Category: Epistemology and Method

AGAINST SENTIMENTAL ARGUMENTS AND FOR TRUTHFUL ARGUMENTS

(important)(this is profound if you can manage it) (anti-rationalism, anti-sentimentalism, anti-loading and framing: these are tools of transfer not truth.)

1) USE THE SAME PROCESS FOR INVESTIGATION, COMMUNICATION AND TRUTH? OR DIFFERENT PROCESSES FOR INVESTIGATION, COMMUNICATION AND TRUTH?

This is the problem and it arose in philosophy because in mathematics the method of construction (a series of operations) is the same as the method of testing (proof). This problem was amplified by the fact that moral arguments like contractual arguments are justificationary (one has permission to say such things). Which differs from the means of truth telling: what survives attempts to falsify it (criticism, or evolutionism). So we wish to learn one technique (or one general rule) and apply it everywhere, rather than three general rules 1) creativity by free association, 2) legal and moral justification, 3) critical truth.

Now, it is possible to teach these three techniques for the three processes, but it is also possible to use each technique outside of its domain, and by doing so create deceptions. It is deceptoins that concern me.

FWIW: This is the second insight you and josh have provided me with: that I must address this issue directly rather than simply emphasize the errors of the past and the use of justificationism by continentals and cosmopolitans to engage in deception.

2) WHAT FORMAT IF WE SPEAK TRUTHFULLY: Meaning: parable, myth, biography, history, Truth: science (testimony).

When people ask me how to enter a new subject I always suggest the pedagogical method: that is to teach in layers of an onion. It is the same criticism that I have of education, that we try to teach science and bypass parable, myth, biography and history leading up to it. And we do that out of false efficiency. If instead, children were taught with many years in the same classroom, then they would year each layer and absorb it as they are ready to. This is why I have been stuck on how to construct my work. I think it must be constructed in those layers.

What I object to is claiming that obscurant methods are THE means when they are clearly merely pedagogical means. If you want to address a population you will have the young. the immature, the mature, the skilled and the wise. Some will need meaning, others understanding, and others truth.

So I agree with [you] in part, that meaning is necessary and that meaning must provide an intergenerational means of transmission as do myth and parable. I just disagree that your concept of ‘audience’ is necessary and sufficient. It may be necessary but it is not sufficient, it is arguably immature, (as are all of us at some point), and it is unable to be codified into law and mandated by a minority by doing so; and it fails to address the problem of deceit by using the same language as the deceivers have used in the ancient and modern period.

My accusations of immaturity are correct. It is this that you must come to terms with. We each grasp the world by more and less sophisticated means. We each negotiate for position in the world by more and less sophisticated means.

The next part will provide more insight:

3) AGAINST SENTIMENTAL ARGUMENTS AND FOR TRUTHFUL ARGUMENTS. Constructing Truthful Arguments.

Science consists in a series of processes by which we launder our imaginary constructions of error, bias, imaginary content, wishful thinking, and deception, leaving only existential truth candidates behind.

This is because for all moral(non-parasitic, productive, cooperative) purposes, truth is more useful in interacting with the world than is error, bias, wishful thinking and deception.

There are limits to perception and action, this is true, but there appear to be few limits to the use of instrumentation to reduce the imperceptible to that which we can perceive. But we appear to be very good at this process. We can only perceive the range of light(radiation) that we can act upon. But we can reduce other bands of light to our spectrum and create a new experience within our perception. And by reducing that which we cannot perceive to that which we can perceive (just as statistics allows us to compare different scales), we create decidability between those things that were previously undecidable and those things now decidable with that reduction to analogy to perception.

And it is true that *free association* – the act of creativity, of imagining, of innovation, is not only necessary but beneficial. And it is true that sharing the results of free association – the act of creativity – can produce similar experiences in others, and by doing so bring them new ambitions and understanding. But at the same time it is true that we can bring them both moral understanding(benefit by truth and production) and immoral understanding(harm by falsehood and predation).

So while we may convey ‘meaning’ and ‘understanding’ by creative association, if we cannot then provide warranty via proof that such meaning is morally constructed or construct-able, then we may harm without knowing we harm, harm out of wishful thinking (most of the time), and harm out of deceit (politics). Just as say, a mathematician may not know that by calling functions numbers, he has created harm to the conceptual commons. Just as an well intentioned but ignorant advocate of political orders may not know that the labor theory of value is false, and that humans will not act as anticipated under communism and socialism. Just as well intentioned christians may not grasp that universal love is suicidal beyond kin. Just as muslims may not realize that the demand to show men respect without earning it, is a poor substitute for christian love because it disallows forceful correction of errant ideas. Just as a buddhist may not understand that his version of mindfulness is to detach from reality and society because he feels powerless to participate in it. Just as a scientist may not understand that nothing he does has anything to do with the physical world, and instead it is a process of eliminating his mind’s predilection for bias and error. Just as a woman may not understand that her compassion is applicable to the family and local neighborhood, but inapplicable to politics, and suicidal if applied there.

I talk to my god every day, but I cannot claim that there is any more truth in it than imagining a character from history who is all knowing and I cannot lie to, in order to prohibit myself from self deception, or that I know what I do when I talk to him, or that it is good that I do – any more than I claim to know or even can know, how I move my arm, and whether it is good that I like chocolate. I know due to science, why I can move my arm, and I think I know (evolutionarily) why we cannot introspectively observe it.

But one has three possibilities available: to add imaginary content to justify the narrative of what I do. To use instrumentation and science to determine what I, in fact, do, how I do it, and why i prefer it. To state I have no idea of what or why, and I must wait for more evidence.

4) ELIMINATING WEAKNESS ALONG WITH ERROR AND DECEPTION

Of the three possibilities, the only one fraught with error, bias, imagination, wishful thinking, and deceit: the search for discounted experience and justification of it.

This is why the weak discipline the mind to abandon reality (buddhism) and the strong discipline the mind to embrace reality (stoicism), the powerful seek virtue, the weak seek escape. The rest seek mere utility.

Transcendence, Monuments, Commons, Wealth, Beauty, Virtue, Truth, Stoicism, Science, History, Immortality. We gain no discounts in these pursuits – they are paid for with premiums: effort. And that is the struggle of heroes – men who pay: to transform the darkness of ignorance in to knowledge so that the universe is transformed under our control . All other pursuits are an attempt to obtain chemical rewards achievable only through material transformation, from imaginary activities. Intellectual peyote. Mental drugs. Entertainment.

Now, we use discounts to steal from one another, and it is is quite true that we use discounts to entertain one another; and we use discounts to teach one another; and that we gain a discount on transformation of the world by cooperating in a division of perception, cognition, knowledge, advocacy and labor. But it is also true that one can use discounts to entertain others and teach others to engage in suicide, or to use them to engage in transcendence.

And just as man’s history has been one of the pacification of the universe and himself, through the incremental suppression of violence, theft, fraud, conspiracy, and free riding, by the use of truth, law and violence, we can continue to incrementally expand the incremental suppression of error, bias, wishful thinking, and deception – particularly in matters of the commons and under mass media (for profit media), using truth, law, and violence. And in doing so transform – transcend – our limitations and train one another just as we did with literacy, just as we did with science, just as we did with reason, just as we did with law.

I do understand that many are too weak and undisciplined to both rely on creative free association, and then test that free association for truthfulness and morality. I also understand that literacy and basic arithmetic require a great deal of training, and that truth speaking and discipline require an equivalent effort in training. Truth is not natural to man. Utility is.

So I write not to preserve the current set of deceits and discounts but to eliminate them entirely. This does not mean eliminating free association and wishful thinking. It means one cannot claim the benefits of claims produced by free association and wishful thinking unless one demonstrates that they are warrantied to be as free of error, bias, wishful thinking and deception (theft) as much as is possible by the speaker.

It means meaning is helpful in imagination and in communication, but truth is a warranty that we have done no harm. Not that truth is the only means of transferring meaning, nor that truth is the only means of free association. Only that we do no harm by doing so, and that the evidence is that much harm has been done not by doing so.

Fixed point mathematics and fixed point morality have been replaced by the calculus of relative position and velocity, and the economics of equilibrium and productivity.

Everyone wishes to preserve his investments no matter how poorly he has invested, since he wishes not to declare his investment a loss, and to place effort into a new investment. But this is what he must do to transcend the limitations of the past.

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev, Ukraine.