Category: Epistemology and Method

… (from elsewhere)

(a) we can possess narratives (not recipes, or measurements) that describe causal relations that manufacture ignorance

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(b) AFAIK the meaning of this statement is that there is a difference between the unknown proper, the incorrect, and the correspondent and consistent.

(c) Set operations are limited in utility. Empirical analysis allows us to search for possible operations (first causes). And so it is operations not set statements that provide information lacking in set statements. This is why the linguistic century has been a waste of time. A puzzle not a problem. We like set statements because they’re cheap. We like apriori arguments because they’re cheap. But both constitute special cases. The universe at all scales consists of a set of constant operations (transformations). And doubling-down, on sets, is no different from doubling down on religion, is no different from doubling down on empiricism: when instead we need additional information eliminating greater fields of error, by increasing the tool set we are using, rather than attempting to use a more primitive tool (analogy, reason, rationalism, set operations, empirical measurement, possible operations) to provide information unavailable to that tool set.

(d) Ergo, I view each method from the the analogy, to syllogism all the way to the formula, then to the algorithm as methods of ignorance expansion when we attempt to apply them to questions requiring greater precision than the method permits.

(e) instead, we can use each method as a means of assisting us in free association by which we generate hypotheses that can be tested by the next method of greater precision, and with each increase in information provided by each increase in precision we can form continuous new free associations until at some point we have found the first causes (operations) that are possible.

(f) Ergo, I don’t think too much of philosophy or philosophers, when what they mean by that is ‘application of rational techniques’ rather than application of ALL techniques.