RS: Would you mind if I queried
you a little bit about argumentation ethics? I must confess I’m very enamoured with it; I
think it’s fascinating, especially having a legal background. I’m very
interested in Stephan Kinsella, who has developed this in terms of its application to jurisprudence. I’ve also written on the subject of holding state judicial powers accountable under a private law system and how the state can never lawfully be a judge and could be taken to court for aggressively establishing a judicial monopoly. What are your thoughts on argumentation
ethics?
DG: I’m afraid I’m going to be
disappointing, I think there’s something to it but I have difficulty seeing
exactly what. One of the points is: suppose I were to say, I don’t own myself.
I would be involved in some sort of contradiction because in order to say, 'I
don’t own myself,' I show that, in fact, I did own myself. Suppose I
say in English, 'I’ve never spoken an English sentence in my life'; my saying
just that shows that my statement is false. Therefore, the claim is that it’s a similar type of profound contradiction. The problem is: I just do not see what the
contradiction is supposed to be. If I can tell you a funny story, I was talking to
Rothbard and I said, 'What if someone just said “I just can’t see what the
contradiction is?” and he said, ‘Ah, f**k ‘em!’
There may be something to it and maybe I’m just failing to see it.
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