Category: Epistemology and Method

Rational != Rationalism.

SERIES: REASON

Imaginable > Reasonable > Rational > Rationalism > Logical > Mathematical > Identitarian: the sequence of testing methods of internal consistency.

SERIES: SCIENCE

While they say it poorly, science makes use of the tests of:

> internal consistency (logical)

> external consistency (empirical repeatability)

> existential consistency (operational definitions)

> scope consistency (full accounting, limits, parsimony)(falsification)

Social science should add:

> reciprocal consistency (moral)

So just as we can say that there exists a discipline called mathematics in which we test axiomatic systems consisting of the dimensions {identity(naming), number(arith.), ratio(math), distance(space), and movement (calculus)}, and just as there is a means by which we test rational systems{(see above)}, we can also say that there exists a discipline called truth, which we call ‘science’ that tests existential rather than axiomatic dimensions{(see above)}.

So science exists as the largest test of reality (causal relations).

Rationalism exists as a test only of internal verbal consistency (semantic relations).

Logic exists as a test of internal consistency (set relations).

And mathematics exists only as a test of relational consistency (constant relations).

So yes, science exists just as mathematics, logic, and rationalism do.

And science is to all other disciplines as calculus is to arithmetic: an increase in the dimensions tested by the method.

TRUTH

The truth of a proposition is permanently uncertain in science, although, while knowable, the physical sciences we do not know the first principles of the universe, meaning the base entities, operations and limits of the universe. We can test the operations of humans by subjective sympathy – which is where mises went wrong. So we can test even if we cannot yet quantify, the limits of human thought instrumentally. We can test social science under the test of reciprocity (productive, fully informed, voluntary exchange, limited to productive externalities). So we can test the physical, personal, and social sciences using the SERIES I listed above.

Truth = a statement that survives.

Testimony = testimony that survives.

Only people can testify that they speak truthfully.

They cannot know they speak the truth – in the sense of most parsimonious description possible – they can only know that they have performed due diligence against the series above (science), and that their utterance has survived those tests.

SPECIFICS

—“The truth value here is not placed on a conclusion, but on a method.”—

The warranty against falsehood is placed upon survival of tests of due diligence. To make the statement ‘truth value’ is a categorical error similar to applying probability to asymmetric distributions (fat tails). you cannot calculate a probability from an unknown scope. Just as you a bell curve is always false, a probability is alway false, and a truth statement is always false. We can know we speak truthfully but we cannot know we speak the truth, nor can we quantify truth.

BLAME

we evolved reason from the common law, aristotelian reason from advances in the common law, and empiricism from advances in the common law. Because the law involved ‘skin in the game’ between aristocratic warriors and their staff, servants, and protectorate, it could not so easily be subverted by excuse making as could religious and philosophical reasoning.

Moral sentiments evolved out of the needs of cooperation, and so did moral rules. Law evolved to codify moral rules. If one adhered to religious, moral, or legal rules, one can be forgiven for error. This is the source of JUSTIFICATIONARY reasoning.

But that reasoning is precisely what delayed the development of science, which does not depend upon prior positive assertions, but the discovery of truth propositions by trial and error, by a relentless evolutionary increase in precision.

The error you are making in your arguments is called ‘justificationism’. It went out with the end of the 19th century.

There is another error you are making that went out with the 19th century, and that is that I suspect you confuse proof (possibility) with truth (causality). A proof != Truth. We use the term ‘true’ allegorically, and that is all

There is yet another error you make and that is to resort to internal consistency instead of expanding into empiricism and then falling back to internal consistency only after you have failed to test the higher standard. This is actually a form of deception commonly employed – although in your case I suspect its merely ignorance and error.

—“Yes, but then there can not be really a definition of the Outcome Ethics, because the knowledge how to bring the mentioned outcomes would have to be a part of the definition.”—

But that’s not really true, now is it.

If we possess the knowledge to test outcomes, then we may make use of outcome ethics.

If we do not we may resort to rule ethics.

If we do not have rules we may resort to virtue ethics.

If we do not have a virtue ethic we can resort to moral introspection.

Morality is serves as a form of law under which we do not hold one another accountable for our errors if we act according to those rules.

We do not hold children, the young, adults, and non specialists for the ethics required of those with specialized knowledge.

Conversely we DO hold accountable those with specialized knowledge in areas of specialized knowledge.

So one of the tests of honesty (truthfulness) is whether one uses both the situational information available to him, and the ethical systems available to him, given his knowledge of a particular discipline.

Conversely we treat as dishonest those who use lower standards of ethics, lower methods of reasoning, that make use of less information, as a means of justifying their arguments rather than eliminating the risk to others by testing at the limits of one’s knowledge.

Furthermore, this is why the left won: we held to the lie that men merely err. The left succeeded by the construction of convincing lies.

Rothbard certainly constructed as convincing a set of lies as did marx and the neocons.