This is part 2 in my series answering Bob Murphy's tough questions for libertarians. I describe this project in an earlier post. All of the questions can be found there and the first entry in the series is linked here.
Question
Does Hoppe's Argumentation Ethics framework imply that animals have self-ownership?
Context
Here's the clip of Bob laying out the question.
Hans Herman Hoppe is a libertarian philosopher who trained under Jurgen Habermas, the famous German philosopher who developed "Discourse Ethics". Hoppe sought to correct some logical errors in his mentors work and discovered that a more rigorous approach yielded a defense of libertarianism, rather than democratic socialism (as Habermas concluded). One interesting note about this is that Hoppe was not already a libertarian when he reached these conclusions, so we can be confident that it was not just an exercise in rationalization.
In the podcast, Bob specifically requested that we not review exactly what argumentation ethics is, so this is somewhat off the cuff. For those who do want to learn what it is in detail, Hoppe lays it out in the beginning of his great book A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism.
Argumentation Ethics is an alternative grounding for libertarianism, in addition to the more common utilitarianism and natural rights approaches. It proceeds from thinking about a dispute between two parties. Hoppe points out that there are certain preconditions for people to be settling a dispute through argumentation, rather than just clubbing each other over the head. One of those preconditions is that neither party is coercing the other (if they were, why have an argument?). This is how Hoppe arrives at a justification for self-ownership.
Following on from there, Hoppe derives several other principles that more or less make up standard libertarian positions. Notice that this is a consequentialist philosophy. The point is to derive a consistent set of norms for people who value peaceful dispute resolution.
Answer
I don't take Argumentation Ethics as establishing self ownership, so much as saying we should recognize self ownership if we value peaceful dispute resolution. That nit-pick with Bob aside, I do think Argumentation Ethics implies that we should treat other beings as self-owners, as long as they appear to be economic actors.
The thought experiment I use is landing on an alien world where there are all kinds of bizarre creatures doing all sorts of strange stuff that makes no sense to us. Is it ok to proceed to just harvest them for their body parts? In alien invasion science fiction, we usually portray aliens attempting to abduct people or harvest the Earth's resources as the bad guys. Where does that standard come from?
That standard comes from the burden of proof being on the potential aggressors to be sure they aren't harming a sentient being. It is not up to victims to know how to communicate with their aggressors.
As Bob points out, there's nothing in Argumentation Ethics that allows a conclusion that it only applies to human beings. It applies to any being capable of resolving a dispute over scarce resources peacefully. There are certainly plenty of animals that this doesn't apply to, like clams or worms, but other animals, like dogs or primates, clearly have a sense of ownership and are able to respect it. The question is where the line is.
One note to slightly preempt comments about why this doesn't apply to animals: make sure that either your argument can't be used by ethno-supremacists to justify their racial violence or that you're comfortable with your argument being used in that way.
I anticipate this will elicit some spicy responses. The comments I've gotten on the two previous posts have been awesome and my first post inspired this great post from @Voldemort.