Curt Doolittle

Theme: Operationalism

  • MORE ON THE AXIOMATIC(CONSISTENT) VS THEORETIC(CORRESPONDENT) 1 – axiomatic (ind

    MORE ON THE AXIOMATIC(CONSISTENT) VS THEORETIC(CORRESPONDENT)

    1 – axiomatic (independent of action and observation) versus theoretic (action and observation)

    a) Axiomatic systems allow us to make statements independent of any correspondence with reality.

    b) Theoretical systems require us to make statements dependent upon correspondence with reality.

    c) It is universally possible to create axiomatic systems by copying theoretical statements.

    d) But it is not universally possible to create theoretical statements by copying axiomatic statements.

    2 – Testing against our perception in an empirical test. Not a logical one. If economic statements are reduced to human actions which we can observe, then we are not in fact making a logical test, but an empirical one.

    3 – What separates economics from the other sciences, (where science means observation) is that we can sense and perceive changes in state without the use of instrumentation. That does not mean that because we do not require instrumentation, we are not making observations. Introspection is still observation. Our statements are not logical, they are empirical because they are based upon that form of observation we call introspection.

    4 – Praxeology, if it’s a science, cannot depend on axiomatic statements since sciences are not axiomatically based, but theoretically based. But if we claim it is axiomatic then it does not require observation and if it does not require observation than must include a prohibition on introspection as a means of testing, and that all such tests are truth or false independent of our sense perception.

    5 – metaphysics states that reality is deterministic or knowledge of the universe is impossible. This stipulation required prior theory or axiom. Reason is impossible without it. We must assume regularity of the universe, even if we tend to construct history in retrospect for our ease of use.

    BACKWARDS

    Mises got it backwards. Economics is an observational science which we have the power of introspection to test. We can, from those observations both introspective and external, We can test the rationality of any statement (it’s truth content) but we cannot deduce much of anything from it. Because complex properties of action are emergent and impossible to forecast.

    Kant was an intellectual criminal, and the continental and cosmopolitan schools have done nothing to help us eliminate obscurantism and pseudoscience favored by the left. In fact, All the triumvirate have seemed to want to do is create yet another pseudoscience.

    I can’t save Hoppe unless I can fix this problem. Otherwise our movement is done when he is. Either we reform this nonsense, or libertarianism dies as a continental and cosmopolitan pseudosciences like the rest of the 20th century pseudosciences, or we convert libertarian language from the pseudoscientific to the scientific.

    Science won. Cognitive science, experimental psychology, and empirical economics have provided all the insights. Meanwhile we’ve spent thirty to forty years now masturbating with a pseudoscience only an autistic moron could possibly fall for.

    Time for libertarians to grow up.

    If you can’t answer my objections above, with statements of human action you’re just a sucker for pseudoscience. Because that’s what Praxeology is. It doesn’t have to be. But that’s what it is.

    LIBERTARIANS OUGHT TO STUDY MORE THAN “SCRIPTURE”. Because while knowledgable about economics, libertarians tend to be absolutely ignorant of anything outside the approved canon. I gain more understanding of the autistic nature of libertarians every day. Even though I’m one of them. I see that the lack of empathic comprehension applies to all disciplines.

    Time to grow up kiddies.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-03-28 18:47:00 UTC

  • LOGIC VS SCIENCE (on praxeology) (getting closer) (attestation theory of truth)

    LOGIC VS SCIENCE

    (on praxeology) (getting closer) (attestation theory of truth)

    So, if the defining property of the discipline of science is observation, and praxeology is purely deductive independent of observation, then how can praxeology honestly be termed a science? It cannot. Praxeology can be defined as a logic, but not a science. Formal Logic and mathematics are branches of logic that produce proofs, but not truths. Truth, to have any universal meaning at all must mean correspondence to reality with increasingly weaker definitions in niche application as we move into various branches of logic.

    Yet while truth is constrained by reality, axiomatic systems are not constrained by reality. We may produce theories, and rigid theories at that, but correspondence with reality is never axiomatic – axioms are limited to internal consistency. We are certainly missing a logic of cooperation with which to repair ethics. (I think I have articulated the criterion for that logic as voluntary transfer, symmetrically informed, warrantied, and free of externality.) But, I do not yet understand why we require a logic of action – or if there is any value in such a thing. But regardless of that question, logics are not identical to sciences and sciences not identical to logics, any more than proofs are identical to truths, or axioms identical to theories.

    We may pretend for amusement purposes that human actions are, by analogy, functionally axiomatic rather than functionally theories in a given context, but this is a mere pretense. Theoretic systems must retain correspondence with reality, while axiomatic systems are not bound by correspondence with reality. Human actions occur within reality and are bounded by reality. Axiomatic systems are imaginary and are only bounded by imagination. For this reason human actions can only be theoretically constructed as correspondent with reality, just as logical systems can only be axiomatically constructed.

    As such axiomatic systems tell us only about the internal consistency of our statements, and theoretical systems tell us only about the external correspondence of our theories – but not the internal consistency of our descriptions of those theories. If we use both tests of internal consistency and tests of external correspondence, and our statements are demonstrably valid proofs, and our theories are demonstrably valid tests, and both proofs and theories are stated operationally, then we can attest to the truth of our theories.

    And the only means by which we can subjectively test either axiomatic or theoretic statements is to reduce them to analogies to experience, by stating them in operational sequence – which we call “Constructionism”.

    If we cannot test the internal consistency or our arguments and external correspondence of our actions, then we cannot EVER honestly attest that our theories are true to our knowledge and understanding.

    This is the only standard of truth for any theory that I know of: attestation. If a theory is both externally correspondent, internally consistent, operationally stated, and falsifiable, then to our current knowledge that theory as stated is true – one can attest to its truth, and not commit unethical attestation. This does not mean that the theory cannot be improved upon. But it means one’s attestation about it is true. And that is the best that we can ever hope for.

    There is a great difference between a true theory and a complete theory. At some point any theory must evolve into a tautology, at which point one cannot attest to one’s hypothesis (theory, conjecture). Than is non-sensical. So a theory free of attestation is merely complete – tautological. Identical. Not correspondent dependent upon attestation ‘true’, nor imaginary and proven ‘proof’.)

    Getting closer. It should be possible, if difficult, to follow that argument. I bet within six months I can get lightbulbs to come on. Not quite there yet. But very close. This approach reduces all statements to human actions and truth to attestation rather than the platonic.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-03-28 15:45:00 UTC

  • THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN ACTION IS PURELY EMPIRICAL The logic of human action is not

    THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN ACTION IS PURELY EMPIRICAL

    The logic of human action is not deductive. The logic of human action, including the discipline of economics, is entirely empirical. Empirical meaning ‘observable’.

    The canons of science require that we use instrumentation and logic to reduce that which we cannot sense to analogy to experience; that we test what we cannot perceive for internal consistency and external correspondence.

    But, we can test the rationality of incentives directly by pure perception. Our perception of voluntary exchange, involuntary exchange, and the satisfaction of wants is in itself the most reductive form of perception: we can both sense the rationality of incentives in relation to any change in state, and we can test the rationality of the incentives of others as well – because human incentives are marginally indifferent – at least outside of taste. Even then we can distinguish between rational tastes and non.

    As such, the logic of human action is constructed from, as all knowledge of truth is, empirical observation.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-03-03 05:19:00 UTC

  • THE ERRORS OF PRAXEOLOGY CORRECTED (cross posted for archival purposes.) I would

    THE ERRORS OF PRAXEOLOGY CORRECTED

    (cross posted for archival purposes.)

    I would like to weigh in on this discussion but so far it’s a mess.

    a) If you want to make claims about Praxeology, then please define praxeology, the praxeological method, it’s axioms and its postulates. if you do you will find that it’s pretty much nonsense to assume much can be deduced from praxeological theory.

    From Rothbard:

    —-

    AXIOM

    “…praxeology contains one Fundamental Axiom–the axiom of action–which may be called a priori, and a few subsidiary postulates which are actually empirical.”

    POSTULATES

    (Postulate 1) A “…variety of resources, both natural and human. From this follows directly the division of labor, the market, etc.; ” (Believe it or not that is a direct quote.)

    (Postulate 2) Leisure is a consumer good.

    (Postulate 3) Indirect exchanges occur.

    (Postulate 4) Every firm aims always at maximizing its psychic profit; and this may or may not involve maximizing its money profit, and or also stated as everyone tries always to maximize his utility.

    —–

    b) If instead we say that it is possible for us to empirically determine the logical rules of cooperation, then praxeology is an empirical method of determining internally consistent rules (a logic of cooperation) for the purpose of testing statements of human cooperation for rationality.

    c) This logic, as empirically based, will allow the test of ANY **CONSTRUCTED** description of human cooperation. (Constructed means “articulated as a set of actions, which in science we refer to as ‘operational language’.)

    d) Therefore praxeology is, if completed (and it’s not complete) a formal logic of cooperation, that like mathematical logic or language-logic, can be used for the purpose of internally testing any argument for logical consistency.

    e) However, ‘true’ statements require BOTH internal consistency, and external correspondence. (I guess I will have to probably teach a few people the meaning of truth by making that statement.) Internal consistency is a PROOF, not a TRUTH. The test of a PROOF is external correspondence in addition to internal consistency. We use the term ‘true’ in the context of proof only to say ‘my attestation is true and therefore corresponds to my assertion’. But proofs are never true in themselves. They are merely proofs.

    f) The reasons that we may use the LOGIC of cooperation AS IF IT WERE A PRIORISTIC are i) that the perception of incentives as rational or not is marginally indifferent between human beings. ii) our rational perception of incentives is open to subjective testing – and therefore subjective testing of incentives is EMPIRICAL. iii) If our rational perception was marginally DIFFERENT, then we would neither be able to easily cooperate nor treat cooperation as IF it were a prioristic.

    g) However, this said, that still means that the logic of cooperation is EMPIRICAL. It just means that we do not have to rely on external instrumentation and logic to measure the rationality of any incentive. We need only reduce any economic statement to operational language, each step of which is open to the subjective test of rationality.

    h) There is very, very little that can be deduced from man acts. Praxeology is NOT deductive. It is a logic – a test of rational incentives independent of theft or involuntary transfer. But one cannot deduce ‘sticky prices’ from it. One can only deduce the incentives that produce sticky prices once one observes that prices are sticky.

    c) Mises pretty much abandons his position on apriorism at the end of his career. He has to because it’s pretty clear that he failed at developing a logic of cooperation. He failed because he tried to state it deductively rather than empirically.

    j) What we intuitively LIKE about the praxeological logic is that it EXPOSES MORAL AND IMMORAL transfers in exchanges.

    k) As such, praxeology is not ONLY a logic of cooperation – IT IS THE LOGIC OF MORAL ACTION. Period.

    I will continue to attempt to reform praxeology and get us out of the trap of German Continental and Jewish Cosmopolitan endemic conflation of moral, rational, and scientific statements, and attempt to complete the logic of human cooperation, over the next year, by converting it into anglo-empirical language like all other logics and sciences have been.

    However, if you understand the points above, and ponder them sufficiently, you will no longer need to operate under the Misesian pretense that praxeology is a science when it is a form of logic dependent upon empirical testing – dependent upon science.

    And you will help us rescue libertarian philosophy from the same silly traps that all continental philosophy has fallen into since Kant: the attempt to recreate christian obscurantist mysticism through the use of fuzzy language that conflates of moral, rational, and empirical statements into pseudoscience.

    We are no better than the ‘scientific socialists’ who propagated a pseudoscience obscured by and justified by the use of aggregates to hide systemic thefts.

    We are libertarians. We are supposed to be the smart people. We are supposed to be the people who understand economics – the study of human cooperation. Its about time we abandoned continental pseudoscience and relied upon empirical science.

    Right now the world thinks we all wear tinfoil hats. And when we argue such obviously false pretenses they’re right.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-26 09:26:00 UTC

  • Praxeology Only Seems Confusing, Because Mises and Rothbard Got It Wrong

    The diagram below is complex because because praxeology and its contents are incorrectly categorized by Mises. And Rothbard made it worse by exacerbating the initial errors. 1) Philosophy Proper – the entire discipline – is required to describe the logic of human action. Philosophy, if articulated in operational language (the language of science) is the science of human action. 2) The missing logic within philosophy, is that of human COOPERATION. And that is the category addressed by praxeology and praxeological reasoning. 3) The different disciplines within praxeology are simply various means of calculating various relations. Just as law, math, engineering, are different means of calculation specific relations that are, without such systems of logic, beyond our rational capacity. 4) From this perspective, we can represent all praxeological action in a simple, expanding hierarchy. Mises tried. Rothbard tried. But they only grasped pieces of the puzzle. They were too influenced by the battle against the state, and so they framed the problem of human action and cooperation incorrectly.

    1535557_10152196912917264_135597373_n

  • Praxeology Only Seems Confusing, Because Mises and Rothbard Got It Wrong

    The diagram below is complex because because praxeology and its contents are incorrectly categorized by Mises. And Rothbard made it worse by exacerbating the initial errors. 1) Philosophy Proper – the entire discipline – is required to describe the logic of human action. Philosophy, if articulated in operational language (the language of science) is the science of human action. 2) The missing logic within philosophy, is that of human COOPERATION. And that is the category addressed by praxeology and praxeological reasoning. 3) The different disciplines within praxeology are simply various means of calculating various relations. Just as law, math, engineering, are different means of calculation specific relations that are, without such systems of logic, beyond our rational capacity. 4) From this perspective, we can represent all praxeological action in a simple, expanding hierarchy. Mises tried. Rothbard tried. But they only grasped pieces of the puzzle. They were too influenced by the battle against the state, and so they framed the problem of human action and cooperation incorrectly.

    1535557_10152196912917264_135597373_n

  • An Operational Definition of "Meaning"

    Meaning: the experience produced by the interaction between memory and stimuli caused by human action in time. This definition survives criticism even if the action is purely passive observation. All symbols for meaning are constructed from some set of analogies to experience. These constructs evolve through repetition and loading, until their constituent causal relations are lost, and all that remains is the habituated experience caused by the term. At which point ‘meaning’ is a purely experiential, rather than constructive. At that point, reason no longer can be said to apply. If one cannot explain something in analogies to experience, where analogies to experience are statements in operational language, one does not understand the terms one uses. They are merely experiential metaphors, used to transfer experiences rather than causal properties independent of experiences.

  • An Operational Definition of “Meaning”

    Meaning: the experience produced by the interaction between memory and stimuli caused by human action in time. This definition survives criticism even if the action is purely passive observation. All symbols for meaning are constructed from some set of analogies to experience. These constructs evolve through repetition and loading, until their constituent causal relations are lost, and all that remains is the habituated experience caused by the term. At which point ‘meaning’ is a purely experiential, rather than constructive. At that point, reason no longer can be said to apply. If one cannot explain something in analogies to experience, where analogies to experience are statements in operational language, one does not understand the terms one uses. They are merely experiential metaphors, used to transfer experiences rather than causal properties independent of experiences.

  • An Operational Definition of "Meaning"

    Meaning: the experience produced by the interaction between memory and stimuli caused by human action in time. This definition survives criticism even if the action is purely passive observation. All symbols for meaning are constructed from some set of analogies to experience. These constructs evolve through repetition and loading, until their constituent causal relations are lost, and all that remains is the habituated experience caused by the term. At which point ‘meaning’ is a purely experiential, rather than constructive. At that point, reason no longer can be said to apply. If one cannot explain something in analogies to experience, where analogies to experience are statements in operational language, one does not understand the terms one uses. They are merely experiential metaphors, used to transfer experiences rather than causal properties independent of experiences.

  • An Operational Definition of “Meaning”

    Meaning: the experience produced by the interaction between memory and stimuli caused by human action in time. This definition survives criticism even if the action is purely passive observation. All symbols for meaning are constructed from some set of analogies to experience. These constructs evolve through repetition and loading, until their constituent causal relations are lost, and all that remains is the habituated experience caused by the term. At which point ‘meaning’ is a purely experiential, rather than constructive. At that point, reason no longer can be said to apply. If one cannot explain something in analogies to experience, where analogies to experience are statements in operational language, one does not understand the terms one uses. They are merely experiential metaphors, used to transfer experiences rather than causal properties independent of experiences.