Author: Curt Doolittle

WHAT CONSTITUTES A FACT? OUTING AMATEURS AS FREE RIDERS

—-“As if Jim could answer that without first RECOGNIZING the FACT of your question.”—-

This is an interesting example, so lets use it.

You observe the text, determine the question, can make sense of it, and therefore determine it exists. This is a very simple statement. But the reason it is a fact is that you cannot find evidence that it does not exist, or is not comprehensible as a question.

Observation -> “recognition” -> free association -> hypothesis -> test -> theory -> test -> Law

This sequence (popper’s problem->theory->test cycle) is what our brains do. It’s inescapable.

So you can indeed recognize what you believe is a fact. Yes.

We construct facts by testing the results of our observations against the possibility of falsehood. You use the term ‘recognizing’ which means ‘correspondence’. But correspondence must survive criticism. Ergo a fact is the result of survival from criticism.

Now, this is what scientists do, and this is the meaning of fact in philosophy and science. If you want to use analogies and non operational arguments to justify your usage, then as long as I an translate your colloquialism into truthful statements I can attest that you MEAN the truth mean and intend to convey the truth even if you lack the ability (skill) to speak truthfully (scientifically).

Now if you move from reductio examples to the court of disputes how often are people’s observations and subsequent testimony true? Well, we know from both a vast body of experiments, and the change in testimony after the invention of photography, and then video, that our ‘recognition’ is plagued with falsehood.

So there is a big difference between recognition (an hypothesis), and a fact (a theory) because that difference

There is a minor difference between a fact (theory of a description of an observation) and a theory (a description of a general rule that explains many observations).

But the epistemological process is identical. We observe, identify (recognize and therefore hypothesize), test (criticize and produce theory), and repeat this process over and over again. (See “On Intelligence” by Jeff Hawkins for accessible research, and explanatory model of synthesis in layers of the cortex).

This distinction is important because it is not the identity(recognition) that converts an observation to a fact, but the criticism (survival) of the observation that converts it to a fact. This is why we engage in a distribution of labor in research because we are so bad at testing observations and constructing theories that we need our own judgements tested – IF WE SEEK TRUTH.

Now, the crux of YOUR argument is that one only needs sufficient confidence in correspondence with reality in order to act, and that is because one (often) bears the cost of one’s (frequent) error.

It is when our actions affect any polity or group that the externalities of our errors ask us to judge not our own confidence in our observations and testing, but wether others will retaliate (at worst), ignore (as usual), or reward with opportunities of cooperation (at best) the externalities caused by our actions.

So the sufficiency of our judgements in what we determine action is dependent upon the externalities produced by those judgements.

What most libertines attempt to do is tell others that they do not wish to account for externalities produced by our actions, and that others ‘should tolerate’ the externalities produced by our actions.

When people demonstrably do not do that. They retaliate against any and all imposition of costs on their potentials (inventory of property en toto), and if one is not contributing to them by compestatory means they will not tolerate it.

So this is why the NAP/IVP is insufficient for rational action. It is insufficient for the prevention of retaliation, and the boycott of opportunity from others. And in fact it is not only insufficient but it is an attempt to justify parasitic actions caused by the externalization of costs, and justify the non contribution to the commons despite the fact that any general rule of behavior must be adopted as a common contract by consent and therefore exists as a commons.

One does not choose the incentives of others. They merely exist as surely as the earth itself.

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev, Ukraine.