Form: Aphorism

(Profound)(reposted)(worth repeating) [W]hile a failure to rely upon operational definitions in mathematics, logic and philosophy may only be immoral, and in science unethical – in economics, politics and law it is criminal. In Mathematics avoiding operationalism merely perpetuates an error; in logic and philosophy it is deceptive of both others and one’s self; in science wastes others’ time. But in economics, politics and law, failure to use operationalism creates theft. That is the answer to the riddle Mises, Rothbard, and Hoppe couldn’t solve in economics and ethics. Nor Hayek and Popper and their followers in politics and philosophy. But then, neither did Bridgman and his followers in science, nor Brouwer and his followers in math. I don’t think the long list ending with Kripke solved it either in logic. One cannot use this heavily loaded term ‘true’ as other than analogy without a constructive knowledge of its meaning. And the only meaning that is constructively possible is testimony: performative truth. All else is merely proof. And the quaint linguistic contrivance that conflates the most parsimonious possible theory with testimony is, much like multitudinous abuses of the verb to-be, nothing more than a means by which we obscure our ignorance as a means of making mere analogies as a substitute for truth claims. Only constructive proofs demonstrate that one possesses the knowledge to make a truth claim. Everything else is merely analogy.