APRIORI AND RATIONAL VS EMPIRICAL AND OPERATIONAL
—“Anything that can be shown apriori can be demonstrated or translated empirically with higher confidence but not everything that is empirical can be demonstrated apriori.”— Ayelam Valentine Agaliba
I am sure he thinks I’m crazy but honestly I see Val as a guardian angel without whose scarce but precious counsel I would not have made the progress I have over the past few years.
Thank you Val.
Source date (UTC): 2015-07-25 09:10:00 UTC
@RBEdmiston @macmason09 @voxdotcom Fortunately, if one sticks to operational construction it is fairly hard to err.
Source date (UTC): 2015-07-08 20:07:26 UTC
Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/618874049989595137
[A] criticism from Bruce, on my failure to make clear that Operationalism is a means of conducting a test of falsification.
–“This monotheistic passion for reduction to operations seems to lead to cul-de-sacs.”— Bruce Caithness
Bruce,
1) Operationalism is an attempt at falsification. Just as in math, if we can construct a statement through operations then it is existentially possible. Just as in economics, if we can reduce an economic statement to a sequence of rationally executable decisions. Just as in science, if we can reduce a test to a repeatable sequence of operations, and if we can reduce our measures to those that are possible then the test is existentially possible, assuming determinism in the universe and therefore the constancy of that which we measure (without which no science ,and no theory, can be possible).
If I conduct tests of identity, internal consistency, external correspondence, repeatability, full accounting, parsimony (limits), existential possibility, objective morality (voluntary transfer), then I have laundered imaginary content from my statements. This is what science consists in: identifying existential information and eliminating imaginary information.
If I have performed the due diligence to launder by speech of imaginary information, then I speak as truthfully as is possible. I may indeed speak the most parsimonious testimony possible (the truth) or I may not – a matter of error at one end of the possibilities, or of imprecision at the other end.
I can warranty that I have performed that due diligence by stating that I speak truthfully: I give testimony in public, as to the truthfulness of my speech.
2) One can speak truthfully, and warranty that one speaks truthfully. If one speaks in e-prime (specifying means of existence), and in operational definitions (rather than experiences), it is extremely difficult to articulate an idea that still contains imaginary content.
3) Rather than “leading to cul-de-sac’s” I suspect that this is the completion (or repair) of the critical rationalist research program and the most important invention in philosophy since the failure of that program.
Just is what it is. I just did a good yeoman’s labor. But between explanatory power, and parsimony it’s a pretty powerful theoretical structure, and it’s pretty hard to defeat it.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine
[A] criticism from Bruce, on my failure to make clear that Operationalism is a means of conducting a test of falsification.
–“This monotheistic passion for reduction to operations seems to lead to cul-de-sacs.”— Bruce Caithness
Bruce,
1) Operationalism is an attempt at falsification. Just as in math, if we can construct a statement through operations then it is existentially possible. Just as in economics, if we can reduce an economic statement to a sequence of rationally executable decisions. Just as in science, if we can reduce a test to a repeatable sequence of operations, and if we can reduce our measures to those that are possible then the test is existentially possible, assuming determinism in the universe and therefore the constancy of that which we measure (without which no science ,and no theory, can be possible).
If I conduct tests of identity, internal consistency, external correspondence, repeatability, full accounting, parsimony (limits), existential possibility, objective morality (voluntary transfer), then I have laundered imaginary content from my statements. This is what science consists in: identifying existential information and eliminating imaginary information.
If I have performed the due diligence to launder by speech of imaginary information, then I speak as truthfully as is possible. I may indeed speak the most parsimonious testimony possible (the truth) or I may not – a matter of error at one end of the possibilities, or of imprecision at the other end.
I can warranty that I have performed that due diligence by stating that I speak truthfully: I give testimony in public, as to the truthfulness of my speech.
2) One can speak truthfully, and warranty that one speaks truthfully. If one speaks in e-prime (specifying means of existence), and in operational definitions (rather than experiences), it is extremely difficult to articulate an idea that still contains imaginary content.
3) Rather than “leading to cul-de-sac’s” I suspect that this is the completion (or repair) of the critical rationalist research program and the most important invention in philosophy since the failure of that program.
Just is what it is. I just did a good yeoman’s labor. But between explanatory power, and parsimony it’s a pretty powerful theoretical structure, and it’s pretty hard to defeat it.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine
—“This monotheistic passion for reduction to operations seems to lead to cul-de-sacs.”— Bruce Caithness
Bruce,
1) Operationalism is an attempt at falsification. Just as in math, if we can construct a statement through operations then it is existentially possible. Just as in economics, if we can reduce an economic statement to a sequence of rationally executable decisions. Just as in science, if we can reduce a test to a repeatable sequence of operations, and if we can reduce our measures to those that are possible then the test is existentially possible, assuming determinism in the universe and therefore the constancy of that which we measure (without which no science ,and no theory, can be possible).
If i conduct tests of identity, internal consistency, external correspondence, repeatability, full accounting, parsimony (limits), existential possibility, objective morality (voluntary transfer), then I have laundered imaginary content from my statements. This is what science consists in: identifying existential information and eliminating imaginary information.
If I have performed the due diligence to launder by speech of imaginary information, then I speak as truthfully as is possible. I may indeed speak the most parsimonious testimony possible (the truth) or I may not – a matter of error at one end of the possibilities, or of imprecision at the other end.
I can warranty that I have performed that due diligence by stating that I speak truthfully: I give testimony in public, as to the truthfulness of my speech.
2) One can speak truthfully, and warranty that one speaks truthfully. If one speaks in e-prime (specifying means of existence), and in operational definitions (rather than experiences), it is extremely difficult to articulate an idea that still contains imaginary content.
3) Rather than “leading to cul-de-sac’s” I suspect that this is the completion (or repair) of the critical rationalist research program and the most important invention in philosophy since the failure of that program.
Just is what it is. I just did a good yeoman’s labor. But between explanatory power, and parsimony it’s a pretty powerful theoretical structure, and it’s pretty hard to defeat it.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine
Source date (UTC): 2015-07-01 03:45:00 UTC
[I] know that you want to feel emotionally vindicated, and that you want to vent your frustrations when conducting an argument, but the fact of the matter is Propertarianism and Testimonialism are constructed amorally (( amoral adjective “not involving questions of right or wrong; without moral quality; neither moral nor immoral.” )) so that all moral propositions can be objectively described, and all moral questions are objectively decidable. Propertarianism(ethics) and Testimonialism (epistemology) let you construct and win arguments wherein the other party is using various means of deception in order to obscure their advocacy for thefts. So, assuming you’re right (and conservatives are usually right, even if argumentatively incompetent) then using Testimonialism and Propertarianism will allow you to win arguments. But unlike simple (cheap) quips, they are expensive arguments to construct and require that you have a bit of skill. And if that isn’t enough. Well. You don’t have reason to feel good, or to win. We leave that to the liars and theives.
[I] know that you want to feel emotionally vindicated, and that you want to vent your frustrations when conducting an argument, but the fact of the matter is Propertarianism and Testimonialism are constructed amorally (( amoral adjective “not involving questions of right or wrong; without moral quality; neither moral nor immoral.” )) so that all moral propositions can be objectively described, and all moral questions are objectively decidable. Propertarianism(ethics) and Testimonialism (epistemology) let you construct and win arguments wherein the other party is using various means of deception in order to obscure their advocacy for thefts. So, assuming you’re right (and conservatives are usually right, even if argumentatively incompetent) then using Testimonialism and Propertarianism will allow you to win arguments. But unlike simple (cheap) quips, they are expensive arguments to construct and require that you have a bit of skill. And if that isn’t enough. Well. You don’t have reason to feel good, or to win. We leave that to the liars and theives.
TESTIMONIALISM (COMPLETED CRITICAL RATIONALISM)
(second draft) (full cycle) (still needs third section)
[W]e both perceive, and remember stimuli, and construct and remember relations from that stimuli, and construct and remember layers upon layers of those relations.
The acts of planning, calculating, hypothesizing, searching, freely-associating, daydreaming, dreaming, and subconscious association attempt to imagine relations between the entire spectrum of memories we can store.
Once some (useful?) association is made (found) we must criticize it: determine if it withstands the scrutiny of other relations.
We determine if our imaginary relations survive (are truth candidates) by the act of testing those imagined relations to see if they fail or not – and therefore are worthy of our investment or not. We constantly compare the usefulness of the imagined relation with the cost of that imagined relation.
The return on those relations determines how excited we ‘feel’ about those relations and the energy expenditure we can risk in pursuit of those relations.
Returns can be both subjective and objective. Return can vary from mere satisfaction of curiosity, to personal gain, to a novel invention, to the total transformation of the world of man.
As the complexity of relations increases, the means by which we test our imagined relations increases. While we are sometimes able to test our imagined relations by means of introspection, at some point we lack sufficient information to perform such tests, and must resort to both more structured methods of testing, and restore to gaining additional information to see if the imagined relation survives criticism.
We perform this expansion of criticism until our estimation of the combination of risk,cost and reward favors conducting the final experiment of acting, rather than conducting either further criticism, or abandoning it as providing insufficient return.
[T]he discipline we call philosophy and the discipline we call science consist of a set of methods (processes) which (a)philosophical science, (b)the social sciences, and (c)the physical sciences, use to launder existential impossibility, limitlessness, error, bias, imaginary content, wishful thinking, deception, and (objective) immorality (in the domain of the social sciences) from our testimony (speech).
This laundering is achieved by a set of methodological criticisms addressing increasing levels of complexity of which philosophical science consists of the full set of criticisms, social science a subset of those criticisms, and physical science yet another a subset of those criticisms.
Those criticisms consist of tests of: Identity, Internal Consistency, External Correspondence, Existential Possibility (Operationalism), Full Accounting (against selection bias), Parsimony (limits), and voluntary transfer (objective morality).”
Source date (UTC): 2015-06-27 06:56:00 UTC
A Question From Benjamin Uraminski
Curt, your underlying methodology seems to work backward from a presupposed solution, similar to an algebra problem. In this instance, it having already been decided upon that everything is inherently sexual so that the missing variables which reinforce the preconceived notion appear obvious to one who holds those beliefs.
I notice this particular Freudian-esque and neo-Darwinist methodology, that everything is inherently sexual, a lot in the modernist thought patterns.
To draw another analogy: how is this inherently different than the methodology of a paranoid, believing that everyone is out to get him, interpreting the facts his sense-perceptions supply to him, to reinforce the preconceived notion that, everyone is, in fact, out to get him?
[W]ell, Ben, I am going to assume that you’re asking a serious question. 🙂 Even if you fall into psychologizing (authoritarianism, ridicule, gossip, ad hominem) rather than criticizing the argument itself.
Either the argument possess explanatory power, and survives criticism or it Doesn’t. In the case of both Testimonialism and Propertarianism that is going to be very hard. And to criticize aristocratic egalitarianism will require only that you justify deceit and favor dysgenic reproduction. Which is a preference, I admit.
As for ‘working backward’ the answer is that I started with the very real problem of cooperation (See Axelrod et al), and constructed Propertarianism from rational incentives in in the face of opportunity costs. And like a good analytic I used every available bit of scientific evidence I could find to criticize it. When I understood that Haidt had pretty much identified the causes, and that I could map them to conflicts over the allocation of property rights, then it wasn’t difficult to use the work in his bibliography to develop the rest of Propertarianism: I expressed moral statements in the AMORAL language of economics.
As for psychology, the reason it seems like psychology is that it replaces authoritarian psychologizing(pseudoscientific) with a much more sophisticated and nuanced means of describing human thoughts as incentives rather than experiences. So to some degree (by accident) I do think that Propertarianism and Testimonialism fully replace authoritarian/totalitarian/equalitarian psychology, by extending economics (observations of demonstrated preference) to include the first principles of economics: incentives to cooperate. And in doing so I explain demonstrated political preferences in voting as a division of moral perception knowledge and labor. This is pretty profound really. And one of the best tests of it, is that the explanatory power appears to unite all fields of inquiry under a very simple set of premises starting with the need to acquire.
As for your analogy to Algebra, the differences is that numbers cannot make layer upon layer of intertemporally perishable normative contracts any more than hydrogen and oxygen can choose not to bond, where people can. As such we can exchange what appear to be violations of those first principles if in the aggregate we benefit.
As for methodology, which methodology are you talking about?
Testimonial truth?
Propertarianism?
Aristocratic Egalitarianism?
I am pretty sure Testimonialism will survive as the definition of truth proper from which all others are derived. That’s probably one of the most important insights into truth in the past century. It completes Critical Rationalism / Critical Preference.
To defeat Propertarianism would require some very substantial and what appears unlikely changes to the history of man’s development. (as we say, the framework of social science is evolutionary biology).
To defeat aristocratic egalitarianism is a matter of preference, although I argue that if one built a high trust truthful polity, that they would all evolve into aristocratic egalitarian polities over time.
So these arguments are defeat-able, but they’re defeat-able on fairly sophisticated grounds.
But then again, Marx built an enormous edifice on a lie (dialectical materialism) and a falsehood (labor theory of value). So maybe I made similar mistakes.
But like Marx, those mistakes will require ratio-scientific arguments not pseudoscientific (psychological gossip and shaming).
(Sorry for throwing the tease in there but I couldn’t resist.)
A Question From Benjamin Uraminski
Curt, your underlying methodology seems to work backward from a presupposed solution, similar to an algebra problem. In this instance, it having already been decided upon that everything is inherently sexual so that the missing variables which reinforce the preconceived notion appear obvious to one who holds those beliefs.
I notice this particular Freudian-esque and neo-Darwinist methodology, that everything is inherently sexual, a lot in the modernist thought patterns.
To draw another analogy: how is this inherently different than the methodology of a paranoid, believing that everyone is out to get him, interpreting the facts his sense-perceptions supply to him, to reinforce the preconceived notion that, everyone is, in fact, out to get him?
[W]ell, Ben, I am going to assume that you’re asking a serious question. 🙂 Even if you fall into psychologizing (authoritarianism, ridicule, gossip, ad hominem) rather than criticizing the argument itself.
Either the argument possess explanatory power, and survives criticism or it Doesn’t. In the case of both Testimonialism and Propertarianism that is going to be very hard. And to criticize aristocratic egalitarianism will require only that you justify deceit and favor dysgenic reproduction. Which is a preference, I admit.
As for ‘working backward’ the answer is that I started with the very real problem of cooperation (See Axelrod et al), and constructed Propertarianism from rational incentives in in the face of opportunity costs. And like a good analytic I used every available bit of scientific evidence I could find to criticize it. When I understood that Haidt had pretty much identified the causes, and that I could map them to conflicts over the allocation of property rights, then it wasn’t difficult to use the work in his bibliography to develop the rest of Propertarianism: I expressed moral statements in the AMORAL language of economics.
As for psychology, the reason it seems like psychology is that it replaces authoritarian psychologizing(pseudoscientific) with a much more sophisticated and nuanced means of describing human thoughts as incentives rather than experiences. So to some degree (by accident) I do think that Propertarianism and Testimonialism fully replace authoritarian/totalitarian/equalitarian psychology, by extending economics (observations of demonstrated preference) to include the first principles of economics: incentives to cooperate. And in doing so I explain demonstrated political preferences in voting as a division of moral perception knowledge and labor. This is pretty profound really. And one of the best tests of it, is that the explanatory power appears to unite all fields of inquiry under a very simple set of premises starting with the need to acquire.
As for your analogy to Algebra, the differences is that numbers cannot make layer upon layer of intertemporally perishable normative contracts any more than hydrogen and oxygen can choose not to bond, where people can. As such we can exchange what appear to be violations of those first principles if in the aggregate we benefit.
As for methodology, which methodology are you talking about?
Testimonial truth?
Propertarianism?
Aristocratic Egalitarianism?
I am pretty sure Testimonialism will survive as the definition of truth proper from which all others are derived. That’s probably one of the most important insights into truth in the past century. It completes Critical Rationalism / Critical Preference.
To defeat Propertarianism would require some very substantial and what appears unlikely changes to the history of man’s development. (as we say, the framework of social science is evolutionary biology).
To defeat aristocratic egalitarianism is a matter of preference, although I argue that if one built a high trust truthful polity, that they would all evolve into aristocratic egalitarian polities over time.
So these arguments are defeat-able, but they’re defeat-able on fairly sophisticated grounds.
But then again, Marx built an enormous edifice on a lie (dialectical materialism) and a falsehood (labor theory of value). So maybe I made similar mistakes.
But like Marx, those mistakes will require ratio-scientific arguments not pseudoscientific (psychological gossip and shaming).
(Sorry for throwing the tease in there but I couldn’t resist.)