(This is profound, and a lot to grasp. I have copied it here from elsewhere.)
While one might say that ‘it does not matter what we do, that discipline over there, is none of our concern, because whether true or not, this technique is useful to us’. The fact is that such a statement is arbitrary and preferential and not ‘true’ remains.
If instead of placing higher value on one’s personal utility in an isolated domain, one places higher value on suppressing immoral political speech such that freedom is possible, one might reach a different conclusion.
Just as high trust ethics are possible by the suppression of additional immoral actions over low trust ethics, higher trust ethics are possibly by the suppression of further immoral actions.
In low trust ethics, asymmetric knowledge is an ethical means of profit. In high trust ethics profit from asymmetric knowledge is immoral.
In ‘higher trust ethics’ (In propertarianism) we place a greater ethical constraint, such that profit from obscurantism, mysticism, and platonism are prohibited.
If operational language will allow you to express an idea and serves the needs of one’s function, then it is immoral to rely on platonic argument.
If symmetrical knowledge will allow you to cooperate with another then it is immoral to express your thoughts in asymmetric terms. (incomplete information).
If telling the truth will allow you to cooperate with another then it is immoral and unethical to express your thoughts in fraudulent terms.
If voluntarily cooperating with someone such that you can obtain something without stealing, then it is immoral to steal from them.
If is possible to cooperate with someone such that you can both survive then it is immoral to kill them.
So, we must, in order to suppress increasingly complex forms of crime, ethical violation and immoral violation, we must forgo opportunities for self benefit by restraint, then to suppress the use of obscurant, mystical, platonic deceptions requires that we refrain, even at cost, from obscurant, mystical, and platonic statements.
That this is in fact, what is required of Science (to make statements in operant language), then why is it that we cannot require this level of TRUTH in all other disciplines – especially if it prevents criminal, unethical, and immoral behavior, and enables as great a leap in cooperation as the high trust ethic did over the low trust ethic?
Again, I believe I have solved the problem. But it may be just too much to ask for someone else to understand unless I am able to either condense it to a Confucian riddle, or extend it to a Hayekian narrative, or a Darwinian exposition of cases.
ETHICAL BEHAVIOR COMES AT A HIGH COST.
Ergo:
If you want a politically ethical society we must pay this cost: the abandonment of the convenience of imaginary objects and confusing the utility of a conceptual tool with the existence and truth of that tool as a construction.
This is how to make politics ‘scientific.’
We outlawed violence.
We outlawed theft.
We outlawed fraud.
We suppressed fraud-by-omission with warranty.
We suppressed free riding with marital structure and property rights.
We tried to suppress corruption with the constitution, but it failed. It failed because the constitution was not precise enough – in no small part because it should have specified original intent.
We have failed to suppress mysticism, monotheism, marxian obscurantism, and Hegelian and postmodern conflation of mysticism and obscurantism.
The requirement for scientific speech makes such arguments impossible. It means that public discourse is a property-commons, and one may not free ride or privatize it for one’s own convenience.
Because it is immoral to do so.
This is pretty profound. But again, it may be that such a profound statement is not of interest to you. But to me, as someone who has tried to solve the problem of ethics in an ethically and morally heterogeneious polity and to protect us from another dark age of ignorance and mysticism that Marx, Freud and Cantor have tried to drive us into, it is of a greater priority, and it is entirely worthy of the cost.
-Cheers
================
END NOTES FOR LATER REFERENCE
-
If i say that the square root if two is the name for a function but is not reducible to a number, and cannot be demonstrated to be possible, that does not in fact prevent me from using the name of that function as a symbol in deduction, because in no circumstance is infinite precision applicable.
-
(Lest we lose sight of the source of my argument here, I am trying to define extensions of political morality such that we can create institutions that permit the cooperation of individuals and groups holding heterogeneous moral codes, each of which reflects a different reproductive strategy. If you are going to create a means of resolving differences between moral codes, what constraints does one place upon the formation of argument, procedure, policy, and law, such that suppression of discounts would be possible, and theft by obscurant means would be impossible.
How do we prevent the use of deception via various forms of obscurantism in a polity consisting of morally and ethically heterogeneous individuals and groups?
If, as I’m arguing, mathematics is justificationary, but need not be, and need not be without sacrifice of functionality, and if it can be such that mathematicians (or members of this group) can be fooled into justificationary positions, then how would we prevent the ‘leakage’ from either this group’s ideology or the platonism of mathematics, (or that of socialists and totalitarians) into law?
- limits solve the problem of arbitrary precision (general rules) when in physics, correspondence with reality provides the ‘limit’ of precision. This is the difference between math (the study of pure relations independent of context) and the study of reality (relations within context).
But that does not mean that when we make a reference to any mathematical object, we are naming a function (label for the result of operations) not naming an extant entity.
That by definition a number system can be used to construct the rules for any n dimensional construct deterministically because of the constancy of relations, we should not confuse the determinacy we have ourselves described in constant relations, with existence.
I cannot speak something into material existence other than the vibrations caused with my voice.
I actually find this subject fascinating because it sort of renders most of the world ‘childish’.
- what good does a personal philosophy of ethical (interpersonal) action, and moral (political) action do you when the others do not share a marginally indifferent ethic and moral code?
So, for example, what good does it do you if the vast majority economically, politically, or physically deprive you of any ability to act on this code?
Politics is a contract, not a personal philosophy. And you might say that you will offer others these terms that you prefer. But if you must construct a contract (constitution) what terms must exist in this contract to make your personal philosophy both ethical and moral, possible to act upon?
- a) Empirical means “observable”, not quantifiable: “based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic.” Which is of course, the difference between the motion of planets vs unicorns (and infinity). That which is empirical is different from that which is imaginary. It is observable in time. (Very common mistake btw. You are not alone.)
b) So, again, existence is different from utility. I can tell a fable with a unicorn, and I can imitate arbitrary precision with infinity. But that is different from saying such a thing exists scientifically (empirically). When you say that something is infinite, you are in fact, RELYING ON INDUCTION. (Ouch. I know.)
c) God, and magic for that matter, are ‘older’ old hat. And they well served the purpose of their authors. Just as does infinity.
d) Why is it that we need the ‘concept of limits’ (a form of justification)? It’s arbitrary precision instead of contextual precision – general rules independent of context versus precision determined by context. Why is it that we can use boolean logic (boolean algebra) for computation? (see Turing) And what utility does the function limit() serve in transforming contextual precision into arbitrary precision (general rule)?
e) Constructivist, Intuitive, computational, operational, empirical, natural – all are expressions in math, logic, philosophy and science of attempts to circumvent the problem of reliance on justification.
Departmental math, is justificationary.
f) So, again, given that the difference is unnecessary and justificationary, and imaginary, while if stated operationally, math is descriptive, deductive, natural and ‘real’, and that the necessity of this conversation is DEMONSTRATION of the very problem of justificationary logic, even among people who assert that they deny the existence of justification, it should be somewhat obvious by now that there exists in fact the problem of externalizing immoral, unreal, illogical, platonism that is exported by justificationary departmental mathematics.
g) Given that mathematical platonism is, like divine intervention, the hand of god, or some other magical mater of existence, ‘correctable’ without sacrifice of functionality in mathematics, then I will return to my asserted thesis that it is immoral to use non-operational, non-constructivist argument in public discourse (the export through obscurant language of error), because the institution of politics, exists for the purpose of transfer of wealth. Further, that we can, by placing the reuqirement for constructivist, operational, language on public discourse, we can (at least in theory) prohibit organized theft, corruption and immorality via justificationary psuedoscience, magic, or the pretense that mathematics can be used to describe phenomenon that is absent of constant relations (economics).