Re: Don't Forget Mises -- and Dump the Third Way!

From: Ron Allen (rallen2_at_bellsouth.net)
Date: 10/23/04 

Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 15:58:25 -0400

Ron Allen wrote:
> There is a will to believe, a wish to believe,
> just as there is an urge to know, and a desire
> to learn. I see the world, reality, through
> clashing perspectives. I have my very own
> consciousness of reality, and I also encounter
> various versions of reality when I read and
> listen to the opinions of writers and speakers.

> From multiple perspectives I make a decision
> about what I believe best and most expresses
> what is real and true.

> My volition does play an important part, I'm
> sure. I like to believe that I'm on the side of
> goodness and liberty, on the side of truth and
> beauty. There are exterior facts, and there is
> interior desire. These come together in every
> knowing self.

> Knowing is largely solitary. Knowledge is
> autonomy, individuality. Knowledge is a private
> gnosis, a personal gnosis, even a poetic gnosis,
> true only for the individual knower.

Michael Price wrote:
> Then it is not true at all, . . .

Ron Allen wrote:
> What is true to me may not be true to you; . . .

Michael Price wrote:
> But some things are true for all.

Ron Allen answers:
We both know some facts as true; but there are
some/many differences of opinion about those facts
which have some clear ideological or philosophical
consequences. There are some/many descriptive
statements we can both agree with; and there are
some/many prescriptive statements we do not agree
on.

I know, for example, that those who risk wealth
will sometimes make wealth. But knowing this is
not enough. There is the question of what wealth
is, and how wealth is created. By risk? No! By
labor? Yes! The notion that risking wealth will
make wealth is compact and cursory statement, a
condensed truism involving a lot of assumptions
about what is and what should be. There are a lot
of old habits, bad habits, which truisms all too
often take for granted, or take as granted. What
we need to do is look in a new way at our old
habits, like the struggle for power, and at our
old institutions, like the balance of power.

Some things are true for all? Perhaps. It is a
likely possibility. Or, maybe what is true for
all of us is a useful fiction, a kind of practical
invention, or a convenient convention, a sort of
common denominator, or collective designation,
or average evaluation, or general category we need
in order to believe that we all do have the same
truth. Even when we believe that we share the
same truths, maybe all that we really share are
the same words. What is a "tree" to someone who
lives in the Sahara, or in the Arctic Archipelago
compared to someone who lives in the equatorial
tropics, the Torrid Zone. The word is the same;
but the image is not, the meaning is not.

Ron Allen wrote:
> . . . but you are not the final, ultimate, or
> unappealable judge and jury, determining and
> deciding what is the true truth.

Michael Price wrote:
> No logic is and logic is not your friend.

Ron Allen answers:
Logic is? Logic is an invention. Logic is no
person's friend.

Ron Allen wrote:
> No truth us true for all people, nor for every
> place, nor for all time.

Michael Price wrote:
> Is that statement true for all people or for
> all time?

Ron Allen answers:
Again, logic is no one's friend. Logic is not
even truth's friend.

Ron Allen wrote:
> This may be a very hard and difficult truth for
> us to handle and manage; but it is a truth which
> accords with the facts.

Michael Price wrote:
> What facts would those be if there is no eternal
> truth?

Ron Allen answers:
There are no eternal facts, just as there are no
eternal truths. Language fails us; and this is
what is shown when we say such things as: What
facts would there be if there are no eternal
truths? Language lets us down; and so we find
ourselves stymied whenever someone says to us,
"There is no true statement." We are stumped.
We are mystified. But it is language that baffles
us.

Ron Allen wrote:
> You can believe that those with a truth
> different from your truth are liars or dunces;
> but that judgment of the facts, that people have
> different truths, is only your judgment of the
> facts, but not the facts per se, not the brute
> facts.

Michael Price wrote:
> . . . for how can you know anything that is not
> true . . .

Ron Allen wrote:
> How can we know if anything is true? Even the
> words "true" and "truth" are problematic and
> enigmatic words. People have known with
> certainty many truths which people no longer
> believe to be the truth. This is empirical
> fact. This is a significant truth.

Michael Price wrote:
> Indeed it is but how can you say you "know"
> that which is false?

Ron Allen answers:
If you do not know it is false, and if you believe
it to be true.

Ron Allen wrote:
> The question is: If there is a truth to be
> known, how can we come to know this truth, or if
> what we believe to be true is truly true? What
> we believe to be true corresponds just enough to
> what may be true that we can function in the
> real world with some degree of certainty and
> finesse. What we believe to be true may
> approximate what is true, but we do not know how
> carefully or correctly our truths approach the
> truth.

> When talking about truth, it must always be kept
> in mind that there is natural reality, and there
> is societal reality. Gravity is an unalterable
> truth about what we observe in natural reality;
> but private property rights are an alterable
> truth about what has been instituted and
> established as a societal reality.

Michael Price wrote:
> No it isn't.

Ron Allen answers:
Yes; I believe it is. Private property is not a
natural reality, not a natural truth, like what we
call "gravity". Property is a societal reality, a
social truth. Property is a fictional truth.

Michael Price wrote:
> It is a consequence of the nature of man and the
> universe. Man cannot use the same resources as
> another man at the same time, therefore
> exclusive use must be apportioned and the needs
> of justice mean that it is apportioned according
> to certain strictures called "rights".

Ron Allen answers:
If there are enough resources, people can make use
of these at the same time, even if in different
places. If all these resources are declared the
private property of one person, then that does
make it difficult for many people to make free use
of all those privately possessed resources. You
seem to be confusing the use of resources with the
ownership of resources. I can own something and
never use it; just as I can use something and
never own it.

If there is a right to property, then every person
ought to have that right equally, and thus every
person would own the property they need. If there
were people who owned more property than they
need, then there will not be enough property for
all the people to rightfully possess and rightly
enjoy.

<><><><><><><><><><>

"All philosophies, if you ride them home, are
nonsense."
-- Samuel Butler, Jr.

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