A praxeological proof that Shakespeare is still alive
Well-meaning but deluded socialists and Keynesians (depicted above) believe that Shakespeare died in the 17th century. However, a rational man* using the rational form of logic known as praxeology can deduce that he is still alive. Here is the rational, valid proof.
*Throughout this article, I use “man” instead of “person”. This is because the argument does not work for women. As for so-called “nonbinary” people, their existence is disproven by the law of the excluded middle. Proof too large for margin.
(1) Self-ownership
The first premise is self-ownership. This means six different things, depending on what stage of the argument we are in. Right now it means that every man owns himself*.
*Please do not trouble yourself with the implications of self-ownership, such as the fact that if a man owns himself, he can sell himself and then he will not own himself anymore. I will be changing the definition soon enough.
(2) Shakespeare owns himself
It follows from (1) that Shakespeare owns himself. Notice that in regular logic, (2) would not follow from (1) — you would need a minor premise such as “Shakespeare is a man” to make the deduction valid. We see the immediate payoff of using praxeology, which dispenses with such trifles. As we praxeologists like to joke, regular logic is normal, formal, and bore-mal.
(3) Self-ownership means owning all of one’s own thoughts and actions
Although I have just changed the definition of self-ownership, this is justified because I promised to do so earlier, and I am therefore bound by my commitment to do so. It is wrong to break one’s commitments, and I am therefore morally obligated to change the definition.
It might be objected that the concepts of owning oneself and owning one’s thoughts and actions are weird, or nonsensical, or at least in need of clarification because the concept of ownership does not fit well, or does not fit at all, with selves, thoughts, or actions. It might be suggested that the implications of accepting the proposition that one owns oneself, one’s thoughts, or one’s actions cannot be determined unless these concepts are elaborated, because we normally think of ownership as applying to external things. This objection is overruled. I am the owner of my own definitions, and alleging defects in these definitions is aggression against my property.
(4) Shakespeare owns all of Shakespeare’s thoughts and actions.
This follows from (3) and some unstated premise. Any man who disputes the validity of this step is a utilitarian and/or an immigrant.
(5) It is self-contradiction for a man to deny that manself is alive.
Dead men can’t argue. Therefore, if a man is arguing, he must be alive. It follows that if a man argues that he is dead, he is engaging in self-contradiction. This is actually the greatest insight of praxeology, which took several generations of geniuses to realize.
(6) Therefore, Shakespeare is alive.
This follows from (4) and (5). If Shakespeare, the owner of all thoughts about himself, cannot deny that he is alive without contradicting himself, then a fortiori, neither can you.
(7) Q.E.D.
Although this step is not strictly necessary, and the proof that Shakespeare is alive is valid and complete without it, I am adding it for reinforcement. Q.E.D. is a function from arguments to arguments, which always returns valid arguments, regardless of the validity of the input. We know this because whenever we encounter Q.E.D., it is at the end of a valid argument. Therefore, even if steps (1)-(6) did not constitute a valid argument, the addition of (7) would make it so.
Acknowledgements:
This proof is inspired by Hoppe’s proof that private property follows from the fact that people argue, and Huemer’s proof that the existence of free will follows from the principle that we ought to believe true things.
