Category: Epistemology and Method

THE CURRENT CONDITION OF PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCE AND WESTERN CIVILIZATION

(important)(profound)

—“The best practical use of analytic philosophy was rooting out methodological problems in scientific inquiry that arise from conceptual confusion or can otherwise be treated with conceptual analysis. The process of formalization of a language of inquiry failed, but it was only a means to the end of improving scientific methodology.”—Duke Newcomb

Sort of. This isn’t quite correct. The process of formalization failed, and in doing so took philosophical rationalism, and the claim that philosophy was a means of developing truth by proof, down with it. There is no closure outside of first order logic, and there is no ‘proof’ to be had in argument like there is in mathematics. Even in mathematics, it is only possible because it’s axiomatic (declared), and scale independence(there is no scale independence outside of the arrow range of human senses). The result is that the logics are only falsificationary. That’s all. So, popper’s program of falsification, which he evolved from jewish via-negativa pilpul and critique, was incomplete, and the anglo-germanic analytic via-positiva program was incomplete, and the pursuit of scientific method was incomplete – all for the same reason: all epistemology is eliminative (falsificationary) just like all market activity: trial and error by which that which is not false, survives competition between reason, action, and the results of action in reality.

—“Continental philosophy is perfectly fine philosophy, if you judge it by the standard of concept production. It’s just poorly written and maliciously employed. However, some interesting, important, and insightful concepts have been produced in the mess of the Continental tradition. It would also be possible to construct an anti-Abrahamic Continental philosophy, starting with Heidegger and Nietzsche. Granted, it would be mostly just another kind of pilpul, but it could be effective.”—Duke Newcomb

Again, agreed, but I might state this a little more precisely. The continental tradition advances the human technique of fiction we call parable, storytelling, mythology, and theology (free association – utility) requiring the least knowledge, into the human technique of idealism (hypothesis – good) requiring we falsify by reason with more knowledge, before we use the human technique we call science (theory – truth) where we falsify by evidence with the most knowledge.

Someone brought up Compte last night and I suppose I should do us a favor and drawing the historical parallels as we developed social science over the past few centuries, by the same means Compte suggested in continental prose and I’ve formalized in anglo legal prose.

And so it is perhaps better to say that a Reasonable Preference or Reciprocal Good aren’t decidable by Truth – only by preference and shared preference. Conversely, a Truth isn’t decidable by preference or good, only by decidability independent of preference or good.

So the value of the continental method is in the reorganization of paradigms, for the choice and production of preferences and goods, because it served by the subjective and empathic, and communicated by the subjective empathic, and the question of the truth or falsehood, gain or loss, reciprocity or parasitism, that would falsify that claim of preference or good, is the function of science – or what I call Testimonial Truth under the Law of Reciprocity.

So ideas move up and down the hierarchy, between fictions, ideals(preferential and good), and reals(Decidable), where we suggest, inform, agree, and falsify upon ideals, stated as fictions, ideals, or reals according depending upon our ability, experience(age), and knowledge(information).

The principle difference being that the continental(ideal) method like the magical, occult (fictional) method, is open to use for deceit – especially the abrahamic deceits which evolved to take advantage of them – and between story on one end, and testimony on the other, we have room for supernatural abuse of storytelling, sophomoric abuse of idealism, and pseudoscientific abuse of testimony.

Human Cognition

Intuition—————–Reason————-Operationalism

Free Association ——-Hypothesis——————Theory

Empathy—————-Sympathy—————–Evidence

Story ——————– Ideal —————— Testimony

Fiction—–Theology — Sophistry — Pseudoscience —-Lie

Internal Market – Interpersonal Verbal Market – Action Market

Competition————Competition ———–Competition

—“The problem is conceptual analysis isn’t enough.”–

Let’s complete that sentence. Enough for what? To meet the demand for infallibility in the given question? It’s not enough to warranty due diligence that a preference or good is’t an act of fraud or deceit.

Do you see what I did there? I removed the (foolish) presumption of intellectual honesty, reciprocity, and presumption of error, and moved the point of demarcation for lying from presumption to demonstrated.

This is why the law of speech has to change. A high trust people able to presume intellectual honesty limited to error, because of thousands of years of (a)militia service for standing, training in reporting, and the criminality of courage (b) the oath upon adulthood, (b) our law to enforce it regardless of rank even if proportional in cost and disincentive, (c) punishment by one’s parents, kin, community, nobility, or aristocracy.

We were invaded yet again in the modern world, because of our high trust and presumption of innocence, as we were invaded by jews and christianity (making us vulnerable to islam) using the lies of religion in the ancient world; this time with false promise of marxism (class and pseudoscience), feminism (gender and denialism), postmodernism (identity and sophism). And like the ancient world women were the target because they evolved not to speak truth but to obtain conformity from children through continuous false statements, and resources of men through continuous false promise – because that was their evolutionary necessity. Not truth before face and eugenic hierarchy, but dysgenic survival of children regardless of merit, and alliance with women against dominant males for the same reason, at the cost of being continuously undermined by women who do not form a hierarchy of rule, but complete for attention in a rotating market for female sexual, caretaking and social, value.

—“There are a lot of practical technical problems in empirical methodology of science, as well as in mathematical statistics, the real language of science.”—

As far as I know, yes, but these are problems of failure of due diligence in the limitation of claims made from the data, because we have created a market under which publication regardless of merit must be justified in order to obtain funding. Which we can easily correct.

In statistics, which does nothing more than seek to provide commensurability between different distributions at different scales, assisting us in the discovery of hypotheses, we can then attempt to operationalize, there is a very simple test:

(a) are you engaging in conflation (almost always)

(a) can you construct an operational hypothesis, theory, or description (meaning operational name) that reproduces those statistics – particularly those statistics that involve rational choice (See Gary Becker’s works) in psychology, or sociology, or politics, or group strategy. In mathematics are you doing the same? (almost never outside of applied mathematics). In physics are you doing the same (absolutely not – Bohr brought postmodernism AND idealism back into physics. And this is the problem with the copenhagen interpretation, and the vast woo woo and mathematical “wooo woo” and pseudoscience that has emerged from it. the failure of mathematicians to develop operational rather than statistical and probabilistic models to describe the wave form we call string that produce the wave form we call quantum fields, that produce the density of quantum fields we call particles. As far as I know the problem is operational acna cannot be solved by mathematics upon which the entire discipline wastes its time, only by trial and error construction of primitive geometries in the manner of protein folding. Why? There is nothing left to “average” below the quantum fields’ underlying wave form, the String. (I doubt very very much I will err in this prediction, since I am simply predicting the dominance of this category of error, given the history of this category of error prohibiting human innovation. )

So, If we required operationalization of all statistical claims, and due diligence against categorical, logical, operational, empirical, rational, and reciprocal inconsistency and therefore inflation and conflation, and obscurantism, very few statistical claims would be published. And those that did would be truth candidates rather than misleading or deceptive, or in furtherance of fraud, for personal, group, political advantage or destruction.

Repairing the incentives means only (b) restoring government research grants to basic knowledge of the universe, within a list of publicly available known problems, with military (political physical), applied technological(commercial physical), basic bio (political biological), applied medical(commercial bio) and in the private sector – because this is all that is economically possible and demonstrably and operationally successful. (c) separating funds of teaching (undergrad, grad) from research (phd postgrad) in universities by hard financial, legal, and institutional walls.

—“However, I think much of analytic philosophy would be useful training for a broad spectrum analytic methodologist who aims to improve the structure and interpretation of scientific practice. That should be a career field with specific vocational preparation: analytic methodologist. Analytic philosophy is just a proper subset of this.”—Duke Newcomb

Scriptural, textual, spoken interpretation is dead. Things don’t speak. Only people do. Things have no intent, people do. All speech is testimonial(due diligence) or honest(warrantied), or dishonest(Fraud). Analytic philosophy is dead. It was killed when Godel wrote his sentence, dying when Popper wrote his, and dead when Kripke gave his first lecture, and Strawson gave the eulogy. Hayek understood he just couldn’t bring it across the line. He didn’t have Turing and Chomsky. I did.

So we will have no more presumption of honesty and reciprocity until we have restored truthful speech as we have in the past through aggressive suppression, with every man a sheriff, in policing display word and deed for failure of due diligence, failure of warranty, fraud and theft. Until once again we are the able to speak truth regardless of cost, ake nothing not paid for regardless of need, defend the commons regardless of cost.

The soft eugenics of truth, duty, and reciprocity.

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

October 2019.