Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response

MORE ON REVIEW OF LESTER

(Just my thoughts as I went through the book today)

As I said yesterday there isn’t anything novel or of value in lester’s work and it’s no use to me. Which is all I wanted to know.

IT IS VERY HARD TO IMPROVE UPON HOPPE

My criticism of Hans’ work is highly technical, and I view mine as both restating his and extending it for heterogeneous polities in the anglo model. I’m open to new insights but there just aren’t any. Property like money renders the incommensurable commensurable.

MISREPRESENTATION OF CRITICAL RATIONALISM

Critical rationalism argues the following general prescriptions for the ‘moral’ practice of scientific investigation.

1) Uncertainty. We can never know whether any theory we construct, test and falsify, and therefore can find no fault with, is the most parsimonious description of causal relations possible without stating a tautology (the Truth), or whether new knowledge and understanding will replace our theory with one that is even more parsimonious.

2) Decidability. Given that the unknown always exists, it is impossible to to choose between theories that are more likely to be true (Decidability), without the addition of subjective preference (Or what in math would be considered contextual precision). In other words, given infinity as a denominator, probability is incalculable.

3) Criticism. The only means of iterative improvement of any theory is constant criticism (hardening for greater parsimony) which increases the empirical content of a theory, rather than additional confirmation of the theory which do not and cannot. No amount of confirmation will increase the content, only failure and therefore additional increases in parsimony increase increase content.

OPEN ISSUES IN CRITICAL RATIONALISM

It is not clear that the following are not true:

1) Popper’s main concern at the time he wrote was that science not practice pseudoscience in the public space, and that the then-pseudoscience of economics in particular was not used with greater authority than science can offer us. As such his argument is that we not abuse science and instead conduct it morally. It is not clear that this moral argument is in fact as certain as he argues, only that to prevent harm we should act in this manner whether it is true or not. Only empirical research can tell us.

2) Popper’s argument is a moral not logical, nor scientific one. We must ACT as such because acting as such will produce the best ecology of scientific investigation. It is not at all clear that under empirical analysis:

….(a) we appear to be quite good at prosecuting theories with both confirmation (repeating) testing, and falsifying those theories.

….(b) we appear to practice investigation by following least-cost means of experimentation. And it is not clear that least-cost-experimentation, because it is empirically incremental in itself, is not the best algorithm for investigation. As such it is not clear that the choice between theories to prosecute is in fact undecidable.

….(c) scientists only require a theory be stated in falsifiable terms, and do not practice criticism, but either instead expand application of theory to the point of failure, OR, posit a highly explanatory theory and attempt to confirm it. It is not clear that they would benefit from some other means of investigation, and it appears to be economically as well as logically difficult to imagine that the expansion of a theory to the point of failure, or confirmation then expansion of a grand hypothesis does not produce greater empirical content than criticism of a theory. It is hard to argue otherwise and that is why science practices as they do.

LESTER’S STRANGE USE OF CRITICAL RATIONALISM

Lester takes the position that if he can conjecture something that is verbally non-contradictory it stands until it is falsified. As long as he can construct alternative hypotheses then his statements remain unfalsified. Rather than,if he presents us with a hardened argument that is both internally consistent and externally correspondent, and therefore it is open to criticism. Science practices operational language to prevent precisely the kind of verbalism he practices. Operational definitions are necessary to give names to actions and observations that are non-fungible, and are repeatable because repeatability is the only means by which we can test that our perceived meaning that corresponds to reality. Lester seems to feel that he can construct axiomatic arguments by defining terms such as liberty rather than making use of extant terms, then neither subject them to tests of internal consistency, nor external correspondence. Instead, he seems to feel that internal consistency and external correspondence are unnecessary and that falsification must be conducted yet he gives us nothing concretely stated enough to falsify. He does not feel the need to justify his theory, in the sense of constructing internally consistent and externally correspondent statements – only hand wave some verbalism and then run from testing of that argument by providing convenient alternate hypothesis. This is not critical rationalism. It is not criticism. It is a verbal deception.

FROM LEVIATHAN

Lester maintains that he constructs a non-moral approach:

—“An important aspect of the compatibility thesis is the non‐ moral approach that I take throughout. It might help to give an early and explicit explanation of this somewhat unusual idea of eschewing moral advocacy. … if it is possible effectively to defend the congruence of liberty and welfare in practice, then there is no practical need for an ultimate moral defense of either”—

However this just means that he is unfamiliar with the literature on the evolution of morality. And as such he lacks the knowledge that morality (prohibition on free riding) is an objective necessity universal to man, without which cooperation is neither rational nor possible to evolve. Morality is necessary for cooperation.

And that the prohibition on free riding used in that literature is synonymous with the imposition of costs. (see Axelrod et all, Haidt’s Bibliography).

In addition, Lester fails to grasp that in all cases we can think of, human satisfaction and dissatisfaction correspond to increases and decreases in property. (See Propertarianism) wherein property is defined empirically through observation of man’s actions, rather than either arbitrarily or pragmatically.

****So since lester lacks current understanding of the literature, he is unable to identify that he has correctly identified the moral intuition of imposed cost, but he merely states that imposed cost affects satisfaction, but not the origin of satisfaction and dissatisfaction as the accumulation of various forms of resources.****

Lester defines ‘moral’ as a synonym for ‘norm’ rather than that the portfolio of norms in any polity consist of (a) objective moral necessities (prohibitions on free riding) given their structure of family and structure of production, (b) arbitrary taboos (c) signals of conformity to norms. So lester fails to correctly understand the difference between the set of norms which includes moral prohibitions, and morals, which are objectively testable statements of morality:

—“I certainly do not mean to belittle moral arguments as such. It is

simply that to bring in moral arguments would distract from my

arguments for objective compatibility. An analogical defense of this non-moral thesis occurs to me. Suppose two undiscovered primitive tribes living in the same region. One tribe thinks that eating any part of animals without hearts is immoral. The other tribe thinks that eating any part of animals without kidneys is

immoral. They have heated debates about both the moral issues and

the empirical facts about which animals have which organs. They feel

moral contempt for each other and continually attack each other in

attempts to enforce their moral views. Peaceful association suffers

considerably. “—

THE PATTERN THAT EMERGES

Lester relies upon two assumptions: Marxist argumentative technique of dialectic, and definitions of terms as used in colloquial language. (It is perhaps telling that Marx himself noted that by making his arguments using dialectic that he could not be held accountable for their failure. (CD: Cit Needed) )

So lester (a) misrepresents theories under CR as untestable via defense, against criticisms of internal consistency and external correspondence (b) engages in fungible language, and (c) relies upon dialectical argument. What this pattern results in, is Lester’s convenient insulation from criticism on the one hand, and argument by nothing but colloquial analogy on the other.

Example:

—“My view is not that there are ‘essences’ or ‘true meanings’ of these things but that there is often at least one of the following errors concerning them: a sound

commonsense understanding or plain English usage is being flouted for no valid reason (such as ‘coercion’ being extended beyond ‘the use of force’); there is no clear account of the real phenomenon which some word denotes, and a better account is needed to avoid confusion (such as ‘weakness of will’); there is no clear meaning to some word and so a better definition, only partly stipulative, can assist in clarifying what people must intend (such as the libertarian use of ‘liberty’); there are important logical and practical connections among these ideas and the things they denote in the world, which are no more ‘merely verbal’ than are, say, the theories of geometry (such as anarchy being intrinsically liberal). Thus I intend my approach not to be the mere linguistic analysis of normal usage but what W. W. Bartley, following Popper, calls ‘diacritical analysis’ “—

It is interesting, and perhaps telling, that both Postmoderns, Libertarians, and Neo-Conservatives rely upon marxist rationalist argumentation rather than science. In the absence of science, meaning, in the absence of observation and instrumentation, it is necessary to rely upon rationalism. But once science is present, all rationalism in all fields has been replaced by that science.

For example, in the above paragraph:

–“there is no clear meaning to some word and so a better definition, only partly stipulative, can assist in clarifying what people must intend (such as the libertarian use of ‘liberty’);”–

This is a confusion of precision. A term, rather than a name, must represent a category rather than an instance, and all terms and theories must exist in correspondence to a context. Newton is not false at human scale, and the speed of light is infinite at human scale, and rather slow at galactic scale.

We can easily separate necessary properties of a term from arbitrary. Much of intellectual history consists of doing just that.

So his statement is untrue. It is entirely possible to state the word ‘imagine’ and we understand what imagine must mean in use and in experience, but we cannot understand what the word imagine means in *construction*: how it exists. We can say the same for intuition: the construction of our intuition is invisible to us,but the USE of our intuition is not, and the experience of our intuition is marginally indifferent, so that we can use the name of that experience of intuition both as USE and as EXPERIENCE even if we cannot articulate its CONSTRUCTION.

So in the case of liberty, liberty is and always has been freedom from imposition by authority – the government (or state). We have used colloquial analogy to refer to anthropomorphic parallels such as fate. We CAN use the term liberty as an analogy for the experience of any interference in our preferences by any actor or anthropomorphized phenomenon. But (a)the term liberty, (b)the anthropomorphized analogy to liberty for use in describing natural phenomenon, and (c) the analogy of liberty for use in the application of political constraint to all human actors even those outside of authoritarian conditions, are not equal conditions. They differ in Construction. As such they are similar referents, but not equal referents.

Conversely, what they share in common is the prohibition on external constraint. In this sense, Lester’s argument is that we began with the political constraint, by analogy state that refers to general constraint by all natural and supernatural forces, and we apply that general constraint by analogy to the individual actors as well as state actors, and state as a consequence that what we desire in all conditions of life is to be free of constraint analogous to political constraint and then he renames that political constraint’s objective description to the subjective experiential description of a loss of satisfaction.

He does this to circumvent the opposite: that humans evolved moral intuitions necessary for cooperation, and under the state, when it later evolved, we demanded to retain these moral rules, that reflect our moral intuitions necessary for cooperation.

Humans can murder, destroy, harm, steal, fraud, fraud by omission, conduct fraud by indirection, fraud by interference, free riding, they can privatize commons, socialize losses into the commons, engage in conspiracies, and form political conspiracies (governments) of beneficial and non-beneficial kinds – all of which impose costs upon others.

And we referred to liberty we referred to liberty from the state, morality as the freedom from imposition of in-group members.

HOW IS MINIMIZATION OF IMPOSED COSTS INSTRUMENTALLY CALCULABLE?

(….it isn’t that’s why we use property…)

COMPATIBILISM IS NOT THE SAME AS PREFERENCE

Again, in stating that liberty and welfare are not incompatible he relies upon the same structure of argument: that while they are not incompatible under X conditions and Y preferences, that the may be incompatible and undesirable under X conditions and Z preferences. Which turns out to be the case. That is, that only a small minority of human beings demonstrate a preference for liberty because liberty requires accountability. All humans demonstrate a preference for joining cultures with higher levels of liberty, because with higher levels of liberty (and the higher levels of trust that make liberty possible) we create greater economic velocity and greater ability to consume. As such, individuals rarely demonstrate a preference for liberty, and instead demonstrate a preference for consumption and security.

So this is the Lesterian method: if there is any hope of something being true it is not falsifiable. And since any set of theories are, under Critical Preference, undecidable, then either may be true.

however this fails to grasp that while something may not be logically decidable it is always preferentially decidable and humans choose to make those decisions. That is the entire premise of Critical Preference: the content is not extant to make a decision without content external to the theory. Preference is always extant.

THE THREE METHODS:

THE ANALYTIC METHOD

Requires we use precise definitions and speak clearly for precisely these reasons. This produces as close to an axiomatic argument as possible that is therefore testable for internal consistency, and more easily criticized than one that is not.

THE OPERATIONAL METHOD

The operational method requires that we use operational definitions so that we know all objects that we consider in our argument are existential through action in practice or thought. And that we are not adding imaginary content.

THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

(………….)

WHY DO I CARE?

I care because lester correctly identified morality,and is the only libertarian I have found to correctly identify morality. We cannot construct liberty without morality (cooperation).

Morality is a necessary property of cooperation. But lester states that (a) his solution is an innovation, where he just substitutes the euphemism “personal liberty’ for ‘morality’, and then claims he has constructed a non-moral, non, propertarian solution to the problem facing libertarians. Then (b) he misstates the problem facing libertarians as failing to grasp what he theorizes, while, in reality, they had always assumed the same principle in subjective value, but also understood that it is not possible to test subjective experiences as a third party jurist. (c) Under a third party jurist, under rule of law, with sufficient axioms (property rights), it is possible to resolve conflicts in a group without rents, bias, favoritism, or arbitrary decision making. Such juridical testing via a third party jurist requires instrumentation. We know that all humans collect property. We know that all humans know the difference between property they constructed without imposition and that which they have not. We know that humans organize inventory of property at the individual, family and extended family and tribe levels. We know that the number of permutations of property as such varies but loosely reflects each family structure. As such Property is the instrumentation by which we test violations of normative expectations of property that the polity is willing to use violence to constraint.

Central to this argument is that no man is an island. He must cooperate with others in production in some normative capacity, and he must reproduce with others in reproduction in some normative capacity. Or rather he CAN do otherwise but not as a general rule, only as an exception to the general rule – otherwise man would not exist. Capitalism allows us to construct a voluntary organization of production, and freedom to choose our mates within any given family structure, allows us to construct a voluntary organization of reproduction. But in both cases our individualism allows us to construct either reproduction or production voluntarily. That does not mean that we can survive without extant structures and norms.

Our problem then is one of constructing general rules for the adjudication of differences intolerable to the polity – but not more. This process eliminates retaliation, eliminates demand for the state, and allows the rational adjudication of differences just as property, money and prices allow rational calculation of planning. Both dispute resolution and planning are required for the voluntary organization of production. The voluntary organization of production has proven infinitely more productive than the involuntary organization of production in no small part because it provides incentives to work, as well as provides incentives to innovate.

Lester presents us with a word game by simply replacing morality with the contradiction in terms of ‘interpersonal liberty’, instead of defining morality as freedom from the imposition of costs, and liberty as the freedom from the imposition of costs by the state. Furthermore, Lester does not solve the problem of instrumentation, where instrumentation in juridical dispute is the problem facing libertarians.

(a) given the necessity of humans to collect resources of all kinds, and;

(b) given human subjective emotional responses reflect increases and decreases in inventory of various forms of property accumulated, and;

(c) given that cooperation is only valuable if it increases inventories rather than decreases them (parasitism), and;

(c) given that different polities evolve allocation of decision making over property at various levels of atomicity that reflects the needs of the means of production and the structure of the family engaged in production (and reproduction), and;

(d) that various groups construct different allocations of property rights that they are willing to adjudicate (use violence for the purpose of punishment or restitution.)

(e) allocations of property rights will vary to reflect the needs of the polity.

(f) that total atomicity of property provides incentives to individuals, and the ability to engage in rational economic calculation regardless of family structure.

We currently use property as the instrumental test of unjustified interference in the behaviors of others…..

SOLVING THE PROBLEM OF INSTRUMENTALISM

We have the following choices:

(a) we must, despite current failures, identify a necessary, non-preferential definition of property and the means of transgression against it;

Conclusion The common law provides the incremental means of protecting us from crime, fraud, free riding, socialization, privatization, conspiracy. As such the rule of law, organically produced, using property as an instrumental measure of violation of the rules of cooperation necessary for production.

The difference between this propertarian position and the lesterian position is that our answer is necessary and testable.

Or (b) we must empirically test what definition of property provides people with the experience of liberty and define the experience of liberty as people demonstrate the experience of liberty.

Conclusion: the current evidence is that small, homogenous communities that operate as extended families produce the highest trust and therefore the greatest kinship defense (redistribution) as well as the highest economic velocity. These people prohibit even the most tentatively immoral actions.

Or (c) we must abandon property as the objective instrumental measure of whether we experience a condition of liberty or not, and then identify an alternative means of measurement;

Conclusion we can find no alternative that both is instrumentally ascertainable, and permits the voluntary (meritocratic)structure of production thereby giving us control over our reproduction (structure of reproduction).

Or (d) we must identify how to eliminate all possible means of transgression against our property, regardless of its constitution, such that no limit to our consideration of property is necessary.

Conclusion: we accomplish this feat by using the common law, and contractual government, to eliminate demand for the state either as a suppressor of retaliation, and enforcer of arbitrary norms, producer of commons, and insurer of last resort.

As such libertarians have two choices. Either

1) define property as all possible forms of property that humans demonstrate, articulate them in the law, and thereby construct a high-trust polity. (The conservative proposition), with no demand for the state.

2) Define all possible property humans demonstrate and ask communities to subscribe to those that suit their preferences at the expense of trust (economic velocity), with no demand for the state.

3) Determine the limit at which polities with different properties demonstrate demand for the state.

More later if I can find anything of value….

LESTER’S THEORY OF LIBERTY IS MEANINGLESS

His claim:

He has created a theory of liberty

That theory of liberty precedes any dependence upon property (depends on the definition of property)

That theory precedes any dependence upon morality (this is false)

That this theory obviates the dependence upon property for the definition of liberty. (property is not the question, the practical scope of property adjudicable under law is the question, furthermore subjective value is assumed but untestable by third parties)

That this theory is innovative (it is merely a restatement of subjective value)

I can criticize it as such:

1) “interpersonal liberty” is a contradiction in terms. Liberty has referred to freedom from interference in matters of property by the state. One cannot conduct interpersonal state operations. That is a contradiction in terms.

2) morality is demonstrable as a prohibition against free riding necessary for any organism to cooperate. Free riding is an imposed cost.

3) Lester has substituted the contradiction of “interpersonal liberty” for “morality”, rather than expressing liberty as the state of freedom from state imposition of costs (immorality).

To refute this

(a) one must demonstrate that the term liberty with its long history evolved as moral rather than political prohibition. (I think this is impossible)

OR

(b )To demonstrate that morality defined as the imposition of costs (free riding in economic and anthropological terms) is somehow different from the political imposition of costs. (I think this is impossible)

THEREFORE HIS ARGUMENT IS NOT PRE-MORAL, IT IS EXPRESSLY MORAL AND HIS CLAIM IS FALLACIOUS: IT IS MERELY A WORD GAME – A DECEPTION OR AN ERROR.

FURTHERMORE

The purpose of property is to eliminate deception because of the impossibility of measuring changes in subjective value, (lying); and furthermore, the degree of suppression of free riding is dependent upon the economic division of labor AND the family structure extant in any polity. As such the definition of property varies from group to group as the conditions necessary for the conduct of free riding (cost imposition) is constituted from variable conditions. Property definitions limit the scope of impositions of merit to the community.

Change in satisfaction is synonymous with subjective value. There is no difference. There is no debate outside of marxism with subjective value. The question is the objective means of measuring what the polity tolerates as decreases in subjective value that the community is willing to use violence in order to perform restitution.

As such while he claims to have solved the problem of liberty, he has not, since his argument is no improvement over subjective value, and our problem is a means of measurement of something immune to deception that we are willing to use force in order to rectify (restitution).

The question of liberty (preventing state immorality under rule of law) requires one of the following:

(a) we must, despite current failures, identify a necessary, non-preferential definition of property and the means of transgression against it;

Or (b) we must empirically test what definition of property provides people with the experience of liberty and define the experience of liberty as people demonstrate the experience of liberty.

Or (c) we must abandon property as the objective instrumental measure of whether we experience a condition of liberty or not, and then identify an alternative means of measurement;

Or (d) we must identify how to eliminate all possible means of transgression against our property, regardless of it constitution, such that no limit to our consideration of property is necessary.

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Calling a cat a dog does not change the properties of the cat.

Saying the cart comes before the horse doesn’t fly either. Morality precedes liberty.

You can choose to call me whatever name you want but that does not change me.

You can call someone else my name but that does not make him me.

You can call morality the name “interpersonal liberty”, but that does not mean the properties of “interpersonal-liberty” are not is identical with morality. They are.

His whole edifice is nonsense. Empty verbalism. And furthermore it’s as bad an abuse of critical rationalism as I have ever seen.