Argumentation ethics

Argumentation ethics, a form of discourse ethics that attempts to establish normative or ethical truths by examining the presuppositions of discourse, is a defense of libertarianism rights asserting that argumentation, or discourse, is by its nature a conflict-free way of interacting and requires individual control of resources.

Justification

The argument by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a modern proponent of argumentation ethics, goes that an individual cannot consistently deny, in the course of argumentation, any of those things which the argument, or discourse, presupposes; doing so is to perform a performative contradiction.

According to the theory, certain norms are presupposed as true by anyone engaging in genuine discourse.

Hoppe's Rationale

The rationale on behalf of argumentation ethics is found on page 334 of Hoppe's book The Economics and Ethics of Private Property.

Argumentation does not consist of free-floating propositions but is a form of action requiring the employment of scarce means; and that the means which a person demonstrates as preferring by engaging in propositional exchanges are those of private property. For one thing, no one could possibly propose anything, and no one could become convinced of any proposition by argumentative means, if a person’s right to make exclusive use of his physical body were not already presupposed. It is this recognition of each other’s mutually exclusive control over one’s own body which explains the distinctive character of propositional exchanges that, while one may disagree about what has been said, it is still possible to agree at least on the fact that there is disagreement. It is also obvious that such a property right to one’s own body must be said to be justified a priori, for anyone who tried to justify any norm whatsoever would already have to presuppose the exclusive right of control over his body as a valid norm simply in order to say, “I propose such and such.” Anyone disputing such a right would become caught up in a practical contradiction since arguing so would already imply acceptance of the very norm which he was disputing.

Criticisms

One criticism is that argumentation ethics conflates the ontological concept of control of one's self with the ethical concept of self-ownership. That is to say, just as someone has the ability to control one's self, that does not give rise to why another ought to refrain from physically interfering with that control.