Curt Doolittle

Form: Mini Essay

  • Why Did The Philosophers Of Science Only Partly Succeed?

    WHY DID THE PHILOSOPHERS OF SCIENCE ONLY PARTLY SUCCEED? (cross posted for archival purposes) [D]id you ever read a novel, which you felt passionate about, and thought that the story was enthralling and insightful, then returned years later to re-read it thinking it was ok, but childish? You wonder what you were thinking? The story didn’t change, you did. I’ve spent a lot of time on the problems of ethics and politics and found my way to Instrumentalism, Operationalism, and Intuitionism as means of placing higher constraints on our theories (and arguments) such that we are unable to engage in deception and self-deception. So when I read almost all philosophers, popper included, I have the same reaction to their ‘allegorical’ imaginary arguments, that others would have to even weaker allegorical religious or platonist arguments. Now, in many cases, you can convey the same relationships (understanding) through supernatural, platonist, abstract imaginary, and operational terms. But the difference in correspondence between your terms and reality is narrowest at the operational end of that spectrum, and widest at the supernatural end. Popper is one of the best philosophers of the past century. Certainly one who had the most impact upon me. But he had the most impact on me because I am predisposed to think scientifically, and in the manner that he sought to convince us. Only a minority of us are predisposed to think as such. For those who are not so predisposed, they fail to grasp Popper’s arguments. And unlike other philosophers (Smith and Hume for example) Popper failed to sufficiently articulate his ideas such that one not be predisposed to agree with them. And the evidence confirms this. The reverse test is also telling: if one cannot articulate poppers ideas operationally, then one merely agrees with them allegorically, but does not understand them operationally. Now, I can articulate CR/CP operationally, but I’m less certain about falsificationary ideas, and I’m less sure about verisimilitude. If we put popper’s work into the context of ethics and politics, he is in the same position as Taleb, Hayek, and the rest: the moral prohibition on government, is to make small tests and measure the results, rather than large risk-inducing, fragility-creating irreversible programs. However, it is in the interests of the redistributionists, if not all rent-seekers, to do precisely that. Telling us what NOT to do, is very different from telling us WHAT to do. And this is the problem with taking the philosophy of science, which pursues absolute, most parsimonious theories, in pursue of absolute truth, regardless of time and cost, and applying it to human affairs whose purpose is to outwit the dark forces of time and ignorance at the lowest possible current cost. [H]uman cooperation requires solutions to the problem of institutions that facilitate our cooperation in ever expanding ways, most quickly, at the lowest cost. To tell us what we should not do, is not very useful in telling us what we should do. But they cannot tell us what we should do, because they failed to solve the problem of the social science. And they failed to solve that problem, because the dramatic increase in the legitimacy of science due to its successes encouraged philosophers to copy the methods and assumptions of science, which does not equilibrate in reaction to investigation, and apply those methods to human cooperation which does equilibrate in reaction to investigation. As such, Popper remains, largely a moral philosopher. He tells us what not to do. His recommendations are simple enough to apply to the problem of science, which does NOT require complex coordination in real time, and incentives needed to construct a voluntary organization of production. But it is not explanatory enough, that he could provide a solution to the problem of I suspect that he maintained the error of classical liberalism: “Us and We where there is neither.” Once we abandon that fallacy, politics and ethics are no longer an impossible equation to solve, they are solvable entirely. Because one can calculate means of cooperation, but one cannot calculate ends of cooperation. So, this is why I have a different perspective from you. To move from A to B is one thing. To move from B to C is another. Popper brings us to B. But in light of the fact that the problem is to bring us to C, he fails, like all other philosophers of his era failed. And we continue to bear the problem of that failure. I hope that adds some clarity to my position. Cheers

  • OPERATIONALISM IS SYNONYMOUS WITH HUMAN ACTION I guess, I just assumed that it w

    OPERATIONALISM IS SYNONYMOUS WITH HUMAN ACTION

    I guess, I just assumed that it was so obvious that I didn’t need to say it. But apparently it’s not.

    So why would you try to rely on all this Kantian nonsense, in order to justify human action? Instead, why wouldn’t you base the philosophy of human action, on human action?

    What is the difference between, say, justifying something aprioristically, and simply stating that it appears that we are able to use description, deduction, induction, abduction given the amount of information available to us. But that deduction is possible only when describing constant relations?

    What is the difference between stating, the obvious falsehood, that categorical descriptions of human actions are axiomatic, as in mathematics, and therefore not bounded by reality, rather than that any general description of human actions is theoretical, parsimonious, with broad explanatory power, but remains bounded by reality?

    Why would one want to appeal to an authority using verbal contrivances, instead of honest descriptions of human actions? Why would you base the theoretical system upon which we analyze human actions on anything other than human actions? Especially when to do so you must misrepresent that which is ‘axiom-like’ but not axiomatic, as that which it is not?

    Unless you were trying to justify an appeal to an authority? To grant to that which is empirical, scientific and theoretical, the authoritative content of mathematics and logic, which because both are axiomatic, are fully tautological and unbounded by reality?

    Misesian reasoning, and rothbardian ethics, could be simply an intellectual error. Or it could be a dishonest use of obscurantism to hide the fact that human actions are observable. Even introspective actions are observable by the actor who makes them, and if communicated, observable by others. And as observable, those actions are empirical.

    Theories may be very hard or very weak. Some theories are very hard, in that under most conditions they are true. But because of time and space, no economic theories are axiomatic. They are bounded by reality. This does not mean that they need to be tested. That is a fallacy of positivism. It means that there are always the possibility of conditions under which they may or may not apply, for any given period of time. In axiomatic systems this is never true. That is what defines them as axiomatic.

    Operationalism solves the problem of reducing all statements to empirical (observable) and therefore sympathetically testable terms.

    Praxeology is either an empirical science for the purpose of determining the rationality of human actions, and the voluntary exchange of property, and therefore it is the test of moral action – or it is another of the many, many, cosmopolitan and continental fallacies.

    If you cannot explain human actions as human actions, then you are either unsure of what it is that you speak, or engaging in obscurantist deception. Continental and Cosmopolitan authors were (and are) trying to preserve traditional authority in the face of science, for the purpose of maintaining group homogeneity. We must treat their arguments as specious. Because they are.

    All we need is property rights, a contract for their fullest expression enforceable under the private, common, law, and the willingness to organize and use violence for the purpose of obtaining the opportunity to construct those property rights, contract, and private common law.

    Everything else is obscurant nonsense.

    Science won.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute.

    Kiev.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-18 06:22:00 UTC

  • THE PURPOSE OF BEING WELL READ NO MATTER WHAT YOUR IQ. The data is pretty good y

    THE PURPOSE OF BEING WELL READ NO MATTER WHAT YOUR IQ.

    The data is pretty good you know. You don’t have to be a genius. You just have to be well read. Being well read means reading the right books, not just any books.

    But the right books at your level of experience.

    Now, the more causally accurate the argument, the less allegorical and more operationally descriptive it is. The more operationally descriptive it is, the further it is from experience. The further it is from experience the greater the detail needed to construct an analogy to experience. This is why simple narratives are easier to comprehend. They reduce complexity. However, by reducing complexity, they obscure causality.

    So that’s a hard way of stating that for about every 15 points of IQ we have entire literatures saying similar things at higher and lower orders of precision, and therefore greater and lesser degrees of content, that have higher correspondence with reality, or higher correspondence with our levels of perception and cognition.

    The more literate you become, the more you grasp that there are a limited number of fundamental ideas. That those fundamental ideas are counter-intuitive. That evolution did not provide us with intrinsic means of grasping or using those fundamental ideas. But that to cooperate in large numbers and to understand the structure of ourselves, our actions, and the universe in which we act, we must somehow master them. Either at high operational correspondence that few of us can master, or at low operational correspondence but high intuitive correspondence that all of us can master.

    LAYERS OF INCREASING COMPLEXITY:

    Intuitive expressions <- pre rational reactions

    Moral arguments <- normative arguments

    Allegorical Arguments <- abstract arguments (most people)

    Historical Arguments <- facts (educated people)

    Scientific Arguments <- specialists in causal relations

    Economic Arguments <- specialists in emergent relations

    Ratio-scientific Arguments <- synthesis of specialized arguments

    Constructivist Explanations <- description of reality

    It gets harder as you climb that ladder. Most of us can manage allegorical. But beginning with Historical arguments one enters the realm of empirical rather than intuitive, and that requires a lot more knowledge at each rung on the conceptual ladder.

    If you cannot explain something in constructive (operational) language you do not understand it. But if you can at least explain something, then you are at least able to determine possible courses of action.

    SO HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT TO READ?

    You read what you can. You climb the ladder as far as you can. At some point you will get good at climbing the ladder. At some point you will realize that you can climb no further. For some of us, we learn how to add rungs to the ladder itself.

    But the important thing to remember is that there are a very small number of fundamental concepts, and a very small number of intuitive falsehoods that evolution cursed us with.

    At every 15 points of IQ someone is writing a book in your language. IN the level of abstraction that you can grasp.

    Read the best book you can. Try the next book up the ladder. stop when you cant climb. And the truth is, that if you want to live a full life, you do not need to add to the ladder, only to climb beyond the intuitive limits that evolution left us with. At that point you will be close enough to the truth (correspondence with reality independent of human cognitive limitations) that you are no longer hindered by your mortal coil.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-17 06:18:00 UTC

  • think it’s actually harder to be a female exec over other women, than it is for

    http://clarissasblog.com/2014/05/14/i-dont-want-to-hire-women/I think it’s actually harder to be a female exec over other women, than it is for men. I mean. Not only are we oblivious, but we just don’t care, and women don’t expect us to care. We just do our thing. And go on obliviously.

    I have had very bad luck with women in senior exec positions. In fact, it’s been almost fruitless. I suppose in other industries it’d be different. But in my generation the combination of feminism and craziness has just been impossible.

    But in middle management, it’s been just the opposite. In middle management you’re trying to facilitate – herding cats. In executive management you’re trying to discriminate – apply scarce resources to the best return whether people like it or not. And women are much better at herding cats, and processing multiple lines of communication than men and that’s just how it is. I don’t argue with it. I just accept it. I have found male middle managers to be free riders, and female middle managers to be more effective. I think it’s genetic. I have been on a career long quest to reduce middle management, indeed all management, to the bare minimum wherever possible and to empower the talent whenever and wherever possible. This tends to lead to a project-based company that is often reorganized, rather than a department based company structure, that is rarely reorganized.

    The gossip mill that women create is almost always destructive and the only cure is over-communication. I’ve tried to manage anti-gossip campaigns whenever possible. But the gossip thing is just insanely painful to deal with.

    (My favorite example is the accusation that I was sleeping with my young female assistant, and I simply could not silence it, despite the fact that she was actually sleeping with one of my married business partners from the east coast. )

    Good gossip lifts people up. Bad gossip cuts people down. It’s hysterical how effective this technique is. (I tell people, “if you want to gossip and conspire to make me a more successful person then please do.”) So there are positive ways to channeling negative behavior if you understand the incentives. (As strange as chick-incentives are to us men.)

    It’s really good if you can get all the admin chicks in your company on a gossip containment committee. This turns the problem into an effective means of control because the girls at the lowest level who have the greatest access to gossip become empowered by policing gossip. You try to get them to tell you anything that’s negative. Then you tell the the TRUTH about what you’re doing and let them do the work. The problem is you can never lie to them. And if you screw up you have to tell them.

    What bothers me still, and something I would like to find a way to solve, is the degree of self destruction women practice upon one another. The hen pecking thing is just impossible. And yes (straight) women are much higher maintenance. I hope to improve some of this over the next decade with Oversing. But I suspect that stopping women from trying to social climb their chick-status-ladder by gossip and undermining is freaking impossible.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-16 14:57:00 UTC

  • Ending The Debilitating Libertarian Dependence Upon Rothbard's NAP

    All, *Ending the debilitating libertarian dependence on Rothbardian Libertarianism and the NAP.* [T]here is a very great difference between a general rule of thumb, and the necessary basis for a body of law whose properties are reducible to property rights, that are sufficient for the resolution of conflicts between individuals, such that they do not desire an authority to resolve or prevent conflicts via means other than the law reducible to property rights. Furthermore, the means of violation of a persons’ property is not, as Hoppe has demonstrated, important, but instead, the definition of property regardless of how it is violated. To define property by aggression is to confuse cause and consequence. Aggression (NAP) against Intersubjectively Verifiable Property (IVP) as the basis for the law and resolution of disputes, is not only insufficient in the coverage of human disputes that require resolution, but NAP/IVP licenses deception and externalities, and prohibits retaliation for deception (unethical) and externalities(immoral). Meaning that objectively, the NAP/IVP licenses deception(unethical) and externalized (immoral) actions. The fact that very few human beings seem to be able to rationally articulate that NAP/IVP is immoral, or that Aggression is an insufficient prohibition for constraining unethical and immoral trade, or that defining property by means of prohibition rather than its origin as human action is non-logical, doesn’t seem to alter the fact, that the majority of humans simply intuit that something is ‘wrong’ with Rothbardian Libertarian Ethics. Jan Lester has taken the logical route to define property as logically reflecting human actions, and quite nearly found the correct answer with ‘imposed costs’ – at least he has been closer than anyone else. However, as we have stated above, we must reduce imposed costs, up what precisely? We must have a definition of property to impose costs against. (He does, but it’s not sufficient either – and will clarify in a moment.) So how do we define property that can be transgressed against; upon which we prohibit the imposition of costs; and limit legal transfers to and from, to voluntary, fully informed, warrantied exchange? We can try to rely upon reason, or we can instead, look empirically at what is necessary for the elimination of demand for the state. My first question is, how do we eliminate the state, by eliminating demand for the state? It is not “what should we ask people to believe?” But what basis of organic law is sufficient for elimination of demand for the state as either a suppressor of unethical and immoral action, or a suppressor of retaliation for unethical and immoral actions, regardless of what people believe or desire. Now, while It is difficult to imagine people wanting to enter into contracts that permit unethical behavior, if people want to enter into contracts that license various forms of immoral behavior, then that is entirely permissible – in fact it is desirable. It allows us to ‘trade’ immoralities between classes. It sets terms and limits on immoral behavior, gives contractual license, but does not redefine the fact that immoral behavior is in fact, the involuntary transfer, or consumption, of paid in capital, or the ‘imposition of costs’ upon others. As such contractual exchange allows us to conduct voluntary exchanges of ‘immoral behavior’ via market means. When no other such means of exchange is possible. So if you were to choose some normative violation, as long as you exchanged contractual terms with some other class, an exchange occurs, not a violation of property rights. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine

  • Ending The Debilitating Libertarian Dependence Upon Rothbard's NAP

    All, *Ending the debilitating libertarian dependence on Rothbardian Libertarianism and the NAP.* [T]here is a very great difference between a general rule of thumb, and the necessary basis for a body of law whose properties are reducible to property rights, that are sufficient for the resolution of conflicts between individuals, such that they do not desire an authority to resolve or prevent conflicts via means other than the law reducible to property rights. Furthermore, the means of violation of a persons’ property is not, as Hoppe has demonstrated, important, but instead, the definition of property regardless of how it is violated. To define property by aggression is to confuse cause and consequence. Aggression (NAP) against Intersubjectively Verifiable Property (IVP) as the basis for the law and resolution of disputes, is not only insufficient in the coverage of human disputes that require resolution, but NAP/IVP licenses deception and externalities, and prohibits retaliation for deception (unethical) and externalities(immoral). Meaning that objectively, the NAP/IVP licenses deception(unethical) and externalized (immoral) actions. The fact that very few human beings seem to be able to rationally articulate that NAP/IVP is immoral, or that Aggression is an insufficient prohibition for constraining unethical and immoral trade, or that defining property by means of prohibition rather than its origin as human action is non-logical, doesn’t seem to alter the fact, that the majority of humans simply intuit that something is ‘wrong’ with Rothbardian Libertarian Ethics. Jan Lester has taken the logical route to define property as logically reflecting human actions, and quite nearly found the correct answer with ‘imposed costs’ – at least he has been closer than anyone else. However, as we have stated above, we must reduce imposed costs, up what precisely? We must have a definition of property to impose costs against. (He does, but it’s not sufficient either – and will clarify in a moment.) So how do we define property that can be transgressed against; upon which we prohibit the imposition of costs; and limit legal transfers to and from, to voluntary, fully informed, warrantied exchange? We can try to rely upon reason, or we can instead, look empirically at what is necessary for the elimination of demand for the state. My first question is, how do we eliminate the state, by eliminating demand for the state? It is not “what should we ask people to believe?” But what basis of organic law is sufficient for elimination of demand for the state as either a suppressor of unethical and immoral action, or a suppressor of retaliation for unethical and immoral actions, regardless of what people believe or desire. Now, while It is difficult to imagine people wanting to enter into contracts that permit unethical behavior, if people want to enter into contracts that license various forms of immoral behavior, then that is entirely permissible – in fact it is desirable. It allows us to ‘trade’ immoralities between classes. It sets terms and limits on immoral behavior, gives contractual license, but does not redefine the fact that immoral behavior is in fact, the involuntary transfer, or consumption, of paid in capital, or the ‘imposition of costs’ upon others. As such contractual exchange allows us to conduct voluntary exchanges of ‘immoral behavior’ via market means. When no other such means of exchange is possible. So if you were to choose some normative violation, as long as you exchanged contractual terms with some other class, an exchange occurs, not a violation of property rights. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine

  • Ending The Debilitating Libertarian Dependence Upon Rothbard’s NAP

    All, *Ending the debilitating libertarian dependence on Rothbardian Libertarianism and the NAP.* [T]here is a very great difference between a general rule of thumb, and the necessary basis for a body of law whose properties are reducible to property rights, that are sufficient for the resolution of conflicts between individuals, such that they do not desire an authority to resolve or prevent conflicts via means other than the law reducible to property rights. Furthermore, the means of violation of a persons’ property is not, as Hoppe has demonstrated, important, but instead, the definition of property regardless of how it is violated. To define property by aggression is to confuse cause and consequence. Aggression (NAP) against Intersubjectively Verifiable Property (IVP) as the basis for the law and resolution of disputes, is not only insufficient in the coverage of human disputes that require resolution, but NAP/IVP licenses deception and externalities, and prohibits retaliation for deception (unethical) and externalities(immoral). Meaning that objectively, the NAP/IVP licenses deception(unethical) and externalized (immoral) actions. The fact that very few human beings seem to be able to rationally articulate that NAP/IVP is immoral, or that Aggression is an insufficient prohibition for constraining unethical and immoral trade, or that defining property by means of prohibition rather than its origin as human action is non-logical, doesn’t seem to alter the fact, that the majority of humans simply intuit that something is ‘wrong’ with Rothbardian Libertarian Ethics. Jan Lester has taken the logical route to define property as logically reflecting human actions, and quite nearly found the correct answer with ‘imposed costs’ – at least he has been closer than anyone else. However, as we have stated above, we must reduce imposed costs, up what precisely? We must have a definition of property to impose costs against. (He does, but it’s not sufficient either – and will clarify in a moment.) So how do we define property that can be transgressed against; upon which we prohibit the imposition of costs; and limit legal transfers to and from, to voluntary, fully informed, warrantied exchange? We can try to rely upon reason, or we can instead, look empirically at what is necessary for the elimination of demand for the state. My first question is, how do we eliminate the state, by eliminating demand for the state? It is not “what should we ask people to believe?” But what basis of organic law is sufficient for elimination of demand for the state as either a suppressor of unethical and immoral action, or a suppressor of retaliation for unethical and immoral actions, regardless of what people believe or desire. Now, while It is difficult to imagine people wanting to enter into contracts that permit unethical behavior, if people want to enter into contracts that license various forms of immoral behavior, then that is entirely permissible – in fact it is desirable. It allows us to ‘trade’ immoralities between classes. It sets terms and limits on immoral behavior, gives contractual license, but does not redefine the fact that immoral behavior is in fact, the involuntary transfer, or consumption, of paid in capital, or the ‘imposition of costs’ upon others. As such contractual exchange allows us to conduct voluntary exchanges of ‘immoral behavior’ via market means. When no other such means of exchange is possible. So if you were to choose some normative violation, as long as you exchanged contractual terms with some other class, an exchange occurs, not a violation of property rights. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine

  • Ending The Debilitating Libertarian Dependence Upon Rothbard’s NAP

    All, *Ending the debilitating libertarian dependence on Rothbardian Libertarianism and the NAP.* [T]here is a very great difference between a general rule of thumb, and the necessary basis for a body of law whose properties are reducible to property rights, that are sufficient for the resolution of conflicts between individuals, such that they do not desire an authority to resolve or prevent conflicts via means other than the law reducible to property rights. Furthermore, the means of violation of a persons’ property is not, as Hoppe has demonstrated, important, but instead, the definition of property regardless of how it is violated. To define property by aggression is to confuse cause and consequence. Aggression (NAP) against Intersubjectively Verifiable Property (IVP) as the basis for the law and resolution of disputes, is not only insufficient in the coverage of human disputes that require resolution, but NAP/IVP licenses deception and externalities, and prohibits retaliation for deception (unethical) and externalities(immoral). Meaning that objectively, the NAP/IVP licenses deception(unethical) and externalized (immoral) actions. The fact that very few human beings seem to be able to rationally articulate that NAP/IVP is immoral, or that Aggression is an insufficient prohibition for constraining unethical and immoral trade, or that defining property by means of prohibition rather than its origin as human action is non-logical, doesn’t seem to alter the fact, that the majority of humans simply intuit that something is ‘wrong’ with Rothbardian Libertarian Ethics. Jan Lester has taken the logical route to define property as logically reflecting human actions, and quite nearly found the correct answer with ‘imposed costs’ – at least he has been closer than anyone else. However, as we have stated above, we must reduce imposed costs, up what precisely? We must have a definition of property to impose costs against. (He does, but it’s not sufficient either – and will clarify in a moment.) So how do we define property that can be transgressed against; upon which we prohibit the imposition of costs; and limit legal transfers to and from, to voluntary, fully informed, warrantied exchange? We can try to rely upon reason, or we can instead, look empirically at what is necessary for the elimination of demand for the state. My first question is, how do we eliminate the state, by eliminating demand for the state? It is not “what should we ask people to believe?” But what basis of organic law is sufficient for elimination of demand for the state as either a suppressor of unethical and immoral action, or a suppressor of retaliation for unethical and immoral actions, regardless of what people believe or desire. Now, while It is difficult to imagine people wanting to enter into contracts that permit unethical behavior, if people want to enter into contracts that license various forms of immoral behavior, then that is entirely permissible – in fact it is desirable. It allows us to ‘trade’ immoralities between classes. It sets terms and limits on immoral behavior, gives contractual license, but does not redefine the fact that immoral behavior is in fact, the involuntary transfer, or consumption, of paid in capital, or the ‘imposition of costs’ upon others. As such contractual exchange allows us to conduct voluntary exchanges of ‘immoral behavior’ via market means. When no other such means of exchange is possible. So if you were to choose some normative violation, as long as you exchanged contractual terms with some other class, an exchange occurs, not a violation of property rights. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine

  • ITS NOT ENOUGH TO SAY ‘WE’RE ALL THICK LIBERTARIANS’ It’s not enough to say that

    ITS NOT ENOUGH TO SAY ‘WE’RE ALL THICK LIBERTARIANS’

    It’s not enough to say that in the end we’re all ‘thick’ libertarians. That’s not honest. The ‘thin’ libertarians are wrong, and harmful to the cause of liberty. They’ve had 30+ years to test their theory, and it’s a demonstrated failure. It is a failure because it’s an unethical and immoral basis for cooperation in a polity.

    So it’s not enough to say ‘we’re all thick. The purpose of thick libertarianism is to acknowledge the failure of thin “rothbardian” libertarianism. Not to expand it. Not to critique it. But to openly state that it is an unethical and immoral failure in both theory and practice.

    Now, the criticism that ‘thick’ libertarians haven’t any answers is true. But having a WRONG answer (rothbardian ‘thin’ libertarianism) and having no answer yet are two different things.

    Thin ‘rothbardian’ libertarianism is false. Thick Left-libertarianism is not yet articulated as more than an intuitive and non-rational supposition. Thick right- libertarianism is at least part of an answer. thick Aristocratic Egalitarian Libertarianism is the entire answer. But AEL is not for free riders. It says we must acquire liberty through direct action by insuring the property rights of all other property owners.

    A lot of libertarians are trying to find a way to justify their claims for liberty at zero cost to themselves. That wont work. It hasn’t worked. Aristocratic Egalitarianism states that we must obtain our insurance against violations of our property by entering into an insurance contract with others, to employ organized violence against any and all transgressors and usurpers.

    No magical, supernatural or fantasy origins for rights are necessary.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-16 06:49:00 UTC

  • ETHICAL REALISM: OPERATIONALISM, INSTRUMENTALISM, INTUITIONISM, EMPIRICISM *Or,

    http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/operationalism/PROPERTARIAN ETHICAL REALISM: OPERATIONALISM, INSTRUMENTALISM, INTUITIONISM, EMPIRICISM

    *Or, how to cure yourself of continental and cosmopolitan obscurantism*

    We can only know enough to act, with the information at our disposal. We can only attest to the truth of statements that we can demonstrate operationally. By articulating a set of statements operationally, as actions in sequence, in time, we expose each statement to subjective tests of truth and rationality. As such, unless we have knowledge of construction, stated in operational language, for all concepts upon which we rely, we cannot honestly make truth claims. That this constraint is already held in the ethics of science, but not in ethics or politics, is the reason why false economic, political, legal, moral, and ethical arguments proliferate. There is no reason extant why we cannot constraint political speech to the same standards of truth as witness in court, or scientific testimony – other than to directly license deception. Our long semi-supernatural history with mathematics has provided false legitimacy to logic and argument for centuries. Operationalism ends this fallacy, and enables us to constrain politics just as we have constrained science, to a requirement for honest statements. It was not possible to levy this constraint until we understood that the unit of commensurability in all moral actions is that of property and fully informed, voluntary exchange. However, with that knowledge nothing prevents us from making universally moral and ethical statements, nor requiring individuals to speak in operational language in order to prevent deception and theft by obscurantist means.

    EMPIRICISM (VS RATIONALISM)

    http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/

    OPERATIONALISM

    Only if we can describe a sequence of actions can we claim to know what it is that we say, and as such make truth claims about our statements.

    http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/operationalism/

    KNOWLEDGE OF USE VS KNOWLEDGE OF CONSTRUCTION

    Operationalism requires that we demonstrate knowledge of construction (causality) while knowledge of use merely demonstrates correlation

    http://www.propertarianism.com/2014/02/15/knowledge-knowlege-of-construction-vs-knowledge-of-use/

    CRITICAL RATIONALISM

    We may make many true statements in the construction of our theories, but whether or not we have made the most parsimonious statements with the greatest explanatory power that is ultimately possible (“The Absolute Truth”) is not available to us. There are no quantifiable measurable denominators to knowledge. The exploration of theories is not tautological, and therefore not logically closed.

    http://www.iep.utm.edu/cr-ratio/

    MATHEMATICAL INTUITIONISM

    http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intuitionism/

    LOGICAL INTUITIONISM

    http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-intuitionistic/

    ETHICAL INTUITIONISM

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_intuitionism

    NATURALISM

    http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism/

    REALISM

    http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/realism/

    SCIENTIFIC REALISM

    http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-realism/

    THE LIMITS OF REASON

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17841838-the-outer-limits-of-reason

    OBSCURANTISM

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obscurantism

    THE PRETENSE OF KNOWLEDGE

    http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/1974/hayek-lecture.html

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-16 06:26:00 UTC