Contrasting Huemer & Hoppe: are they both making a similar error?
- Huemer’s Argument: Free Will as a Presupposition of Rational Discourse
Core Claim-
Huemer (2008, 2010) argues that when we engage in argumentation—criticizing positions, praising insights, blaming errors—we presuppose that thinkers could have done otherwise: that they are responsible agents capable of choice.
Performative Contradiction-
Claim: “Determinism is true—no one ever does otherwise than they must.”
Practice: “You’re wrong; you ought to have thought differently.”
The very act of blaming or praising presupposes that the agent was free to choose otherwise, so a deterministic or hard-deterministic stance undercuts the norms of sincerity, responsibility, and criticism required for discourse.
Norms Undermined by Denial-
Epistemic Responsibility: If you couldn’t have believed otherwise, you can’t be accused of error.
Moral Responsibility: You can’t be morally praised or blamed for actions you couldn’t avoid.
Conversational Norms: Insincerity and manipulation become inescapable if no one can choose.
Conclusion: Denying free will collapses the very framework in which “you’re wrong” or “that argument is flawed” carry any force. Thus, belief in libertarian free will is a pragmatic necessity of meaningful rational discourse.
- Hoppe’s Argument: Self-Ownership via Discourse Ethics Core Claim
Hoppe (1988, 1993) builds on a Kantian move: the act of argumentation itself presupposes certain rights—chiefly, that each speaker owns his or her own body and its fruits (property).
Performative Contradiction
Claim: “I have no exclusive ownership of my body or the products of my labor.”
Practice: “Let me explain to you why you’re wrong.”
By engaging in argumentation, I implicitly claim the right to control my vocal cords, my words, my attention, and to exclude you from mine. To deny self-ownership is thus to contradict the very activity of making a claim.
Deriving the Libertarian Ethic
Self-Ownership Axiom: Every agent has exclusive authority over his/her body.
Homesteading Principle: By mixing labor with unowned resources, one acquires property rights over them.
Non-Aggression Principle: Because each life and body is inviolable, initiating force against persons or property is illegitimate.
Conclusion The libertarian ethic—self-ownership, private property, non-aggression—is not a contingent social contract but a necessary presupposition of rational argumentation.
- Point-by-Point Contrast Aspect Huemer (Free Will) Hoppe(Self-Ownership)
Target Presupposition- Agents must have genuine alternative possibilities. Agents must possess exclusive control over themselves. Type of Norm Epistemic & Moral (responsibility for belief & action) Ethical & Legal (property and non-aggression)
Performative Contradiction – Criticizing a determanist is incoherent if no choice. Arguing against property rights is incoherent if no self-ownership.
Metaphysical Focus- Free will vs. determinism Bodily sovereignty vs. political/statist claims
Pragmatic Move- Discourse presupposes free will; denial self-undermines critique. Discourse presupposes self-ownership; denial self-undermines argument.
Scope of Implication- Validity of moral blame/praise, epistemic accountability Foundation of all justifiable interpersonal relations
- Philosophical Significance
Shared Strategy: Both employ a performative‐contradiction or pragmatic‐presupposition argument. By reflecting on the practice of argument itself, they extract a normative axiom that any denier must implicitly rely upon.
Divergent Domains: Huemer’s is chiefly about metaphysics of agency and the conditions for meaningful criticism. Hoppe’s is about the ethical‐legal structure underlying any claim to “you owe me an argument.”
Norms and Discourse: Both suggest that some key principles are not up for rational debate in the usual way—they’re preconditions of debate itself. Rejecting them is not merely false, it is incoherent given one’s own practice of arguing.
- Take-Away If you try to deny free will, you undercut your ability to call anyone wrong or praiseworthy.
If you try to deny self-ownership, you undercut your ability to even hold forth or direct anyone’s attention.
Each argument shows how a fundamental libertarian norm—whether in agency or property—emerges not from contingent facts but from the very form of rational communication.
!!!!
Hoppe’s critics argue that his performative‐contradiction only secures a very minimal “ownership” over whatever faculties you need to argue—essentially your brain (to think the argument) and your mouth (to articulate it)—and that it conflates a liberty (the freedom to speak) with a right (a claim others must respect). Let’s see whether analogous worries can be pressed against Huemer’s discourse‐ethical defense of free will.
- The “Brain-and-Mouth” Objection versus Huemer’s Argument
Hoppe’s Weak Minimalism
Objection: All the contradiction really shows is that I must “own” control of my own cognitive and vocal apparatus when I argue. It doesn’t extend to the rest of my body or to property rights in a robust libertarian sense.
Result: Critics say Hoppe’s proof can’t underwrite the full non-aggression principle or homesteading claims—only the “right to speak” in the debate itself.
Why Huemer Avoids This Particular Objection
Huemer isn’t trying to ground property rights at all, but rather the epistemic–moral norm that agents are responsible for their beliefs and actions.
The core performative move is: “If you deny free will, you undercut your own capacity to blame or praise—which is what you’re doing in arguing.” That responsibility-presupposition applies to all choices you criticize (be they belief-choices or action-choices), not just to the “choice to argue.”
Even if someone said “Okay, I only presuppose I could have spoken differently,” they still need more than mere vocal freedom—they need genuine alternative possibilities in order for “you’re wrong” to be meaningful.
So the “I only own brain and mouth” worry doesn’t really bite Huemer: his contradiction is about the normative force of criticism, not about exclusive control of particular body-parts.
- Rights-Claims vs. Liberty-Claims Objection Hoppe’s Conflation
Critics note a distinction:
A liberty-claim is simply freedom from interference (e.g. “I’m free to speak my mind”).
A right-claim is an entitlement that others must refrain from interfering (a morally or legally enforceable claim).
They argue Hoppe moves too quickly from “I must be free to argue” to “everyone else has a duty not to kill or steal my body.”
Does Huemer Commit the Same Move?
Huemer’s target is the norm of moral and epistemic responsibility, which is itself a set of entitlements and obligations among arguers:
If I can legitimately blame you, you have an obligation to reconsider your beliefs.
If I can justly praise you, you have a claim to moral credit.
In that sense Huemer is also moving from a pragmatic presupposition (we must assume free will to criticize) to normative conclusions (agents really are responsible and deserve blame or praise).
But Huemer is arguably on firmer ground because moral responsibility is already an established right-claim framework in ethics—blame and praise are social practices with recognized obligations (e.g. to apologize, compensate, reform)—whereas Hoppe tries to derive new property rights from scratch.
Hence while both go from pragmatic presupposition to normative claim, Huemer’s leap is narrower and more embedded in existing moral discourse.
- Other Possible Internal Problems for Huemer The Is-Ought Gap
Some might press: “Even if argument presupposes free will, how do you get from ‘we must assume X in discourse’ to ‘X really exists’?”
Huemer replies that it’s a pragmatic transcendental argument: denying X is self-undermining, so anyone who denies free will is irrational in practice. But critics can still challenge whether that commits you to metaphysical libertarianism or merely to a useful fiction of responsibility.
Circularity or Question-Begging
Does Huemer sneak in free-will language in his very norms of criticism? If so, his argument might beg the question.
He strives to formulate the presupposition in minimal, practice-based terms (“holding someone responsible only makes sense if they could have done otherwise”), but skeptics say that already assumes a particular account of agency.
Scope of the Presupposition
Critics could argue: “Maybe what discourse really presupposes is merely compatibilist free will—the ability to act according to one’s reasons—rather than libertarian contra-causal freedom.”
Huemer would then have to show that only an incompatibilist (libertarian) notion of free will does the needed work in blame and praise. This remains a live debate.
- Bottom‐Line: Parallel but Distinct Vulnerabilities Parallel
Both Hoppe and Huemer use the same performative‐contradiction strategy: reflecting on discourse to extract a normative axiom.
Both can face challenges about whether that axiom really extends beyond the minimal conditions of speaking or arguing.
How are they distinct?
Hoppe’s axiom aims at property rights and faces the “brain-and-mouth” and rights-vs-liberty critiques, because he tries to bootstrap a broad libertarian order from the narrow act of arguing.
Huemer’s axiom concerns responsibility and already sits within a familiar moral-epistemic framework, so his argument is largely immune to the specific “only your vocal cords” worry—though it still must address the is-ought gap, potential circularity, and whether it really demands libertarian rather than compatibilist freedom.
In short: Huemer’s discourse‐ethical defense of free will is not vulnerable to the same “only brain and mouth” critique, because it isn’t trying to ground bodily property at all. However, it does share with Hoppe the broader challenge of turning a pragmatic presupposition of discourse into a robust metaphysical or normative doctrine—and must fend off objections about question‐begging, scope (compatibilist vs. libertarian), and the is-ought leap.
See here for Huemer’s defense against the claims of circularity/question-begging:
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