The Blackadder Says:

Let's hope no one ever gives Santiago a gun.
 

Which raises a distantly related point: if we found evidence that animals can contract, would they have rights? Not all animals, but animals that engage in contracts?

What is the Libertarian stance on the rights of non-humans?

I submit that if a non-human demonstrates the ability to contract, it should be given the same standing as a human being.

any takers?
 

if we found evidence that animals can contract,

You mean like blowfish?
 

Ha ha. I thought their hallmark is the ability to expand... (I also submit the Blowfish should be the international emblem of Central Banks: they move sluggishly, easily become captive to predators, inflate at the slightest provocation, and are poisonous).

But, seriously, is there a Libertarian discussion on the hypothetical rights of non-humans?

Is the ability to contract (that is: the intellectual capacity to make promises and act on them) a precondition for having rights?
 

The Blackadder Says:

I believe Murray Rothbard's position on animal rights was that they could have them if they petitioned for them.
 

I've always believed that Mises' language of "action" and his idea that economics is a "science of action" was unhelpful, and in many ways simply false.

Entrepreneurs are learners. Learning isn't an 'action'. Entrepreneurs are planners. Planning isn't an "action'.

The whole "belief" / "desire" picture of mind and action leaves a lot to be desired -- it's an essentially false view of the mind, the person, and of action and behavior and human going on together.
 

Thanks to Murray Rothbard, there's a libertarian position on practically everything under the sun. Read his "Ethics of Liberty" for his discussion about animal rights.
 

Yo Bob,

Can you write a post about applying for a PhD at New york university (a "top" university). I realize there's no way around the GRE except hard work and perspiration, however universities also ask for a "statement of purpose" or something similar.

So re: the personal statement, what should applicants write to impress the admissions committee? What shouldn't they write? What did you write? Just some tips if you know any would be helpful.

I'm sure there's many book written by experts on this, but if you have time an anecdotal story would also be useful.

I've got 2 more years till graduation from undergrad, but I want to move into PhD straight away and avoid the hassle of getting a real job.
 

Sukrit,

I don't know if they even read those things, to be honest. But you should ask Pete Boettke; he can give you a better answer.

I don't remember what I wrote in mine.
 

This is impressive. Not having read much of Rothbard (apart from his basic arguments of logic), it is still possible to deduce most of his conclusions - even if not as elegantly.

To petition for rights is a much better way to put what I tried to say with 'contract', and follows clearly from the basic premises of Libertarianism.

So, while Rothbard has probably uncovered most of the implications of strict Austrian economics and anarchist morality, they are in fact simply the logical conclusions of basic premises.

Sheer beauty.
 

I am really looking forward to discussing this kind of thing at the Austrian Scholars Conference this week!

Mises clearly states in Human Action that humans alone act. I find myself frequently taking notes that question this premise.

Doesn't he say in his chapter devoted to rejecting polylogism that there is but one reason and this is human reason? If there were others, one would be more competitive than the other. The less competitive would have to survive on instinct alone, at which point he becomes an animal. Acting is what, in Mises' mind, distinguishes man from animal.

Doctors typically make better decisions today than in the bloodletting past. Mises says that current doctors have better information but are not more rational.

He also states that the empirical world teaches us which economic theorems and axioms apply to the real world we actually live in.

Is an example where empirical, biological science is teaching us to expand praxeology to include the concept of animal action?
 

Erick,

When you say Mises clearly states that "humans alone can act," is your evidence the quotes to which you allude? Or does he literally come out and say it?

I'm not challenging you, I just can't remember him definitively saying anything about animals. I thought he left it open.
 

What is more important: what von Mises may have said or meant in regards to animals, or non-humans in general, or what is to be concluded from the basic logic of Austrian/Libertarian philosophical axioms?

Would Austrian economics/Libertarianism be undermined by arguing that any organism acting purposefully is in principle capable of having rights, and that any purposefully acting organism engaging in voluntary exchange with other purposefully organisms should be included in the group of those who have rights?

Or put differently: do rights depend on biology or on behavior? If the latter, libertarianism may provide us with a paradigm for even such far-fetched scenarios as alien encounters.

It would also provide us with a paradigm of how to deal with machines passing the Turing test - which is possible the most likely scenario for encounters with a non-human mind.
 

Hi James! I agree 100% that the basic logic implied by the theorems and axioms is more important than what any particular individual says -- including Mises.

I also think it is possible to learn new axioms and theorems. For example: do we live in a Euclidean, hyperbolic or what geometric space? No one knows for sure.

I believe Mises alludes to this idea of incomplete knowledge when he talks about humans being not gods but finite creatures.

I am not sure where rights come from. Where do you think?

Murphy, here are a couple quotes that lead me to conclude Mises did not consider animal action relevant to our world.

What do you think they say?

http://mises.org/humanaction/chap1sec2.asp:
He arranges [p. 17] his wishes and desires into a scale, he chooses; in short, he acts. What distinguishes man from beasts is precisely that he adjusts his behavior deliberatively.

http://mises.org/humanaction/chap4sec1.asp
While all other animals are unconditionally driven by the impulse to preserve their own lives and by the impulse of proliferation, man has the power to master even these impulses. He can control both his sexual desires and his will to live. He can give up his life when the conditions under which alone he could preserve it seem intolerable. [p. 20] Man is capable of dying for a cause or of committing suicide. To live is for man the outcome of a choice, of a judgment of value.

http://mises.org/humanaction/chap3sec4.asp
If there had been races which had developed a different logical structure of the mind, they would have failed in the use of reason as an aid in the struggle for existence. The only means for survival that could have protected them against extermination would have been their instinctive reactions. Natural selection would have eliminated those specimens of such races that tried to employ reasoning for the direction of their behavior. Those individuals alone would have survived that relied upon instincts only. This means that only those would have had a chance to survive that did not rise above the mental level of animals.
 

Of course animals can deliberate and act, though sadly most of us these days have so thoroughly cut ourselves off from Creation that we don't know this first hand.

Whether we give animals rights is another story, and one wrapped up with the whole problem of open-access resources.
 

"So, while Rothbard has probably uncovered most of the implications of strict Austrian economics and anarchist morality, they are in fact simply the logical conclusions of basic premises.

Sheer beauty."

This is why he got so many things wrong?
 

I think The Daily mash had the right take on this story.