Curt Doolittle

Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response

  • of the Mind Read this

    http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/01/diversity_of_th.htmlDiversity of the Mind

    Read this

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-03 14:08:00 UTC

  • Another Critic

    —“I wonder if Curt Doolittle would share with us which economic discipline ie Keynesianism or Friedman’s Chicagoan School that is more scientific than Austrian economics.”—Brian White

    [B]rian,

    I can define ‘Scientific’ very precisely. I am not sure that I can define Austrian Economics so precisely – other than stating it as the two German and Cosmopolitan (Misesian/Rothbardian) branches. The germans did not make any pseudoscientific claims that I am aware of. However, Mises and Rothbard make expressly pseudoscientific arguments – not the least of which is conflating axiomatic (complete) systems for constructing proofs, with theoretical (incomplete) systems for constructing models. The definition of pseudoscientific is a claim that does not follow the scientific method. The scientific method however, is not in fact a method, but a set of moral constraints on warrantable (truthful) speech. Mises claims an axiomatic system is a science rather than a logic. This is simply false. (albeit his era was plagued with philosophical confusion as philosophy desperately attempted to attain the respectability of science. Today it is group with theology both in book stores and in academic budgets..)

    —“Okay Curt I was more interested to know if there were other economic sciences that you concluded were more scientific”—Brian White

    [B]rian,

    Logical fallacy.

    Something is not more scientific than something else. The point of demarcation in science is whether the scientific method is used or not. As such practicing science is a binary proposition, not an analog proposition. So “more scientific” is not possible. Either someone follows the scientific method or one does not. The definition of ‘science’ is whether one practices the scientific method.

    Economic science is practiced scientifically. Misesianism is the non-scientific branch of Austrian economics. All working economists today who call themselves Austrians (that I know of) practice empirical, scientific, economics. In other words, they are not Misesians.

    Instead,working Austrians require praxeological testing (operational falsification) of economic theories rather than macro correlations alone. This is tantamount to placing two additional requirements on the scientific method: (a) that economic theories must be operationally falsifiable, and (b) that economic theories of policy must be stated such that they expose the degree of moral or immoral consequences.

    Cheers.

  • Another Critic

    —“I wonder if Curt Doolittle would share with us which economic discipline ie Keynesianism or Friedman’s Chicagoan School that is more scientific than Austrian economics.”—Brian White

    [B]rian,

    I can define ‘Scientific’ very precisely. I am not sure that I can define Austrian Economics so precisely – other than stating it as the two German and Cosmopolitan (Misesian/Rothbardian) branches. The germans did not make any pseudoscientific claims that I am aware of. However, Mises and Rothbard make expressly pseudoscientific arguments – not the least of which is conflating axiomatic (complete) systems for constructing proofs, with theoretical (incomplete) systems for constructing models. The definition of pseudoscientific is a claim that does not follow the scientific method. The scientific method however, is not in fact a method, but a set of moral constraints on warrantable (truthful) speech. Mises claims an axiomatic system is a science rather than a logic. This is simply false. (albeit his era was plagued with philosophical confusion as philosophy desperately attempted to attain the respectability of science. Today it is group with theology both in book stores and in academic budgets..)

    —“Okay Curt I was more interested to know if there were other economic sciences that you concluded were more scientific”—Brian White

    [B]rian,

    Logical fallacy.

    Something is not more scientific than something else. The point of demarcation in science is whether the scientific method is used or not. As such practicing science is a binary proposition, not an analog proposition. So “more scientific” is not possible. Either someone follows the scientific method or one does not. The definition of ‘science’ is whether one practices the scientific method.

    Economic science is practiced scientifically. Misesianism is the non-scientific branch of Austrian economics. All working economists today who call themselves Austrians (that I know of) practice empirical, scientific, economics. In other words, they are not Misesians.

    Instead,working Austrians require praxeological testing (operational falsification) of economic theories rather than macro correlations alone. This is tantamount to placing two additional requirements on the scientific method: (a) that economic theories must be operationally falsifiable, and (b) that economic theories of policy must be stated such that they expose the degree of moral or immoral consequences.

    Cheers.

  • INSIGHT FROM MORGAN WARSTLER Morgan Warstler —“The bit that I’m thankful to Ho

    INSIGHT FROM MORGAN WARSTLER

    Morgan Warstler

    —“The bit that I’m thankful to Hoppe for… is that his effort on Argumentative Ethics (which I disagree with), knocked loose and helped crystallize an idea that I have long held from debate: That rhetoric is violence. That those who engage in rhetoric, are engaging in legal violence to make a claim on property (including the time of other men). This immediately justifies violence to maintain property.”—

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-02 11:51:00 UTC

  • STRANGE CRITICISM FROM BRUCE KOERBER (from elsewhere) –Still not a peep about:

    STRANGE CRITICISM FROM BRUCE KOERBER

    (from elsewhere)

    –Still not a peep about: “Even though it is perfectly true and perfectly logical that humans are subjective beings there are some who cannot fathom a scientific subjective methodology.”– Bruce Koerber

    The question is not whether we can practice a subjective methodology. Nor is it honest to use psychologism as a criticism when the question is whether such a method is a logical possibility or is empirically demonstrable. (It is dishonest actually – and psychological criticism is immoral because it is dishonest.) Instead, the question is whether subjectivity yields results – empirically it doesn’t, empirically it hasn’t, and logically it can’t. This is because of a tragically simple reason: subjective testing is not axiomatic in that it is complete (the distinguishing property of an axiom). But it is instead, that economic laws, constitute “laws” (in the spectrum of intuition, hypothesis, theory and law) meaning that it they are general rules of limited precision, widely accepted, that we cannot find false.

    We can certainly TEST economic statements. But we cannot deduce economic phenomenon, nor can we observe economic phenomenon, particularly emergent economic phenomenon, without empirical methods. We can test data all day long. We do.

    The logical possibility does not exist. We cannot and do not imagine (deduce) economic phenomenon, because economic phenomenon are emergent and inter-temporally equilibrating without every reaching equilibrium. Man is also fraught with an increasing number of cognitive biases. In other words, those phenomenon are too complicated to observe and predict. This is why there are so many outstanding problems in economic theory – it’s terribly complicated.

    So the unique property of economics is that we can test first principles (human subjectivity),rather than resort to purely correlative tests. In this sense we can know if economic theories can be true, in a way that we cannot know if theories in other science can be true. And even if we know that they CAN be true, we do not know if they are ‘true’ in the metaphysical sense, of being the most parsimonious theory possible.

    We can for example, construct a mathematica proof given any set of axioms. this mathematical proof demonstrates that any mathematical expression is can be constructed using mathematical operations. We can also demonstrate a proof in economics if any economic statement can be constructed from sympathetically testable existentially possible, human operations. But mathematical models cannot demonstrate innovation due to self awareness, and intentionally bend or break axioms in order to satisfy self interest – but humans can, and do – that is what even Keyensian economics combined with trade, fiscal and monetary policy attempt to do – and successfully do.

    It is therefore immoral and unscientific (an abuse of science) to claim that economic theories that are not operationally tested are true and moral. Whether we use empirical methods to observe and test our observations of economic phenomenon is merely a necessity of observation, and a necessity of compensating for our cognitive biases that forever jaundice our reason.

    There is no exit from the above box. Sorry.

    (Plenty of ‘peeps’ in there.)

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-02 05:05:00 UTC

  • ANOTHER EXAMPLE —“I wonder if Curt Doolittle would share with us which economi

    ANOTHER EXAMPLE

    —“I wonder if Curt Doolittle would share with us which economic discipline ie Keynesianism or Friedman’s Chicagoan School that is more scientific than Austrian economics.”—Brian White

    Brian,

    I can define ‘Scientific’ very precisely. I am not sure that I can define Austrian Economics so precisely – other than stating it as the two German and Cosmopolitan (Misesian/Rothbardian) branches. The germans did not make any pseudoscientific claims that I am aware of. However, Mises and Rothbard make expressly pseudoscientific arguments – not the least of which is conflating axiomatic (complete) systems for constructing proofs, with theoretical (incomplete) systems for constructing models. The definition of pseudoscientific is a claim that does not follow the scientific method. The scientific method however, is not in fact a method, but a set of moral constraints on warrantable (truthful) speech. Mises claims an axiomatic system is a science rather than a logic. This is simply false. (albeit his era was plagued with philosophical confusion as philosophy desperately attempted to attain the respectability of science. Today it is group with theology both in book stores and in academic budgets..)

    —“Okay Curt I was more interested to know if there were other economic sciences that you concluded were more scientific”—Brian White

    Brian,

    Logical fallacy.

    Something is not more scientific than something else. The point of demarcation in science is whether the scientific method is used or not. As such practicing science is a binary proposition, not an analog proposition. So “more scientific” is not possible. Either someone follows the scientific method or one does not. The definition of ‘science’ is whether one practices the scientific method.

    Economic science is practiced scientifically. Misesianism is the non-scientific branch of Austrian economics. All working economists today who call themselves Austrians (that I know of) practice empirical, scientific, economics. In other words, they are not Misesians.

    Instead,working Austrians require praxeological testing (operational falsification) of economic theories rather than macro correlations alone. This is tantamount to placing two additional requirements on the scientific method: (a) that economic theories must be operationally falsifiable, and (b) that economic theories of policy must be stated such that they expose the degree of moral or immoral consequences.

    Cheers.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-02 04:50:00 UTC

  • Untitled

    Wikipedia deletes the Cultural Marxism article with a new voting less than a week after a previous vote showed "no consensus"
    byu/Logan_Mac inKotakuInAction

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-31 09:13:00 UTC

  • I think such arguments are not cast in useful frames, because the difference bet

    http://johnquiggin.com/2014/12/31/consequentialist-arguments-for-deontological-positions/comment-page-1/#comment-249747John,

    I think such arguments are not cast in useful frames, because the difference between Imitative(virtue) ethics, rule(deontological) ethics, and outcome(consequentialist) ethics, is merely the information one has at one’s disposal in making judgements. Just as abduction, induction and deduction are different levels of guesswork depending upon the information we have at our disposal. In that light, I am not sure that the assumption that one combines rule justifications and consequent justifications is any more than an artifact of the normal process of debating moral rules because of the outcomes they produce. There isn’t anything irrational about it.

    But, rather than frame the question as one of rationalism, we can also frame it scientifically: Humans demonstrably justify our moral intuitions through a fog of cognitive biases that are unequally distributed in intensity across all of us – not the least of which are by gender, kin, class, family structure, and pressures from local geographic competition. It is as painfully obvious that you are an Australian as it is to you that I am an American, or someone else is a Canadian, Brit or German. Yet each of us in the final analysis relies upon an intuitionistic judgment. And appeals to scientific judgement are rare. In your post you make this same argument: that in the end we result to intuition.

    So, the very idea of a common good achievable by moral argument among well intentioned equals is probably illogical – which is why we cannot achieve it. We were relatively equal in interests under craftsman-agrarianism and the absolute nuclear family. But outside of those conditions, our inequality of interests is increasingly visible, expressed and our inequality of interests dominant. And particularly with the dissolution of the family and the de-nationalism of liberalism, our inequality of interests is increasingly expressed in political preferences.

    Instead of operating under the pretense of equals under majority rule, if we treat one another as possessed of different sensory biases (roles) in a division of inter-temporal reproductive labor, and that we use voluntary exchange as our information system, then under those conditions, majority rule is only slightly less terrible a means of cooperating than tyranny, and a failure to construct exchanges lost opportunity for cooperation.

    And so our purpose, if better served, in economic science (the study of human cooperation), is to provide institutional means for facilitating superior communication (exchanges) between individuals and groups, rather than attempting to construct unknowable optimums under majority rule.

    At that point fallacious arguments predicated upon false premises will no longer be necessary and we can simply argue about what we are each willing to do, instead of what we justify to be good albeit if in our own illusory and biased interests.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev,

    http://johnquiggin.com/2014/12/31/consequentialist-arguments-for-deontological-positions/

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-30 23:13:00 UTC

  • Dear Scrivener, and your creators at Literature and Latte. Thank you for crashin

    Dear Scrivener, and your creators at Literature and Latte.

    Thank you for crashing and taking down my entire day’s worth of work.

    I thought I had Microsoft Word for that.

    Thanks. Really.

    Not like I have this much time to waste you know?

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-29 09:14:00 UTC

  • (worth repeating) —“Like I keep saying, the Anglos were wrong but argued truth

    (worth repeating)

    —“Like I keep saying, the Anglos were wrong but argued truthfully; the germans were right but argued untruthfully; and the Jews were wrong and agued untruthfully. What I struggle to do, is to state the german proposition truthfully.”—

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-29 05:27:00 UTC