Author: Curt Doolittle

ON COMPREHENSION OF PROPERTARIANISM

I’m trying to put my arms around who understands what, and why. Because I can test pretty clearly each individual, and I see patterns between individuals.

LEVEL 1) POLITICS – Can you understand politics?

(a) The informal and formal institutions of cooperation and coercion, and the ability to model changes to those institutions, and to forecast the results.

(b) Can you distinguish the difference between personal philosophy, informal institutions and moral norms, and formal political institutions. And can you distinguish between making arguments of personal philosophy, moral norms, and political institutions?

The problem I encounter is the inability for individuals to model all three at once, since all three do function at once in any polity.

Eli Harman, Paul Bakhmut, and an increasing number of people who have conservative libertarian intuitions, seem to grasp these matters quickly. Although I think Eli may be a better communicator than I am.

LEVEL 2) ETHICS – Can you understand ethics?

The moral rules necessary for cooperation, and the ability to model changes to those rules given a heterogeneous polity whose incentives vary significantly.

The problem I encounter is moral blindness. Moral blindness combined with the inability to model ethics, or distinguish between philosophy, informal institutions and formal institutions. Or the selective choice of one rather than all three.

Roman Skaskiw grasps these matters immediately.

LEVEL 3) EPISTEMOLOGY – Can you understand epistemology?

The methods by which we ascertain the quality of our understanding of the correspondence between our ideas, our actions that result from our ideas, and the natural world.

I seem to be able to get pretty far with a few Critical Rationalists ( Frank Lovell for example. Ayelam Valentine Agaliba clearly can manage these issues. Better than I can I think.) But even CR’s are locked into pervasive platonism. A platonism they protect with religious zeal.

Philosophy is largely a Platonist discipline. So it’s actually pretty hard to find people with both scientific and economic backgrounds sufficient to grasp the differences between reason, exchange, and science.

I seem to get pretty far with a few mathematical philosophers and professors who were educated before the ‘mystical’ sixties and later.

If I can find mathematicians who have some experience with the problems of mathematical philosophy I seem to have no problem showing them the parallel of their problem in logic, ethics and science. But otherwise, epistemology is simply a pretty hard topic for most people to manage.

We certainly have a problem in libertarianism because of jewish pseudoscientific rationals. And we have a pervasive and crippling problem of german continental platonism. We have a problem of mathematical and logical platonism in anglo analytic philosophy.

LEVEL 4) Can you understand metaphysics?

I cant really get very far with anyone on metaphysics. Skye Stewart is better than I am at grasping different philosophical points of view. But in general, my view of metaphysics is on of absolute Scientific Realism, just as my view of ethics is one of absolute Ethical Realism.

This is not terribly difficult terrain for professional philosophers. But there are not a lot of professional philosophers with libertarian leanings.

SUMMARY

This is a ladder from the least to the most complex problems in political philsophy. And while I may engage some at the lowest level, by the time I reach the highest there are just very few people to converse with.