Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response

http://www.propertarianism.com/2014/06/21/mises-praxeology-as-the-failure-to-develop-economic-operationalism-yes/Well, OK, I can work with this. Thanks. But first we have to get by some criticisms that bother me, before we get to the central argument. But by the last paragraph “CLOSING” that argument should be a bit clearer. You may or may not agree with what I’ve stated; but at least you will understand why I am so interested in your line of reasoning.

THREE CRITICISMS OF “PHILOSOPHICAL IMPERIALISM”

1) –“if you were to state it plainly and succinctly, then I might understand it.”—

This statement is always troubling to me, since if Hegel, Heidegger and Nietzsche were so influential, not to mention Darwin (who is widely misunderstood), why is it that a particular set of ideas must be, or even CAN be, plainly and succinctly stated? Cantor is widely understood in USE, but the fact that he substitutes frequency for quantity and thereby eliminating time, thus fabricating infinity is not. Mathematicians rely on mathematical platonism without understanding why, and thereby the causal reasons why their math ‘works’ despite its presumed abandonment of operational correspondence. Is Popper plainly and succinctly stated – if so then why do we need such constant ‘clarification’ of his ideas? Is the three worlds truth plainly stated or is it merely a useful a analogy for conveying meaning?

Meaning (analogy to experience) is quite different from correspondence independent of experience. As such meaning is self referential. Truth can be stated independently of the transfer of meaning. Constructing a bridge between meaning (extant experience) and in-extant experience is not a property of truth but of the complexity of accumulating interstitial relations. Is Critical Preference plainly stated? Is Critical Rationalism plainly stated? Since I spend quite a bit of time on this subject, and Agassi and a dozen others must constantly attempt to promote these ideas, when why is “plain statement” not merely a cover for ‘low investment cost by resorting to familiar analogy’.

CP may be morally true (Popper’s objective being moral), and it may be logically true if we ignore the evidence, but it is not empirically true as far as we can tell, nor is it how scientists functionally operate. And while that research has not been done, nor was even given casual consideration by Popper, the evidence to date does not reflect the theory. So meaning is not a test of anything other than the relative position of two speakers. The cost of bridging the difference is merely a choice of opportunity costs between investments.

That fairly obvious statement made, I think I can probably get to the point within this email – or at least close enough.

2) —“In any case, empiricism is a philosophical theory”—

Empiricism is a philosophical justification for stating a proposition in human language. Observation, hypothesis, action and observed consequence existed and were widely used prior to philosophy, and quite certainly, prior to language. So, again, this is a fallacious constraint. One does not require philosophy except as a common language for the purpose of efficiently conveying shared meaning. I could, if I look at history, argue that the purpose of philosophy is purely justificationary and nothing more. Or as Durant argued given his study of it, that it consists largely of erroneous verbal imagination, whereas history does not – it is a record of man’s demonstrated actions. However as a means of organizing similar systems of thought it has proven adequate for meaningful discourse, if, like string theory, insufficiently constraining to constitute a test of honest testimony (abstracted as ‘truth’). I organize my work into metaphysics, epistemology, truth, ethics, politics and aesthetics. But that is more a matter of protocol or good manners than necessity. Philosophy makes no claim on truthful testimony as to mans actions and observations.

3) –“Whether it is or not, what you write seems more about sociology and anthropology.”–

That would seem an immaterial criticism would it not? Is not the consequence of that criticism methodologically induced ignorance? One way to address this question is whether philosophy as practiced (not as proposed) is used in practice as is religion (a means of achieving shared belief and therefore shared ends), or whether it is used as is geometry or say, physics, (to achieve descriptive correspondence with reality regardless of what we believe) so that we can act in accordance with it. I don’t do dogma so to speak. So either we make true propositions or we do not. In making true propositions we do not get to define the boundaries of the method, without of necessity mandating falsehoods. Methodological boundaries are crutches for justifying ignorance: selection bias.

ON TO THE CENTRAL PROPOSITION

–“All libertarians tend to get morality right. “—

This doesn’t seem to be true does it? Then did Rothbard get morality right? In other words, is the combination of aggression against intersubjectively verifiable property a test of morality? Furthermore, when you say ‘imposed cost’, that incomplete statement requires that we know what it is imposed against. So, without a definition of property (or some substitute), no test of aggression or imposition is meaningful. The definition of property one relies upon determines the scope of that which we aggress or impose upon.

–“I aimed to get liberty right.”–

This is what I am curious about. If we evolve a set of affairs and give it a name, and then describe it’s causal properties, and give that set of properties a name, then I can understand that. I can understand defining liberty as a state of affairs described objectively, or a set of actions taken, or the experience of an individual in response to circumstances. What I can’t understand quite yet (and that may be because I am looking for something that isn’t there) – is if there is a distinction between an objectively moral state of affairs which we can experience and act to produce, and a state of liberty that we can experience and act to produce. Is there a difference, or are morality and liberty descriptions of the same phenomenon from objective and subjective points of view?

–“You do not say what you think [philosophy] is, as I have.”–

Well, (aside from that statement’s questionable use of the verb to be), first, this lack of clarity is because I am being timid with this topic since it is one of the central problems I am struggling with: whether philosophy is a very loose form of calculation: whether the various forms of calculation (identity, naming, counting, relations, logic, causality, cooperation, AND philosophy) are antecedent to philosophy, or whether calculation is consequent to philosophy. Second, since I suspect the former, I am working under the assumption that philosophy constitutes a process of calculation in the broader sense, using descriptive language to attempt to compensate for the incommensurability of objects of comparison and the fragmentary knowledge we have of those objects of consideration. In other words, not the normative description of the discipline, but the constituent actions practiced in the discipline, regardless of tradition and opinion. (More on this if you are interested, although the basic question should be obvious). Now, we can approach the definitions of philosophy as traditionally stated (a) a systematic analysis of branches of knowledge, (b) a systemic body of knowledge, or (c) general rules to assist us in taking actions. (Which I take to be degrees of formalism and nothing more). And we can discuss it analogistically and normatively (religion and morality), rationally(in continental and cosmopolitan language), analytically (as the internal correspondence of sets), or scientifically (as a means of incorporating advances in knowledge into our current system of thought such that our ideas correspond increasingly to reality). As far as I know, this set of properties in both spectra are reducible to assisting us in taking action in different spheres of our lives given fragmentary knowledge at any given time.) My question is probably lost, but my concern is not meaning but truth: why is it that philosophy has been such a fertile vehicle for deception (propaganda)? And how can we insulate ourselves from philosophical obscurantism and deception the way we have insulated ourselves from religious mysticism? Not only strictly within philosophy but across the works of public intellectuals as well.

WE NEED TWO DEFINITIONS HERE

“CALCULATION” : The term is generally used to describe a spectrum of methods of reasoning, from the very definite arithmetical calculation of using an algorithm, to the vague heuristics of calculating a strategy in a competition or calculating the chance of a successful relationship between two people. CALCULATION(performed by humans) vs COMPUTATION (which can be performed by computers). Reason then constitutes a subset of calculation using language which consists of heterogeneous objects of comparison. I tend to rely upon \calculation because calculations are largely insulated from framing and loading. This is necessary when we reduce all rights to property rights and all morality to imposed costs. Loading and framing with values are no longer necessary, and can only be seen as attempts at deception.

“CALCULATIVE INSTITUTIONS” – The set of technologies that permit human beings to extend their perception and comparison ability, and therefore their ability to understand and forecast in complexity, particularly within a division of knowledge and labor, as a means of assisting in planning, forecasting, production and decision making. Specifically those institutions include: numbers, counting, arithmetic, accounting, algebra, calculus, statistics, combined with money, numeric time, banking, interest, contract, rule of law, combined with narrative, history, objective truth, combined with property, exchange, trade, markets.

WHY? WHAT PROBLEM IS TO BE SOLVED?

Why? Because Mises failed in economics, Brouwer failed in math, and Bridgman failed in science. (See http://www.propertarianism.com/2014/06/21/mises-praxeology-as-the-failure-to-develop-economic-operationalism-yes/ ). And so did Popper and Hayek for that matter, fail in ethics and politics. And had they not, they would have reversed the fallacy of platonic truth, in favor of performative truth (which I tend to operationalize and clarify as ‘Testimonial Truth’). (See: http://www.propertarianism.com/2014/07/28/the-central-argument-western-truth-vs-platonic-truth/ ) And we very likely could have avoided the current necessity for science to reform itself after a century of pseudoscience. And we would not have been so subject to the deceptions of the marxists, socialists, postmodernists, keynesians, even Rothbard’s immoral libertinism for that matter.

And why does this matter? Because we have just spent a century under the influence of a second wave of mysticism (Marx, Freud, Cantor, Keynes, Mises, Rothbard, Russell, the Frankfurt school, the Postmodernists and their various offspring), constructed by verbalisms (obscurant analogy). If philosophy, distributed by media, can be used to cause such harm, and is no less harmful than mystical religion distributed by Orators and Print, then we are left with the need to reform philosophy the way we reformed religion. We can see that much of science, at least that science which relies upon tests instead of models, and experimental psychology in particular, have largely reformed themselves over the past half century. But despite the failure of the metaphysical program and its usurpation by cognitive science, we seem to have failed to reform the discipline of philosophy. (Hence the trend of university departments being combined with those of religion and literature.)

How did philosophy become such a utilitarian vehicle for deception, pseudoscience, restated religion, obscurantism, framing, loading and overloading such that it was the primary means by which the public was misled? Why did we abandon Grammar, Rhetoric and Ethics and Morality when those three are at at least loosely calculable methods and measures? Why has the systemic attack on western unique preference for (if not unique understanding of) truth-telling been so successful?

REFORMATIONS

As such, (a) what reforms are necessary in philosophy that would defend the body politic from that discipline and its further use as what I think you would call ‘propaganda’ – but that I would call deceptive manipulation (synonyms possibly, but I prefer the pejorative). (b) While reformation of the discipline is not necessarily possible (and possibly not desirable), reformation prohibiting the use of obscurantism, overloading, loading and framing, in our institutions (law, politics, ethics and morality) may be. (c) What institutional protections can be put in place that prevent the use of sophisticated philosophical, argumentative, and pseudoscientific deception via obscurantism, overloading, loading and framing. (Terms which I don’t think I need to define.) (d) Since only one institution appears to be necessary (organic law, limited to the prohibition on free-riding and imposed cost, positively articulated as property rights ), can we use such property rights adjudicable under the common law, under universal standing, to defend against damage to (theft via fraud from) the conceptual commons, the normative commons, the legal commons, and the political commons? And (e), if so, under what linguistic constraints would such law be articulated?

We have for quite some time understood that original intent, strict construction, and operational language, sunsetting can constrain organic law (not regulatory nor legislative), but like aggression or imposed cost, we must start with some theory of property rights to protect with original intent, strict construction, operational language, and sunsetting. As such what is the definition of property that we prevent the imposition of costs against?

Questions:

1) Is there a difference between the actions necessary for the respect of objective property rights, and of the actions necessary for the respect of moral rules? (I think I know this answer: objectively moral statements are universal prohibitions on involuntary transfer, however the allocation of property in any polity reflects its abilities, organization of reproduction – the family, means of production – division of labor, and the formal institutions that insure those property rights – law. )

2) Under what conditions will demand for the state dissipate sufficiently that it is rational for members to form a voluntary polity? What institutions are necessary to eliminate demand for an authoritarian state, and a monopoly bureaucracy? (I am fairly certain this requires a high trust society that suppresses nearly all free riding and imposed cost.)

3) We pay for our norms by forgoing opportunities for benefit. Each of these forgone opportunities is a cost to us. As such we have born a cost for our norms – almost all of which, if criminal, ethical or moral, are prohibitions on involuntary transfer (imposed cost/free riding) OR signals of the promise of avoiding involuntary transfer (imposed cost / free riding). So are not all members of a polity who respect norms simply un-enumerated but factually shareholders in the common asset of normative capital?

4) As such I see the definition of property necessary for the formation of a voluntary polity to be nearly all possible means of involuntary transfer, imposed costs, and free riding.

5) Competitively speaking, what occurs when all groups compete using the same evolutionary strategy? The loser is predetermined by his abilities within the rules of the strategy. And the losers can almost always identify this and change their strategy. So why are property rights prohibiting all imposition of costs/free riding/ involuntary transfers, beneficial to all? What would happen to Gypsies if they took up honorable professions? So why is it we would expect the same moral codes, codified in law, to be universally desirable to all, rather than, as we have now, high trust and low trust societies with more authoritarian and lower scope of property rights, and less authoritarian and greater scope of property rights?

CLOSING

This should be enough to help you understand my line of inquiry, and my interest in your definition of morality, yet uncertainty of your definition of property that can be imposed against. While I agree with your definition of a condition of liberty, I am not yet certain that it’s meaningful unless we also know your definition of property. My definition of property is a general rule of prohibiting all forms of involuntary transfer, free riding and imposed cost (arguably synonyms), within any pair of structures of production and reproduction, and that liberty is the condition within any pair of structures of reproduction and production in which I am free of free riding, imposed costs, and involuntary transfers. And as I understand it, I can find no other means of suppressing impositions other than the organic evolution of the common law positively stated as property rights, whose single cause is the prohibition upon free riding, imposed costs and involuntary transfers, expressed ‘calculatively’ as original intent, strict construction, and sunsetting. Furthermore that all violations of those property rights and impositions of costs (losses) are lost opportunities for productive exchange (gains), and therefore ‘thefts’ (imposed costs). Given that the state and bureaucracy must of necessity be defined as monopolies, and monopolies cannot knowingly construct an environment of voluntary exchange, the state and bureaucracy (once rule of law is established), violate property rights, and every time create conflict by prohibiting voluntary exchange that would in the main, force the lower classes to demonstrate high trust behavior (respect for property rights) in exchange for the production of commons or the receipt of discounts and redistributions. All imposed costs by the state are not only thefts, but thefts of opportunity for productive exchange. (I cannot cover all the streams and eddies of this argument in this short space but it should be sufficient for our purposes.)

As others have noted, I am quite capable of clarity when I choose to be clear. However clarity requires a sufficient frame of reference, and a willing participant to discourse with. Otherwise it is a great deal of effort expended upon trial and error, without known return for both parties.

Again, thank you for your time and patience. I’m very grateful.

Curt Doolittle

On Sat, Sep 13, 2014 at 7:38 AM, JCL <jclester@gmail.com> wrote:

>I dont think I seriously misunderstand philosophy. 🙂

You do not say what you think it is, as I have.

> Maybe just the opposite. I only misunderstand it if I fail. 🙂 So far I have made it farther than anyone else.

Farther towards what? Can you say in two short sentences, what philosophical problem are you trying to solve and what is your proposed solution?

>But it could be an intellectual dead end. Unfortunately neither of us can know that yet. :).

Whether it is or not, what you write seems more about sociology and anthropology.

>I do agree that I rely on the sciences and their emphasis on external correspondence rather than the logic of internal consistency.

Philosophy cannot be reduced to internal consistency. Science can be used to test and inform theories, but not relied on. In any case, empiricism is a philosophical theory. Therefore it cannot be used to refute philosophy.

>But even that moderate statement may be difficult to parse. And as I suggested, it’s probably a bit much for email. I can only leave breadcrumbs and they aren’t enough of a trail.

Theories that are not a confused muddle can usually be stated plainly, boldly, and succinctly.

>I had hoped to find some common ground because I argue that you are correct and I would like to restate your argument in Propertarian terms if I can understand your reasoning well enough not to misrepresent it.

But I use liberty to explain property, not property to explain liberty. That previous attachment ought to be clear.

>But if the breadcrumbs aren’t enough then the investment required of you is too high and you have no way to know if its worthwhile.

I see little philosophy and little clarity.

>I have, believe it or not, obtained enough insight from our exchange, your work, and postings to understand your frame of reference. I wish you could understand mine. Its lonely out here. ;). Lol

As I wrote, if you were to state it plainly and succinctly, then I might understand it.

>Thanks again. Kudos for getting morality right.

All libertarians tend to get morality right. I aimed to get liberty right.

Jan