Source: Facebook

RESPONSE TO GREG SWAN’S CRITICISM PART 2. 😉 (ouch)

–another five words–

Although I read the entire post, it is not necessary to to respond to the criticism made in only five words. So your statement is illogical. Correct?

—” Philosophy is a critical survival tool for every human being that has been temporarily and catastrophically hijacked by post-literate Cautious personalities.’—-

This cannot be true – correct?

Reason is indeed a critical survival tool only because we evolved the utility of and consequent dependence upon reason.

Wisdom is extremely useful. One must have a set of prejudices (rules) to reason deeply (we call this philosophizing by analogy). But it is merely reasoning.

But however you define ‘philosophy’ it cannot have been critical for survival, tool, since we did not evolve with it. And we can approximately date its invention.

As far as I know there are three existing categories of thought that we commonly label ‘philosophy’.

1 – Accumulated historical wisdom organized into frameworks. (mythology, religion, history) Without demand for internal consistency or external correspondence, mere utility.

2 – Hypothesis and justification – by myth, analogy, and example – of theories of personal action within a political context.

(continental philosophy, confucian philosophy.) without demand for external correspondence but with demand for internal consistency.

3 – The discipline in which we search for truth propositions, or conversely, the discipline in which we seek to eliminate error from our propositions. This is under the assumption that truth is the most useful and most correspondent framework of determining actions.

(science, analytic philosophy) demand for internal consistency and external correspondence.

Note the clarity of this argumentative structure. This is why it is wordy, because analytic philosophy requires testable statements, and science requires existential and therefore operational language – all of which requires precision because precision is necessary for testability.

So you may criticize my wordiness, but this is how professionals in the discipline of philosophy conduct their craft. Not as merely ‘meaningful’, not as merely ‘useful’, but to provide some assurance that said statements are in fact ‘truthful’ by the standards of scientific investigation, even if by natural human frailty they may may not be ultimately true.

SO MY ACCUSATION: You are philosophizing by analogy, using colloquial language, to justify your priors. You are not searching for truth whether your priors stand criticism or not.

—I have read almost none of you, because you writing is so obtuse, —

I write as professional philosophers write, which is far closer to software programming than to literature. And my writing requires a great deal of prior scientific knowledge, and even more knowledge of economics and law.

So again, technical disciplines with great deal of precision generally require a great deal of knowledge, and the Dunning Krueger (a little knowledge is dangerous) effect may convince us we know more than we do. Economics is the most common discipline since each sub-discipline appears counter-intuitive to the other.

I am very conscious of this fact, and I am very conscious that I am also the most innovative and possibly one of the most important philosophers working today. Not because I am impressed with myself, but because as you say, the field of philosophy was much distracted in the 20th century. But if you knew my work you would understand with painful clarity why it was.

But just as it is somewhat difficult to explain why non-euclidian geometry demonstrates the fallacy of apriorism, and just as general relativity demonstrates the fallacy of human common sense, much of what I write requires equally deep knowledge of the subject matter to comprehend it.

A fact that I am open about and often apologize for.

—-aggressive—

I don’t take it as aggressive. I take it as defensive. You do not grasp what I do, you have no idea if you should make the investment in the rather extensive work necessary to grasp it. And from what you can gather it would falsify some of what you believe.

Now, I actually agree with you on much of what I can quickly find on your site, but that is because I can translate your amateurism into professional language and therefore test it for truthfulness or not.

But you lack the ability to do the same to my work. Nothing more complicated is occurring here.

It is perfectly fine if some of us are vastly more sophisticated at philosophizing, and vastly more technical at philosophizing – whether colloquial, informed, professional, or talented. Every 15 points of IQ (one standard deviation) humans need increasingly simplified frameworks with greater analogy to intuitionistic experience. Therefore you have an audience and I have one. The world needs this, since we humans are so vastly unequal in knowledge and ability.

I can read Heidegger, and a realize he is attempting to lie, using the same technique that religious leaders are constructed lies. Both of them for the same purpose – to attempt to do by lie that they did posses, that which they could not achieve by truth they did not yet possess. But I criticize him for his deceit, for the simple purpose that it is a deceit, not because it is impenetrable. But because it is impenetrable because of its method of deceit (reframing existence as experience.)

FWIW: I do not say your work is false. I say only that your criticism of mine is made in ignorance, rather than in honesty: Because the only honest answer you can render is “I don’t understand.”

So it’s not that you’re wrong, it’s that you’re dishonest in your criticism, you practice wishful thinking, practice wishful thinking out of arrogance in the face of demonstrated and admitted ignorance, commit rudimentary logical errors in your reasoning, and rely on common inarticulate language by analogy in order to justify your priors, under the pretense that your abilities, judgement and knowledge are better than they demonstrably and admittedly are.

I own being difficult to comprehend. As do most technical specialists. You might make the same honest admission about your abilities.

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev, Ukraine.

=====OP========

I can’t imagine how much more you’ll have to say when you’ve read another five words.

Meanwhile: tl;dr stopped here:

> Philosophy is a technical specialty like any niche technical discipline.

False. Philosophy is a critical survival tool for every human being that has been temporarily and catastrophically hijacked by post-literate Cautious personalities. I have read almost none of you, because you writing is so obtuse, but what I’ve seen seems to be the needless remastication of obvious error. I agree that this is what technical ‘philosophers’ do.

When you’ve read more than five words of me, you’ll have more interesting things to say. My apologies if this seems aggressive. It’s plausible to me you can learn, but this outsized display argues against it.

And just like that: Ci, like so many libertarians. Prove me wrong.