—“The problem with philosophical tradition is that it’s predicated on textual and scriptural interpretation. But words don’t mean things, people mean things and they satisfy the demand for unambiguity, consistency, correspondence, and the possibility or they don’t.”—
This is long. It’s mostly just copy-paste because I make similar arguments all the time. It wasn’t an effort. Interpretation of Text vs Analysis of Actions
GIVEN – European legal tradition (Contract) vs Literary interpreted tradition (wisdom, persuasion, argument) vs middle eastern scriptural tradition (Authority). – Performative Truth (testimony, science) vs Textual Truth(legal or scriptural interpretation) vs Ideal Truth(literary phil.) vs Analytic Truth(mathematics). – Set Logic (Speech, Analogy) vs Operational Logic (Action, Computation) – Binary (True False) and non-contradiction vs Ternary (undecidable, truth candidate, and false) and Supply and Demand – Inference vs Possibility – Analogy vs Identity (unambiguous) – Justification vs falsification vs adversarialism (construction and falsification)
WHERE We Define Truth As:
Honesty: that testimony (description) you give with full knowledge that knowledge is incomplete, your language is insufficient, but you have not performed due diligence in the elimination of error and bias, but which you warranty is free of deceit; within the scope of precision limited to the question you wish to answer; and the promise that another possess of the same knowledge (information), performing the same due diligence, having the same experiences, would provide the same testimony.
Truthfulness (TRUTH, Performative Truth): that testimony (description) you give if your knowledge (information) is incomplete, your language is insufficient, you have performed due diligence in the elimination of error, imaginary content, wishful thinking, bias, fictionalism, and deceit; within the scope of precision limited to the question you wish to answer; and which you warranty to be so; and the promise that another possessed of the knowledge, performing the same due diligence, having the same experiences, would provide the same testimony.
Ideal Truth: That testimony (description) you would give, if your knowledge (information) was complete, your language was sufficient, stated without error, cleansed of bias, and absent deceit, within the scope of precision limited to the context of the question you wish to answer; and the promise that another possessed of the same knowledge (information), performing the same due diligence, having the same experiences, would provide the same testimony. (Ideal Truth = Perfect Parsimony.)
Analytic Truth: The testimony you give promising the internal consistency of one or more statements used in the construction of a proof in an axiomatic(declarative) system. (a Logical Truth).
Tautological Truth: That testimony you give when promising the equality of two statements using different terms: A circular definition, a statement of equality or a statement of identity.
AND; Performative Truth( Testimony ), Requires Coherence Across the Dimensions Testifiable by Man, in The Series:
- Existential > … 2. Realism > … 3. Naturalism >
- Possible > … 5. Operational – Demonstrable (Observable: externally internally) > … 6. Empirical – Externally Correspondent > … 7. Logical – Categorically Consistent
- Rational > … 9. Rational Choice – Demonstrated Preference > … … 10. Incentives – Demonstrated Interest > … … … 11. Body, Mind, Memory, Effort, Time … … … 12. Mates, Offspring, Kin … … … 13. Status, Reputation, Kith … … … 14. Several Interests (in many forms) … … … 15. Common Interests (in many forms) … 16. Reciprocal > … … 17. Productive … … 18. Fully Informed … … 19. Voluntary Transfer > … … 20. Free of Negative Externality > First Principles > … (… Ternary Laws … (Cut for Brevity)) Survivable > … 22. Power Distribution of Law > … 23. Pareto Distribution of Assets > … 24. Nash Distribution of Rewards > Complete > … 26. Limits, Completeness, Full Accounting, … 27. Consistency, Coherence, Parsimony Competitive – in the market for theories … 29. Sufficient – Satisfies the Demand For Infallibility … 30. Parsimony – In competition with other testimonies Warrantable > … 32. (i)as having performed due diligence in the above dimensions; … 33. (ii)where due diligence is sufficient to satisfy the demand for infallibility; … 34. (iii)and where one entertains no risk that one cannot perform restitution for.
AND; Decidability sufficient to satisfy the demand for infallibility
WHERE; The Spectrum of demand for infallibility includes no less than:
Intelligible: Decidable enough to imagine a conceptual relationship Reasonable: Decidable enough for me to feel confident about my decision (that it will satisfy my needs, and is not a waste of time, energy, resource ) Actionable: Decidable enough for me to take actions that produce positive results. Moral: Decidable enough for me to not cause others to react negatively to me, if they have knowledge of my actions. Normative: Decidable enough to resolve a conflict without subjective opinion among my fellow people with similar values. Judicial: Decidable enough to resolve a conflict without subjective opinion across different peoples with different values. Scientific: Decidable regardless of all opinions or perspectives (‘True’) Logical: Decidable out of physical or logical necessity Tautological: Decideably identical in properties (referents) if not references (terms).
THEREFORE The liar’s paradox: “[everything written in this box is false]” is not a paradox. It is a deception by an author by use of grammatical abuse, by the abuse of the most common means of textual deception: the copula, and by the abuse of recursion without supply additional information, necessary to complete a transaction for meaning, where the human grammatical and speech facility, and all human speech, results from continuous recursive disambiguation that can terminate in a contract for meaning.]
In other words just as we discover optical illusions (deceits) because it is possible to deceive neural prediction by our sight, it is equally possible to discover verbal illusions (deceits) because it is possible to deceive verbal prediction by grammatical suggestion rather than optical suggestion.
In other words, words don’t mean things, people mean things. The Liar’s Paradox is only a paradox if you don’t understand grammar. If you understand grammar you understand that it is just a lie, by design.
Likewise, we tend to prefer comforting lies regardless of whether they violate the formal, physical, natural, and evolutionary laws. Especially scarcity (the false promise of endless growth), the nature of man (amoral, acquisitive, reciprocal, proportional, and limited), the malleability of man (very little), and the evolutionary laws (genetic load, regression to the mean, natural selection, defeat of the red queen).
And likewise, we tend to prefer doubling down on intellectual malinvestments rather than learn to master new technologies.
Philosophy evolved under pressure in the ancient, medieval and modern worlds, such that it would not cross certain lines. Those lies are accountability, responsibility, possibility, and cost.
In other words, philosophy and science are fully demarcated, because the only truth we can warranty as not false is testimony, and testimony doesn’t just cover correct and incorrect, or moral right and wrong, but possible or not, costs, testifiable and not, and criminal and not. Words don’t mean things (idealism). People do(empiricism). The only reason to interpret words is that the author was pragmatic lazy incompetent or dishonest.
This is, an example of, the last century of dispute – that was corrected by a supreme court judge (Scalia) who returned us from legal positivism (idealism) to legal empiricism.