I think Mises’s point is rather that concepts like “good,” “bad,” “evil,” “right,” “wrong,” “ought to” and “rights” all reduce back down to variations on “I desire it”/”It brings me pleasure” and the opposite. In other words, all ethical systems are dressed up (subjective) consequentialism and they only appear otherwise due to semantic confusion.
The response to that would be that you only do things that give others pleasure because the feeling of helping others is pleasurable to you or because you expect something in return, and that if neither of those were the case, you wouldn’t do it. (I don’t necessarily agree with that — I’m pretty sure I don’t — but I do believe that’s how they’d reduce it.)
I think Mises’s point is rather that concepts like “good,” “bad,” “evil,” “right,” “wrong,” “ought to” and “rights” all reduce back down to variations on “I desire it”/”It brings me pleasure” and the opposite. In other words, all ethical systems are dressed up (subjective) consequentialism and they only appear otherwise due to semantic confusion.
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Imagine that you got no satisfaction at all from bringing pleasure to others, but you did it anyway. What would be the reason?
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The response to that would be that you only do things that give others pleasure because the feeling of helping others is pleasurable to you or because you expect something in return, and that if neither of those were the case, you wouldn’t do it. (I don’t necessarily agree with that — I’m pretty sure I don’t — but I do believe that’s how they’d reduce it.)