Theme: Deception

(important piece on the form and content of philosophy) Testimony vs Literature Truth vs Experience Criticism vs Free Association Survival vs Creativity Deflationary vs Conflationary Clarify vs Obscure Persuasion vs Suggestion Decidability vs Opportunity Decrease Cost vs Increase Cost Save vs Spend Action vs Consumption Production vs Entertainment Science vs Art What is the difference between an action novel and a philosophical treatise? You are carried into the plot, vs the plot is carried into you. But they are both literature. That is all. A recipe is different from a work of literature. Science(Testimony) consists of the methods by which we create recipes and name them. Literature the methods by which we create experiences. Communication, like violence, is a resource put to good or ill. Whether we create fully informed, productive, warrantied voluntary exchanges free of externalities – meaning moral communication – or whether we create suggestion, unproductive or harmful, unwarranted, involuntary transfers full of externalities – meaning immoral communication. And the fact remains that it is very difficult to communicate immorally with recipes, it is very easy to communicate immorally with literature. Yet given that experience is our native language – one which evolved prior to reason – pedagogy is often best performed with loaded, framed, and repeated (overloaded) analogy. There is a place for truth. There is a place for pedagogy. There is a place for creativity The question we must ask of some philosophers is whether there is a place for immoral suggestion rather than moral communication. And whether they transfer by moral or immoral means, immoral or moral ends. The philosophy of the west is natural law, common law, testimony, jury, universal standing and rule of law (universal applicability). Science is the art of improving one’s testimony. Everything else is merely literature. The question is whether that literature conveys moral or immoral content, and does so morally or immorally. And from that perspective, philosophers have a very checkered past. Curt Doolittle The Philosophy of Aristocracy The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine