(Curt Doolittle December 18 at 9:24pm)
  1. if we CAN fully expand a sentence, before we test it for internal consistency, and we do not do so, then why? In other words, what is the informational content between an unexpanded sentence, and an expanded sentence? And why would we fail to expand a sentence that can be expanded?

What is the difference between the order of terms in mathematics, the order of terms in set statements, and the order of terms in operational language, and the order of terms in fully expanded natural language, and the order of terms in colloquial natural language?

So if we start with a statement in colloquial language then fully expand it in natural language, then fully expand it in operational language, then it is almost impossible to construct the vast majority of sophomoric pseudo-philosophical questions.

  1. The necessity of the prohibition on the verb to-be, (another category of expansion) evolved to prevent stating authoritatively that which is merely subjective opinion. But in addition, it also prevents conflating intention, experience, interpretations, and actions. Of which we can only test actions.

  2. Promissory expansion of statements (sentences) evolved to prevent forms of suggestion and conflation. (Instead of Strawson’s light version of performative truth, use promissory – strict -construction that precedes each statement ” I promise that….”

  3. In the sequence:

1 – identity (categorically consistent)

2 – logical (internally consistent)

3 – empirical (externally consistent)

4 – operational (existentially consistent)

5 – moral (reciprocally consistent)

6 – fully accounted (scope consistent)

7 – limits and parsimony (limit consistent);

each dimension of which increases the informational content we are testing …. we have the choice of choosing to increase the dimensions that we test, using the methodology capable of testing that dimension, or limiting ourselves to the current dimension’s means of testing.

Now, when we increase the dimensions, we gain new knowledge which we can then use to recursively test each prior dimension by its method.

So why would one choose to test a question by internal consistency rather than external correspondence followed by another test of internal consistency?

  1. When testing for internal consistency, we eventually run into the problem of completeness. And while we can construct relatively complete statements axiomatically we cannot do so theoretically (against reality) because of causal density, except in the special cases (reductio).