I think this indeed an excellent review of a number of the issues with UPB. I don't see it posted on his blog, so I wanted to repost it here just in case the thread on FDR mysteriously disappears.

Brainpolice wrote:

Problems With UPB Redux 1. UPB is nothing more than the tool of deductive logic and falsification. Thus, at the very outset, UPB cannot "verify" any particular moral proposition (and is therefore not a normative ethical theory). All that it can do is attempt to falsify moral statements by showing either that they are empirically impossible to realize or by demonstrating that someone is making two contradictary claims and revealing personal hypocrisy on the part of the arguer. Since UPB is a consistency test, all normative ethical theories that are non-absolutist (which have moral statements with qualifiers or exceptions to the rule) are automatically ruled out by it. This means that only deontological normative ethical theories or categorical imperatives can even potentially pass the test. 2. Even in the context of absolute or non-qualified moral propositions, UPB doesn't "verify" any of them. It could be said to falsify statement A, but it does not necessarily follow that statement B is therefore "verified" (both A and B could be false, C could be left out of the discussion, and so on). To complicate matters even more, a statement such as "murder is moral" or "theft is good", stated simply by itself, does *not* inherently self-detonate deductively. It isn't "illogical" by itself. It can only be deductively "illogical" if it is combined with its opposite. But this then begs the question as to which side of the dichotomy is true. One could rule out "murder is moral" on the grounds that it's not consistent with "murder is immoral", but this gets us nowhere as far as proving the latter. Deductive logic alone can't tell us what is true or false, as the whole thing is contingent on either the analytic or synthetic truth of the premises. 3. This is the point at which UPB pulls out empiricism by trying to falsify moral statements on the grounds that it is impossible to universally *apply* them or by pointing out absurd results of trying to universally apply them (which, btw, directly mirror's one of Kant's arguments for the categorical imperative). Firstly, it must be said that this implicitly amounts to a consequentialist argument (thus breaking the strictly deontological character of the ethics). For example, if everyone tried to kill eachother there would be noone left (or one person remaining). This is true, but does this constitute an absolute falsification of the proposition "murder is moral"? No, it doesn't. It just points out the consequences of everyone following the rule. In the absence of the value of life already being affirmed in some other way (which UPB cannot do by definition, since it isn't a normative ethical theory), the argument holds no weight. 4. In conjunction with the above points, as has been pointed out extensively before, UPB technically leaves literally any moral proposition untouched as long as it is absolute and universalizable. This includes propositions such as "do whatever you want to do". Such propositions do not "contradict themselves", nor are they impossible to universalize in practise. The claim that the end result of UPB inherently is something like the non-aggression principle is bogus. As long as a normative ethical theory is absolutist and its proponents are not hypocrits in their practise of it (or lack thereof), it passes the UPB test. Hence, a total hedonist has just as much legitimacy in claiming to be consistent with UPB as a deontological libertarian does. UPB can do nothing to resolve a dispute between such positions. 5. UPB provisionally is said to adhere to Hume's dictum that an ought cannot be derived from an is. Then, proponents of UPB often proceed to derive oughts from ises (or, to be more accurate, from "is nots" through falsification). This is mysterious. The claim that non-aggression is universalizable and self-consistent (derived from the falsification of its opposite), therefore one ought not to initiate aggression, is a simple is-ought argument (or an is-not-ought argument). If we really adhere to Hume's dictum, UPB doesn't succeed in proving such "oughts". If it is instead a matter of deriving oughts from "ifs", then ethics has been made contingent and the absolute character of UPB has already been broken. 6. UPB does very little towards explaining any particular meta-ethical theory. It roughly defines ethics as "universally preferable behavior" (hence the acronym) and makes some vague appeals to "science" or "the scientific method", which is roughly defined in terms of falsificationism. This could be interpreted as proposing a form of moral realism in which ethics is on par with "science" or is a result of scientific falsification. But if one really adheres to the is/ought dichotomy, this can't be the case (science dealing strictly with "ises" which "oughts" cannot be derived from). And UPB rules out all other means of justifying ethics. Once the mentioned problems are taken into account, UPB should actually lead one toward moral anti-realism in the wake of the impossibility of its criteria being met and all alternatives being ruled out ahead of time. 7. UPB already weakens ethics at the outset by equating ethics with "preference". By speaking in terms of "preference", UPB already gets caught up in the very individual relativism that it wants to avoid. To be sure, it aims at "universal preference", but the very nature of "preference" is something that is not universal, given a world filled with diverse individuals with different "preferences". It is arguable that there is a key difference between ethical norms and "mere preferences". But if one is speaking in terms of "preference", the matter has already been trivialized. UPB may attempt to demarkate preferences between ones which are "universalizable" and are constituted by violent or legal enforcibility on one hand and ones which are "personal preferences" on the other hand, but this demarkation breaks down. The idea that questions of physical force are "universalizable" and everything else is "subjective" or "personal" erases the vast majority of ethical questions. This is a very narrow understanding of what counts as "ethics", effectively restricting ethics to politics or law. 8. There are grave problems with ethical absolutism (as in purely acontextual ethics, with no room for any exceptions to rules). In particular, it inherently rules out all lifeboat ethics. While it might be wrong to use lifeboat scenarios as an argument against a rule altogether, the main function of a lifeboat scenario is to point out the limits of certain rules by showing the absurd consequences of treating them as acontextual absolutes. A classic example would be someone freezing and starving to death in a snowstorm breaking into an abandoned cabin to survive. Adhere to ethical absolutism about property rights would require the person to choose death, and this is absurd. The purpose of the scenario is not to "disprove property rights" but to reveal limits, to argue for qualifiers in which a rule can at least temporarily be suspended in light of other considerations. Any non-deontological ethics must take account of such things, yet the seemingly deontology-only character of UPB rules out such considerations and divorces ethics from the real world. 9. There is an element of UPB which is a blatant rhetorical trick very similar to Hans Hoppe's "argumentation ethics". In "argumentation ethics", one is said to presuppose precisely what one is denying in the act of denying it. For example, someone could say "I don't believe in property rights" or "property rights are immoral", and then the "argumentation ethics" proponent responds by argueing that since they in fact do own property and must make use of their property (particularly their own bodies) in order to argue, they implicitly prove property rights. This is a ridiculous sleight of hand. At best, all it can prove is personal hypocrisy. It in no way necessarily follows from the fact that someone argues or the norms necessary for one to argue that such norms are actually valid. Likewise, argueing that "argueing against UPB proves UPB" is simply a complete shifting of the burden of proof, effectively saying that you are always right ahead of time in a debate. This would be laughed out of court in just about any serious philosophy circle. I have never seen any of these things adequately addressed by Stefan or any of his followers.

(Thread link)

Very sharp summary by BP. So far, it doesn't look like they even know what to make of it. (Not surprising. If this was a kung-fu movie, he basically ripped the heart out of UPB's chest and showed it to them while it was still beating.) Problem #5 is particularly insightful about UPB proponents and their misunderstanding of UPB.

I'm glad BP laid out the fallacy in Stef's smug "arguing against UPB validates it" claim in his 9th problem.

It's interesting to see in some members' responses how insular FDR continues to be and how deluded they are about their position in the philosophical world. What was that "C" word again...?

Agreed! It's mostly stuff I have thought about before -- some of which I had forgotten about, some of which I hadn't been able to word as clearly as BP did here. I suspect that the sheer volume of content -- each point of which could be discussed in an essay/thread of its own, may be overwhelming to many FDR members who haven't thought about UPB in this light before. And this will be reflected in their responses. Hopefully it at least plants some seeds.

I like how #9 mentions Hoppe's name. Stefan uses the argumentation ethics line of reasoning a lot, and never credits Hoppe. Their arguments are so similar that, in my mind, there's no way Stefan came up with his independently. If he credited it properly it would be incumbent on him to inform himself about the debate that has already taken place on the topic, and defend his continued support of it. By claiming ignorance (or even choosing to remain ignorant, as may be the case), he lets himself off the hook -- at least as far as his followers are concerned. But it's certainly not an intellectually honest thing for a philosopher to do.

Reply from Stefan:

Stefan Molyneux wrote:

To the OP, I'm afraid that you don't understand UPB at all, which is no particular problem, it can be a bit of a beast of the theory, but I will suggest that if you want your criticisms to be taken seriously, you might want to include at least one or two quotes from the actual book to support each of your arguments. I would also suggest avoiding overly technical language on a genpop message board (i.e. "This means that only deontological normative ethical theories or categorical imperatives can even potentially pass the test."). I think it's important to have a good sense of who your audience is when trying to communicate in public. As far as metaphysics and epistemology goes, they are not in the UPB book, of course, but I do go into them in fairly good detail in my introduction to philosophy series, which is available on YouTube of course, as well as the podcast feed. http://feeds.feedburner.com/FreedomainRadio-IntroPhilosophy Thanks for your interest in my work, I look forward to further feedback.

I agree that the post is most likely going to go over most people's heads. But I'm not sure what BP could have done differently, short of spending many more days of his time writing a substantially longer post -- that it's likely no one would read. We've seen how Stefan likes getting people to provide specific examples so that he can zero in on them and forget the general flavour of the critique. I think that this was just fine for what it was, though.

I had to laugh at the second paragraph. The words used in the quoted sentence don't exist to confuse laymen; they exist because they have precise meanings that allow people to discuss philosophical issues in a clear manner. I think that Stefan's decision not to use technical language in his work, while it has the effect of not scaring off laymen, does not make his work any less confusing. Stefan's work is the dangerous kind of confusing, where you think you understand what's being said because you understand all the words, but if you think about it some more, you realize that what was said was not precise enough to possibly be understood. Which is great for Stefan, because it gives him a lot of wiggle room whenever his ideas are critiqued. Which, incidentally, is exactly why I don't think quotes from the book would have added anything to the post. I think they actually would have detracted from it. ("That's not what I meant by that! Read the book again!", etc.) In contrast, once you understand writing like BP's post, you understand it. No need to scour through it again and again to try to make heads or tails of it. No admonishments to consult the author to find out what he meant by certain things. The meaning is in the words!

And Stefan is kind of insulting his audience by suggesting that they won't be able to understand the post due to the technical language. I mean, it's not like Stefan is catering to a group of people who only have 10 minutes a week to spend on this. He's fine with taking up hours of people's time going on tangent after tangent and making each podcast way longer than it needs to be, yet he's not fine with encouraging (or helping) people to take a few minutes of their time to learn the basics of some really useful tools and language? It can't be about the time. Does he think they can't do it?

Very small thing, really, but I notice that Stef addresses BrainPolice--whom he's debated before and included in his podcasts--as "To the OP." It reminds me of the same diminution he tries to pull with Shahar. ("Some student who posted on FDR once...")

It doesn't mean anything, really. But it makes me laugh. He HATES to be questioned this way!

His girlfriend is a member and regular, I think. That probably goes a long way as an explanation for why he sticks around. And his series of critical thinking lessons probably serve to make his FDR time more palatable, as a strategy for improving the quality of conversations there. Even if no one gets better at critical thinking (or more able to apply it generally instead of at outsiders only), it's something he can control the quality of. It's a space he established to meet his own standards of excellence.

BP has always been wrong about the following:

"All that it can do is attempt to falsify moral statements by showing that someone is making two contradictary claims and revealing personal hypocrisy on the part of the arguer."

UPB can not do this because it:

a) never defines the moral terminology it makes use of, and

b) never requests that those putting forth an "ethical statement" (a term never defined) define their own terms.

If I argue that "taxation is moral", one can not arrive at the conclusion that I am a hypocrite without first understand the MEANING of my statement. For all anyone knows, when I say that something is "moral", it simply means that I personally approve of it. What's contradictory about that? The fact that there are no consensus definitions for moral terms, coupled with the fact that it's unclear (do to the fact that it's never properly defined) whether UPB is inventing or clarifying "ethics" (whether Stefan is simply borrowing preexisting terms and redefining them or whether he is relying on previously established definitions), means that every conclusion that UPB draws, is quite possibly a strawman.