is not subject to the test of voluntary purchase at market price.... Increased output through this method is at best an ambiguous indicator of economic improvement... If the capital is not provided voluntarily, this suggests that the population prefers an alternative use of resources, whether current consumption or other forms of investment.“ (Ibid., pp. 133-34) |
Rothbard II Murray N. Rothbard Classical Economics. An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Cheltenham 1995 Rothbard III Murray N. Rothbard Man, Economy and State with Power and Market. Study Edition Auburn, Alabama 1962, 1970, 2009 Rothbard IV Murray N. Rothbard The Essential von Mises Auburn, Alabama 1988 Rothbard V Murray N. Rothbard Power and Market: Government and the Economy Kansas City 1977 |
| Taxation | Say | Rothbard II 40 Taxation/Say/Rothbard: [Say] tended to make it responsible for all the economic evils of society, even, as we have seen, for recessions and depressions. In contrast to almost all other economists, Say had an astonishingly clearsighted view of the true nature of the state and of its taxation. In Say there was no mystical quest for some truly voluntary state, nor any view of the state as a benign semi-business organization supplying services to a public grateful for its numerous ‘benefits’. No; Say saw clearly that the services government indubitably supplies are to itself and to its favourites, and that all government spending is therefore consumption spending by the politicians and the bureaucracy. He also saw that the tax funds for that spending are extracted by coercion at the expense of the tax-paying public. Say goes on to attack the ‘prevalent notion’ that tax monies are no burden on the economy, since they simply ‘return’ to the community via the expenditures of government. Say is indignant: Rothbard II 41 This is gross fallacy; but one that has been productive of infinite mischief, inasmuch as it has been the pretext for a great deal of shameless waste and dilapidation. The value paid to government by the tax-payer is given without equivalent or return: it is expended by the government in the purchase of personal service, of objects of consumption... (1) SayVsSmith, Adam/Rothbard: Thus, in contrast to the naive Smith's purblind assumption that taxation always confers proportional benefit, we see J.B. Say treating taxation as very close to sheer robbery. Taxes/SayVsSchumpeter/Rothbard: He is not impressed with the apologetic notion, properly ridiculed in later years by Schumpeter(2), that all society somehow voluntarily pays taxes for the general benefit; instead, taxes are a burden coercively imposed on society Rothbard II 42 by the ‘ruling power’. Neither is Say impressed if the taxes are voted by the legislature; to him this does not make taxes any more voluntary: for ‘what avails it... that taxation is imposed by consent of the people or their representatives, if there exists in the state a power, that by its acts can leave the people no alternative but consent?’(1) Taxation/production/Say: Moreover, taxation cripples rather than stimulates production, since it robs people of resources that they would rather use differently. Taxation/SayVsRicardo: Say engages in an instructive critique of Ricardo, which reveals the crucial difference over the latter's long-run equilibrium approach and the great difference in their respective attitudes toward taxation. Ricardo had maintained in his Principles(3) that, since the rate of return on capital is the same in every branch of industry, taxation cannot really cripple capital. For, as Say puts it, ‘the extinction of one branch by taxation must needs be compensated by the product of some other, towards which the industry and capital, thrown out of employ, will naturally be diverted’. Here is Ricardo, blind to the real processes at work in the economy, stubbornly identifying a static comparison of long-run equilibrium states with the real world. Taxation/Solution/Say/Rothbard: (…) ‘the best scheme of [public] finance, is to spend as little as possible; and the best tax is always the lightest’. In the next sentence, he amends the latter clause to say ‘the best taxes, or rather those that are least bad...’.(1) 1. Say, Jean-Baptiste. Traité d’Economie Politique, Paris 1803. 2. J.A. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 491. 3. Ricardo, D. (1951 [1817]) On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, in P. Sraffa (ed.) with the collaboration Of M.H. Dobb, The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. I, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (P/b edn 2004, Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund.) |
EconSay I Jean-Baptiste Say Traité d’ Economie Politique Paris 1803 Rothbard II Murray N. Rothbard Classical Economics. An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Cheltenham 1995 Rothbard III Murray N. Rothbard Man, Economy and State with Power and Market. Study Edition Auburn, Alabama 1962, 1970, 2009 Rothbard IV Murray N. Rothbard The Essential von Mises Auburn, Alabama 1988 Rothbard V Murray N. Rothbard Power and Market: Government and the Economy Kansas City 1977 |
| Terminology | Baudrillard | Blask I 11 Seduction/Baudrillard: the term seduction later becomes meaningful to Baudrillard. Contrary to simulation, seduction is pure pretense and not a world of signs. Blask I 11 Fatality/Baudrillard: the fatal strategies include seduction, restoration and ecstasy. Everything is happening anyway. Blask I 26 Simulacra = are artificial worlds of signs. Blask I 34 Implosion/Baudrillard: the disappearance of the poles of cause and effect, of subject and object. Individual and class have no meaning anymore. Masses are only a statistical phenomenon. Implosion of the sense. Start of simulation. Blask I 46 The symbolic exchange resolves the contrast between real and imaginary. Arbitrary interchangeability of the characters. Blask I 47 Crisis: crisis is not a threat, but an attempt to renew confidence. Generated itself by the system. Blask I 47 Symbolic exchange: (following Marcel Mauss): symbolic exchange is a gift without return and beyond the Equivalence Principle. No value law. One inevitably gets something back, but no value system dictates the appropriateness. Baudrillard: the system is to be challenged by a gift to which it cannot answer except through its own death and collapse. Blask I 55 Alfred Jarry: "Pataphysics". In accordance with this, characterized and really his own work. Blask I 57 Seduction: seduction is the bearer of reversibility. "Seduction is a pure pretense and not a sign world." It renounces the principle of representation and already establishes "the other" as opposed to the identical. Against any kind of causality and determination. The law gives way to the rule of the game, the simulation of the illusion, the communication of irony. Seduction is more false than the false, for it uses signs that are already pseudo-forms to remove the meaning of the sign. Blask I 58 Seduction: the starting point is the opposite: truth, results from a convulsive urge for revelation. Pornography, an example of the escalation of truth: more true than the truth. No secret. Even love stands after confession-like truth and ultimately obscenity. Blask I 59 Seduction: seduction has no truth, no place, no sense. The seducer himself does not know the enigma of seduction. Woman: just pretense, she has a strategy of pretense. Seduction: the strength of the seducer is not to desire. Reversibility as a counterforce to the causality principle. Blask I 60 Seduction: seduction does not produce a law, but is based on rules of the game to which one can voluntarily engage. Love: love is individual, one-sided and selfish. Seduction: seduction is two-sided and antagonistic, according to rules which have no claim to truth. Sexuality and love are rather resolutions of seduction. Seduction appreciates distance and is an infinite rescue of an exchange. The female is not the opposite of the male but his seducer. Seduction Blask I 62 The Evil: the evil is not the opposite, but the deceiver of the good. Blask I 67 Fatality/Baudrillard: Ecstasy - irony (overcomes morality and aesthetics) - superiority of the object Principle of evil - at the same time subversion. Blask I 68 Ecstasy/Baudrillard: ecstasy lives in all things of the present. Passion for doubling and increasing. Adopts the dialectic, resolves its opposites. "Either or" no longer exists. E.g. Cancer Cells: growth acceleration, disorder and aimlessness. Blask I 69/70 Ecstasy: ecstasy is simultaneously slowdown, laziness. End before the end and surviving at a standstill. What, dissolution and disaster. The return point has long since been crossed, the catastrophe is without consequences and thus inevitable as the purest form of the event. Small breaks replace the downfall. Blask I 70 Indifference/Baudrillard: according to Baudrillard dreams, utopias and ideas have been played out, they have already been redeemed in reality. Everything has already taken place. The avant-garde has become as meaningless as the revolution. This is the transpolitical. Blask I 78 The Other: is the last way out of the "Hell of the Same." (VsSartre). Blask I 93 Asceticism/Baudrillard: The abundant society tends rather to asceticism because it wants to save what it has achieved. Blask I 95/96 Mythic poles: myth of banality and myth of the desert. "Anything you cross with insane speed is a desert." Blask I 102 Principle of the evil: the whole universe contradicts the principles of dialectics. In their stead, the principle of evil rules: "the malice of the object." Evil: Good and evil are not to be separated, nor distinguished as effects or intentions. Mental subversion by confusion, perversion of things, fundamental inclination to heresy. The principle of evil is the finished counterforce to logic, causality, and signification. "Say," God is evil, "is a tender truth, friendship for death, glide into space, into absence." Blask I 104 Scene: the basis of every illusion, challenge of the real, the opponents of the obscene. Blask I 105 Obscene: "The total obscenity of the money game." Blask I 108 Ceremony of the world: everything is always predetermined. Need for a return. Blask I 110 Virtual catastrophes: Schadenfreude of the machines. Delusion of prophylaxis. The last virus: the virus of sadness. |
Baud I J. Baudrillard Simulacra and Simulation (Body, in Theory: Histories) Ann Arbor 1994 Baud II Jean Baudrillard Symbolic Exchange and Death, London 1993 German Edition: Der symbolische Tausch und der Tod Berlin 2009 Blask I Falko Blask Jean Baudrillard zur Einführung Hamburg 2013 |
| Unemployment | Keynesianism | Rothbard III 778 Unemployment/free Market/Keynesianism/Rothbard: KeynesianismVsFree market: Therefore, the elaborate attempts of the Keynesians to demonstrate that free-market expenditures will be limited - that consumption is limited by the "function," and investment by stagnation of opportunities and "liquidity preference" - are futile. For even if they were correct (which they are not), the result would be pointless. There is nothing wrong with hoarding or dishoarding, or with "Iow" or "high" levels (whatever that may mean) of social money income. >Hoarding/Rothbard, >Consumption function/Keynesianism. Employment/unemployment: The Keynesian attempt to salvage meaning for their doctrine rests on one point and one point alone - the second major pillar of their system. This is the thesis that money social income and level of employment are correlated, and that the latter is a function of the former. This assumes that a certain "full employment" level of social income exists below which there is correspondingly greater unemployment. Rothbard III 780 The nub of the Keynesian critique of the free market economy (…) rests on the involuntary unemployment allegedly caused by too Iow a level of social expenditures and income. Problem: But how can this be, since we have previously explained that there can be no involuntary unemployment in a free market? >Free market/Rothbard, >Unemployment/Rothbard. Solution: The Keynesian "underemployment equilibrium" occurs only if money wage rates are rigid downward, i.e., if the supply curve of labor below "full employment" is infinitely elastic.(1) >Elasticity. Thus, suppose there is a "hoarding" (an increased demand for money), and social income falls. The result is a fall in the monetary demand curves for labor factors, as well as in all other monetary demand curves. >Hoarding/Rothbard. We would expect the general supply curve of labor factors to be vertical. Since only money wage rates are being changed while real wage rates (in terms of purchasing power) remain the same, there will be no shift in labor/leisure preferences, and the total stock of labor offered on the market will remain constant. At any rate, certainly no involuntary unemployment will arise. >Purchasing power/Rothbard. How then can the Keynesian case arise? How can the supply of labor remain horizontal at the old money wage rate? In only two ways: 1) if people voluntarily agree with the unions, which insist that no one be employed at Iower than the Old money wage rate. Since selling prices are falling, maintaining the old money wage rate is equivalent to demanding a higher real wage rate. We have seen above that the unions' raising of real wage rates causes unemployment. >Trade Unions/Rothbard. But this unemployment is voluntary, since the workers acquiesce in the imposition of a higher minimum real wage rate, below which they will not undercut the union and accept employment. Or 2) unions or government coercively impose the minimum wage rate. But this is an example of a hampered market, not the free market to which we are confining our analysis here. >Free Market/Rothbard, >Minimum wage/Rothbard. 1. Thus, see the revealing article by Franco Modigliani, "Liquidity Preference and the Theory of Interest and Money" in Hazlitt, Critics of Keynesian Economics, pp. 156-69. Also see the articles by Erik Lindahl, "On Keynes' Economic System - Part I," The Economic Record, May, 19 54, pp. 19-32; November, 1954, pp. 159-71; and Wassily W. Leontief, "Postulates: Keynes' General Theory and the Classicists" in S. Harris, ed., The New Economics (New York: Knopf, 1952), pp. 232-42. For an empirical critique of the assumed Keynesian correspondence between aggregate output and employment, see George W. Wilson, "The Relationship between Output and Employment," Review of Economics and Statistics, February, 1960, pp. 37-43. |
Rothbard II Murray N. Rothbard Classical Economics. An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Cheltenham 1995 Rothbard III Murray N. Rothbard Man, Economy and State with Power and Market. Study Edition Auburn, Alabama 1962, 1970, 2009 Rothbard IV Murray N. Rothbard The Essential von Mises Auburn, Alabama 1988 Rothbard V Murray N. Rothbard Power and Market: Government and the Economy Kansas City 1977 |
| Use Theory | Cavell | II 215 Meaning/Uses/Cavell's Use Theory: what the technical terms of mathematics and sciences mean, cannot be deduced by us from the way we use e.g. "mass" commonly. II 216 To mean/Meaning/Use theory/Cavell: one could still say: "Some actions are voluntary, others are involuntary, so I can call them as I want!" >"voluntarily"/Ryle. CavellVs: what we have to ask ourselves here is: in what kind of situation does it make no difference how I call a thing? It is a difference whether we ask: "What does x mean?" qnd "What does x really mean?". The second is not a profound version of the first, but is expressed in another situation. II 217 The most normal and the most profound utterances can only be understood when expressed in their natural contexts. >Context dependence, >Speaker meaning, >Speaker intention. |
Cavell I St. Cavell Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen Frankfurt 2002 Cavell I (a) Stanley Cavell "Knowing and Acknowledging" in: St. Cavell, Must We Mean What We Say?, Cambridge 1976, pp. 238-266 In Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen, Stanley Cavell Frankfurt/M. 2002 Cavell I (b) Stanley Cavell "Excursus on Wittgenstein’s Vision of Language", in: St. Cavell, The Claim of Reason, Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy, New York 1979, pp. 168-190 In Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen, Stanley Cavell Frankfurt/M. 2002 Cavell I (c) Stanley Cavell "The Argument of the Ordinary, Scenes of Instruction in Wittgenstein and in Kripke", in: St. Cavell, Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism, Chicago 1990, pp. 64-100 In Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen, Davide Sparti/Espen Hammer (eds.) Frankfurt/M. 2002 Cavell II Stanley Cavell "Must we mean what we say?" in: Inquiry 1 (1958) In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 |
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| Disputed term/author/ism | Author Vs Author |
Entry |
Reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Austin, John L. | Searle Vs Austin, John L. | SearleVs Traditional Speech act analysis. (SearleVsAustin,SearleVsHare) Thesis: "Good", "true" mean the same in different acts. Ignored by the traditional speech act theory) good/true/speech act theory/tradition: Hare: E.g. "Good" is used to recommend something. Strawson: "True" is used to confirm or acknowledge statements. Austin: "Knowledge" is used to provide guarantees. (SearleVs). In principle: "the word W is used to perform the speech act A". >Speech act theory. IV 17 illocutionary act/Austin: five categories: verdictive, expositive, exercitive, conductive, commissive) speech acts/SearleVsAustin: Distinction between illocutionary role and expression with propositional content: R(p). The various acts performed in different continua! There are at least 12 important dimensions. IV 18 1. Differences in joke (purpose) of the act. (However, not to every act a purpose has to belong). IV 19 The illocutionary joke is part of the role, but both are not the same. E.g. a request may have the same joke as a command. 2. Differences in orientation (word to the world or vice versa). Either, the world needs to match the words, or vice versa. IV 20 Example by Elizabeth Anscombe: Shopping list with goods, the same list is created by the store detective. IV 21 3. Differences in the expressed psychological states E.g. to hint, to regret, to swear, to threaten. (Even if the acts are insincere). Def sincerity condition/Searle: You cannot say, "I realize that p but I do not believe that p." "I promise that p but I do not intend that p" The mental state is the sincerity condition of the act. IV 22 These three dimensions: joke, orientation, sincerity condition are the most important. 4. Differences in the strength with which the illocutionary joke is raised. E.g. "I suggest", "I swear" 5. Differences in the position of speaker and listener E.g. the soldier will make not aware the general of the messy room. IV 23 6. Differences of in which the utterance relates to what is in the interest of speaker and listener. E.g. whining, congratulating 7. Difference in relation to the rest of the discourse E.g. to contradict, to reply, to conclude. 8. Differences in propositional content, resulting from the indicators of the illocutionary role E.g. report or forecasts IV 24 9. Differences between those acts that must always be speech acts, and those that can be carried out differently. E.g. you need not to say anything to classify something, or to diagnose 10. Differences between those acts, for which the extra-linguistic institutions are needed, and those for which they are not necessary E.g. wedding, blessing, excommunication IV 25 11. Differences between acts where the illocutionary verb has a performative use and those where this is not the case E.g. performative use: to state, to promise, to command no performative: "I hereby boast", "hereby I threaten". 12. differences in style E.g. announcing, entrustment. IV 27 SearleVsAustin: the list does not refer to acts but to verbs. One must distinguish between verb and act! E.g. one can proclaim commands, promises, reports but that is something else, as to command, to announce or to report. A proclamation is never merely a proclamation, it also needs to be a determination, a command or the like. IV 30 Searle: E.g.iIf I make you chairman, I do not advocate that you chairman IV 36 Def Declaration/Searle: the successful performance guarantees that the propositional content of the world corresponds. (Later terminology: "institutional facts) Orientation: by the success of the declaration word and world match to each other () No sincerity. Overlapping with assertive:... The referee's decisions. SearleVsAustin: Vs Distinction constative/performative. VII 86 Cavell: "Must we mean what we say?" defends Austin and adds: The deviation can be "really or allegedly" present. Austin: it is neither true nor false that I write this article voluntarily, because if there is no deviation, the concept of free will is not applicable. SearleVsAustin: that's amazing. VII 88 SearleVsAustin: Five theses to see Austin in a different light: 1. Austin exemplifies an analysis pattern that is common today as it is also used at Ryles' analysis of "voluntarily". Ryle thesis of "voluntary" and "involuntary" can be applied only to acts, "you should not have done." Again, it is absurd to use it in an ordinary use. VII 89 Neither true nor false: Wittgenstein: e.g. that I "know that I am in pain" E.g. that Moore knows he has two hands. etc. (> certainty). Austin: E.g. it is neither true nor false, that I went out of free will to the session. VII 90 The use of "voluntary" required certain conditions are not met here. Words in which they are not met, we can call "A-words", the conditions "A-Conditions". We can create a list. 2. the conditions that are exemplified by the slogan "No modification without deviation", penetrate the whole language and are not limited to certain words. E.g. The President is sober today. Hans breathes. etc. VII 91 3. Negation/Searle: the negation of an A-word is not in turn an A-word! E.g. I bought my car not voluntarily, I was forced to. I did not volunteer, I was dragged here. He does not know whether the object in front of him is a tree. Considerable asymmetry between A-words and their opposite or negation. VII 92 SearleVsAustin: according to him, in both cases a deviation is required. 4. A deviation is generally a reason to believe that the claim that is made by the statement to the contrary is true, or could have been, or at least could have been held by someone as true. An A-condition is simply a reason to believe that the remark could have been false. SearleVsAustin: his presentation is misleading because it suggests that any deviation justifies a modification. E.g. if I buy a car while strumming with bare toes on a guitar, which is indeed a different way to buy a car, but it does not justify the remark "He bought his car voluntarily." VII 93 SearleVsAustin: we can come to any list of A-words, because if word requires a deviation, will depend on the rest of the sentence and on the context. Then Austin's thesis is not about words but about propositions. VII 94 Standard situation/circumstances/SearleVsAustin: notice that there is a standard situation, is to suggest that this fact is remarkable and that there is reason to believe that it could also be a non-standard situation. VII 95 SearleVsAustin: his thesis even is not on propositions: to make an assertion means to specify that something is the case. If the possibility that the situation does not exist, is excluded, it is meaningless. Austin's slogan should be formulated to: "No comment, which is not remarkable" or "No assertion that is not worth to be claimed". VII 96 SearleVsAustin: this one has seen it wrong. This is connected with the concept of intention: Intention/Searle: Thesis: the oddity or deviation which is a condition for the utterance "X was deliberately done" represents, at the same time provides a reason for the truth of the statement by "X was not done intentionally". assertion condition/utterance condition: it is the utterance condition of an assertion precisely because it is one reason for the truth of the other. SearleVsAustin: the data must be explained in terms of the applicability of certain terms. So my view is simple and plausible. (VII 98): In Austin's slogan "No modification without deviation" it is not about the applicability of these terms, but rather about conditions for putting up claims generally. Negation/SearleVsAustin: then the negations of the above, are not neither true nor false, but simply false! E.g. I did not go voluntarily to the meeting (I was dragged). etc. VII 98 Example The ability to remember ones name is one of the basic conditions ... |
Searle I John R. Searle The Rediscovery of the Mind, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1992 German Edition: Die Wiederentdeckung des Geistes Frankfurt 1996 Searle II John R. Searle Intentionality. An essay in the philosophy of mind, Cambridge/MA 1983 German Edition: Intentionalität Frankfurt 1991 Searle III John R. Searle The Construction of Social Reality, New York 1995 German Edition: Die Konstruktion der gesellschaftlichen Wirklichkeit Hamburg 1997 Searle IV John R. Searle Expression and Meaning. Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts, Cambridge/MA 1979 German Edition: Ausdruck und Bedeutung Frankfurt 1982 Searle V John R. Searle Speech Acts, Cambridge/MA 1969 German Edition: Sprechakte Frankfurt 1983 Searle VII John R. Searle Behauptungen und Abweichungen In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 Searle VIII John R. Searle Chomskys Revolution in der Linguistik In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 Searle IX John R. Searle "Animal Minds", in: Midwest Studies in Philosophy 19 (1994) pp. 206-219 In Der Geist der Tiere, D Perler/M. Wild Frankfurt/M. 2005 |
| Derrida, J. | Habermas Vs Derrida, J. | Derrida I 95 Derrida: no distinction between everyday language and specialist languages. (DerridaVsSearle). I 196 HabermasVsDerrida: there are differences. Derrida over-generalizes poetic language. There has to be a language in which research results can be discussed and progress registered. HabermasVsDerrida: he does not wriggle out of the restrictions of the subject-philosophical paradigm. His attempt to outbid Heidegger does not escape the aporetic structure of the truth events stripped of truth validity. I 211 Subject-Philosophy/Derrida: Habermas: he does not break with her at all. He falls back on it easily in the style of the original philosophy: it would require other names than those of the sign and the re-presentation to be able think about this age: the infinite derivation of the signs who wander about and change scenes. HabermasVsDerrida: not the history of being the first and last, but an optical illusion: the labyrinthine mirror effects of ancient texts without any hope of deciphering the original script. I 213 HabermasVsDerrida: his deconstructions faithfully follow Heidegger. Involuntarily, he exposes the reverse fundamentalism of this way of thinking: the ontological difference and the being are once again outdone by the difference and put down one floor below. I 214 Derrida inherits the weaknesses of the criticism of metaphysics. Extremely general summonings of an indefinite authority. I 233 DerridaVsSearle: no distinction between ordinary and parasitic use - Searle, HabermasVsDerrida: there is a distinction: communication requires common understanding I 240 Derrida’s thesis: in everyday language there are also poetic functions and structures, therefore no difference from literary texts, therefore equal analysability. HabermasVsDerrida: he is insensitive to the tension-filled polarity between the poetic-world-opening and the prosaic-innerworldly language function. I 241 HabermasVsDerrida: for him, the language-mediated processes in the world are embedded in an all prejudicing, world-forming context. Derrida is blind to the fact that everyday communicative practice enables learning processes in the world thanks to the idealizations built into communicative action, against which the world-disclosing power of interpretive language has to prove itself. Experience and judgment are formed only in the light of criticizable validity claims! Derrida neglects the negation potential of communication-oriented action. He lets the problem-solving capacity disappear behind the world-generating capacity of language. (Similarly Rorty) I 243 HabermasVsDerrida: through the over-generalization of the poetic language function he has no view of the complex relationships of a normal linguistic everyday practice anymore. Rorty II 27 HabermasVsDerrida, HabermasVsHeidegger/Rorty: "subject philosophy": misguided metaphysical attempt to combine the public and the private. Error: thinking that reflection and introspection could achieve what can be actually only be effected by expanding the discussion frame and the participants. II 30 Speaking/Writing/RortyVsDerrida: his complex argument ultimately amounts to a strengthening of the written word at the expense of the spoken. II 32 Language/Communication/HabermasVsDerrida: Derrida denies both the existence of a "peculiarly structured domain of everyday communicative practice" and an "autonomous domain of fiction". Since he denies both, he can analyze any discourse on the model of poetic language. Thus, he does not need to determine language. II 33 RortyVsHabermas: Derrida is neither obliged nor willing to let "language in general" be "determined" by anything. Derrida could agree fully with Habermas in that "the world-disclosing power of interpretive language must prove itself" before metaphors are literarily absorbed and become socially useful tools. RortyVsHabermas: he seems to presuppose that X must be demonstrated as a special case of Y first in order to treat X as Y. As if you could not simply treat X as Y, to see what happens! Deconstruction/Rorty: language is something that can be effective, out of control or stab itself in the back, etc., under its own power. II 35 RortyVsDeconstruktion: nothing suggests that language can do all of this other than an attempt to make Derrida a huge man with a huge topic. The result of such reading is not the grasping of contents, but the placement of texts in contexts, the interweaving of parts of various books. The result is a blurring of genre boundaries. That does not mean that genera "are not real". The interweaving of threads is something else than the assumption that philosophy has "proven" that colors really "are indeterminate and ambiguous." Habermas/Rorty: asks why Heidegger and Derrida still nor advocate those "strong" concepts of theory, truth and system, which have been a thing of the past for more than 150 years. II 36 Justice/Rawls Thesis: the "just thing" has priority over the "good thing". Rawls/Rorty: democratic societies do not have to deal with the question of "human nature" or "subject". Such issues are privatized here. Foundation/Rorty Thesis: there is no Archimedean point from which you can criticize everything else. No resting point outside. RortyVsHabermas: needs an Archimedean point to criticize Foucault for his "relativism". Habermas: "the validity of transcendental spaces and times claimed for propositions and norms "erases space and time"." HabermasVsDerrida: excludes interaction. |
Ha I J. Habermas Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne Frankfurt 1988 Ha III Jürgen Habermas Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns Bd. I Frankfurt/M. 1981 Ha IV Jürgen Habermas Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns Bd. II Frankfurt/M. 1981 Derrida I J. Derrida De la grammatologie, Paris 1967 German Edition: Grammatologie Frankfurt 1993 Rorty I Richard Rorty Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton/NJ 1979 German Edition: Der Spiegel der Natur Frankfurt 1997 Rorty II Richard Rorty Philosophie & die Zukunft Frankfurt 2000 Rorty II (b) Richard Rorty "Habermas, Derrida and the Functions of Philosophy", in: R. Rorty, Truth and Progress. Philosophical Papers III, Cambridge/MA 1998 In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty II (c) Richard Rorty Analytic and Conversational Philosophy Conference fee "Philosophy and the other hgumanities", Stanford Humanities Center 1998 In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty II (d) Richard Rorty Justice as a Larger Loyalty, in: Ronald Bontekoe/Marietta Stepanians (eds.) Justice and Democracy. Cross-cultural Perspectives, University of Hawaii 1997 In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty II (e) Richard Rorty Spinoza, Pragmatismus und die Liebe zur Weisheit, Revised Spinoza Lecture April 1997, University of Amsterdam In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty II (f) Richard Rorty "Sein, das verstanden werden kann, ist Sprache", keynote lecture for Gadamer’ s 100th birthday, University of Heidelberg In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty II (g) Richard Rorty "Wild Orchids and Trotzky", in: Wild Orchids and Trotzky: Messages form American Universities ed. Mark Edmundson, New York 1993 In Philosophie & die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M. 2000 Rorty III Richard Rorty Contingency, Irony, and solidarity, Chambridge/MA 1989 German Edition: Kontingenz, Ironie und Solidarität Frankfurt 1992 Rorty IV (a) Richard Rorty "is Philosophy a Natural Kind?", in: R. Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth. Philosophical Papers Vol. I, Cambridge/Ma 1991, pp. 46-62 In Eine Kultur ohne Zentrum, Stuttgart 1993 Rorty IV (b) Richard Rorty "Non-Reductive Physicalism" in: R. Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth. Philosophical Papers Vol. I, Cambridge/Ma 1991, pp. 113-125 In Eine Kultur ohne Zentrum, Stuttgart 1993 Rorty IV (c) Richard Rorty "Heidegger, Kundera and Dickens" in: R. Rorty, Essays on Heidegger and Others. Philosophical Papers Vol. 2, Cambridge/MA 1991, pp. 66-82 In Eine Kultur ohne Zentrum, Stuttgart 1993 Rorty IV (d) Richard Rorty "Deconstruction and Circumvention" in: R. Rorty, Essays on Heidegger and Others. Philosophical Papers Vol. 2, Cambridge/MA 1991, pp. 85-106 In Eine Kultur ohne Zentrum, Stuttgart 1993 Rorty V (a) R. Rorty "Solidarity of Objectivity", Howison Lecture, University of California, Berkeley, January 1983 In Solidarität oder Objektivität?, Stuttgart 1998 Rorty V (b) Richard Rorty "Freud and Moral Reflection", Edith Weigert Lecture, Forum on Psychiatry and the Humanities, Washington School of Psychiatry, Oct. 19th 1984 In Solidarität oder Objektivität?, Stuttgart 1988 Rorty V (c) Richard Rorty The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy, in: John P. Reeder & Gene Outka (eds.), Prospects for a Common Morality. Princeton University Press. pp. 254-278 (1992) In Solidarität oder Objektivität?, Stuttgart 1988 Rorty VI Richard Rorty Truth and Progress, Cambridge/MA 1998 German Edition: Wahrheit und Fortschritt Frankfurt 2000 |
| Frankl. V. | Nozick Vs Frankl. V. | II 579 Death/Nozick: it is often assumed that our mortality is a particular problem for the meaning of life. Why? Would this problem not exist if life were infinite? Life/Infinite/Victor Frankl: Thesis: it is death himself who gives meaning to life. Suppose we had an infinite life: then we could legitimately postpone all our actions forever. It would be of no consequence whether we do something now or later. It might then happen that someone voluntarily ends their life to give it meaning. Scientists who discovered a remedy for immortality would probably keep it secret. ((s) Vs: (similar to above): this possible world is so far away from us, and the description is so general and vague that it is hard to say anything about it and hardly any conclusions can be drawn from it: would we not need anything to eat then, would we not need to work for it? Would we not need breathe regularly and would we not stumble into certain conflict situations? Would immortality make our bodies so different that the physiology became incomparable and thus our way of life then would not be comparable to our life now? Would there be no competition for finite resources therefore?) Nozick: perhaps other things would be won that would outweigh the loss of meaning? Frankl/Nozick: our only desire is to get certain things done. II 580 Nozick: also: if we had an infinite life, we could look at it as a whole, as something we could shape ((s) Does infinity not prevent that?. NozickVsFrankl: does not seem to be in question whether infinity did not eliminate the meaning of God's existence! Frankl: just general assumption that restrictions and pre-existing structures are necessary to operate a meaningful organization or store things (in vessels). NozickVsFrankl: even if that were true, death is only one way of limitation, sonatas and sonnets have different restrictions. Death: why should we think that the bad thing about death is the good which it ends, and not the good that it prevents from happening? E.g. a child dies three minutes after birth. II 581 Why does it bother us that after death an infinite amount of time will pass in which we do not exist? Death/Epicurus: is not bad for someone who lives, because this is not dead, and not bad for someone who is dead, because the dead no longer exist. Nozick: is death bad because it makes our life finite? E.g. Suppose our past is infinite, but we have forgotten most of it. If death still bothers you, it is not because it makes life finite! E.g. Inverse situation: infinite future. That does not explain why there is an asymmetry between past and future. II 582 E.g. why do we not mourn our late birth as much as we mourn our early death? Is it because we already accept the past as fixed and the future as malleable? Perhaps a fulfilled past in which we have experienced, seen, and lived through everything would let death appear less serious than an endless monotonous past. |
No I R. Nozick Philosophical Explanations Oxford 1981 No II R., Nozick The Nature of Rationality 1994 |
| Habermas, J. | Tugendhat Vs Habermas, J. | II 16 TugendhatVsHabermas/Apel: "good" or the entire ethics cannot be justified linguistically. Only voluntarily. |
Tu I E. Tugendhat Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Sprachanalytische Philosophie Frankfurt 1976 Tu II E. Tugendhat Philosophische Aufsätze Frankfurt 1992 |
| Hume, D. | Verschiedene Vs Hume, D. | Hacking I 68 Causality/W.C.BroadVsHume: VsRegularity: For example we can see that the siren of Manchester howls every day at the same time, whereupon the workers of Leeds let the work rest for one hour. But no causation. Hacking I 70 CartwrightVsHume: the regularities are characteristics of the procedures with which we establish theories. (>Putnam). Hume I 131 Def Atomism/Hume/Deleuze: is the thesis that relations are external to conceptions. (KantVs). VsHume: Critics accuse him of having "atomized" the given. Theory/DeleuzeVsVs: with this one believes to have pilloried a whole system. As if it were a quirk of Hume. What a philosopher says is presented as if it were done or wanted by him. I 132 What do you think you can explain? A theory must be understood from its conceptual basis. A philosophical theory is an unfolded question. Question and critique of the question are one. I 133 It is not about knowing whether things are one way or the other, but whether the question is a good question or not. Apron I 238 Lawlikeness/lawlike/Schurz: b) in the narrower sense: = physical necessity (to escape the vagueness or graduality of the broad term). Problem: not all laws unlimited in space-time are legal in the narrower sense. Universal, but not physically necessary: Example: "No lump of gold has a diameter of more than one kilometre". Universality: is therefore not a sufficient, but a necessary condition for lawfulness. For example, the universal statement "All apples in this basket are red" is not universal, even if it is replaced by its contraposition: For example "All non-red objects are not apples in this basket". (Hempel 1965, 341). Strong Hume-Thesis/Hume/Schurz: Universality is a sufficient condition for lawlikeness. SchurzVs: that is wrong. Weak Hume-Thesis/Schurz: Universality is a necessary condition for lawfulness. ((s) stronger/weaker/(s): the claim that a condition is sufficient is stronger than the claim that it is necessary.) BhaskarVsWeak Hume-Thesis. BhaskarVsHume. Solution/Carnap/Hempel: Def Maxwell Condition/lawlikeness: Natural laws or nomological predicates must not contain an analytical reference to certain individuals or spacetime points. This is much stronger than the universality condition. (stronger/weaker). Example "All emeralds are grue": is universal in space-time, but does not meet the Maxwell condition. ((s) Because observed emeralds are concrete individuals?). I 239 Natural Law/Law of Nature/Armstrong: are relations of implication between universals. Hence no reference to individuals. (1983) Maxwell condition/Wilson/Schurz: (Wilson 1979): it represents a physical principle of symmetry: i.e. laws of nature must be invariant under translation of their time coordinates and translation or rotation of their space coordinates. From this, conservation laws can be obtained. Symmetry Principles/Principle/Principles/Schurz: physical symmetry principles are not a priori, but depend on experience! Maxwell Condition/Schurz: is too weak for lawlikeness: Example "No lump of gold..." also this universal statement fulfills them. Stegmüller IV 243 StegmüllerVsHume: usually proceeds unsystematically and mixes contingent properties of the world with random properties of humans. Ethics/Morality/Hume: 1. In view of scarce resources, people must cooperate in order to survive. 2. HumeVsHobbes: all people have sympathy. If, of course, everything were available in abundance, respect for the property of others would be superfluous: IV 244 People would voluntarily satisfy the needs in the mutual interest according to their urgency. Moral/Ethics/Shaftesbury/ShaftesburyVsHume: wants to build all morality on human sympathy, altruism and charity. (>Positions). HumeVsShaftesbury: illusionary ideal. Ethics/Moral/Hume: 3. Human insight and willpower are limited, therefore sanctions are necessary. 4. Advantageous move: intelligence enables people to calculate long-term interests. IV 245 The decisive driving force is self-interest. It is pointless to ask whether the human is "good by nature" or "bad by nature". It is about the distinction between wisdom and foolishness. 5. The human is vulnerable. 6. Humans are approximately the same. |
Hacking I I. Hacking Representing and Intervening. Introductory Topics in the Philosophy of Natural Science, Cambridge/New York/Oakleigh 1983 German Edition: Einführung in die Philosophie der Naturwissenschaften Stuttgart 1996 Carnap V W. Stegmüller Rudolf Carnap und der Wiener Kreis In Hauptströmungen der Gegenwartsphilosophie Bd I, München 1987 St I W. Stegmüller Hauptströmungen der Gegenwartsphilosophie Bd I Stuttgart 1989 St II W. Stegmüller Hauptströmungen der Gegenwartsphilosophie Bd 2 Stuttgart 1987 St III W. Stegmüller Hauptströmungen der Gegenwartsphilosophie Bd 3 Stuttgart 1987 St IV W. Stegmüller Hauptströmungen der Gegenwartsphilosophie Bd 4 Stuttgart 1989 |
| Kant | Verschiedene Vs Kant | Kanitscheider I 434 KantVsNewton: Infinite unimaginable! NewtonVsKant: unimaginable, but conceptually comprehensible! Kanitscheider I 441 EllisVsKant: (antinomies): the expressions "earlier" and "later" can be related to states before a fixed time t0, without assuming that all these states really existed. Just as one can speak of a temperature of 0 K, even if one knows that this temperature cannot be reached. Kant I 28 VsKant/Causality: Of course, he does not adhere to this himself! His critique of reason is about more than possible experience (namely about metaphysics through freedom and thus about the absolute value of our existence). Here Kant's concept of causality shows itself to be completely unaffected by Hume. - Intelligent Cause. I 47 Mind: has its own causality: "spontaneity of concepts". (VsKant: untouched by Hume). Antinomy of Freedom: VsKant: a bluff: we cannot do it with objects, "it will only be possible with concepts and principles that we accept a priori." I 49 Freedom Antinomy: solution: third cosmological antinomy: theme: the third constitution of the world as a whole: event context. - VsKant: Imposition: the "acting subject", i.e. I, should take myself as an "example" for things! It is not in itself subject to the condition of time. Spontaneous beginning of events. I 53 Freedom/Kant: The freedom of the other would be uncertain. VsKant: A freedom that could be both mine and that of the other cannot be thought of in this way. - VsKant: he misappropriates the problem of identification with the other. (> intersubjectivity, subject/object). I 52 For Kant this was not a problem: for him the rescue was not in the world of appearances. Concept: Predicates only have to be consistent. I 66 SchulteVsKant: this only applies to objects for which it can always be decided, not to chaotic diversity. I 67 Predicate/Kant: Kant simply omits the negative predicates. I 68 I 69 MarxVsKant: Dissertation from 1841: Kant's reference to the worthlessness of imaginary thalers: the value of money itself consists only of imagination! On the contrary, Kant's example could have confirmed the ontological proof! Real thalers have the same existence as imagined gods". I 104 Only through this idea does reason a priori agree with nature at all. This prerequisite is the "expediency of nature" for our cognitive faculty. > Merely logical connection. - VsKant: actually relapse into "thinking in agreement". Die ZEIT 11/02 (Ludger Heidbrink: Rawls) RawlsVsKant: religiously influenced Manichaeism. Because the "good ego" that lives in the intelligent world of understanding is threatened by the "evil ego" of the natural world of the senses, moral action must be anchored in the belief that it is God's will to realize the "supreme good" of existence in accordance with the ideal realm of purposes. Moral/HegelVsKant: in a well-ordered state with a functioning legal system, the individual does not have to be committed to morality, but acts voluntarily in accordance with the moral constitution of bourgeois society. Menne I 28 Kant: transcendental reasoning of logic. It must apply a priori. Kant: analytical judgement: so narrowly defined that even the largest part of mathematics and logic falls within the realm of synthetic judgement. MenneVsKant: if he wanted to justify logic from the twelve categories, this would be a circular conclusion. Vaihinger I 333 Thing in itself/F.A. LangeVsKant/Vaihinger: If the thing itself is fictitious, then also its distinction from the apparitions. ((s)Vs: the distinction is only mental, not empirical). Vollmer I XIV World View/Konrad LorenzVsKant: in no organism do we encounter a world view that would contradict what we humans believe from the outside world. Limit/Lorence: The comparison of the world views of different species helps us to expect and recognize the limitations of our own world view apparatus. |
Kanitsch I B. Kanitscheider Kosmologie Stuttgart 1991 Kanitsch II B. Kanitscheider Im Innern der Natur Darmstadt 1996 Me I A. Menne Folgerichtig Denken Darmstadt 1997 Vaihinger I H. Vaihinger Die Philosophie des Als Ob Leipzig 1924 |
| Nozick, R. | Verschiedene Vs Nozick, R. | I 378 Minimal State/Nozick: Rights/Nozick: the human has the right to self-destruction. Other people are untouchable. Taxes/Nozick: there is no abstract total social benefit. Therefore, millionaires should not be taxed. I 379 Utilitarianism/Nozick/Rawls: both reject all utilitarian considerations and calculations! Life: only a creature with the ability to plan its own life can have a meaningful life. Property: the individual is its own property and not that of another. Otherwise one could, for example, remove its kidneys on demand. Reason: the individual would not have worked them out itself. The free market with private property rights will ensure the effective use of scarce resources and encourage inventiveness and new thinking. This is the reason why those who have fewer resources available because they have already used others are not really worse off. I 381 For example, suppose one person's life could only be saved by violating another person's property right, for example over a certain medicine. Nozick: in certain extreme cases, his principle that the property of others is absolutely inviolable can be relaxed. VsNozick: unfortunately, deals nowhere with how the moral status of these rights is founded. Question: if the right to property has the same moral value as the right to self-determination, the plausibility of the starting position is endangered. If the second has priority over the first, the argumentation is inconclusive, because the inviolability of property is a necessary precondition for the rejection of any form of state. I 383 Distribution/Nozick: there is no allocation or distribution of goods just as there is no allocation of spouses in a society. The just distribution therefore depends on the way in which the property came into the hands of the owner, that is, on its prehistory. (Most other theories about distributive justice deal only with the result of distribution or the key: e.g. Rawls' principle of difference). Justice: a) original acquisition: appropriation of "masterless" goods. b) transfer of possessions. I 384 1. Anyone who acquires a property in accordance with the principle of just appropriation shall be entitled to that property. 2. Anyone who acquires a property in accordance with the principle of equitable transfer from someone who is entitled to the property shall be entitled to the property. 3. Claims to possessions arise only through (repeated) application of rules (1) and (2). c) Correction of injustices. Dealing with thieves, fraudsters and perpetrators of violence. Question: how can the sins of the past be corrected again? VsNozick: he deals with this complicated problem on less than one and a half pages. He only says that this is an important and complicated problem. Distributive justice/Nozick: Difference: structured (historical) principles/non-structured (non-historical) principles. I 384/385 "Natural Dimension": distribution according to performance (historical). Historical: according to intelligence or race. E.g. Basketball fans pay completely overpriced prices to see their star. Nozick: this must be seen as completely fair, since it happens voluntarily. The appearance of injustice arises only if, on the one hand, individuals are granted a free right of disposal over their goods and, on the other hand, it is demanded that the distribution resulting from the exercise of this right should have taken place in accordance with the original structured and result-oriented distribution principle. Nozick: there can be no enforcement of result-oriented principles or structural distribution without permanent interference in people's lives! In order to maintain a certain structure, the state would have to intervene again and again. I 386 VsNozick: Question: why does he assume that people in the state of the original distributive justice V1 have absolute freedom to deal with their possessions at their own discretion (to buy overpriced baseball tickets)? A right which, according to the structural theories, they supposedly have based on their assumptions V1, yes, a right they do not even possess! Contradiction. The question is more complicated than it seems: Goods/Nozick: are seen by Nozick as a kind of mass entry to the common catering of all. VsNozick: this systematically ignores the demands of the workers from their own production. Nozick unfortunately gives himself a systematic discussion of this problem of competing demands. |
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| Ordinary Language | Positivism Vs Ordinary Language | Fodor II 118 PositivismusVsOrdinary Language/PositivismVsOxford: the philosophy of ordinary language has no system. A representation of natural language, which does not specify its formal structure, cannot comprehend the production principles for the syntactic and semantic properties. II 123 FodorVsOrdinary Language: that forces the philosophers of ordinary language to seek refuge more and more with the intuitions. II 124 In particular, he will claim to detect anomalies intuitively and to say that a philosophical problem is solved if anomalies are detected. (Cavell asserts that!). FodorVsCavell: Contradiction: so he thinks that in philosophical practice it is important not to use words wrongly, and at the same time he thinks that he can decide with the help of intuition when a word is misused. Even though it may be clear intuitively when a word is abnormal, it is not enough for philosophical purposes to know that it is abnormal, it may be abnormal for many reasons, some of which are not faulty! E.g. If you accuse a metaphysicist that he uses language wrongly, he will answer rightly: "So what?" Moreover, we cannot demand of a theory of meaning that any expression which is called abnormal by a theoretically untrained speaker is also evaluated as such by the theory. II 125 The theory should rather only determine semantic violations. II 126 FodorVsIntuitions: decisions about unusualness (anomalies) cannot be extrapolated in any way if they are based only on intuitions. Then we have no theory, but only overstretched intuitions. OxfordVsFodor/Ordinary LanguageVsFodor: could counter that we have ignored the principle of treating similar cases with similar methods. FodorVsVs: that is beside the point: specifying relevant similarity means precisely to accurately determine the production rules. III 222 Ordinary Language/Cavell: here there are three possible types to make statements about them: Type I Statement: "We say..., but we do not say...." ((s) use statements) Type II Statement: The supplementation of type I statements with explanations. Type III Statement: Generalizations. Austin: E.g. we can make a voluntary gift. (Statement about the world). Cavell: conceives this as "substantive mode" for "We say: 'The gift was made voluntarily'". (Statement about the language). Voluntary/RyleVsAustin: expresses that there is something suspicious about the act. We should not have performed the act. Cavell Thesis: such contradictions are not empirical in any reasonable sense. III 223 Expressions of native speakers are no findings about what you can say in a language, they are the source of utterances. ((s) data). Also without empiricism we are entitled to any Type I statement that we need to support a Type II statement. |
F/L Jerry Fodor Ernest Lepore Holism. A Shoppers Guide Cambridge USA Oxford UK 1992 Fodor I Jerry Fodor "Special Sciences (or The Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis", Synthese 28 (1974), 97-115 In Kognitionswissenschaft, Dieter Münch Frankfurt/M. 1992 Fodor II Jerry Fodor Jerrold J. Katz Sprachphilosophie und Sprachwissenschaft In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 Fodor III Jerry Fodor Jerrold J. Katz The availability of what we say in: Philosophical review, LXXII, 1963, pp.55-71 In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 |
| Ryle, G. | Austin Vs Ryle, G. | Vendler I 243 Voluntary/Ryle: this word is only used for acts that seem to be the result of a person's guilt. AustinVsRyle: you can also make a gift voluntarily. Voluntarily/Cavell: middle way between Austin and Ryle: the action must at least be suspect. |
Austin I John L. Austin "Truth" in: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 24 (1950): 111 - 128 In Wahrheitstheorien, Gunnar Skirbekk Frankfurt/M. 1977 Austin II John L. Austin "A Plea for Excuses: The Presidential Address" in: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 57, Issue 1, 1 June 1957, Pages 1 - 3 German Edition: Ein Plädoyer für Entschuldigungen In Linguistik und Philosophie, Grewendorf/Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 Vendler II Z. Vendler Linguistics in Philosophy Ithaca 1967 Vendler I Zeno Vendler "Linguistics and the a priori", in: Z. Vendler, Linguistics in Philosophy, Ithaca 1967 pp. 1-32 In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 |
| Ryle, G. | Cavell Vs Ryle, G. | II 170 Everyday Language/Cavell: here there are three possible types to make statements about them: Type I statement: "We say ...... but we do not say..." Type II statement: the addition of explanations to Type I statements. Type III statements: generalizations. II 171 AustinVsRyle: for example a gift can be given voluntarily (without being guilty) but that is not something you should normally not do. II 173 CavellVsRyle: requires an explicit explanation (Type II statement): he is generally entitled to do so, but especially with regard to his example "voluntarily" the generalization goes wrong: II 174 (E.g. Austin: voluntary gift). Austin Thesis: we cannot always say of actions that they are voluntary, even if they were obviously not involuntary either. CavellVsRyle: he has not completely neglected it, his mistake is that he characterizes these actions incompletely and those where the question cannot arise wrongly. He does not see that the condition for the use of the term "voluntarily" applies in general. II 175 He falsely assumes that "not voluntary" means "involuntary". Cavell: this is also overlooked by utilitarianism. |
Cavell I St. Cavell Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen Frankfurt 2002 Cavell I (a) Stanley Cavell "Knowing and Acknowledging" in: St. Cavell, Must We Mean What We Say?, Cambridge 1976, pp. 238-266 In Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen, Stanley Cavell Frankfurt/M. 2002 Cavell I (b) Stanley Cavell "Excursus on Wittgenstein’s Vision of Language", in: St. Cavell, The Claim of Reason, Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy, New York 1979, pp. 168-190 In Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen, Stanley Cavell Frankfurt/M. 2002 Cavell I (c) Stanley Cavell "The Argument of the Ordinary, Scenes of Instruction in Wittgenstein and in Kripke", in: St. Cavell, Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism, Chicago 1990, pp. 64-100 In Die Unheimlichkeit des Gewöhnlichen, Davide Sparti/Espen Hammer (eds.) Frankfurt/M. 2002 Cavell II Stanley Cavell "Must we mean what we say?" in: Inquiry 1 (1958) In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 |
| Use Theory | Searle Vs Use Theory | III 64 Use theory of meaning/SearleVsSearleVsUse theory: E.g. it is said that in Muslim countries a man can divorce his wife by simply saying three times "I divorce myself from you," while throwing three white pebbles. This is obviously a deviating use of the word compared to the use of the word in our societies. Anyone who thinks that meaning is use, would have to conclude that the word "divorce" has a different meaning for Muslims than for others. But that is not the case! III 64/65 Solution/Searle: an existing proposition form has been assigned a new status function. The proposition form "I divorce myself from you," does not change its meaning when a new status function is added. Rather, it is now simply used to create a new institutional fact. (Declaration). E.g. that does not apply to every institutional fact: you cannot make a touchdown (baseball), by simply saying that you make it. III 79 Causality/Status Function/Searle: Status functions differ from causal use functions in terms of their language dependency: E.g. one can think without all the words that this is a screwdriver because you can easily think that this thing is used to screw in these other things, because you may have seen it many times. To treat an object as a screwdriver and to use it, no words are logically necessary! (> Use) There are structural properties available that may be perceived without using words. Status: here no physical features are available. V 221 Searle: the concept of use is too vague. SearleVsUse theory: 1. no indication of the distinction between the use of a word and the use of a proposition! 2. false conviction: because we could not say this or that under certain conditions, it could under these conditions not be the case! V 221/222 E.g. "under what conditions would we say that he can remember this or that or the act was carried out voluntarily?" False: 1. What does W mean? 2. How is W used? 3. How is W used in simple present indicative propositions of the form "X is W"? (Way too specific!). 4. how are such propositions used? V 223 5. Which illocutionary act is performed? 6. When would we say such propositions? The assumption that the answers to the fifth question represent necessary answers to the first leads to speech fallacy. ((s) as Tugendhat: meaning not from circumstances.) Relation to the fallacy of criticism of the naturalistic fallacy: V 224 SearleVsUse theory: "Use" is too vague to distinguish between the truth-conditions of the proposition expressed and the truth conditions of the illocutionary strength of the expression. V 229 SearleVsUse theory: there is a difference between the question "What does it mean to call something good?" and "What is the meaning of" good "?" V 234 SearleVsUse theory: E.g. obscenities: the use of obscenities is substantially different from that of the corresponding courteous synonyms. E.g. "He is not a nigger" is just as derogatory as "He is a nigger". |
Searle IX John R. Searle "Animal Minds", in: Midwest Studies in Philosophy 19 (1994) pp. 206-219 In Der Geist der Tiere, D Perler/M. Wild Frankfurt/M. 2005 |
| Various Authors | Lewis Vs Various Authors | I (b) 21 Tradition had no problems or disputes in equating water with H2 0 or light with electromagnetic radiation. According to the conventional wisdom, such identifications are made voluntarily. Simply with the help of >bridge laws. Tradition: the equating is made, not found! (LewisVs, Putnam/KripkeVs). I (b) 22 LewisVsTradition (see above): theoretical identifications are not fixed, they follow rather from the theories that make them possible. |
Lewis I David K. Lewis Die Identität von Körper und Geist Frankfurt 1989 Lewis I (a) David K. Lewis An Argument for the Identity Theory, in: Journal of Philosophy 63 (1966) In Die Identität von Körper und Geist, Frankfurt/M. 1989 Lewis I (b) David K. Lewis Psychophysical and Theoretical Identifications, in: Australasian Journal of Philosophy 50 (1972) In Die Identität von Körper und Geist, Frankfurt/M. 1989 Lewis I (c) David K. Lewis Mad Pain and Martian Pain, Readings in Philosophy of Psychology, Vol. 1, Ned Block (ed.) Harvard University Press, 1980 In Die Identität von Körper und Geist, Frankfurt/M. 1989 Lewis II David K. Lewis "Languages and Language", in: K. Gunderson (Ed.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. VII, Language, Mind, and Knowledge, Minneapolis 1975, pp. 3-35 In Handlung, Kommunikation, Bedeutung, Georg Meggle Frankfurt/M. 1979 Lewis IV David K. Lewis Philosophical Papers Bd I New York Oxford 1983 Lewis V David K. Lewis Philosophical Papers Bd II New York Oxford 1986 Lewis VI David K. Lewis Convention. A Philosophical Study, Cambridge/MA 1969 German Edition: Konventionen Berlin 1975 LewisCl Clarence Irving Lewis Collected Papers of Clarence Irving Lewis Stanford 1970 LewisCl I Clarence Irving Lewis Mind and the World Order: Outline of a Theory of Knowledge (Dover Books on Western Philosophy) 1991 |
| Volitions | Ryle Vs Volitions | 79 Volition/Act of will/Tradition/Ryle: long-term undisputed axiom: that the human mind is three-parted: thought, feeling, will. Tradition/Ryle: also modes: of knowing, of affection, of striving. We refute this, but do not deny that there are will-strong and weak people, voluntary and involuntary acts. Tradition/Ryle: only when my body movement arises from an act of will, I deserve praise or blame. --- I 80 RyleVsVolitions/Ryle: inevitable expansion of the myth of the ghost in the machine. He assumes that there are states of mind and processes, and there are different states of the body and processes for this. An event on the one stage is never identical to an event on the other stage. A causal proposition is necessary, which says that the physical action of pulling the trigger of the pistol is an effect of the mental act of will to pull the trigger. A mental impulse has caused the contraction of the muscles. This is the language of the paramechanic theory of mind. When a theorist believes in acts of will, he believes in the mind as a secondary field of special causes. He will then speak of physical actions as "utterances" of mental processes. RyleVsVolitions: 1 .: nobody ever says (even not the advocates of the theory) that he was busy at ten o'clock in the morning, to want this or that. Or he carried out five fast and light and two slow and heavy acts of will between the breakfast and lunch. If there were acts of will, with what predicates would they be described? Could they be sudden or gradual, strong or weak, pleasant or unpleasant? Can I do two or seven of them at the same time? Can I execute one in a dream, or while I think of something else? Can I mistakenly believe that I had executed one? At what moment did the jumper perform his act of will as he put his foot on the ladder when he took a deep breath when he counted one, two, three but did not jump? What would he answer to these questions himself? Acts of will/Tradition/Ryle: Advocates of the theory say, of course, that the execution of acts of will would be tacitly asserted whenever an action is described as voluntary, deliberate, etc. They also say that one cannot only, but one must know that one carries out an act of will. RyleVsVolitions: but you cannot ask an advocate when he has done his last act of will, or whether he performs one when he recites "Oh, you dear Augustin" backwards. He will admit that he had difficulties in answering these questions, although he should not have any according to his own theory. RyleVsVolitions: 2. It is admitted that one can never observe an act of will. One can only conclude from effects. It follows from this that no judge, father, or teacher ever knows whether the deeds which he judges deserve praise or rebuke. The making of confessions is also just another muscle movement. (The only thing you can observe according to this theory). Nor can it be maintained that the agent himself can know whether any action is the effect of an act of will. Suppose, for example, that he could localize his act of will shortly before pulling the trigger of the pistol due to introspection. Then it would still not prove that the pulling of the trigger was the effect of the act of will. It could still be caused by another event. (Regress) RyleVsVolitions: 3. The connection between the act of will and the movement is admittedly puzzling. It is not, however, an unsolved mystery of a solvable kind, as the problem of recognizing the causes of disease, but of a quite different kind. Tradition/Ryle: The episodes in the life of the mind have supposedly a completely different existence than the episodes in the career of a body. A middle position is not allowed. But interrelationships between the body and the mind need the middle members, where there can be no members. VsVolitions: 4. It is the main function of acts of will to induce body movements, but from the argument to the proof of their existence, as weak as it is, it follows that some mental events must also be caused by acts of will. (Regress). Acts of will/Tradition/Ryle: were postulated to make actions voluntarily, resolutely, laudably or wanton. But predicates of this kind are not only attributed to body movements, but also to those activities that are not physical, but mental, according to the theory. Acts of will/volitions: Ryle: what is the status of the will acts themselves? Are they voluntary or involuntary? ((s)> Schopenhauer: We are free to do what we want, but not free to want what we want). VsVolitions/Ryle: both voluntary and involuntary acts of will are absurd. If my act of will is voluntary in the sense of theory, another act of will must have preceded it, ad infinitum (regress). It has been proposed for avoidance that the acts of will can neither be described as voluntary nor involuntary. "Act of will" is a term that cannot accept predicates such as "virtuous," "vicious," "good," or "wicked," which may embarrass those moralists who use the acts of will as the emergency anchor of their systems. --- I 85 In short, the theory of acts of will is a causal hypothesis, and the question of voluntariness is a question of the cause. |
Ryle I G. Ryle The Concept of Mind, Chicago 1949 German Edition: Der Begriff des Geistes Stuttgart 1969 |
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The author or concept searched is found in the following 4 theses of the more related field of specialization.
| Disputed term/author/ism | Author |
Entry |
Reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Modification | Austin, J.L. | III 48 Austin/Thesis: "No modification without deviation": i.e. no modification of the language without deviation in behavior (to normality). One is of the opinion that there must always be at least one modifying expression. Austin: this is completely unjustified for most uses of most verbs! E.g. "eat", "push", "play football" here no modifying expression is necessary or even permissible. Probably also not with "murder". A modifying expression is only permissible in the case of a deviating design. Searle VII 86 Austin: Thesis: The terms used by us to modify descriptions of actions, such as "intentionally", "voluntarily", etc., are only used to modify an action if the action is somehow deviant or cross. "No modification without deviation". VII 93 .... Austin's thesis is not about words but about sentences. |
Searle IX John R. Searle "Animal Minds", in: Midwest Studies in Philosophy 19 (1994) pp. 206-219 In Der Geist der Tiere, D Perler/M. Wild Frankfurt/M. 2005 |
| Ethics | Hume, D. | Stegmüller IV 243 Ethics/Moral/Hume: Thesis 1. In view of scarce resources, people must cooperate in order to survive. 2. HumeVsHobbes: all people have sympathy. If, of course, everything were available in abundance, respect for the property of others would be superfluous: IV 244 People would voluntarily satisfy the needs in the mutual interest according to their urgency. IV 244 Ethics/Morality/Hume: Thesis 3. human insight and willpower are limited, therefore sanctions are necessary. 4. Advantageous move: intelligence enables people to calculate long-term interests. IV 245 The decisive driving force is self-interest. It is pointless to ask whether the human is "good by nature" or "bad by nature". It is about the distinction between wisdom and foolishness. 5. Humans are vulnerable. 6. Humans are approximately the same. |
Carnap V W. Stegmüller Rudolf Carnap und der Wiener Kreis In Hauptströmungen der Gegenwartsphilosophie Bd I, München 1987 St IV W. Stegmüller Hauptströmungen der Gegenwartsphilosophie Bd 4 Stuttgart 1989 |
| Determinism | Lewis, D. | V 291 Def soft Determinism/Lewis: the thesis that one sometimes voluntarily does what one is predestined to do and that in such cases one could also act differently, although prehistory and the laws of nature determine that one will not act differently. Def Compatibilism/Lewis: is the thesis that soft determinism could be true. But a compatibilist could still doubt soft determinism because he doubts that there is a physical basis, that we are predetermined to act as we act. Lewis: Thesis: I myself am a compatibilist, but not a determinist. For the sake of the argument, I will pretend to represent soft determinism. V 293 Weak Thesis/Lewis: I am able to do something so that if I did, a natural law would be broken. Strong Thesis: I am able to break natural laws. V 295 Lewis: Thesis: I was able to raise my hand (instead of actual lowering). I acknowledge that a natural law had to be broken for this, but I deny that I would be able to break natural laws because of it. Soft Determinism does not require supernatural forces. Compatibilism/Lewis: in order to maintain it one does not even have to assume that supernatural powers are possible at all! |
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| Voluntarily | Ryle, G. | Searle VII 88 Ryle s thesis: "voluntary" and "involuntary" can be applied only to acts "that you should not have done." Again, it is absurd to use it in ordinary use. |
Searle IX John R. Searle "Animal Minds", in: Midwest Studies in Philosophy 19 (1994) pp. 206-219 In Der Geist der Tiere, D Perler/M. Wild Frankfurt/M. 2005 |
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