Curt Doolittle

Category: Epistemology and Method

  • TWO ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRIVIA FOR MY UKRAINIAN AND RUSSIAN FRIENDS. 1) “Subtile” l

    TWO ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRIVIA FOR MY UKRAINIAN AND RUSSIAN FRIENDS.

    1) “Subtile” looks like it should be pronounced SUB-tile. The origin is a latin word “subtilis”, meaning ‘delicate’. However, the anglicization of the latin ‘Soob-teel-ees’ dropped the “B” sound, and in modern english it’s pronounced ‘SUH-TUL’. Like “settle”, or “suttle”.

    Why do we keep these spellings? English consists of Anglo Saxon, Latin, and French words. The spellings help us identify the origin of the words, how it is pronounced, and many other subtle clues, and help clarify words that have similar sounds but different meanings. (and it’s an anglo thing to be fascinated by minuscule bits of history. Which is why so many historians are british.)

    2) The show will be aired at 10PM – 9 Central. Or 10-9c. Or some equivalent like 9 Eastern, 12 pacific time. The USA is divided into four time zones: Pacific, mountain, central, and eastern. There are very few people in the mountain areas in the middle of the country, so when networks broadcast television shows, they save money by only showing a film or episode three times, instead of four, by combining the mountain and central time zones into a single broadcast. This means that you have to stay up later in the mountains to see your favorite shows. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-15 14:44:00 UTC

  • THE COMPACTNESS OF A THEORY : PROPERTY Compactness of any theory, is not necessa

    THE COMPACTNESS OF A THEORY : PROPERTY

    Compactness of any theory, is not necessarily a virtue for the purpose of communication. Some theories can only be expressed in the form of a novel, and then via some shorthand reference to the arc of the narrative. Darwin’s evolution is an example of a shorthand that still has not managed to penetrate human cognitive biases: After all, evolution favors complexity within a niche, but not in the direction of anything.

    I am naturally wordy because I am obsessed with a certain kind of perceptive precision as guarantee against misinterpretation. I would rather lose the reader, than marginally move him, albeit in the wrong direction. I am still torn, but my experience is, that people begin to grasp my work this way without making early judgements.

    I started out with Propertarianism in narrative form, as a new parable for conservatism. And I have reduced it to a limited grammar and terminology. And now am engaged in narrowing Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics and Politics, into a very small number of rules, based upon the necessity of calculation – where I mean calculation in the broadest sense of defining differences.

    Compactness matters because it reduces your possibility of error. Intelligibility is more a problem for the reader. For the author of any theory, the expression of that theory in terms least open to misinterpretation, and your work most open to testing.

    A compact argument with vast explanatory power is the holy grail.

    Property, and Propertarianism, are that missing grail. And with property under propertarianism, we possess a set of technologies capable of expressing and clarifying, not only logic (reason), but mathematics (relations), physics (causes) and economics (actions).

    I care a bit more about knowing this than I care about anyone else knowing it. But that’s selfish. 🙂 So I will continue to improve it, and publish my work.

    Cheers

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-15 12:24:00 UTC

  • Um… Empirical means observable and verifiable. Not numeric. It’s just that we

    Um… Empirical means observable and verifiable. Not numeric. It’s just that we most often need numbers to verify our observations, due to the limits of our perception, cognition, and short term memory.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-12 10:13:00 UTC

  • EMPIRICIAL LANGUAGE VS LINGUISTIC ‘SUPERSTITION’ (Important)(profound) I suppose

    EMPIRICIAL LANGUAGE VS LINGUISTIC ‘SUPERSTITION’

    (Important)(profound)

    I suppose it’s partly that my Americanism is annoying to him, because he really doesn’t pay me any mind, but Hans has only given me I think, three bits of advice. One of them I disagree with. One I have to remind myself every day – how Hayek failed to actually solve the problem . And, one of them was critical: to use established terminology whenever possible.

    I made the same mistake many others do outside of academia, which is, that because existing paradigms are so heavily loaded, it’s tempting to define new terms, in order to load them differently – or in my case, unload them entirely.

    And it turns out that its entirely possible, because philosophy is so littered with frames of reference that one merely must play an intellectual game of conceptual pickup-sticks, and modify the properties of existing concepts to establish an entirely different order.

    I am still troubled by a few problems. The first is that the persistence of the continental model of linguistic ‘superstition’ which uses heavily loaded language, by intention, to

    It is possible that aristoctratic language, that is, the language of science, or ‘truth’ – meaning, unloaded correspondence with observable actions in objective reality, is just more natural to anglos for antiquarian reasons. I am unsure. I do know that ‘duty’ in the anglo metaphysical value system is ‘to each other’ and in the continental system ‘to place in the order’, is quite different. And it is quite different because of ancient land ownership and defense reasons. That this ancient bias served to force the english people into an empirical rather than hierarchical set of conceptual biases, is probably an obvious cause in retrospect. But at this point in time, empiricism, that is, **order independent of hierarchy**, or “unloaded” truth, is embeded into the language so deeply that anglos are indoctrinated into empiricism by simply learning the language.

    This is, of course, after the Absolute Nuclear Family, the next most important reason for forced cultural integration: Language: The Anglo Framework of Ratio Scientific Empiricism.

    And that is why the Postmoderns must undermine the english language here, and not so severely on the continent: Because the language itself prevents loading – either subjective or hierarchical. And without prevention of loading, or without reversing the ability to load the language, it is impossible to obscure inequality of ability and merit.

    One of the reasons I am attempting to reform libertarianism, is because of the German and Jewish fascination with obscurantism in creating pseudosciences: Hegel, Heidegger, Marx, Freud, and Cantor, and I must unfortunately, add Mises and Rothbard to that list. I think for precisely the same reason.

    Unfortunately, the anglo, indo-european fascination with, and intellectual bias toward, space/time and mechanisms, seems to create a vulnerability to pseudoscience created by obscurant and loaded language.

    So, I am taking this german and jewish pattern of obscurant and loaded thought and converting it to RATIO SCIENTIFIC LANGUAGE.

    Every month I get closer. If I live long enough I should finish it. Right now I can get most of it across in something on the nature of 5000 words. My expectation, when done, is that I should have reduced this set of complexity down to less than 10K words in its entirety.

    And that reduction has come, because of Hans’ advice, by using and extending the properties of, existing terminology.

    That does not mean that it is trivial to grasp. And mastery of the framework will still require a bit of study. But Propertarianism is, as a philosophy, the most complete and most empirical philosophical system we have yet been able to devise.

    Now, I get a great deal of feedback on my perceived arrogance. But from my extremely skeptical perspective, as someone who has spent a lifetime in pursuit of resolving the problem of political conflict, i’m just speaking as objectively as I can.

    I did not come to libertarianism naturally. I came to libertarianism because I understood that the economic calculation argument, and its obverse, incentives, were the only NECESSARY argument that I could find in all of philosophy. And it was from that initial necessary observation that I was able, with a great deal of work, to express all philosophy in a single consistent framework, by reducing not only all rights, but all of ethics, morals, manners, to the process of voluntary exchange, given the different reproductive strategies of individuals.

    And this is the conflict that I have with both Marxist Dialectic and Rawlsian aggregates: neither are empirical. And they are not empirical, for the sole purpose of forcing cooperation between people who do not wish to involuntarily cooperate, by claiming a commonality of interest on ends, where there is none. And there is only a commonality of interest on means.

    Exchange is observable and empirical.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-12 09:36:00 UTC

  • FROM TRUTH TO LIE: IMPROVEMENTS TO ANALYSIS OF ARGUMENT AND DEBATE This spectrum

    FROM TRUTH TO LIE: IMPROVEMENTS TO ANALYSIS OF ARGUMENT AND DEBATE

    This spectrum covers the categories of argument used to make honest statements or to deceive.

    I – HONEST (SCIENTIFIC) STATEMENTS

    1 – Operational language (as observable actions)

    2 – Unloaded language (absent verb ‘to-be’) (Unprimed / E-Prime)

    II – LOADED STATEMENTS

    3 – Loaded Language (with verb ‘to be’)

    4 – Shaming and Rallying Language (morally loaded language)

    III – OBSTRUCTIVE STATEMENTS

    5 – Obscurant Language

    6 – Analogistic language

    IV – DECEPTIVE STATEMENTS

    7 – Lying by Omission

    8 – Lying by Misrepresentation

    V – COMBINED DECEPTIVE STATEMENTS

    9 – combinations of types II,III,IV.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-12 04:50:00 UTC

  • ON SATIRE AND RIDICULE When we agree to enter into discourse, debate, even polem

    ON SATIRE AND RIDICULE

    When we agree to enter into discourse, debate, even polemic, we grant each other the right of free speech, in pursuit of the truth, for shared benefit. Otherwise there is no reason to lay down our weapons: we simply substitute the honesty of violence for the deception of words.

    Satire and ridicule are forms of deception. They are theft. A crime. A moral crime. And the majority of us sense it is a moral crime, even when we disagree with it.

    You cannot get around this logic. Satire and Ridicule, unless they are, like the greek drama, directed at ourselves, rather than others, a violation of the contract for cooperation.

    So one can state how and why we use it. But one cannot legitimize it. It’s not possible.

    (See Habermas)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-12 01:30:00 UTC

  • ON THE ART OF DEBATE : CHARITABLE INTERPRETATION “There’s nothing smart or even

    ON THE ART OF DEBATE : CHARITABLE INTERPRETATION

    “There’s nothing smart or even effective about a criticism that depends upon an abandonment of the principle of charitable interpretation.” – Kenneth Allen Hopf

    Always seek to understand.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-09 06:08:00 UTC

  • ALMOST THERE. CLOSER. I will be able to express objective morality in symbolic l

    ALMOST THERE. CLOSER.

    I will be able to express objective morality in symbolic logic, with a rigid and simple grammar. This will fulfill the promise of libertarianism’s insight that all rights are in fact reducible to private property rights, but also that all moral codes are in fact reducible to expressions of property rights.

    And it will make obscurant language impossible for the left.

    (I’m so happy I feel like crying with joy.)

    I’m slow, but I got there.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-03 06:20:00 UTC

  • (CORE) We Cannot Think Without Metaphysical Biases

      Given that Don Finnegan has just hit a nerve by reminding me about Friedman’s perspective on Irish Law, I’m going to throw something out here that may not be as obvious and important as it seems. As usual it might take me a bit to get there. But I think it’s worth the journey. 1) MAN MUST SENSE 2) MAN MUST PERCEIVE 3) MAN MUST REMEMBER 4) MAN MUST CALCULATE (PLAN) 5) MAN MUST CHOOSE. 6) MAN MUST ACT ON HIS CHOICE, AND HAS NOT EMPIRICALLY DEMONSTRATED HIS CHOICE UNTIL HE HAS ACTED. 7) MAN MUST CHOOSE WITH INSUFFICIENT INFORMATION, BECAUSE OUTWITTING NATURE IS HIS ONLY CHANCE FOR PROFIT. It is impossible to make guesses without some basis for decision. And every civilization constructs a set of narratives that contain those metaphysical means of decision making. Those rules or guidelines, or recommendations not only make decisions possible, and rational, in the presence of insufficient informaiton, but the biases contained in those metaphysical assumptions allow us to FUND by micropayments, of all kinds, our norms. We create a reality with them. And we cooperate at the metaphysical level. (We have to.) We couldn’t think otherwise. The truth is that in almost no circumstance can humans make decisions as a group without shared metaphysical assumptions. Sure, without property man cannot form a division of knowledge and labor. But without metaphysical value judgements groups cannot cooperate at all. We have a healthy literature of cultural differences in cognition. Cultural differences in verbal and spatial intelligence, and cultural and genetic differences in the distribution of intelligence. The east and west differ between emphasis on verb and noun, on connectivity versus particularism. On constitution versus Shape. Most importantly, they differ ON BALANCE VERSUS TRANSFORMATION: “The purpose of man is to bend nature to his will, and to leave the world better for having lived in it”. That is the western metaphysics. Almost everything can be reduced to that statement of individual action. “Truth and debate mean the rapid resolution of differences by conflict” (See Donald Kagan); versus deception and delay until matters resolve themselves in the eastern sense (See Kissinger and Huntington.) And for example Jewish civilization and western civilization vary between the rebellious ethics of the bazaar and ghetto (Rothbardian ethics) and the land owning ethics and morality of the aristocratic egalitarians in the high trust society. These are metaphysical group assumptions that constitute the primary means of decision making for each group given it’s evolutionary strategy. LIBERTARIAN ERRORS For example, in the we often talk about Bouridans’ ass. The problem when you must choose between two orange vendors both offering equal oranges at equal prices. How do you choose? The only thing interesting about any exchange is this very question. Why? Because in large, any commodity is chosen not on price, or on consumption value, but on signal value, and the signal we most often pay for is contribution to our commons. ie: price is meaningless, since it is rarely what is purchased. We largely pay for signals and norms, and we pay for our factions and our preferences. And therefore all the Misesian and Rothbardian ordinal arguments to price are meaningless outside of commodities trading, and nothing at all to do with social order AT ALL PERIOD. In, fact, it is quite easy to case Rothbard and Mises as continuing the cultural tradition of intentionally ignoring the normative economy of land holders as a means of rebelling against it. When I first heard this argument from Dr Herbner, I was kind of stupefied that Misesians thought clearing preferences was ordinal predicated on price rather than a network (technically a graph) predicated largely on signals on norms, where price was merely the first marginal criteria. IN fact, the only way to argue for the ordinal versus the graph, was to argue AGAINST payment for norms, which puts Mises, Rothbard and Hayek into perspective. (And is why I criticize Mises and Rothbard. It’s why they failed.) IN OTHER WORDS WE DID NOT KONW OUR METAPHYSICS NOR WRITE IT DOWN. As such we have been largely defenseless against jewish rhetoric, and franco-germanic counter-englightenment figures, desperate to restore the church under the authority of the educational institution. Desperate to wrest control of society back into obscurant language and moral mysticism, and away from the hands of the engineers, scientists, lawyers, accountants, entrepreneurs and consumers who create and maintain the society we live in. Conservatives are largely right. But WE HAVE FAILED TO ARTICULATE FREEDOM AND LIBERTY in rational terms with MORAL DEPTH sufficient for they and their numbers to adopt in favor of the west. We can be free amongst a majority of conservatives. But we cannot be free amongst a majority of statists. The state and democracy are just communism and are antithetical to liberty, private property, common law, personal sovereignty. PROGRESSIVE LIBERTARIANISM IS TO LIBERTY WHAT THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL WAS TO CLASSICAL LIBERALISM.

  • (CORE) We Cannot Think Without Metaphysical Biases

      Given that Don Finnegan has just hit a nerve by reminding me about Friedman’s perspective on Irish Law, I’m going to throw something out here that may not be as obvious and important as it seems. As usual it might take me a bit to get there. But I think it’s worth the journey. 1) MAN MUST SENSE 2) MAN MUST PERCEIVE 3) MAN MUST REMEMBER 4) MAN MUST CALCULATE (PLAN) 5) MAN MUST CHOOSE. 6) MAN MUST ACT ON HIS CHOICE, AND HAS NOT EMPIRICALLY DEMONSTRATED HIS CHOICE UNTIL HE HAS ACTED. 7) MAN MUST CHOOSE WITH INSUFFICIENT INFORMATION, BECAUSE OUTWITTING NATURE IS HIS ONLY CHANCE FOR PROFIT. It is impossible to make guesses without some basis for decision. And every civilization constructs a set of narratives that contain those metaphysical means of decision making. Those rules or guidelines, or recommendations not only make decisions possible, and rational, in the presence of insufficient informaiton, but the biases contained in those metaphysical assumptions allow us to FUND by micropayments, of all kinds, our norms. We create a reality with them. And we cooperate at the metaphysical level. (We have to.) We couldn’t think otherwise. The truth is that in almost no circumstance can humans make decisions as a group without shared metaphysical assumptions. Sure, without property man cannot form a division of knowledge and labor. But without metaphysical value judgements groups cannot cooperate at all. We have a healthy literature of cultural differences in cognition. Cultural differences in verbal and spatial intelligence, and cultural and genetic differences in the distribution of intelligence. The east and west differ between emphasis on verb and noun, on connectivity versus particularism. On constitution versus Shape. Most importantly, they differ ON BALANCE VERSUS TRANSFORMATION: “The purpose of man is to bend nature to his will, and to leave the world better for having lived in it”. That is the western metaphysics. Almost everything can be reduced to that statement of individual action. “Truth and debate mean the rapid resolution of differences by conflict” (See Donald Kagan); versus deception and delay until matters resolve themselves in the eastern sense (See Kissinger and Huntington.) And for example Jewish civilization and western civilization vary between the rebellious ethics of the bazaar and ghetto (Rothbardian ethics) and the land owning ethics and morality of the aristocratic egalitarians in the high trust society. These are metaphysical group assumptions that constitute the primary means of decision making for each group given it’s evolutionary strategy. LIBERTARIAN ERRORS For example, in the we often talk about Bouridans’ ass. The problem when you must choose between two orange vendors both offering equal oranges at equal prices. How do you choose? The only thing interesting about any exchange is this very question. Why? Because in large, any commodity is chosen not on price, or on consumption value, but on signal value, and the signal we most often pay for is contribution to our commons. ie: price is meaningless, since it is rarely what is purchased. We largely pay for signals and norms, and we pay for our factions and our preferences. And therefore all the Misesian and Rothbardian ordinal arguments to price are meaningless outside of commodities trading, and nothing at all to do with social order AT ALL PERIOD. In, fact, it is quite easy to case Rothbard and Mises as continuing the cultural tradition of intentionally ignoring the normative economy of land holders as a means of rebelling against it. When I first heard this argument from Dr Herbner, I was kind of stupefied that Misesians thought clearing preferences was ordinal predicated on price rather than a network (technically a graph) predicated largely on signals on norms, where price was merely the first marginal criteria. IN fact, the only way to argue for the ordinal versus the graph, was to argue AGAINST payment for norms, which puts Mises, Rothbard and Hayek into perspective. (And is why I criticize Mises and Rothbard. It’s why they failed.) IN OTHER WORDS WE DID NOT KONW OUR METAPHYSICS NOR WRITE IT DOWN. As such we have been largely defenseless against jewish rhetoric, and franco-germanic counter-englightenment figures, desperate to restore the church under the authority of the educational institution. Desperate to wrest control of society back into obscurant language and moral mysticism, and away from the hands of the engineers, scientists, lawyers, accountants, entrepreneurs and consumers who create and maintain the society we live in. Conservatives are largely right. But WE HAVE FAILED TO ARTICULATE FREEDOM AND LIBERTY in rational terms with MORAL DEPTH sufficient for they and their numbers to adopt in favor of the west. We can be free amongst a majority of conservatives. But we cannot be free amongst a majority of statists. The state and democracy are just communism and are antithetical to liberty, private property, common law, personal sovereignty. PROGRESSIVE LIBERTARIANISM IS TO LIBERTY WHAT THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL WAS TO CLASSICAL LIBERALISM.