The Great Fiction, Second Expanded Edition

It is possible to describe and explain man in naturalistic terms, in the same way as we describe and explain stones, plants and animals: in the language of physics, chemistry, biology, genetics, neurology, etc.

But a purely naturalistic account of man, while entirely legitimate, and even if true, must fail to capture the essence of man: what makes man unique and distinguishes him from all other things: from stones, plants and animals. That this is the case can be easily recognized in asking oneself what it is that one is doing when debating the question at hand—the nature of man—or any other question for that matter. The answer: We speak to each other in meaningful words and sentences—we present arguments—and we do so with the purpose of argumentative success, of reaching agreement regarding the validity of an argument or the truth of some proposition. Yet it is obviously impossible to give a naturalistic account of this undeniable part of human nature: of meaningful words, sentences and arguments, of intention and purpose, of truth and falsehood, and of success and failure. There is nothing purposeful, meaningful, true, false, successful or unsuccessful in nature. Nature and the laws of nature are what they are and they work the way they do, unchangingly and unfailingly. Yet human propositions or sentences are intentional, meaningful, and true or false, i.e., all meaning and all truths are in a most fundamental sense meaning-and-truths-for-man rather than meaning-and-truths-an-sich.

Hence, every natural scientist—whether biologist, physiologist, chemist, geneticist or neurologist—who claims that man can be reduced to nothing but nature becomes entangled in contradiction.

On the one hand, the ‘man’ this scientist speaks and writes about: man-as-nature (which he claims to be the only ‘man’ there is), has no purpose and no meaning and nothing about its inner workings is true or false, successful or failing. Everything works the way it does, in accordance with unchanging and unfailing causal laws. Even life and death have no meaning. Death and bodily decay do not falsify causal laws. Nor does life confirm these laws. The same laws of nature hold for life and death equally. Life and death are not a “success” or “failure,” as far as man-as-nature is concerned. They simply are: morally (valuation-ally) “neutral” events. And yet: On the other hand, he, the very scientist, who obviously counts himself as a member of the class of ‘man,’ follows a purpose in conducting his research on man-as-nature. He conducts purposeful operations and must employ meaningful sentences to describe the results of his research concerning “an-sich” meaningless natural materials and processes. He claims these results to be true rather than false. And given his purpose, he considers his research a success or a failure. And for him, in contrast to man-as-nature, death and bodily malfunctions do have meaning and are indeed failures and malfunctions. Yet they have meaning and are failures or malfunctions only insofar as they are related to a human purpose: the purpose of wanting to preserve life and health (as something “good”) and to prevent illness and death (as something “bad”).

Instead of a necessarily insufficient and incomplete “naturalistic” account, then, I want to present what one might call a cultural(istic) account of man, which captures what the naturalistic account leaves out and thus elucidates what distinguishes man from everything else.

And we have already gained a non-naturalistic starting point from which we must begin this endeavor: the apriori of argumentation.

Man can undeniably argue. Not only is arguing what we do here and now, there is simply no other starting point available, for whatever we may choose as such a point, we cannot but speak and argue about it. We cannot deny that argumentation must be the starting point, and the point of departure of all talk about man, without falling into some (immediately to be explained) form of contradiction.

Setting out from the apriori of argumentation as my necessary and undeniable—and hence apriori true—starting point, then, it is my plan to explain everything that is already “implied” in this apriori and hence likewise must be regarded as apriori true.

That is, my following argument aims to establish and elucidate what must be presupposed by argumentation, i.e., what an arguer must accept as more basic and elementary than argumentation, as the pre-argumentative foundation of argumentation, if you will, and that makes argumentation possible.

Four immediate insights spring to mind: (1) Argumentation presupposes action. Action comes before argumentation. All arguing is acting and every arguer knows what it is to act. But only very few actions are argumentation. (2) Even most of our speech acts—acts accompanied by words—are not argumentation. The employment of language for other, non-argumentative purposes also comes before and is presupposed by argumentation. (3) In fact, most of the time we do not speak at all when we act. We act silently, and silent action, too, comes before and is presupposed by argumentation. (4) Argumentative discourse is rare and has the unique purpose and aim of resolving disagreements regarding the truth of certain propositions or the validity of certain arguments.

First: Since many here are familiar with Mises’s work, I can be brief regarding the first point. Arguing is a special case of acting. Everything that can be stated about actions in general applies also to the special case of argumentation. Like all action, argumentation takes place in time and space and is constrained by scarcity and time. Argumentation, too, is a motivated, purposeful activity.

But: Not all action is argumentation. Argumentation is an activity sui generis.

Second: While arguing is also a form of communicative—language-using—action (interaction) aimed at the successful coordination of the actions of a community of speakers, most communicative action is non-argumentative, i.e., is speech not concerned with the clarification of truth-claims. In fact, even the request or the suggestion to enter into an argumentation is apparently not itself a right or wrong proposition or argument, but a request or a suggestion. Which demonstrates that non-argumentative communication comes and must have been learned temporally and logically prior to argumentation. Most fundamentally, before we can ever engage in argumentation, we must already know and have learned (at a minimum) how to use words to call upon someone and how to point out, draw attention or refer to something to be done or expected. It would be senseless to deny this, because the proponent of this argument must already presuppose these abilities as an apriori ‘given’ both for himself as well as for his opponent. The apriori of argumentation, then, implies as its logical and practical—praxeological—presupposition and foundation, an apriori of communicative action.

Analytically, in any type of human speech act or communicative action we can distinguish two categorically distinct parts or constituents. On the one hand, all speech has a propositional part. Therein something is stated regarding certain facts (what it is that we are talking about). On the other hand, every speech has an illocutionary or performative part whereby the speaker places the propositional part of his speech into a social or interactive context, commenting, so to say, to other speakers what to make of it. The same propositional content: for instance, “this banana,” can be presented in various performative modes such as “Is this a banana?” “I promise you this banana,” “this is my banana,” “take this banana,” “I am telling you a story about a banana,” “I am ordering you to get rid of this banana,” etc. Speaking, then, is more than a mere statement of facts (facts being what propositions are about). It involves always and invariably that a given propositional content is uttered and placed in some specific performative mode.

Accordingly, the success (or failure) of a communicative action aimed at coordination depends on a two-fold accomplishment. The understanding of the speech’s propositional content and the acceptance of the modus of proposing it.

Coordination is successful if I ask you to bring me a banana and you bring me one. It is unsuccessful if you don’t know the meaning of “banana” or “bring”—and you bring me a teddy bear instead or you respond to my request by saying, for instance, “I am 60 years old” (indicating that you haven’t understood the entire purpose of my speech). Likewise, coordination is unsuccessful if you understand what I say, but you reject my proposal and reply, for example, “I don’t take orders from you,” or “I have no time,” or simply walk away from me.

Moreover and importantly, unsuccessful coordination (dis-coordination) can take two possible forms or outcomes: “simple” disappointment or “serious” conflict. After you (disappointingly) walked away from my request (and my speech act has failed), we both go about our daily business as before (silently), I with the means under my control and you with the means under your control. A case of disappointment.

A conflict results, if, instead of you bringing me a banana (successful communication) or walking away from me (disappointing communication), you respond, for example, by taking a pocket knife against my protestations out of my hand or pulling my hair. As well, conflict results if I respond to your disappointing refusal by following you against your protestation into your house (the house previously under your undisputed control). In both cases, we clash, because we want to employ the very same scarce means—the knife, the hair, the house—for incompatible purposes. Because of the scarcity of physical means, only one purpose can be realized and fulfilled. We must clash.

Let me pause here for a moment for a few critically important empirical observations. The achievements of the social sciences are often belittled or even ridiculed. And in view of much if not most of contemporary academic sociology, this assessment is certainly well deserved. Yet this should not blind us toward noticing some rather obvious facts.

It must surely come as reassuring and refreshing to observe that much if not most of our communicative action—our speech-acts—is successful, both in being understood and in being accepted for what it is. Far more communication is successful than not. And if communication is not successful and fails to reach its end of interpersonal coordination, these failures are mostly mere disappointments. Failed communication in the form of conflict is a comparatively rare occurrence (and its notoriety is derived from this rarity). By and large, we are amazingly successful as speakers in bringing about coordination.

And if speaking is and does for us in the social world (made up of other people and their actions) what engineering is and does for us in the natural world (made up of stones, plants and animals and their behavior), then we must actually come to the conclusion that we are quite successful as social engineers, as people effecting coordination by means of speech.

Moreover, even if communicative action sometimes fails to attain coordination, we have a method of learning and improving it.

I will come back to the subject of argumentation. But before some first attention must be given to silent or speechless action and the categorically distinct purpose of communicative action vs. instrumental action.

Most of what we do is silent or speechless action. In fact, just as communicative action comes before and is presupposed by argumentation, so silent action comes before and is presupposed by communicative action. On the one hand, this is revealed by the fact that, as children, we learn to act before we learn to speak and use words to identify and describe our actions as actions. And on the other hand, it is revealed by the fact that, however important communicative action may otherwise be in human life, acting man cannot live off and sustain his life from words alone. He must first transform nature to produce material goods for the ultimate purpose of consumption in order to then find the time to engage in communication or argumentation.

Getting dressed, cooking, eating, walking, working, observing, planting, harvesting, building, measuring, counting, cutting, cleaning, repairing, driving, drinking, etc., are all examples of silent action. In all of these activities we follow methodically ordered practical recipes of how to use scarce physical means in order to reach an anticipated goal (being dressed, having cooked, eaten, etc.). If asked, and on reflection, we could give an account of our actions in terms of meaningful words and sentences: about their purposes, about the means used, and about the recipes followed and applied in using such means. And other speakers could understand this account, because we all are united by a common language learned through common practice in language games. But we are silent, because we judge the success (or failure) of our action as independent of any communicative effort (otherwise communication would have to be part of the recipe leading to success). We stay silent, because we deem the success of our action as dependent solely on us, as if we were the only person on earth, as if we stood in a purely monologic relation to the world and were the sole judge of success and failure.

As already noted, every instrumental or speechless activity involves the use of scarce physical means in reach and under control of a given actor, with the purpose of transforming or re-arranging the physical-material world around him into another more highly valued anticipated future arrangement or configuration of his material surroundings. In this, he is always guided by some ideas or knowledge in the form of action-recipes. If he reaches his goal, his recipes are considered correct and the knowledge contained in them can be said to be true. If he fails to reach his goal, the recipes are incorrect and his knowledge is considered false or insufficient.

Interestingly, in the wake of the writings of such prominent intellectual figures as Willard v. O. Quine, Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend, the relativism and skepticism characteristic of much of the philosophy of the social sciences has also taken increasing hold in the philosophy of the natural sciences. Even in the natural sciences, these authors claim in their various ways, there exists no rock-solid foundation and no systematic and methodical progress, and hence the possibility of any “growth of knowledge” must be put in fundamental doubt. Instead, much is made by them of the “indeterminacy of translation,” “ontological relativity,” the “incommensurability of paradigms,” and “methodological anarchism.”

In light of what has already been noted about the role of knowledge as a mental tool in the pursuit of successful instrumental action and the intentional transformation of nature into culture, these relativistic views, however popular or fashionable they may currently be, must be considered fundamentally mistaken. Indeed, as I am going to further demonstrate, they should strike one as nothing short of absurd.

For one, it would seem to be obvious that most—and increasingly more—of the world around us is not “raw nature” or nature-given “environment,” but made up instead of manufactured goods (or means). We are surrounded by houses and streets, farms, factories, tables, chairs, toasters, telephones, pipes, wires, cars, boats, napkins, toilet paper, and on and on. Almost never, in our daily lives, do we encounter “raw nature.” What we encounter almost exclusively instead is a world of man-made culture: of “artificial” objects, designed for a definite purpose.

Importantly (but regularly overlooked by relativistic philosophers of the natural sciences), also the natural scientist in particular does not approach nature with his bare hands, as it were, but with the help of purposefully manufactured goods. To make his nature-observations, he employs man-made surfaces, planes, rulers, lines, points, angles, circles, curves, clocks, scales, calculators, microscopes, telescopes, burners, lighters, thermometers, X-ray machines, etc., etc. Without these instruments, there would be no observations, and without the proper functioning of these instruments his observations would not be “scientific” observations. As well, whenever the natural scientist conducts an experiment, he must, so as to isolate the effect of one variable on another, hold other variables constant. That is, he must artificially design and arrange nature in order to only then generate his data, and again these data are “scientific” data only if the experiment was designed and conducted properly. Indeed, even “plain” or “raw” observations, such as an eyewitness account, for instance, require that the observer is properly placed or situated vis-à-vis the observed object, and hence, his observations, too, are “artificial,” purposefully generated data.

Moreover, empirically equally obvious, most of our actions involving manufactured means and most of the natural scientists’ manufactured data turn out to be working and valid.

Most of the products used in our daily lives work as they are intended to do. The house gives shelter, the toaster toasts, the telephone rings and transmits distant sounds, the car drives on streets made for driving, the chair allows us to sit down, the table stands still and provides a surface, the wire serves as a fence or transmits electricity, the pipe holds air, water, oil or gas inside, etc., etc. The recipes leading up to these products, then, must obviously be correct recipes. What these recipes tell us must be true knowledge of nature and its way, because it leads us to instrumental success. And judged by the great and increasing number and variety of different artificially manufactured objects all around us, we must obviously have discovered increasingly more correct recipes and accumulated increasingly more true knowledge of nature. (So much for any skepticism regarding the possibility of a “growth of knowledge.”)

Of course it is also true that we sometimes fail in our instrumental actions. The house, the chair or the table collapse, the telephone remains silent, the wire breaks or the pipe leaks. We fail to reach our purposes. However, even in the comparatively rare cases when our instrumental actions fail and we do not reach our goal, we do not only immediately recognize that we failed. We also ascribe this failure to us and a faulty or incorrectly applied recipe, i.e., to our deficient knowledge or its incorrect application. We do not blame nature. Nature, as has been already repeatedly emphasized, is the way it is. What distinguishes a working house, chair, table, toaster, car, boat, or whatever, from a broken one, is not nature and the laws of nature—they hold true and apply to both functioning and broken implements equally—but the presence of a human purpose, i.e., the fact that only a standing house, chair or table, a toasting toaster, and a swimming boat are judged by us a success (whereas a broken one is considered a failure). Both success and failure are due to us, and to our correct or incorrect construction recipes.

All this applies also to the natural scientist. His instruments: his manufactured surfaces, rulers, circles, clocks, scales, calculators, thermometers, lenses, etc., etc., too, mostly work and function the way they are supposed to do. The ruler rules, the circle circles, the clock clocks and the calculator calculates. Likewise, the natural scientist’s design and construction of “controlled experiments” is routinely successful. The construction recipes for these instruments and artificial arrangements, then, must be correct and the knowledge embodied in them must be true.

It is also possible of course, even if comparatively rare, that the natural scientist’s instruments fail to do what they are intended to do. The ruler, the circle, the clock, the calculator, the thermometer are broken, or an experiment has spun out of control. However, in this case the natural scientist, too, is not only to find out quickly that he failed. He also knows that the failure lies with him and his faulty or incorrectly applied construction recipe for his ruler, circle or calculator, and not with nature and its laws. The broken ruler, circle or calculator are just as much part of nature and behave in accordance with natural laws as are a properly functioning ruler, circle or calculator. It is only the natural scientist, depending on the purpose of his research, that makes the distinction between “broken” and “properly” functioning implements. The ruler does not “know,” as is were, how to measure, and the calculator does not “know” how to calculate, i.e., to distinguish correct from incorrect measurements and calculations, as the existence of broken rulers and calculators conclusively demonstrates. It is the scientist, who knows how to correctly measure and calculate and thus also to distinguish between faulty and functioning rulers and calculators. Similarly, it is only the scientist, not the “experiment” itself, that determines whether something was a successful—replicable—experiment or not.

Moreover, whenever the natural scientist’s instruments—his ruler, circle or calculator—fail or his experiments go awry, he in particular also knows where the failure lies and what needs to be improved or repaired in the construction recipes of his tools or his experimental design.

Truth and truth seeking, then, are our method and means for the attainment of our ends, i.e., of success. We do not seek the truth-an-sich, we seek the truth, because it leads to and is a requirement of success. The more true recipes we know, the more actions we can successfully perform.

Fourth: But—and this brings me back to my final point: to argumentation as an action sui generis—although the recipes we follow in our silent actions can be right or wrong, we rarely if ever argue whether they are one or the other. If they are right, they lead to success, and if they are wrong, they lead to failure. The decision is always easy. The proof is in the pudding. Lengthy public trials à la Galilei are not needed to decide in the field of manufacturing and engineering. There is no need for a public debate about what recipe to follow in constructing a plane surface, a ruler, a triangle, a circle, a clock, a brick, a wall, a house, etc. Everyone can try and see the consequences for himself. And because of this intimate connection of truth and success, new and improved recipes, once they become known, are quickly, without much or even any discussion, frictionless if you will, adopted by other actors as in their own interest in success.

A need for any lengthy discussion regarding the truth-claims of various recipes, i.e., for argumentation, arises typically only in connection with conflict. That is, the first time we seriously discuss and debate matters of truth, whether or not something is “really” true, is in discussions concerning matters of justice, of right and wrong.

You and I want to use one and the same good for incompatible purposes. Plain communication has failed to achieve coordination. We clash. But we can still argue. And in any case, it is impossible to argue consistently (without falling into contradictions) that we cannot do anything about our apparent dis-coordination except to fight. We can do something else, as this very argument, in claiming itself to be true, manifestly and conclusively demonstrates.

We can describe the actions leading to our conflict verbally, and we can identify two incompatible truth-claims as the source of our conflict: “You are the proper owner of the good in question” (the knife, the hair, the house, or whatever)—and hence your plan comes to execution—versus “I am the proper owner”—and hence my plan is implemented. By means of words, then, we can institute a “trial,” conducted in a public language, in which we present our rival truth claims with the purpose of finding a definitive answer of “yes” or “no,” “true” or “false,” “right” or “wrong”—the true recipe—that will restore coordination and prevent future conflict.

And we have discovered such an answer—which explains why conflicts are comparatively rare in our lives and the overwhelming bulk of our actions, whether communicative or silent, runs peacefully, even if sometimes disappointingly.

The recipe concerns the “proper”—“right,” “true,” or “correct”—ownership (exclusive control) of scarce physical means. It prescribes that “proper” ownership of means, or “property,” is to be established solely through first —that is, unopposed or conflict-free—appropriation and subsequent transformation of such means, or else through a mutually agreed upon—and hence likewise unopposed—transfer of property from one actor to another. Always, in all of your actions employ only such means that you have first unopposed appropriated and produced or that you have received in a mutually agreed on exchange from others who had unopposed possession (property) of the good in question before you! If you follow this recipe, the world will still be full of surprises and disappointments, but all conflict can be avoided, from the beginning of mankind until its end.

That we indeed know the correct recipe of conflict-avoidance is revealed in the fact that in our daily lives we routinely abstain from interfering with the use of means that are already under the visible or noticeable control of someone else and restrict our actions instead exclusively to means that we already have control of.

However, this knowledge is largely habituated and subconscious. It is only upon reflection—in speaking about actions and typically motivated by some rare event of conflict—that we can not only verbalize and formulate this rule, but that we can recognize further, via a transcendental argument, that this very rule is already “implied” in or, more correctly, presupposed by argumentation. That is, that following this rule is what makes argumentation as an action sui generis at all possible; and hence, that its truth and validity as a recipe of “engineering” social coordination cannot be argumentatively denied without falling into a performative contradiction.

Argumentation is a purposeful activity. It is not aimless, free-floating sounds. It is speech acts aimed at coordination. More specifically, it is speech acts aimed at coordination by means of nothing but arguments. But as an action, argumentation also involves the employment of scarce physical means. First and foremost among these means is our physical body. Both the proponent and the opponent of an argument must make use of their bodies to generate their arguments and engage in argumentation. I must use my body, and you yours. And my “proper” ownership of my body, and yours of yours, cannot be argumentatively disputed without falling into contradictions. For to argue back and forth and impute the arguments to you or me, as my arguments or yours, you and I must recognize each other’s “proper” ownership of our distinct and separate physical bodies.

Moreover, both our bodies are already “naturally” appropriated, in that only I can control my body directly, at will, and that only you can control your body directly. Mutatis mutandis, I can control your body, and you can control my body, only indirectly, by using our directly controlled bodies first. This demonstrates the practical and logical—or praxeological—priority of direct before and above indirect appropriation. To claim in an argument, then, that I am the proper owner of your body (or you of mine) involves a performative contradiction. Because I must presuppose that I am the proper owner of my own body (with which to produce my arguments) and you are the proper owner of your body (with which to produce your arguments). To impute an argument to me (or to you) the means employed to produce it must be mine (or yours), too.

And something else, besides each person’s proper ownership of his naturally appropriated physical body, is presupposed by argumentation. You and I have already acted, silently and communicatively, long before we ever engaged in argumentation. Prior to any argumentative encounter, you and I have with the help of our respective bodies—and unopposed by either you or me—already appropriated, produced, exchanged, consumed or accumulated countless goods. We could not be engaged in argumentation now without such prior activities and prior possessions. They make our present argumentation at all possible. Accordingly, we must admit (and cannot deny without “performative” contradiction) that prior and ultimately first possession is the “proper” route to the ownership of scarce physical means. In presenting our arguments back and forth, you and I affirm that we are not only the proper owners of our “naturally” owned and directly controlled physical bodies with which we produce these arguments, but also of all the things that you or I have previously, prior to our argument, and unopposed by you or me, purposefully done or produced. Indeed, to argue consistently to the contrary—that property be established and determined by disputed later and ultimately last possession—is literally impossible. We would have no feet or ground on which to stand on and make our arguments. Neither you nor I could have ever acted silently and on our own, or separately from one another, side by side, sometimes may be disappointed, but in any case without conflict.

Philosophical analysis, then, confirms and reinforces our intuition. We have indeed a perfect and unfailing recipe of how to avoid conflict and thus systematically improve coordination, and we have a perfect recipe to resolve each and every conflict should it still occur. And with this recipe we have also a true and unfailing criterion of justice, i.e., of deciding between just (or true) vs. unjust (or false) ownership claims and determining how to restore justice if injustice has occurred. Not everything is open to dispute in an argumentation over conflicting ownership claims. The validity of the priority-principle of just acquisition itself cannot be argumentatively disputed, for without it any argumentation between you and me would be impossible. Under dispute, then, can only be the application of this principle in particular instances and with respect to specific means. There can be dispute about whether or not you or I have misapplied the principle in some instances and with regard to particular means. We can disagree as to the “true” facts of a case: who was where and when and who had possession of this or that at such and such times and places? And it can be at times tedious and time-consuming to establish and sort out these facts.

However, just as the principle is beyond dispute, so is the procedure, the recipe, of sorting out the relevant facts and reaching a conclusion. The procedure is logically dictated by the principle: In every case of conflict brought to a public trial of arguments, the presumption is invariably in favor of the current owner and, mutatis mutandis, the burden of a “proof to the contrary” is always on the opponent of some current state of affairs and of current possessions. The opponent must demonstrate that he, contrary to current appearance, has a possessive claim on some specific good that is older and dated prior to the current owner’s claim, and hence, that he has been dispossessed by the current owner. If, and only if the opponent can successfully demonstrate this beyond a reasonable doubt in a public trial of arguments, must the questionable possession be restored as property to him. On the other hand, if the opponent fails to make his case, then not only does the possession remain as property with its current owner, but the current owner in turn has acquired a possessive claim against his opponent. For the current owner’s body and time was misappropriated by the opponent during his failed and rejected argument. He could have done other preferred things with his body-time except argumentatively defend himself against his opponent.

Let me formulate a brief conclusion now: What I have tried to do here is to refute the naturalist (or behaviorist), who wants to explain Man—the nature of man—fully and exclusively in terms of the natural sciences and, more specifically and importantly, the skeptic, who claims that there is no such thing as a constant and unchanging human nature and immutable laws of man (of man’s essence). Who claims instead, that everything there is to say about man is the story and study of history, i.e., of past actions; that the best we can achieve is knowledge of past regularities, and based on these, of tentative conjectures concerning future events; and that the most we can thus attain are hypothetical—not yet falsified—truths, but that no such thing exists in human affairs as apodictic or apriori truths; and in any case, that there is no such thing as universal and immutable principles of justice, i.e., of right and wrong.

I have argued instead that we do know—and that we cannot without performative contradiction deny knowing—quite a few apriori truths about man. Once spelled out they appear almost self-evident and trivial, but their recognition has important philosophical consequences. We cannot deny that we can argue with each other in a common and public language. That we can communicate with each other. That we can coordinate our actions by means of words, and can become “better,” i.e., more successful, in our attempts at communicative coordination in learning how to speak better, i.e., how to use our words more properly and clearly.

With that we can immediately dispose of all talk about “solipsism,” “other egos” or “ultra-subjectivism” and all Hobbesian ruminations of a war of all against all as idle mental gymnastics and pseudo problems—because whoever writes about these matters refutes himself by virtue of the fact that he writes and argues his case in a public language and thus shows himself as a cultured or socialized person (neither solipsist nor wolf).

Further, we cannot deny that we can act in silence, alone and without any communicative purpose whatsoever (because we have acted alone before we started to talk with each other, and we can stop talking again). That in doing so, we employ directly and indirectly appropriated goods with the purpose of producing some more highly valued future goal or good. That we follow recipes (how-to-do rules) in the pursuit of this good, whatever it may be. That these recipes can lead to either success or failure, and hence, given their purpose, are objectively true or false recipes. And that we can learn from our successes or failures and methodically improve our recipes by means of successive experimentation, i.e., by trying them out.

This refutes all fashionable talk about “methodological anarchism,” of the “untranslatability of languages,” of the “incommensurability of paradigms,” and of the impossibility of a systematic growth of knowledge.

Finally, we cannot deny that we know the true recipe of how to avoid conflict, and how to resolve it should it still occur. That we can distinguish between unopposed prior possessions as argumentatively justifiable possessions (as property) versus opposed later possessions as argumentatively unjustifiable dispossessions (as theft). And that we know how to restore justice if injustice has occurred.

And this refutes all talk about cultural and ethical relativism, of legal positivism, might makes right, etc.

* Previously unpublished. This was the Mises Memorial Lecture presented at the 2015 Austrian Economics Research Conference in Auburn, Alabama, on March 14.