Curt Doolittle

Category: Epistemology and Method

  • “If we cast Praxeology a failed attempt at constructing the economic equivalent

    “If we cast Praxeology a failed attempt at constructing the economic equivalent of Operationalism in physics, Operationism in psychology, and Intuitionism in mathematics, all of which are tests of the existential possibility of premises, then we can rescue praxeology from the domain of pseudoscience, and instead, use it as an additional moral constraint on scientific argument: that no economic statement can be testified to be true, unless it can be constructed from sympathetically testable human operations. As such, praxeology is an extension of falsification within the scientific method: a form of criticism, wherein all premises are suspect, and as such, so are all deductions. And only through logical, empirical, and operational criticism can we warrant that our theory stands sufficient scrutiny for us to claim without moral hazard, that it may be true.” – Curt Doolittle

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-23 07:08:00 UTC

  • THE GREEKS SET US ON A PATH. Math isn’t the ideal, economics is. The reason we g

    THE GREEKS SET US ON A PATH. Math isn’t the ideal, economics is.

    The reason we got hooked on deduction was mathematics. In math, the means of exploration (mathematical operations) and the means of testing (mathematical operations) are the same (except in very rare circumstances).

    The greeks ran with this. And we followed.

    The problem is, (as Popper showed us) this convenience in mathematics is an exception due to the simplicity of mathematical operations, and is not a rule. Whereas, in every other field we must use guesses (induction) to arrive at hypotheses, then criticize them for internal consistency(logic), external correspondence(testing), existence (operations), and scope (falsification).

    We test our words to be free of imagination (logic), we test our correspondence with reality to be free of imagination (actions) we test our premises to be free of imagination (operations) and we test our conclusions to be free of imagination (Falsification). (still working on how to say this bit, and not quite there yet.)

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-21 11:00:00 UTC

  • ON THE VIRTUE OF CRITICISM Without something to criticize I would have nothing t

    ON THE VIRTUE OF CRITICISM

    Without something to criticize I would have nothing to calculate. My reasons for trying to improve upon critical rationalism are external to physical sciences and partly external to epistemology: they’re in ethics and politics. Meaning, that there is a difference between permissible argument in pursuit of the most parsimonious truth (analytic or platonic truth) where no external costs are imposed upon others, and pursuit of truthful statements along the journey wherever external costs are imposed upon others. But the central ideas are still the same: seek criticism, and criticize. When you do – and especially if others do you the favor of defending their positions, and criticizing yours – you learn. I intuit a set of patterns on the very edge of perception, and just criticize whatever fragments I can sense on the way getting there. And that takes an absurd amount of patience and discipline, because (as followers probably can tell) it can take you YEARS to make incremental improvements in important theories. You cannot make a baby in less than nine months and it seems you cannot make a philosophy in less then seven to ten years.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-21 10:30:00 UTC

  • YOU SEE, WE NEVER “KNOW” ANYTHING. WE JUST TRY. This is why the rationalist argu

    YOU SEE, WE NEVER “KNOW” ANYTHING. WE JUST TRY.

    This is why the rationalist argument is a straw man. Critical Rationalism won. In propertarianism I focus on truthful speech as an IMPROVEMENT on critical rationalism’s narrow focus in the absence of ethical and moral constraints (imposed costs, such as creating a hazard). So operationalism is an existential test – a further criticism, on top of falsification, that is necessary when we speak of matters that may impose costs upon one another.

    I can never know that I speak the ultimate truth, but I can know if I speak truthfully (morally). I can warranty truthful speech but I cannot warrant a statement is true.

    And in publishing information into the commons I am distributing a product which may do harm or good. And I can be held accountable for unwarrantable speech, or unwarranted speech, but if I have warrantied my speech I cannot be held accountable in law for the negative consequences of it.

    Conversely, if I did, then I CAN be held accountable for it.

    So it is by these means I have tried to:

    ….(a) Extend critical rationalism by adding the additional requirement of operational description – something scientists already do but outside of psychology do not recognize as necessary criticism, and something that is necessary for all political questions, since only political questions require by definition transfers.

    ….(b) Redefine the scientific method as the method of speaking truthfully (warrantably).

    ….(c) Incorporate the principle of the voluntary exchange of property as the only test of moral action.

    UNIVERSAL STANDING

    Under universal standing each of us can protect his or her commons from lies, cheats, socialization of losses, privatization of gains, and even the use and abuse of others – we an all act as sheriffs. We cannot resort to political favoritism.

    The only problem is in creating judges. And we seem to be far better at creating judges than economists and philosophers.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-21 10:18:00 UTC

  • Another Nail In Rothbard’s Abuses of Praxeology

    [P]raxeology: is Mises’ failed attempt at discovering Operationalism in economics, as it was discovered in psychology (Operationism), Intuitionism (mathematics) and Operationalism (physics). Regardless of field it is reducible to the statement that we cannot know whether we are discussing (or whether one testifies to) the imaginary or the existential unless it can be described as a set of operations – even if limited to measurements.

    All knowledge is theoretical because all premises other than the reductio are theoretical. The construction of a theory is immaterial. It is whether we can operationalize that theory that determines whether we can claim it is stated truthfully. This is how scientists function and have functioned – and is the reason for their success.

    And the discipline of Science is misunderstood: it is the only known technique for speaking truthfully regardless of subject matter. If one cannot speak scientifically, then one is not speaking truthfully – only analogically – in allegory and metaphors. Only operationally demonstrable statements refer to the existential. All others are allegorical, not existential. They may be meaningful, and meaning may be helpful – but they are not TRUE.

    Mises was unfortunately not enough of a scientist or mathematician, and was too much fascinated by German verbalism to make the leap that Anglos and Netherlander’s did. He would have been easily corrected by someone like myself earlier, if he had not been so firmly associated with Rothbard and his reputation damaged so severely by that association.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev, Ukraine

  • Another Nail In Rothbard’s Abuses of Praxeology

    [P]raxeology: is Mises’ failed attempt at discovering Operationalism in economics, as it was discovered in psychology (Operationism), Intuitionism (mathematics) and Operationalism (physics). Regardless of field it is reducible to the statement that we cannot know whether we are discussing (or whether one testifies to) the imaginary or the existential unless it can be described as a set of operations – even if limited to measurements.

    All knowledge is theoretical because all premises other than the reductio are theoretical. The construction of a theory is immaterial. It is whether we can operationalize that theory that determines whether we can claim it is stated truthfully. This is how scientists function and have functioned – and is the reason for their success.

    And the discipline of Science is misunderstood: it is the only known technique for speaking truthfully regardless of subject matter. If one cannot speak scientifically, then one is not speaking truthfully – only analogically – in allegory and metaphors. Only operationally demonstrable statements refer to the existential. All others are allegorical, not existential. They may be meaningful, and meaning may be helpful – but they are not TRUE.

    Mises was unfortunately not enough of a scientist or mathematician, and was too much fascinated by German verbalism to make the leap that Anglos and Netherlander’s did. He would have been easily corrected by someone like myself earlier, if he had not been so firmly associated with Rothbard and his reputation damaged so severely by that association.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev, Ukraine

  • “Meaning” Is A Great Way of Lying

    [I]t really doesn’t matter what an author says or intends. What matters is whether its true or not- and I do not mean internally consistent, I mean externally correspondent. When we roll a bag of conceptual marbles down the hill, we do not control them – reality does. When we roll our sentences into the public it does not matter what we say or how we say it but whether what we say is true and truthful.


    Nothing marx, freud and rothbard say for example is truthfully expressed, so we cannot judge an author by his own terms, but on whether his arguments are operationally possible in reality.


    Meaning is a great way to lie. Which is useful in myths and religious dogma. It was useful in pseudosciences. It was useful in the fallacy of psychologizing. It was useful by the postmoderns. It is useful in all public speech. But it is just a perfect vehicle for lying.


    I run into this all the time, when criticizing certain authors. My favorite is still the typical economist’s reply that ‘we don’t concern ourselves with that’.


    Which makes me crazy because they do affect that which they claim to ignore, without admitting that it is precisely what they ignore that allows them to justify their work.
    Marx is better though. Best. Liar.Ever.

  • “Meaning” Is A Great Way of Lying

    [I]t really doesn’t matter what an author says or intends. What matters is whether its true or not- and I do not mean internally consistent, I mean externally correspondent. When we roll a bag of conceptual marbles down the hill, we do not control them – reality does. When we roll our sentences into the public it does not matter what we say or how we say it but whether what we say is true and truthful.


    Nothing marx, freud and rothbard say for example is truthfully expressed, so we cannot judge an author by his own terms, but on whether his arguments are operationally possible in reality.


    Meaning is a great way to lie. Which is useful in myths and religious dogma. It was useful in pseudosciences. It was useful in the fallacy of psychologizing. It was useful by the postmoderns. It is useful in all public speech. But it is just a perfect vehicle for lying.


    I run into this all the time, when criticizing certain authors. My favorite is still the typical economist’s reply that ‘we don’t concern ourselves with that’.


    Which makes me crazy because they do affect that which they claim to ignore, without admitting that it is precisely what they ignore that allows them to justify their work.
    Marx is better though. Best. Liar.Ever.

  • AUTHORS INTENTIONS AND WORDS ARE A CONVENIENT DECEPTION. It really doesn’t matte

    AUTHORS INTENTIONS AND WORDS ARE A CONVENIENT DECEPTION.

    It really doesn’t matter what an author says or intends. What matters is whether its true or not- and I do not mean internally consistent, I mean externally correspondent. In the sense that logical conclusions can be and must be drawn from any set of statements. and that the author’s ‘way of thinking’ is either correspondent with reality or not. Most of the time, it’s not. That’s what separates pseudoscience, rationalism, mysticism from truth telling (science).

    When we roll a bag of conceptual marbles down the hill, we do not control them – reality does. When we roll our sentences into the public it does not matter what we say or how we say it but whether what we say is true and truthful.

    Nothing marx, freud and rothbard say for example, is truthfully expressed. So we cannot judge an author by his own terms, but on whether his arguments are operationally possible in reality, regardless of what he means, intends, or portends.

    Meaning is a great way to lie. Which is useful in myths and religious dogma. It was useful in pseudosciences. It was useful in the fallacy of psychologizing. It was useful by the postmoderns. It is useful in all public speech. But it is just a perfect vehicle for lying.

    I run into this all the time, when criticizing certain authors. My favorite is still the typical economist’s reply that ‘we don’t concern ourselves with that’.

    Which makes me crazy because they do affect that which they claim to ignore, without admitting that it is precisely what they ignore that allows them to justify their work.

    Marx is better though. Best. Liar.Ever.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-17 08:00:00 UTC

  • TRUTH UNDER PROPERTARIANISM (getting very close now) The Question: How do we war

    TRUTH UNDER PROPERTARIANISM

    (getting very close now)

    The Question:

    How do we warranty that we speak the truth, given any subset of properties of reality? Testimonial truth is a promise, a warranty. But a warranty of what? All knowledge is theoretical; and all non-tautological, non-trivial premises and propositions are theoretical. Therefore how to we know our theories can be warrantied?

    We can warranty that our statement somewhere in this spectrum:

    0) Sensible (intuitively possible)

    1) Meaningfully expressible ( as an hypothesis )

    2) Internally consistent and falsifiable (logically consistent – rational)

    3) Externally correspondent and Falsifiable ( physically testable – correlative)

    4) Existentially possible (operationally construct-able/observable)

    5) Voluntarily choose-able (voluntary exchange / rational choice)

    6) Market-survivable (criticism – theory )

    7) Market irrefutable (law)

    8) Irrefutable under original experience (Perceivable Truth)

    9) Ultimately parsimonious description (Analytic Truth)

    10) Informationally complete and tautologically identical (Platonic Truth – Imaginary)

    And we can state what criteria any proposition tested on this spectrum satisfied. And we can conversely state whether a proposition is required to satisfy each criteria.

    All disciplines are subject to this list, and to testimony. All that differs is whether the properties are necessary for application of the theory to the context (scale) at hand.

    Only such statements made under this warranty, are classifiable as moral: consisting of Truthful, fully informed, productive, voluntary exchange free of negative externality.

    OUR WARRANTY IS:

    I. A statement is stated *TRUTHFULLY*: satisfying the criteria for such a warranty to be made.

    II. A statement is *TRUE*: Assuming that we eliminated the barriers of time, space, scale, and observability, we warranty that one would come to the same conclusion if equally truthful in his actions.

    We can never state whether a statement is “Absolutely True”, as in satisfying Platonic truth. And rarely can we state that we have satisfied analytic truth, and only at human scale can we testify that we have satisfied Perceivable Truth – original experience. But we can always state whether we have stated something truthfully.

    The question is only *whether we truly desire to*.

    CRITICISM OF INTELLECTUAL HISTORY

    Things can’t ‘be’ true, we can only speak/write truthfully.

    We have been obsessed with science and math rather than seeing them as simple subsets of the more complex problem. And in the west, we took truth telling for granted, when it is the first principle upon which all other western advances were made.

    (Next. Information Differences Necessary in Verbal Expression)

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-17 07:53:00 UTC