Category: Epistemology and Method

GETTING TO TRUTH, PREFERENCE AND TRADE: PETERSON(conflation), HARRIS(omission), and DOOLITTLE(completion)

The problem of our era (the post-industrial revolution) is not identifying goods to imagine – it’s in eliminating error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, overloading, and deceit, so that we pursue the good, beautiful, possible, and select among the good, beautiful, and possible, the preferable. Thankfully, rather than seeking whatever we can, because of the technologies of investigation and cooperation, and transformation of the world that we have invented, we are less limited by the possible than we are the good, and the beautiful.

THE RECENT DEBATE BETWEEN PETERSON AND HARRIS

It provided an example of both ends of the spectrum of failure of thinkers in our era:

Peterson engages in the ‘sin’ of conflation – conflation is the language of liars. It is the technique we have struggled to escape our inherent tendency to reduce complexity to an ideal type which is easiest to compare. Teachers fall into this trap because they want to convey meaning. Priests and public intellectuals and politicians make use of this technique to create the impression of false goods or consensus.

Peterson says “it is ok to lie if we lie by conflation for good reason”

Harris says: it is not necessary to lie by conflation if we separate out the true, the good, the beautiful, the possible, and the preferable. Because at each stage we can ensure we have not violated the previous stage.

Harris engages in the ‘sin’ of omission (incompleteness). Incompleteness combined with overloading (complexity) is the means by which we are lied to using suggestion by prophets, priests, philosophers, pseudoscientists, and pseudo-intellectuals. Judges fall into this trap because they want to resolve disputes by fault. Authoritarians make use of this technique because they seek monopolistic solutions rather than exchanges.

But both Harris and Peterson err. But despite their errors, it is possible to make either’s argument – the argument they both seek by different means – using DEFLATION, and COMPLETENESS and avoid both of their ‘sins’: conflation and incompleteness.

HOW DO WE BOTH DEFLATE AND COMPLETE?

EXAMPLE : DEFLATING CONSTANT RELATIONS IN MATH

… identity (category)

… … number (naming)

… … … arithmetic (operations, add, multiply divide)

… … … … mathematics (ratios)

… … … … … geometry (spatial relations)

… … … … … … calculus (movement relations)

… … … … … … … statistics (inconstant movement relations)

… … … … … … … … equilibria (equilibration between inconstant relations)

BUT HOW DO WE DEFLATE A TRUTH PROPOSITION?

Just a when we want to know if something is true, we ask:

… is it categorically consistent

… … is it logically consistent (internally consistent)

… … … is it empirically consistent (externally consistent)

… … … … is it existentially possible (existentially consistent)

… … … … … is it reciprocally consistent (morally consistent)

… … … … … … is it fully accounted? (scope, limits, and parsimony consistent)

OUR QUESTION: HOW DO WE DEFLATE A ‘GOOD’ PROPOSITION?

… We must test whether something is true

… … Then whether it is good

… … … Then whether it is possible.

… … … … Then whether it is beautiful.

… … … … … Then whether it is preferable to the other things that are true, good, beautiful and possible.

… … … … … … Then whether we can obtain it by cooperation.

SO WE CAN SOLVE BOTH DEFLATION AND COMPLETION

Full accounting takes care of the long term. So that takes care of the darwinian question for Peterson, and reciprocity, parsimony and limits take care of the ‘omissions’ that Harris (is much more subtly) making.

Reciprocity takes care of morality. (where we define reciprocity by criteria: “Productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary transfer, limited to productive externalities.”

THE DESIRE OF MAN FOR IDEALS (one dimensional testing).

Our optimum means of decidability is provided by anthropomorphization because this allows us to reduce complex criteria into a model that we can test by intuition and experience rather than reason.

Man may desire a simple means of testing all his ideas, but this is not possible – our intuition is too easily overloaded, which is why clear falsehoods like mysticism, theology, pseudo-rationalism, pseudoscience, and propaganda are so effective a means of persuasion..

We invented deflation (breaking things into pieces) to prevent us from ignorance, error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, obscurantism, and deceit. And Peterson is advocating simplicity (regressive thinking) instead of achieving the same ends through those means we can insure we do not deceive.

We use analogy and conflation to convey meaning and understanding. This is called communication. And to argue based upon it is called justificationism. it evolved because we must usually explain our ‘way’ to an answer in order to communicate; we must explain our actions as moral by way of norms; and we must explain our way of permissible actions by existing laws. We have evolved in a social and therefore justificationary world – which is fine, for small homogenous polities of closely related people, who do not need to decide that which is beyond their collective experience.

Conversely, we use truth and deflation to insure that the meaning we communicate is not constructed from error, bias, wishful thinking, and deception. This is called criticism. Or more correctly: the scientific method.

Imagine two artists, one who constructs a sculpture by adding layers of clay, and another who removes layers of stone. We construct communication, normative, moral and legal arguments via adding layers to clay. We discover truth, adjudicate differences, by removing ignorance, bias, error, wishful thinking, suggestion, overloading, and deceit. By the comparison of construction and deconstruction we perform a competition, and discover truth candidates from our presumptions.

We use stories (literature) to compose analogies to transfer properties and relations and values (meaning) to those that lack present understanding. Then we use criticism (analysis) to decompose the resulting properties, relations, and values into constituent parts to test whether the meaning that was conveyed is true – we cut the errors, biases, and deceits from the clay of meaning.

BACK TO OUR EXEMPLARS

Peterson tries to convey the problem of beliefs that cause extermination by false means, and Harris tries to circumvent that his beliefs cause extermination by incomplete means.

Unfortunately, Harris makes his mistake because of his background of analysis and his culture, just as Peterson makes his mistake because of his background of communication and his culture. Whereas I advocate that we deny the field to both peterson’s false and harris’ incomplete means of argument, by the requiring complete means of testing truth AND preference

So, this is why they fail. But it is still possible for us to succeed: by the combination of deflation, and stepping through each test of each dimension until we reach a condition of completeness.

From there we can choose among the possible, that which is most preferable.

BUT IN THE END THE LIMITS OF ARGUMENT RESULT IN THE CHOICE OF PREFERENCE BETWEEN TRUTHS

And from there we will realize that preferences do not coincide, and so regardless of TRUTH or PREFERENCE the only actions we can take that are True, moral, and preferable are those that constitute productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary exchanges, limited to productive externalities.

And it is that last sentence that is the basis of western civilization, and the single principle from which it all evolved.

That last step is TRADE. And if trading fails, boycott, or violence are the only options that remain, not further argument.

The jeffersonian, anglos-saxon, germanic, aryan, indo-european oath of reciprocity under sovereignty: the oath of the intiatic brotherhood of warriors.

In the end, we pursue the true, the good, the beautiful, the preferable, and the obtainable through trade. Or we simply obtain the preferable by force.

The first question of ethics is “if I can, then why do I not just kill or enslave you and take your women, your property, and your territory?” And denying this is the first lie we engage in.

So these are not trivial questions. Because if we cannot come to a trade by truthful means, the only means of ‘clearing the market’ is violence.

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev, Ukraine.