Curt Doolittle

Category: Epistemology and Method

  • An Advancement On E-Prime?

    … I THINK? CHANGING IT FROM PREFERENCE FOR MEANING TO NECESSITY FOR TESTIMONY?

    [I]’ve been reading more on General Semantics and their meme E-Prime, and it’s pretty interesting how they advocate GS/E’ for the purpose of clarity and meaning.

    Now, I advocate E’ and Operationalism because one cannot testify to the truth of a statement if one cannot state it in operational language. Because you can’t possibly state that you know what you’re talking about.

    So, I think my argument in favor of E’ as a moral and ethical constraint, (and in the case of negative externalities, a criminal constraint) is stronger than the argument for ‘clarity and meaning’.

    ON A MY CONTINUED FRUSTRATION WITH A PRIORISM AS A VERBALISM
    [I]’ve still got to address the strange a priorist argument that there is something particularly interesting about decreasing precision (making general statements). Yes we can drop properties of many similar instances in order to construct sets of commons properties, and give them names. But this is an inverse of the problem of making general observations and investigating which properties we observe are necessary and which are not.

    Some descriptions, if made more precisely have no meaning: “wind” and “wave” are pretty good examples. At human scale they are meaningful statements. below human scale they are not. All statements of precision have maximum and minimum points of demarcation.

    I mean, i guess if you start with instrumentalism, you implicitly start with human scale and the problem of precision and arbitrary precision as necessary properties of any description (theory).

    I just guess this is one of those things that’s so obvious to me that I can’t imagine a literary alternative because I did not learn philosophy by literary (allegorical) means.

    Curt

  • ON THE EXISTENTIAL, EXPERIENTIAL, AND OBJECTIVE (OBSERVABLE) (worth repeating) H

    ON THE EXISTENTIAL, EXPERIENTIAL, AND OBJECTIVE (OBSERVABLE)

    (worth repeating)

    Humans are usually, when not defective, capable of reasoning – meaning comparing and contrasting properties, methods and relations, then forecasting, then ranking and choosing – usually without much introspective requirement – although our abilities to do so differ vastly. Very often we use language to organize these thoughts, which then frames the thoughts themselves by the language available to the actor.

    One can be sentient (aware of changes in state of memory) and willing, but not able to make rational judgements. (see Sacks). One’s rational judgements can be internally consistent, and therefore self-justifiable as rational, but externally non-correspondent (false) and therefore objectively non-rational. (or more easily stated, an individual may be too incompetent or ignorant to make an objectively rational assessment.)

    So while we use the term ‘rational’ categorically, we cannot ‘cheat’ and because of that verbalism, conflate the existence, the experience, and the measure. This is also the technique used by the postmoderns, of whom Heidegger is the most advanced, in their attempt to restate truth as experiential rather than objective. For him, Being is experiencing, not acting. This is an elaborate defense of hedonic ignorance. The most anti-rational set of ideas yet made.

    It is possibly not obvious that advocating both Popper’s Platonic Truth, and your above statement that we “ARE” rational (which is also an obscurant use of the verb to-be) with as Experiential Truth, is itself a contradictory definition of Truth. We may use language to mask the point of view, but points of view are different: existential, experiential, and objective are three different points of view.

    (I suspect this might be brain-frying, because I have to actually pay attention when I’m writing it myself this morning) lol Operational language, constant awareness of the ‘fungibility’ of empty verbalisms, has helped me avoid these mistakes.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-08-24 10:11:00 UTC

  • on Ray Percival’s commitment to reason. STIPULATIONS It is rational to hold opin

    http://www.amazon.com/The-Myth-Closed-Mind-Understanding/dp/0812696859/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top/181-2526688-3304011Thoughts on Ray Percival’s commitment to reason.

    STIPULATIONS

    It is rational to hold opinions.

    It is rational to hold desperately to opinions.

    It is rational to hold desperately to opinions even in the face of overwhelming argumentative evidence that one cannot refute.

    It is rational to hold to opinions and beliefs as a deliberate choice if one prefers to imagine the world as one wishes, versus represent it correspondingly.

    It is rational to hold to opinions and beliefs and to conduct constant selection bias because there exist a multitude of applications in which arational, and seemingly irrational behavior are beneficial strategies, immune to argumentative change.

    THEREFORE

    The rationality of a belief is not a truth proposition post-hoc, but a volitional necessity given the preconditions set by one’s ignorance.

    This constrains rationality to constituent ignorance.

    ??No opinion then is criticizable as irrational?? Or is it that only simple and well constructed ideas are criticizable as irrational.

    ABSENT FROM CONSIDERATION

    The opportunity cost of erroneous ideas is neutral.

    The cost of conducting persuasive argument is immaterial.

    The difference in cost between the construction and distribution of various false and deceptive arguments, and truthful and honest arguments is immaterial.

    The persistence of human cognitive biases, of metaphysical assumptions, of religious, philosophical, intellectual, and normative convictions, are rational tools, and therefore immaterial.

    FALSE DICHOTOMY

    First criticism as a false dichotomy:

    1) Irrational: a statement that is internally inconsistent in construction, and we cannot determine if it would produce desired outcomes, or if it would produce undesirable outcomes.

    2) arational: a statement that is not internally consistent in construction but whose use produces desirable outcomes.

    3) rational: a statement that is internally consistent, and whose use produces desired outcomes.

    As far as I know, an arational argument is scientifically demonstrable (knowledge of use), even if scientifically inexplicable (knowledge of construction).

    As far as I know, a rational argument must be both explicable (knowledge of construction), and demonstrable(knowledge of use).

    As far as I know, an irrational argument is neither explicable (knowledge of construction) nor demonstrable(knowledge of use).

    FURTHERMORE

    The absence of a logic of cooperation renders all moral arguments extant untestable, yet all political arguments are governed by moral constraints. As such no moral arguments can be rational?

    The use of language consisting of aggregated meanings (functions) masks the underlying assumptions and renders arguments untestable, and deceptive.

    The use of in-group identity bias literally ‘pays’ people to believe things that are irrational as stated, but rational to pursue for their group’s purposes. In other words, religious and cultural ‘beliefs’ produce high returns, and therefore may not be rational, or irrational, but arational.

    CONCLUSIONS

    Therefore unlike the calm, timeless, costless world of scientific philosophy, and its pursuit of platonic truth, the opposite is true, particularly under democracy: we are fighting, always, to use the violence of government to extract money from some purpose to apply it to some other purpose, in real time, with real consequences, and ignorance is a luxury in the philosophy of science but not in life.

    Scientists consider the pursuit of truth independent of cost. No one else has that luxury. Scientists are a privileged class and advocate the belief systems of a privileged class. Unlike scientists, who are not temporally bound, or theologians who are neither temporally, or existentially bound, human action requires we compensate for temporal and existential constraints, as well as opportunity costs.

    Because the purpose of thought is action. We do not live in the garden of eden. And that is the culture of the Academy: the Cathedral. The pretense of costlessness in a world constituted of the necessity of human action guided entirely by prices.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-08-22 06:46:00 UTC

  • Analytic was close. Operational was the answer. Why did philosophers get it wron

    Analytic was close.

    Operational was the answer.

    Why did philosophers get it wrong?

    Source date (UTC): 2014-08-22 04:40:00 UTC

  • ETHICS: IMPROVING FUZZY LANGUAGE —“To be correct, ethical memes need to be uni

    ETHICS: IMPROVING FUZZY LANGUAGE

    —“To be correct, ethical memes need to be universal. It cannot be right or wrong only for some but not for all. But all mere values are personal, but a value is only like a belief in that respect.”— David M.

    Excellent. I’d suggest improving this a bit.

    First:

    “All true ethical propositions must apply universally. All preferential rules need not apply universally. All preferences must exist as individual opinions. All ethical (and moral) rules must exist independent of individual opinions. “

    Second:

    The term “meme” refers to the rate of involuntary distribution. An ethical rule may be stated mimetically or not. While it is certainly more efficacious that an ethical rule be stated mimetically, the truth of the proposition holds whether it is stated mimetically or not.

    For example, most false moral statements constructed by the Frankfurt school and the postmodernists as well as many of the pseudoscientific arguments of twentieth century social science, appear to be ethical, but are not.

    Third:

    Worse, justifications for unethical and immoral actions spread fastest because they allow for rapid returns.

    CONCLUSION

    So (a) ethical rules, if true, are universal. (b) The memetic construction of an idea has no correspondence with its truth. In fact since ethical rules require us to forgo consumption, in general, they impose a cost upon us, and therefore they are constantly met with friction. This is why the common law must always evolve: we find a new way of ‘cheating’ and then must describe that form of cheating as illegal. Rules follow inventions.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Philosophy of Aristocracy

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-08-21 11:21:00 UTC

  • CRITIQUE IS NOT EQUAL TO CRITICISM Critique != Criticism — In Criticism the al

    CRITIQUE IS NOT EQUAL TO CRITICISM

    Critique != Criticism — In Criticism the alternative choice must be defended. In critique the alternative choice must be obscured. The purpose of Criticism is to identify truth. The purpose of Critique is obscurantism: complex deception.

    Critique is deception.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-08-17 07:00:00 UTC

  • “Meaning” is the name of an experience, not a description of cause and effect. S

    “Meaning” is the name of an experience, not a description of cause and effect. So when we day we say words cause the experience of meaning, or that they lack meaning, what is it that we describe by referring to the experience, not the cause?

    Correspondence.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-08-14 04:05:00 UTC

  • The truth, as in truthful testimony, requires nor tolerates framing, loading or

    The truth, as in truthful testimony, requires nor tolerates framing, loading or overloading.

    So you have to ask the question why someone would accuse you if framing the truth.

    This was one of their tactics.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-08-13 14:43:00 UTC

  • Untitled

    http://www.quora.com/How-can-one-determine-when-subjective-reasoning-might-be-preferable-to-objective-reason/answer/Curt-Doolittle?share=1

    Source date (UTC): 2014-08-13 05:39:00 UTC

  • How Can One Determine When Subjective Reasoning Might Be Preferable To Objective Reason?

    This question is not necessarily coherent, since subjective reason is a non-sequitur. If you mean, “When is intuition more useful than reason?” then that is a question currently addressed by Kahneman and Haidt.  Intuition is very powerful, but not logical or observable.  Reason is very weak, but observable.  And they inform one another.  However, any concept of truth is determined by reason.  Any concept of preference by intuition. And we lie to ourselves whenever possible in an effort to conflate the two.

    https://www.quora.com/How-can-one-determine-when-subjective-reasoning-might-be-preferable-to-objective-reason