Category: Epistemology and Method

WHERE DO WE FIND KNOWLEDGE OF TRUTH?

(great important question for those fooled by rationalism)

—“Where do you get your knowledge about truth If the senses cannot be relied on? All knowledge, including ideas (ideal), wishful (desireable, derived from feelings of pleasure and pain) are ultimately formed on the information derived from sense-organs. If you exclude what is derived from senses, than what remains to be calculated?”— Domagoj Vaci

by Curt Doolittle

|| Senses > perceptions > experiences > memories(episodes) > products of reasoning(episodic modeling) > knowledge(survived modeling) > memories of the use of knowledge(survived actions – hypothesis) > memories of the consequences of the use of knowledge(survived consequences – theories) > memories of the class of consequences of the use of classes of knowledge(survived broadly – laws).

Emotions reflect changes in state of that which we seek to acquire or have acquired, or have acquired and invested. Acquisition is the cause of the prey drive. The prey drive consists of stages. Each stage of the prey drive corresponds to one of our endocrinological reward(punishment) systems. The variations in our personalities are due to variation in the sensitivity and productivity of our endocrinological reward systems.

|| Acquisition > Prey Drive > Reward Systems > Variations > Personality (biases)

We only obtain hypotheses from perception. We obtain theories from the record of our actions, and we obtain ‘laws’ from the categorical record of our actions.

|| Free association > hypothesis > theory > Law > Metaphysical Value judgements.

So the question “where do we obtain knowledge of truth if not from our senses” is a common fallacy created out of the German (Kantian) counter-enlightenment. We obtain ideas from the mixing of our senses with our memories and instincts to acquire (avoid loss). We obtain incremental knowledge of success from the survival of our actions that test those free associations. We obtain incremental knowledge of truth from attempts to falsify those free associations by intent rather than waiting for failure.

We only can develop hypotheses from free association, and only in certain special simple cases, can we identify confident deductions from them – what we call the “a priori” in counter-englightenment prose. But, while the average well intentioned fool uses the term “a priori” without understanding it, there is no such *CASE* as an ‘a priori’, alone, only the following CATEGORIES of a priori statements. In other words, the a priori tells us nothing other than we have identified an opportunity to learn a truth candidate at a discount.

(a) Analytic A Priori: tautological: 2+2=4 and all deductions thereof.

(b) Necessary Synthetic A Priori: “Childless women will have no

(c) Synthetic A Priori : Increasing money increases inflation.

grandchildren.”

(d) Contingent Synthetic A Priori: “all other things being equal, as a general trend, increasing demand will increase supply, although we cannot know the composition of that supply in advance, we can identify it from recorded evidence.”

This produces a an ordered spectrum of declining precision:

(a) Identity(categorical consistency) – Analytic A Priori

(b) Logical:(internal consistency) – Nec. Synthetic a priori

(c) Empirical: (external consistency) – Gen. Synth. a priori

(d) Existential: (operational consistency) – Cont. Synth. a priori

The set of which must always go through the cycle of:

|| Free association > hypothesis > theory > law > metaphysical assumption.

In other words, it must survive increasing markets for falsification.

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev, Ukraine