—“if you produce an operational definition then you can be shown to have spoken truthfully, (given witness) even if the truth content of your theory cannot be determined to be true – ever. Moreover, that if you do not produce an operational definition of your argument, then we cannot tell you are speaking truthfully or whether you are engaging in deception, or because of your lack of discipline and diligence you are committing error. “—
Source: Original Site Post
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Anchoring, Ideology, Dogma: Not Science. It's A CRAFT.
[T]he problem with specialization in any set of ideas is that if we construct our self-esteem, our status, or our income upon that edifice, we defend it as dogma, in defense of our self esteem. Humans defend ideas all the time, regardless of whether they are true, and usually because they are emotionally useful. Abandoning ideas is just as necessary for the pursuit of truth as is the exploration of them. the defense against both anchoring, ideology and dogma is to increase one’s breadth of knowledge as fast as one’s depth, and to discard anything that doesn’t survive your tests. Science progresses only after the death of proponents of ideas, precisely for these reasons. Science is practiced as a craft, and learned by apprenticeship. Ignorance of and ridicule of philosophy in the scientific community is legendary. Scientific philosophy is almost always conducted as a proxy for morality, and therefore politics, of some sort or other(as was Popper’s), in order to transfer the moral legitimacy, and assumed lack of bias of science, into the highly loaded and biased domain of Politics. Craft in itself is not one of the three possible means of coercion: force, remuneration, moralism. All of the other specialties must make use of Craft. Meanwhile craftsmen go about their duties without much use for coercion.
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Anchoring, Ideology, Dogma: Not Science. It’s A CRAFT.
[T]he problem with specialization in any set of ideas is that if we construct our self-esteem, our status, or our income upon that edifice, we defend it as dogma, in defense of our self esteem. Humans defend ideas all the time, regardless of whether they are true, and usually because they are emotionally useful. Abandoning ideas is just as necessary for the pursuit of truth as is the exploration of them. the defense against both anchoring, ideology and dogma is to increase one’s breadth of knowledge as fast as one’s depth, and to discard anything that doesn’t survive your tests. Science progresses only after the death of proponents of ideas, precisely for these reasons. Science is practiced as a craft, and learned by apprenticeship. Ignorance of and ridicule of philosophy in the scientific community is legendary. Scientific philosophy is almost always conducted as a proxy for morality, and therefore politics, of some sort or other(as was Popper’s), in order to transfer the moral legitimacy, and assumed lack of bias of science, into the highly loaded and biased domain of Politics. Craft in itself is not one of the three possible means of coercion: force, remuneration, moralism. All of the other specialties must make use of Craft. Meanwhile craftsmen go about their duties without much use for coercion.
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Anchoring, Ideology, Dogma: Not Science. It's A CRAFT.
[T]he problem with specialization in any set of ideas is that if we construct our self-esteem, our status, or our income upon that edifice, we defend it as dogma, in defense of our self esteem. Humans defend ideas all the time, regardless of whether they are true, and usually because they are emotionally useful. Abandoning ideas is just as necessary for the pursuit of truth as is the exploration of them. the defense against both anchoring, ideology and dogma is to increase one’s breadth of knowledge as fast as one’s depth, and to discard anything that doesn’t survive your tests. Science progresses only after the death of proponents of ideas, precisely for these reasons. Science is practiced as a craft, and learned by apprenticeship. Ignorance of and ridicule of philosophy in the scientific community is legendary. Scientific philosophy is almost always conducted as a proxy for morality, and therefore politics, of some sort or other(as was Popper’s), in order to transfer the moral legitimacy, and assumed lack of bias of science, into the highly loaded and biased domain of Politics. Craft in itself is not one of the three possible means of coercion: force, remuneration, moralism. All of the other specialties must make use of Craft. Meanwhile craftsmen go about their duties without much use for coercion.
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Anchoring, Ideology, Dogma: Not Science. It’s A CRAFT.
[T]he problem with specialization in any set of ideas is that if we construct our self-esteem, our status, or our income upon that edifice, we defend it as dogma, in defense of our self esteem. Humans defend ideas all the time, regardless of whether they are true, and usually because they are emotionally useful. Abandoning ideas is just as necessary for the pursuit of truth as is the exploration of them. the defense against both anchoring, ideology and dogma is to increase one’s breadth of knowledge as fast as one’s depth, and to discard anything that doesn’t survive your tests. Science progresses only after the death of proponents of ideas, precisely for these reasons. Science is practiced as a craft, and learned by apprenticeship. Ignorance of and ridicule of philosophy in the scientific community is legendary. Scientific philosophy is almost always conducted as a proxy for morality, and therefore politics, of some sort or other(as was Popper’s), in order to transfer the moral legitimacy, and assumed lack of bias of science, into the highly loaded and biased domain of Politics. Craft in itself is not one of the three possible means of coercion: force, remuneration, moralism. All of the other specialties must make use of Craft. Meanwhile craftsmen go about their duties without much use for coercion.
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Operationalism Isn't A Truth Test, It's A Test Of Truth Telling. 🙂
(worth repeating) From my notes….
–“An operational definition is produced by defining a process of operationalization and recording the results of operating that process; in order to define a variable, term, or object in terms of a set of tests needed to determine its existence, duration, and quantity or quality. Operational definitions define changes in state as those operations necessary to change state; define unobservable entities concretely in terms of the physical and mental operations used to measure them; and ensures that the definition of each observable and unobservable entity has been uniquely identified with the instrumentation used to define it. Just as the operational naming of numbers via positional numbering gives a unique name to every number, this process of operationalization gives a unique name to an extant entity consisting of the definition for that step, rather than consisting of an analogy that approximates it in some form or other. Operationalism is a process of granting unique names.”–
This ensures that we are discussing names of extant entities rather than allegories, functions, experiences, or imaginary projections. Operationalism is not a truth test, it is a test of truth telling.
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Operationalism Isn’t A Truth Test, It’s A Test Of Truth Telling. 🙂
(worth repeating) From my notes….
–“An operational definition is produced by defining a process of operationalization and recording the results of operating that process; in order to define a variable, term, or object in terms of a set of tests needed to determine its existence, duration, and quantity or quality. Operational definitions define changes in state as those operations necessary to change state; define unobservable entities concretely in terms of the physical and mental operations used to measure them; and ensures that the definition of each observable and unobservable entity has been uniquely identified with the instrumentation used to define it. Just as the operational naming of numbers via positional numbering gives a unique name to every number, this process of operationalization gives a unique name to an extant entity consisting of the definition for that step, rather than consisting of an analogy that approximates it in some form or other. Operationalism is a process of granting unique names.”–
This ensures that we are discussing names of extant entities rather than allegories, functions, experiences, or imaginary projections. Operationalism is not a truth test, it is a test of truth telling.
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Operationalism Isn't A Truth Test, It's A Test Of Truth Telling. 🙂
(worth repeating) From my notes….
–“An operational definition is produced by defining a process of operationalization and recording the results of operating that process; in order to define a variable, term, or object in terms of a set of tests needed to determine its existence, duration, and quantity or quality. Operational definitions define changes in state as those operations necessary to change state; define unobservable entities concretely in terms of the physical and mental operations used to measure them; and ensures that the definition of each observable and unobservable entity has been uniquely identified with the instrumentation used to define it. Just as the operational naming of numbers via positional numbering gives a unique name to every number, this process of operationalization gives a unique name to an extant entity consisting of the definition for that step, rather than consisting of an analogy that approximates it in some form or other. Operationalism is a process of granting unique names.”–
This ensures that we are discussing names of extant entities rather than allegories, functions, experiences, or imaginary projections. Operationalism is not a truth test, it is a test of truth telling.
-
Operationalism Isn’t A Truth Test, It’s A Test Of Truth Telling. 🙂
(worth repeating) From my notes….
–“An operational definition is produced by defining a process of operationalization and recording the results of operating that process; in order to define a variable, term, or object in terms of a set of tests needed to determine its existence, duration, and quantity or quality. Operational definitions define changes in state as those operations necessary to change state; define unobservable entities concretely in terms of the physical and mental operations used to measure them; and ensures that the definition of each observable and unobservable entity has been uniquely identified with the instrumentation used to define it. Just as the operational naming of numbers via positional numbering gives a unique name to every number, this process of operationalization gives a unique name to an extant entity consisting of the definition for that step, rather than consisting of an analogy that approximates it in some form or other. Operationalism is a process of granting unique names.”–
This ensures that we are discussing names of extant entities rather than allegories, functions, experiences, or imaginary projections. Operationalism is not a truth test, it is a test of truth telling.
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Conflating Truth with Truthfulness : Theory as Psychologizing The Universe.
(probably a little difficult for most but possibly profoundly useful)
—“But we can claim that our theory is true and often do so. In fact, the idea that we cannot do so is itself a theory which, if true, cannot be claimed to be true.”—
[O]f course, I didn’t make that claim. I only claimed that we can test if you speak truthfully, as in honestly and diligently, not whether your theory is true. Any statement reducible to human actions is open to sympathetic testing, and is no longer subject to the errors of meaning. Processes work or do not, there is no error of meaning in them. That which is demonstrated is true. Theories are the opposite. Very little of what is spoken is other than a word game. We can state human actions both as actor and observer.They are the same, merely from a different point of view. But, we must anthropomorphize the “actions” of the physical universe if we state the universe’s position (theoretical definitions) — or we can state the observer position (operational definitions). When we state the observer position we need not add imaginary content. When we state the universe’s position we must always add imaginary content – we must hypothesize.We can not read the mind of the universe (at least yet). This is what mises intuited by imitating the ideas of other thinkers, but he was not able to state it, and fell into pseudoscience instead. In economics we have a constant problem of this nature between Austrians and mainstream macro. Austrians stress the human position as both actor and observer. However, in the mainstream is common if not universal to state that ‘the curve moves this way” in response to some change. when the cause is human activity. (Sometimes I wonder if all this talk of theories is just another type of justification, and recipes are the only truth we can or do know. We can categorize our recipes, but that is all. Everything else, is imaginary.) [T]his is probably more important than is obvious at first blush. Between the problem of (a) anthropomorphizing the physical universe (theoretical definitions), (b) the obscurity provided by functions, (c) the obscurity provided by experiential definitions, (d) the obscurity provided by imaginary definitions (analogies), (e) the obscurity provided by the verb to-be, (f) the variety of cognitive biases that we know of, (g) and pervasive human framing and loading, if not (h) the cosmopolitan techniques of critique as means of overloading (deception), it seems that human beings are desperate to add meaning wherever they can – when the exercise of science is in no small part an effort to remove meaning. We do not need to psychologize the universe. Which is in no small part what is being done. (psychologizing the universe: I have to work on this a bit more but it’s pretty close to the criticism I’m looking for.)