Curt Doolittle

Category: Epistemology and Method

  • MHO: the only test of one’s capacity is his mastery of this hierarchy: Historica

    MHO: the only test of one’s capacity is his mastery of this hierarchy: Historical, Moral, Rational, Critical, Decidable, and Prescriptive argumetns in propertarianism.

    Individuals do not need to master all of them. Only those that they can make use of.

    1) The sets of narratives describing the historical evolution of truth and incremental suppression and how this reduces all costs and forces all people into productive production and exchange.

    HISTORICAL

    2) The division of perception, cognition, knowledge, labor, and advocacy as demonstration of reproductive strategies, and voluntary exchange as the only means of making use of that disparate information. The evolution of a market for goods and services (consumption) and a market for commons (investment).

    MORAL

    3) The strict construction of propertarian arguments as a description of incentives, in various matters of human cooperation and conflict.

    RATIONAL

    4) The strict construction of criticism of statements under testimonialism using all 7/8 criterion

    CRITICAL (SCIENTIFIC)

    5) The strict construction of law enforcing all of the above in matters of dispute.

    DECIDABLE

    6) The construction of propertarian institutions.

    PRESCRIPTIVE

    )

    Source date (UTC): 2016-02-06 08:44:00 UTC

  • The Difference Between Cognitively Meaningful, and Existentially True

    –“or put another way “But one thing is the thought, another thing is the deed, and another thing is the idea of the deed. The wheel of causality doth not roll between them”.—

    [L]aurence, (Danny), Exactly. I tend to describe this problem as the Point of View in the grammar of testimony. (my emphasis being that it remain constant – meaning non-conflationary – lest we not engage in escaping the test of knowledge of causality by the speaker).

    • Experience: “But one thing is the thought,”
      Action: “another thing is the deed,”
      Observation: “and another thing is the idea of the deed.”

    Because we are human, because we can empathize with other humans (or cooperation would be impossible), we can as observer suggest both action and experience. But because we are human, and we do not yet know the first principles of the universe, we can manage only observation. And if we can construct an experiment then we can act, and record our actions – but the universe merely reacts to us. We are mere observers until we can construct a sufficiently thorough model of the universe that we can empathize with it as we do other men. It is also possible (though difficult to imagine) that we cannot do so. This difference between the empathically testable and the empathically untestable, is the reason for the necessity of praxeological explanation of social science, and operational description of physical science in order to test whether we imagine a sequence of imaginary relations, or whether we can describe a sequence of extant causal relations. We are forever in frustrated by the fact that the physical universe appears deterministic even if we cannot empathize with it, while the human universe is less deterministic despite that we’re able to empathize with it, for the simple reason that while humans are marginally indifferent at scale, and can act consistently in their interests, that humans can react to combinations of memory and information that we are as insulated from observing as we are the subatomic world that we currently cannot peer into. Hence the problem of “meaningful theories” that assist us in creative free association, and “true recipes” for action that assist us in predictable transformation. I can testify to a sequence of operations. I cannot testify to meaning. I can only be honest about it. And herein lies the difference between: 1) the judicial and the judge (decidable): the critical, and; 2) the producer and production (actionable): the productive, and; 3) the artistic and the scientist (exploratory): the creative. 4) the nurturer and the mother (consumptive): the reproductive. Which we can take further into: 1 – the conservative and judicial (substantial majority) 2 – the conservative libertarian producer (minority) 3 – the progressive libertarian investigator (smaller minority) 4 – the progressive progressive consumer (dominant majority) We all seek to justify our genetic biases, reproductive strategies, and greatest interests. We all tolerate, accept, or advocate that the externalities produced by our biases should be considered acceptable losses by others. When the limit of that tolerance for loss can only be determined by exchange: no other method can capture ‘value’ and price of knowledge, any more than any method other than exchange can capture value and price. ERGO 1) Popper does not account for costs, nor externalizations, which is rational since he was unsophisticated in these matters. 2) Popper fails to define the market as the tolerance for externalities. This is forgivable. He was a victim of his heritage and his era. 3) Popper is concerned that creativity not be imposed upon, that creativity not be used to impose upon others, since the truth of it is uncertain. And it is clear he was (like Mises) happy to just ‘make stuff up’ to fight the socialists. He is showing his cognitive bias by defending his cognitive, reproductive, and genetic bias. 4) But popper’s arguments are not true in the sense that they satisfy the seven or eight tests of warranty of due diligence against falsehood. His arguments are instead a moral warning. Not a logical, not an empirical, but a moral warning. 5) Under the demands of decidability, we tend to refine our most abstract theories, not falsify them. 6) When we refine theories we seem to falsify the verbal ‘Meaning’ used in free association (creativity), not the instrumental (operational), “truth” in the application of the recipe (method). 7) for the creative, the meaningful is profoundly important, the existential operationalization of it less so, and he resists external demands on his free association (stimuli pursuit), and immoral impositions on his pursuit of gratification. 8) Why should the producer of ideas be less accountable for externalities of his product than are the providers of goods and services? Why is fixed and organizational capital more valuable than informational capital? Why do we defend the physical commons, the normative commons, the institutional commons, the traditional commons, and even the mythological commons, but we do not defend the informational commons? 8) Non operational, non-existential terms like “positive and negative liberty” are perhaps meaningful, but they have little to no truth content. One can experience a condition of liberty. He can do so either because he errs (liberty by permission is not liberty) or he can do so because he experience an existental condition of liberty. What liberty can exist? The liberty that can exist is moral action by any monopoly organization with power to act immoraly, yet its members do not. What morality can exist? when others impose no cost upon you while at the same time you impose no cost upon them – especially the cost of free ridership. I am not interested in improving creativity. I am unconvinced that trial and error, using least cost method of investigation. can be improved upon. We seem to do fairly well with the advancement of the physical sciences. But we have been tragically incompetent at advancing the social sciences. Why? Why, as Hayek, Poincare, Brouwer, Bridgman and dozens of others – even Mises in his crude way – did the late 19th and the 20th century result in the pervasive expansion of pseudosciences – if not outright lies? What was the cost of those ‘lies?’ ==== —Boaz (anthropology), Marx (economics and sociology), Freud (psychology), and Cantor(mathematical platonism), Mises (economics and philosophy) the 20th century saw the subsequent wave of philosophical liars, Michel Foucault, the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, the developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, the linguists Roman Jakobson and Noam Chomsky, the literary critic Roland Barthes …. and the Marxist theorists Louis Althusser and Nicos Poulantzas, Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Friedrich Pollock, Erich Fromm, Otto Kirchheimer, Leo Löwenthal,, Franz Leopold Neumann, Henryk Grossman, Siegfried Kracauer, Alfred Sohn-Rethel, Walter Benjamin, Jürgen Habermas, Claus Offe, Axel, Honneth, Oskar Negt, Alfred Schmidt, Albrecht Wellmer …. and the postmodernists Martin Heidegger, Jean-François Lyotard, Richard Rorty, Jean Baudrillard, Fredric Jameson, Douglas Kellner… Although we must take notice that the french, german, american, and British postmodernists are making use of the german method of pseudo-moral, pseudo-rationalism: ADVICE – not the pseudoscientific: LAW. … and Ayn Rand, and Murray Rothbard as well. The fact that Hoppe’s work on incentives is solid has no bearing on his nonsense-arguments advancing Misesian and Rothbardian pseudoscience (which I’ve written extensively about elsewhere). ==== How do we improve science by preventing another dark age created by the pseudoscientists, pseudo-rationalists, verbalists, mystics, mathematical platonists? We require them to warranty due diligence in the production of their informational products just as we warranty goods and services against falsehood, and we hold them liable for them. If one fulfills all the warranties of due diligence, then it is hard for one to be liable. If one fulfills the warranties of due diligence then it is hard to publish falsehoods. This method has been working fairly effectively in the hard sciences, merely by requiring operational language. There is no reason we cannot extend this to the social sciences, by requiring operational language as a test of existential possibility each step of which is subjectively testable. COMPLETING POPPER So I view popper as cognitively and culturally biased, and having correctly deduced that we must remove the rock from the marble to expose the statue of truth. And that the advancement of knowledge – scientific, meaning truthful knowledge – in all fields requires not that we improve the method of free association (that’s non logical) but that we improve our tests that limit our errors. RESPONDING TO Danny My concern with the paper was that this is an inarticulate use of non-operational, non-existential and perhaps ‘meaningful’ but not ‘truthful’ attempt to defend priors, rather than a critical analysis of the method of constructing a condition of liberty, and the costs we bear to do so, and the warranty we must place upon our utterances – not to limit our creativity, but TO IMPROVE OUR CREATIVITY on the one hand, and LIMIT OUR VIOLATION OF LIBERTY by the imposition of harm by externality. Simply, it persists in the mainstream libertarian use of verbalisms and therefore persists the persistence of pseudoscientific argument in libertarian thought. Although I doubt authors of rationalist argument realize what they are doing, because they do not know how to argue truthfully, only meaningfully. EPISTEMELOGICALLY: WHAT WORKS IS WHAT IS TRUE “We only know what works”. Because actions are testable in reality. Our meanings “labels, justifications” are just that and nothing more. If we cannot describe something existentially then we do not in fact know that of which we claim by our speech. Meaning is analogous to a parable. A recipe or formula that ‘works’ is true. OBJECTIVE I am fairly certain that if we were to require warranty of due diligence of intellectual products prior to any kind of publication, that publications would plummet, falsehoods would plummet, and truth content would expand. Moreover, I am fairly certain that this would produce as great a change in human knowledge as the scientific enlightenment did in the physical sciences. CAVEAT I have a lot of respect for Danny (you) since he’s about the only person who produces anything in the liberty movement worth more than use for birdcage lining. That said, I was unable to determine which argument he was (you were danny) making since the terminology is metaphorical, and not existential, scientific, real or ‘possible’ that I know of. Postive and negative liberty cannot exist. Liberty can be brought into existence. We can have more or less of it. That’s it.

  • The Difference Between Cognitively Meaningful, and Existentially True

    –“or put another way “But one thing is the thought, another thing is the deed, and another thing is the idea of the deed. The wheel of causality doth not roll between them”.—

    [L]aurence, (Danny), Exactly. I tend to describe this problem as the Point of View in the grammar of testimony. (my emphasis being that it remain constant – meaning non-conflationary – lest we not engage in escaping the test of knowledge of causality by the speaker).

    • Experience: “But one thing is the thought,”
      Action: “another thing is the deed,”
      Observation: “and another thing is the idea of the deed.”

    Because we are human, because we can empathize with other humans (or cooperation would be impossible), we can as observer suggest both action and experience. But because we are human, and we do not yet know the first principles of the universe, we can manage only observation. And if we can construct an experiment then we can act, and record our actions – but the universe merely reacts to us. We are mere observers until we can construct a sufficiently thorough model of the universe that we can empathize with it as we do other men. It is also possible (though difficult to imagine) that we cannot do so. This difference between the empathically testable and the empathically untestable, is the reason for the necessity of praxeological explanation of social science, and operational description of physical science in order to test whether we imagine a sequence of imaginary relations, or whether we can describe a sequence of extant causal relations. We are forever in frustrated by the fact that the physical universe appears deterministic even if we cannot empathize with it, while the human universe is less deterministic despite that we’re able to empathize with it, for the simple reason that while humans are marginally indifferent at scale, and can act consistently in their interests, that humans can react to combinations of memory and information that we are as insulated from observing as we are the subatomic world that we currently cannot peer into. Hence the problem of “meaningful theories” that assist us in creative free association, and “true recipes” for action that assist us in predictable transformation. I can testify to a sequence of operations. I cannot testify to meaning. I can only be honest about it. And herein lies the difference between: 1) the judicial and the judge (decidable): the critical, and; 2) the producer and production (actionable): the productive, and; 3) the artistic and the scientist (exploratory): the creative. 4) the nurturer and the mother (consumptive): the reproductive. Which we can take further into: 1 – the conservative and judicial (substantial majority) 2 – the conservative libertarian producer (minority) 3 – the progressive libertarian investigator (smaller minority) 4 – the progressive progressive consumer (dominant majority) We all seek to justify our genetic biases, reproductive strategies, and greatest interests. We all tolerate, accept, or advocate that the externalities produced by our biases should be considered acceptable losses by others. When the limit of that tolerance for loss can only be determined by exchange: no other method can capture ‘value’ and price of knowledge, any more than any method other than exchange can capture value and price. ERGO 1) Popper does not account for costs, nor externalizations, which is rational since he was unsophisticated in these matters. 2) Popper fails to define the market as the tolerance for externalities. This is forgivable. He was a victim of his heritage and his era. 3) Popper is concerned that creativity not be imposed upon, that creativity not be used to impose upon others, since the truth of it is uncertain. And it is clear he was (like Mises) happy to just ‘make stuff up’ to fight the socialists. He is showing his cognitive bias by defending his cognitive, reproductive, and genetic bias. 4) But popper’s arguments are not true in the sense that they satisfy the seven or eight tests of warranty of due diligence against falsehood. His arguments are instead a moral warning. Not a logical, not an empirical, but a moral warning. 5) Under the demands of decidability, we tend to refine our most abstract theories, not falsify them. 6) When we refine theories we seem to falsify the verbal ‘Meaning’ used in free association (creativity), not the instrumental (operational), “truth” in the application of the recipe (method). 7) for the creative, the meaningful is profoundly important, the existential operationalization of it less so, and he resists external demands on his free association (stimuli pursuit), and immoral impositions on his pursuit of gratification. 8) Why should the producer of ideas be less accountable for externalities of his product than are the providers of goods and services? Why is fixed and organizational capital more valuable than informational capital? Why do we defend the physical commons, the normative commons, the institutional commons, the traditional commons, and even the mythological commons, but we do not defend the informational commons? 8) Non operational, non-existential terms like “positive and negative liberty” are perhaps meaningful, but they have little to no truth content. One can experience a condition of liberty. He can do so either because he errs (liberty by permission is not liberty) or he can do so because he experience an existental condition of liberty. What liberty can exist? The liberty that can exist is moral action by any monopoly organization with power to act immoraly, yet its members do not. What morality can exist? when others impose no cost upon you while at the same time you impose no cost upon them – especially the cost of free ridership. I am not interested in improving creativity. I am unconvinced that trial and error, using least cost method of investigation. can be improved upon. We seem to do fairly well with the advancement of the physical sciences. But we have been tragically incompetent at advancing the social sciences. Why? Why, as Hayek, Poincare, Brouwer, Bridgman and dozens of others – even Mises in his crude way – did the late 19th and the 20th century result in the pervasive expansion of pseudosciences – if not outright lies? What was the cost of those ‘lies?’ ==== —Boaz (anthropology), Marx (economics and sociology), Freud (psychology), and Cantor(mathematical platonism), Mises (economics and philosophy) the 20th century saw the subsequent wave of philosophical liars, Michel Foucault, the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, the developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, the linguists Roman Jakobson and Noam Chomsky, the literary critic Roland Barthes …. and the Marxist theorists Louis Althusser and Nicos Poulantzas, Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Friedrich Pollock, Erich Fromm, Otto Kirchheimer, Leo Löwenthal,, Franz Leopold Neumann, Henryk Grossman, Siegfried Kracauer, Alfred Sohn-Rethel, Walter Benjamin, Jürgen Habermas, Claus Offe, Axel, Honneth, Oskar Negt, Alfred Schmidt, Albrecht Wellmer …. and the postmodernists Martin Heidegger, Jean-François Lyotard, Richard Rorty, Jean Baudrillard, Fredric Jameson, Douglas Kellner… Although we must take notice that the french, german, american, and British postmodernists are making use of the german method of pseudo-moral, pseudo-rationalism: ADVICE – not the pseudoscientific: LAW. … and Ayn Rand, and Murray Rothbard as well. The fact that Hoppe’s work on incentives is solid has no bearing on his nonsense-arguments advancing Misesian and Rothbardian pseudoscience (which I’ve written extensively about elsewhere). ==== How do we improve science by preventing another dark age created by the pseudoscientists, pseudo-rationalists, verbalists, mystics, mathematical platonists? We require them to warranty due diligence in the production of their informational products just as we warranty goods and services against falsehood, and we hold them liable for them. If one fulfills all the warranties of due diligence, then it is hard for one to be liable. If one fulfills the warranties of due diligence then it is hard to publish falsehoods. This method has been working fairly effectively in the hard sciences, merely by requiring operational language. There is no reason we cannot extend this to the social sciences, by requiring operational language as a test of existential possibility each step of which is subjectively testable. COMPLETING POPPER So I view popper as cognitively and culturally biased, and having correctly deduced that we must remove the rock from the marble to expose the statue of truth. And that the advancement of knowledge – scientific, meaning truthful knowledge – in all fields requires not that we improve the method of free association (that’s non logical) but that we improve our tests that limit our errors. RESPONDING TO Danny My concern with the paper was that this is an inarticulate use of non-operational, non-existential and perhaps ‘meaningful’ but not ‘truthful’ attempt to defend priors, rather than a critical analysis of the method of constructing a condition of liberty, and the costs we bear to do so, and the warranty we must place upon our utterances – not to limit our creativity, but TO IMPROVE OUR CREATIVITY on the one hand, and LIMIT OUR VIOLATION OF LIBERTY by the imposition of harm by externality. Simply, it persists in the mainstream libertarian use of verbalisms and therefore persists the persistence of pseudoscientific argument in libertarian thought. Although I doubt authors of rationalist argument realize what they are doing, because they do not know how to argue truthfully, only meaningfully. EPISTEMELOGICALLY: WHAT WORKS IS WHAT IS TRUE “We only know what works”. Because actions are testable in reality. Our meanings “labels, justifications” are just that and nothing more. If we cannot describe something existentially then we do not in fact know that of which we claim by our speech. Meaning is analogous to a parable. A recipe or formula that ‘works’ is true. OBJECTIVE I am fairly certain that if we were to require warranty of due diligence of intellectual products prior to any kind of publication, that publications would plummet, falsehoods would plummet, and truth content would expand. Moreover, I am fairly certain that this would produce as great a change in human knowledge as the scientific enlightenment did in the physical sciences. CAVEAT I have a lot of respect for Danny (you) since he’s about the only person who produces anything in the liberty movement worth more than use for birdcage lining. That said, I was unable to determine which argument he was (you were danny) making since the terminology is metaphorical, and not existential, scientific, real or ‘possible’ that I know of. Postive and negative liberty cannot exist. Liberty can be brought into existence. We can have more or less of it. That’s it.

  • ARE FUNDAMENTALIST MOVEMENTS RATIONAL? If you mean by ‘rational’ to imply ‘justi

    ARE FUNDAMENTALIST MOVEMENTS RATIONAL?

    If you mean by ‘rational’ to imply ‘justificationary’ for the purpose of granting higher ontological status to internal consistency than internal correspondence, then yes.

    That is the meaning of “Fundamentalist”: internally consistent but non correspondent.

    We can treat FUNDAMENTALISM as a reaction to RATIONALISM, just as we can treat SCRIPTURALISM as a reaction to REASON.

    Both technologies and their modern equivalent :

    (PSEUDOSCIENCE AND POLITICAL CORRECTNESS are a Reaction to SCIENCE.)

    Seek to give higher criteria for decidability to internal consistency rather than external correspondence.

    This is also the source of the various sects that attempt to create “Social Justice” and “Social Truth”.

    Source date (UTC): 2016-02-05 08:10:00 UTC

  • VARIATIONS ON TRUTH (very much worth repeating) Truth and Adherence to Rules are

    http://www.propertarianism.com/en_US/2014/07/11/cultural-variants-of-truth-and-the-consequences/CULTURAL VARIATIONS ON TRUTH

    (very much worth repeating)

    Truth and Adherence to Rules are two different things. (submission)

    Truth and Fidelity to Contract are two different things.

    Truth and Duty are two different things.

    Truth and Knowledge are two different things.

    Truth as Adherence – Familialism (most of the world)

    Truth as Fidelity – Tribalism (judaism)

    Truth as Duty – Nationalism (germans)

    Truth as Science – Universalism. (english)

    The principle of truth to to an Adherence community consists of order. The principle of ‘truth’ to a contract community consists of fidelity. The principle of truth to a truth-telling community consists of ***SCIENCE***

    Source date (UTC): 2016-02-05 06:06:00 UTC

  • Why Discuss Lies? You’re Just Being A Useful Idiot. A Host for Lies.

    (read it and weep) (a graduate education in philosophy in one lesson)

    Q&A: —“Curt Doolittle, is christian mysticism a functional or structural approach to things?”—

    [W]ell, now that’s an interesting question. 1) “Functional”, “Structural” and “Approach to Things” are problematic terms. If we clarify the terms – which is the purpose of analytic philosophy – then I am pretty sure that (as usual) the question will all but answer itself. 2) The Grammar of Description: The subset of internal consistency: observer (narrator) consistency. There are at least three points of view that we can use do describe observations: (a) the experience of being subjected to stimuli, (b) the experience of acting to cause change in state, (c) the observer of the actor and/or the experiencer, (d) the description of the constituent parts as a series of operations. In other words, all description of observation that we can use for reconstruction of observation (communication) of relies upon a grammar, and that grammar includes the point of view. In general the most problematic use of this grammar originates in the ‘cost’ of consistency in construction of our descriptions. The verb to-be functions as an obscurant technique with which to conflate multiple points of view, (use bad grammar of description) thereby either alleviating the burden of logical consistency from the speaker, OR worse, through obscurantism, allowing the speaker to state a falsehood undetected by the audience. 3) “Functional” methodology is more correctly stated as an attempt at descriptive consistency using the experiential observer’s point of view, and the behavior (incentives?) that these experiences produce. Since humans act according to their experiences, this is somewhat difficult to argue with. To convey mere ‘meaning’ any method can be used to serve the speaker’s interests. Certainly the experiential point of view requires the least knowledge, and relies upon mere introspection. But experiential description is also the most susceptible to error, bias, wishful thinking, deception, because it is the easiest means of suggestion. It is the easiest means of suggestion because it is the most subject to loading, framing, overloading, and it invokes our desire to empathize with the speaker, leading to easy abuse of our altruism. (Which is why people use it). Hence why the discipline of science speaks operationally: to best ostracize error, bias, wishful thinking, deceit, suggestion, and abuse of altruism. And hence why, in my work, I use amoral operational language to prevent error caused by experiential, intentional, and observational methods of description. To convey “truth”, meaning that we have done due diligence to launder error, bias, wishful thinking, deceit, loading, framing, and suggestion would require that we test that all four descriptive models of a process are consistent with one another, such that we convey no error, bias, wishful thinking, or deceit in our description. 4) Structuralism, or more honestly stated “social constructivism”, suggests that people throw symbols around at one another, and that their reality is socially constructed. Now this may be true at some popular level, but it was the western tradition to teach grammar, rhetoric, logic, and philosophy for a very long time. And we can see from the disciplined use of grammar, rhetoric, logic, performative truth, the discipline of testimony, natural law, and physical law, that it is quite possible to learn to speak with the same discipline as any of the logics. We just have industrialized education mass consumption and no longer teach these skills. The structuralist movement was created by some of the greatest ‘liars’ of the past century, in what I would argue represents an attempt to impose false skepticism on the use of language, in an effort to circumvent the constraint that consistent grammar, rhetoric, logic, performative truth, the discipline of testimony, natural law, and physical law So just as the 19th century saw the first wave of pseudoscientific liars: Boaz (anthropology), Marx (economics and sociology), Freud (psychology), and Cantor(mathematical platonism), Mises (economics and philosophy) the 20th century saw the subsequent wave of philosophical liars, Michel Foucault, the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908 – ), the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901 – 1981), the developmental psychologist Jean Piaget (1896 – 1980), the linguists Roman Jakobson (1896 – 1982) and Noam Chomsky (1928 – ), the literary critic Roland Barthes (1915 – 1980) and the Marxist theorists Louis Althusser (1918 – 1990) and Nicos Poulantzas (1936 – 1979). 5) Christian mysticism makes use of analogy to invoke experience (the extension of kinship love through appeals to altruism and the pack response in exchange for self-generated status signals). It makes use of any and all methods to suit its purpose. Christian mysticism is at best an allegorical literary and rhetorical art for constructing myths parables and outright lies, for the purpose of creating experiences, that produce behaviors. Some of these behaviors are objectively beneficial (the extension of kinship love). And some of them are not (too many to list). But what the data suggests is that this method works, particularly on the young, the vulnerable, the hopeful, and those with lower intelligence, and even those with average intelligence and above average moral instincts (purity, sanctity, hierarchy). (But the church also has a long tradition of natural law as well.) 6) Humans can cooperate, communicate, and understand ethical moral and political statements by a spectrum of tools. And with some confidence we can say that Ethics can be taught using a spectrum of methods, from the most primitive and requiring the LEAST knowledge, to the most sophisticated and requiring the MOST knowledge: a) Myth and Mysticism b) Virtue ethics and imitation. c) Rule ethics and adherence to law d) Outcome ethics and the practice of science. We can separate the promise of a narrative, from the truth content of it, from the behavior produced by it (ie: Islam’s nonsensical ‘religion of peace’ claims which fail all three tests.). I would say that the truth content of christian mysticism is higher than the truth content of Structuralism. I would say that the outcome of christian mysticism is objectively more beneficial than the outcome of structuralism. I would say that the intention of structuralists was fraud and deception (parasitism). I would say that christian mysticism is not as bad as structuralism or social constructivism – which are themselves an argumentative innovation on mysticism (deceit). I would say that as long as we have a method of laundering error, bias, wishful thinking, and deceit from any and all arguments, and that we can teach this method by grammar, rhetoric, logic, performative truth, testimonial skill, natural law and physical law, that we can counter every one of these falsehoods. CLOSING [C]hristian mysticism consists of allegorical conveyance of meaning, using a mixture of truth and falsehood to try to produce high trust on one end, and dependency on the other. functionalism consists of an internally consistent and grammatically consistent method of argument, but it is insufficient in the scope of due diligence it includes to ensure it is not used as a vehicle for error,bias, wishful thinking, and deceit. Structuralism is a literary and narrative attempt to circumvent a demand for truth, testimony, natural law and physical law. Christianity (monotheism) was the first great lie to successfully infect the west. 19th century pseudoscience as the second great lie to successfully infect the west. 20th century verbal ‘new mysticism of language’ was the third great lie to successfully infect the west. None of these subjects merit discussion since christian supernatural mysticism, cosmopolitan pseudoscience, and cosmopolitan verbal mysticism, are nothing but the same technique applied in three different waves, in order to defeat the west’s central competitive strategy: The creation of competitive commons through the use of truth, testimony, natural law and physical law. In other words: correspondence. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine.

  • Why Discuss Lies? You’re Just Being A Useful Idiot. A Host for Lies.

    (read it and weep) (a graduate education in philosophy in one lesson)

    Q&A: —“Curt Doolittle, is christian mysticism a functional or structural approach to things?”—

    [W]ell, now that’s an interesting question. 1) “Functional”, “Structural” and “Approach to Things” are problematic terms. If we clarify the terms – which is the purpose of analytic philosophy – then I am pretty sure that (as usual) the question will all but answer itself. 2) The Grammar of Description: The subset of internal consistency: observer (narrator) consistency. There are at least three points of view that we can use do describe observations: (a) the experience of being subjected to stimuli, (b) the experience of acting to cause change in state, (c) the observer of the actor and/or the experiencer, (d) the description of the constituent parts as a series of operations. In other words, all description of observation that we can use for reconstruction of observation (communication) of relies upon a grammar, and that grammar includes the point of view. In general the most problematic use of this grammar originates in the ‘cost’ of consistency in construction of our descriptions. The verb to-be functions as an obscurant technique with which to conflate multiple points of view, (use bad grammar of description) thereby either alleviating the burden of logical consistency from the speaker, OR worse, through obscurantism, allowing the speaker to state a falsehood undetected by the audience. 3) “Functional” methodology is more correctly stated as an attempt at descriptive consistency using the experiential observer’s point of view, and the behavior (incentives?) that these experiences produce. Since humans act according to their experiences, this is somewhat difficult to argue with. To convey mere ‘meaning’ any method can be used to serve the speaker’s interests. Certainly the experiential point of view requires the least knowledge, and relies upon mere introspection. But experiential description is also the most susceptible to error, bias, wishful thinking, deception, because it is the easiest means of suggestion. It is the easiest means of suggestion because it is the most subject to loading, framing, overloading, and it invokes our desire to empathize with the speaker, leading to easy abuse of our altruism. (Which is why people use it). Hence why the discipline of science speaks operationally: to best ostracize error, bias, wishful thinking, deceit, suggestion, and abuse of altruism. And hence why, in my work, I use amoral operational language to prevent error caused by experiential, intentional, and observational methods of description. To convey “truth”, meaning that we have done due diligence to launder error, bias, wishful thinking, deceit, loading, framing, and suggestion would require that we test that all four descriptive models of a process are consistent with one another, such that we convey no error, bias, wishful thinking, or deceit in our description. 4) Structuralism, or more honestly stated “social constructivism”, suggests that people throw symbols around at one another, and that their reality is socially constructed. Now this may be true at some popular level, but it was the western tradition to teach grammar, rhetoric, logic, and philosophy for a very long time. And we can see from the disciplined use of grammar, rhetoric, logic, performative truth, the discipline of testimony, natural law, and physical law, that it is quite possible to learn to speak with the same discipline as any of the logics. We just have industrialized education mass consumption and no longer teach these skills. The structuralist movement was created by some of the greatest ‘liars’ of the past century, in what I would argue represents an attempt to impose false skepticism on the use of language, in an effort to circumvent the constraint that consistent grammar, rhetoric, logic, performative truth, the discipline of testimony, natural law, and physical law So just as the 19th century saw the first wave of pseudoscientific liars: Boaz (anthropology), Marx (economics and sociology), Freud (psychology), and Cantor(mathematical platonism), Mises (economics and philosophy) the 20th century saw the subsequent wave of philosophical liars, Michel Foucault, the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908 – ), the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901 – 1981), the developmental psychologist Jean Piaget (1896 – 1980), the linguists Roman Jakobson (1896 – 1982) and Noam Chomsky (1928 – ), the literary critic Roland Barthes (1915 – 1980) and the Marxist theorists Louis Althusser (1918 – 1990) and Nicos Poulantzas (1936 – 1979). 5) Christian mysticism makes use of analogy to invoke experience (the extension of kinship love through appeals to altruism and the pack response in exchange for self-generated status signals). It makes use of any and all methods to suit its purpose. Christian mysticism is at best an allegorical literary and rhetorical art for constructing myths parables and outright lies, for the purpose of creating experiences, that produce behaviors. Some of these behaviors are objectively beneficial (the extension of kinship love). And some of them are not (too many to list). But what the data suggests is that this method works, particularly on the young, the vulnerable, the hopeful, and those with lower intelligence, and even those with average intelligence and above average moral instincts (purity, sanctity, hierarchy). (But the church also has a long tradition of natural law as well.) 6) Humans can cooperate, communicate, and understand ethical moral and political statements by a spectrum of tools. And with some confidence we can say that Ethics can be taught using a spectrum of methods, from the most primitive and requiring the LEAST knowledge, to the most sophisticated and requiring the MOST knowledge: a) Myth and Mysticism b) Virtue ethics and imitation. c) Rule ethics and adherence to law d) Outcome ethics and the practice of science. We can separate the promise of a narrative, from the truth content of it, from the behavior produced by it (ie: Islam’s nonsensical ‘religion of peace’ claims which fail all three tests.). I would say that the truth content of christian mysticism is higher than the truth content of Structuralism. I would say that the outcome of christian mysticism is objectively more beneficial than the outcome of structuralism. I would say that the intention of structuralists was fraud and deception (parasitism). I would say that christian mysticism is not as bad as structuralism or social constructivism – which are themselves an argumentative innovation on mysticism (deceit). I would say that as long as we have a method of laundering error, bias, wishful thinking, and deceit from any and all arguments, and that we can teach this method by grammar, rhetoric, logic, performative truth, testimonial skill, natural law and physical law, that we can counter every one of these falsehoods. CLOSING [C]hristian mysticism consists of allegorical conveyance of meaning, using a mixture of truth and falsehood to try to produce high trust on one end, and dependency on the other. functionalism consists of an internally consistent and grammatically consistent method of argument, but it is insufficient in the scope of due diligence it includes to ensure it is not used as a vehicle for error,bias, wishful thinking, and deceit. Structuralism is a literary and narrative attempt to circumvent a demand for truth, testimony, natural law and physical law. Christianity (monotheism) was the first great lie to successfully infect the west. 19th century pseudoscience as the second great lie to successfully infect the west. 20th century verbal ‘new mysticism of language’ was the third great lie to successfully infect the west. None of these subjects merit discussion since christian supernatural mysticism, cosmopolitan pseudoscience, and cosmopolitan verbal mysticism, are nothing but the same technique applied in three different waves, in order to defeat the west’s central competitive strategy: The creation of competitive commons through the use of truth, testimony, natural law and physical law. In other words: correspondence. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine.

  • Why Not Study The Cosmopolitans, Continentals, Philosophers of Language, and Mystics?

    WHY NOT STUDY THE CONTINENTALS, MYSTICS, PHILOSOPHERS OF LANGUAGE? [S]pending time analyzing lies is not useful. In fact, its harmful. And that’s the intent of the authors.

    —“If you dance with the devil, the devil doesn’t change, the devil changes you.”—

    Or less eloquently,

    —“If you spend a lot of time with dung, you begin to smell of it.”—

    Or put more accurately:

    We are all aware that the average idiot seems to feel qualified to engage in discourse on ethics, morality, politics, economics, psychology, and sociology, despite his pervasive ignorance.

    By constructing elaborate nonsense-riddles the producers of systems of lies accomplish indoctrination through amusement. In other words, the study of the language of deceit makes one a willing host for it, and an accidental accomplice to it. If philosophy and science are compatible then the subject at hand is possibly worth consideration. If they are not compatible, then the evidence is that the subject at hand is one of deception, not education. Curt Doolittle, The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine.

  • Why Not Study The Cosmopolitans, Continentals, Philosophers of Language, and Mystics?

    WHY NOT STUDY THE CONTINENTALS, MYSTICS, PHILOSOPHERS OF LANGUAGE? [S]pending time analyzing lies is not useful. In fact, its harmful. And that’s the intent of the authors.

    —“If you dance with the devil, the devil doesn’t change, the devil changes you.”—

    Or less eloquently,

    —“If you spend a lot of time with dung, you begin to smell of it.”—

    Or put more accurately:

    We are all aware that the average idiot seems to feel qualified to engage in discourse on ethics, morality, politics, economics, psychology, and sociology, despite his pervasive ignorance.

    By constructing elaborate nonsense-riddles the producers of systems of lies accomplish indoctrination through amusement. In other words, the study of the language of deceit makes one a willing host for it, and an accidental accomplice to it. If philosophy and science are compatible then the subject at hand is possibly worth consideration. If they are not compatible, then the evidence is that the subject at hand is one of deception, not education. Curt Doolittle, The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine.

  • The Absence of Consideration for Costs in Popper’s Critical Rationalism.

    [T]HE ABSENCE OF COST IN POPPER’S CRITICAL RATIONALISM AND TESTIMONIALISM’S COMPLETENESS.

    —Since we can never know for sure what is true and what is false, —

    1) **We can however perform due diligence on our hypotheses, and pay the cost of that due diligence, rather than fail to do so, and thereby export the cost of our falsification onto the commons.** Which is why I raise the question, since it is what I believe you’re advocating. 2) Newton’s theory is not so much false as it less precise than Einstein’s. If that were true then Mythic, Virtue, and Rule ethics would all be ‘false’ rather than the degree of precision possible given the human subject using them. Recipes work or do not work. The verbal description we give to the category of those recipes (the theory), constructed as a verbal statement of arbitrary precision, is less precise (more general) than the recipe (sequence of operations). And imprecision is useful to us so that we can freely associate opportunities for the use of the theory, and then test them. But it appears that we are very good at criticizing theories. The problem is not criticizing theories, but the instrumentation necessary, and cost of criticizing those theories. Popper did no research, he made only an a priori assumption. It certainly APPEARS that in choosing between alternatives the least-cost method leads to discovery if for no other reason than the universe operates by least cost itself. So the statement that we know nothing for certain is not an empirical, and not even a logical, but a moral one: that we cannot use theories of arbitrary precision to impose costs upon one another, under the appeal to the authority of truth or science. 3) But Popperians like many libertarians, seem to habitually seek to justify exporting of costs in order to satisfy their needs for novelty and order (Big5: Openness to experience, Moral Foundations: economic and personal liberty. Propertarianism: acquisition of novel experiences. ) And popper is visibly circumventing costs in hist arguments, as if we are not speaking of a physical and material world, but a verbal, legal, or platonic one. Just as progressives seek to export their experiments ‘for the common good’ onto others. Just as conservatives wish to export their concern for risk-abatement onto others. Libertarians seek to export their admittedly lower cost of self stimulation onto others without taking care that they have performed due diligence against falsehood – if not also immorality (harm). When (a) the empirical evidence suggests that we do kill off false theories very quickly, (b) that we are largely engaged in the process of refining theories, not falsifying them, (d) that the number of theories that are ‘challenging’ is fairly small, but the number of falsehoods extant are very large (c) that least-cost is indeed a method of aggregate decidability (critical preference) (d) that it is far more expensive to construct a falsification of a welcome error or deception than it is to produce a welcome error or deception. 4) Popper/Darwin’s innovation was the systemic use of ‘survival’ over historical ‘justification for being’, meaning that he inverted the search for truth from accumulating justifications for hypotheses: as Rodin builds his sculpture from clay; into accumulating criticisms to see if the theory survives: as Michelangelo removes the rock to expose the potential sculpture underneath. So why would we seek to advance knowledge rather than eliminate lies and falsehoods? Why would we not worry more about preventing false and deceitful intellectual products more so than truthful ones? Would that not direct capital (costs) to truthful rather than untruthful results? So you see – this problem of costs, so fundamental to the natural laws of human behavior, and the physical laws of the extant universe is absent from popperian thought. And I am always struck with “why?” Popper was a cosmopolitan just as I am an anglo empiricist, and Kant is a german rationalist. Popper’s tradition was religion, religious law, avoidance of paying into the commons, willing, if not advocacy of, privatization of the commons, and an avoidance of externalized costs so universal to western thought that we are unaware of alternative methods of thinking. None of us escape our framings. But popper’s vision was incomplete. He ‘hooked onto’ falsification (survival) as a life raft, but he didn’t grasp that each dimension of existence requires us to perform due diligence (which again, is a cost-based framing, whereas falsification is a legal or religious based framing). Warranties of Due Diligence: – categorical consistency (non-conflation) – Internal consistency (logical) – external correspondence (empirical consistency) – existential consistency (operational definitions) – full accounting ( against selection bias ) – parsimony and limits ( precision ) – morality – ( natural law of cooperation) consisting of productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary transfer, limited to externalities of the same criteria.) Because having performed these due diligences, it is extremely difficult to engage in error, bias, wishful thinking, loading-framing-overloading-suggestion, and deceit. In fact, it would be almost impossible. Simply stating most arguments analytically in operational language causes self refutation. Hence the only reasons to escape these due diligences are; 1 – because one is merely ignorant that such a warranty of due diligence can be performed, or how to perform it. 2 – to escape paying costs of due diligence, like the distributor of faulty products. 3 – to deceive or profit from, or achieve conquest by, the distribution of wishful thinking and deceit. 4 – because we do not limit the market for distribution of intellectual works to those which are warrantied of due diligence, by treating the informational commons like we do the air, land, and sea: as commons that must be protected from harm; and under universal standing allowing us to pursue restitution for such harm against those who fail to perform due diligence on their intellectual products. This may be a bit to digest, but you can see between the scope of your argument and the scope of mine the demonstration of the technique. Cheers Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine