Curt Doolittle

Theme: Operationalism

  • CORRECTING GEORGE LAKOFF’S POSTMODERN FASCINATION WITH THE EXPERIENTIAL CONCEPTS

    CORRECTING GEORGE LAKOFF’S POSTMODERN FASCINATION WITH THE EXPERIENTIAL CONCEPTS; “EMBODIED” and METAPHOR

    Just reading his work makes me agitated. As if introspection could tell us something on the one end, and as if reduction could tell us something on the other.

    What follows are three important points. The second of which is profoundly important.

    Propertarianism:

    REGARDING #1 BELOW

    (a) We must use a variety of instrumental systems (logics) and instrumental means (technology) to reduce that which is imperceptible with our senses, to analogies to experience.

    (b) That our senses are limited to that which we can experience with our bodies is certainly true. However, that metaphors which can easily be loaded, are equal to logics which cannot be, is to make the postmodern error that our feelings are more than descriptions of changes in state given our CURRENT knowledge. They tell us only whether we are ignorant of something or not. They don’t tell us anything meaningful about the universe. This is why introspection is meaningless activity, while action is meaningful.

    (b) Given that we must reduce to analogy to experience that which we wish to perceive, then there is a maximum level of precision that humans can make use of in any theory of action in any given context. In this sense, newton’s theory is the greatest precision we need for all perceptible human action. As such it is not false, it is just only applicable to the instrumentation that is available to our senses. (I haven’t said this quite right. I have to think about how to state it better.) There is a maximum level of precision that we need to understand human behavior. I am fairly sure that propertarianism is the maximum level of precision necessary for the formulation of political cooperation.

    REGARDING #2 BELOW

    (a) All experience can be expressed in operational terms. Otherwise, per ’embodiment’ we cannot express it. The profundity of this statement should not be overlooked. In other words, there is nothing we cannot express that we can experience. We may lack the language for it. But that is all. For example, as I have argued, mathematics can be expressed entirely operationally, yet mathematicians persist in discourse about ‘mathematical reality’, when no such thing exists or can exist in any meaningful sense other than as imagination. So, due to the necessity of simplifying terms, and the advantage of highly loading and framing terms, we obscure content. However, no content is actually obscurable in operational language. The problem is that as complexity increases the ability of the both the speaker and the listener to construct an and share an experience requires some sort of reduction. But that does not mean that the entire experience cannot be articulated operationally. (If I could get this one point across then my work would be done. lol) This is what praxeologists have failed to understand. All experience may be reduced to operational language, and therefore truth tested, but not much can be deduced from that statement without the additional use of logic, science and instrumentation to extend our perceptions to that which we cannot perceive without their assistance.

    REGARDING #3 BELOW

    (a) Reason is not very complicated. Experience is the use of short term memory to determine changes in the state of our assets both real and imagined in real time, and storing those changes in state in long term memory given the amplitude of the change. We then compare experiences with other experiences. And we test those differences. We are very limited in the number of differences that we can test. So we rely on our logical technologies to extend our memories so that we can break a problem into simple sections which our simple minds are able to solve one at a time. As such reason and experience are only different from the natural world in that they exist only with the passage of time.

    ———-

    #1″ Reason is not disembodied, as the tradition has largely held, but arises from the nature of our brains, bodies, and bodily experience. This is not just the innocuous and obvious claim that we need a body to reason; rather, it is the striking claim that the very structure of reason itself comes from the details of our embodiment. The same neural and cognitive mechanisms that allow us to perceive and move around also create our conceptual systems and modes of reason. Thus, to understand reason we must understand the details of our visual system, our motor system, and the general mechanisms of neural binding. In summary, reason is not, in any way, a transcendent feature of the universe or of disembodied mind. Instead, it is shaped crucially by the peculiarities of our human bodies, by the remarkable details of the neural structure of

    our brains, and by the specifics of our everyday functioning in the world.”

    #2 “Reason is evolutionary, in that abstract reason builds on and makes use of forms of perceptual and motor inference present in “lower” animals. The result is a Darwinism of reason, a rational Darwinism: Reason, even in its most abstract form, makes use of, rather than transcends, our animal nature. The discovery that reason is evolutionary utterly changes our relation to other animals and changes our conception of human beings as uniquely rational. Reason is thus not an essence that separates us from other animals; rather, it places us on a continuum with them.

    #3″ Reason is not “universal” in the transcendent sense; that is, it is not part of the structure of the universe. It is universal, however, in that it is a capacity shared universally by all human beings. What allows it to be shared are the commonalities that exist in the way our minds are embodied.”

    • Reason is not completely conscious, but mostly unconscious.

    • Reason is not purely literal, but largely metaphorical and imaginative.

    • Reason is not dispassionate, but emotionally engaged.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-01 16:02:00 UTC

  • AN OPERATIONAL DEFINITION OF “MEANING” Meaning: the experience produced by the i

    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.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-24 09:34:00 UTC

  • THE LIES OF THE IRRATIONALS Conflating fact, value and preference : Marx and Mar

    THE LIES OF THE IRRATIONALS

    Conflating fact, value and preference : Marx and Marxists

    Conflating action and perception : Heidegger and Postmoderns

    Lies, lies, lies. All lies.

    If someone cannot state something to you in operational language they are either lying to you, or they don’t know what they’re talking about.

    LIFE CYLCE OF OF THEORIES

    0) PROBLEM: I may understand a problem.

    1) THEORY: I may have a theory of how to solve the problem.

    2) TEST OF INTERNAL CONSISTENCY: I man be able to construct a ‘tool’ for the solution of a problem.

    3) TEST OF EXTERNAL CORRESPONDENCE: I may be able to use a tool, and understand how it came to be.

    4) PRODUCTION (HABITUATION): I may use a tool but not understand how it came to be to either solve the problem or avoid the problem.

    5) DISTRIBUTION (SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION): I may may unknowingly rely on a tool to avoid a problem, AND NOT know how that tool came to be, or the problem.

    6) COMMODITIZATION (METAPHYSICAL ASSUMPTION): I may be ignorant of a tool, not how to use it, or how it came to be, but exist in a world where all of us avoid the problem for which the tool was intended and designed.

    The problem is that by the time we get to COMMODITIZATION, I’m know sure we can call what we’re doing ‘knowledge’. It’s just a habit. An informational instinct, rather than biological instinct.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-19 11:12:00 UTC

  • Well, if Stephan isn’t going to take this on, I”ll make a couple of points from

    Well, if Stephan isn’t going to take this on, I”ll make a couple of points from the ratio-scientific point of view (my means of argument) instead of the ratio-moral point of view (the rothbardian and anarcho-capitalist means of argument.)

    FAIR WARNING

    (I dont engage in justification. I try to determine the truth. And so if you manage to get through this little essay, you might not emerge with your high investment in rothbardian libertarianism intact.)

    PART 1

    THE AXIOM OF SELF OWNERSHIP

    Regarding: “…the self-ownership axiom is the only one of those under consideration that is sound…”

    Ethical statements cannot be ‘sound’ since that’s an allegorical and untestable statement. The testable term is ‘internally consistent’. However internal consistency (error free construction) doesn’t tell us anything about external correspondence (truth).

    Instead, ethical statements must adhere to a higher standard of argument than the internally consistent: Ethical arguments must be:

    a) preferable (to their absence)

    b) necessary

    c) sufficient

    d) possible

    e) durable (survivable over time)

    How does the self ownership Axiom survive this test?

    a) The S.O. axiom Is probably preferable (I can’t imagine a rational creature for whom it wouldn’t be preferable. I think it’s a precondition of autonomous sentience. So I have to stipulate that while I can’t determine the preferences of others, that it is hard for me to understand how it isn’t preferable for any being for whom action in real time is necessary for survival.)

    b) it may or may not be sufficient;

    c) it is certainly possible since it’s demonstrably extant;

    d) it is rationally, praxeologically, and demonstrably durable.

    Self Ownership and the NAP are very hard to argue with, except with regard to sufficiency. Are Self Ownership, Private Property, and NAP sufficient? They are sufficient for the purposes that Hoppe has put them to: which is the ability solve (almost) all problems of human cooperation while relying on self ownership, private property, and NAP.

    The questions are:

    a) whether the these rules are sufficient to obtain sufficient voluntary adoption and adherence such that this libertarian state of affairs are possible?

    b) is there an alternative axiom or set of axioms that permits the deduction of the various solutions to voluntary cooperation?

    c) is there a superior alternative axiom or set of axioms that permit the deduction of the various solutions to the problem of liberty (voluntary cooperation).

    It would be unscientific to suggest that no other argument exists other than {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP}. (Self ownership, Private Property, Homesteading, Voluntary Exchange and Non Aggression). It is also pretty hard to imagine something more compact with the same explanatory power.

    Why? Because these three statements:

    1) Metaphysics: Self Ownership:(Existence);

    2) Epistemology: Private Property with Homesteading and Voluntary Exchange :(Scope);

    3) Ethics: NonAggressionPrinciple:(Test);

    …are pretty narrow requirements for an axiomatic system. In fact, one statement per major domain of philosophy is so compact that it’s pretty hard to argue that it can be improved upon. Instead, it’s actually kind of awe-inspiring that all of the philosophy of human cooperation can be reduced to just these three statements.

    Even better, technically all five philosophical domains are answered by SO,PP+H+VE,NAP:

    4) Politics: Politics is solved by market, anarchy and voluntary insurance organizations.

    5) Aesthetics: Aesthetics is satisfied by the fact that we stipulate that liberty is desirable.

    So, if you’re asking the question, ‘how can we cooperate peacefully and voluntarily?’ and Hoppe has demonstrated that from these simple axioms we can cooperate peacefully and voluntarily, then it isn’t NECESSARY to devise an alternative axiomatic system. (I”m not even sure it’s helpful)

    It may be accurate to state that we not claim (actually, that **HE** not claim) no other set of statements would be superior (even if it is improbable) . But that is not to say that it is necessary, since he has demonstrated them to be sufficient for the deduction of all the institutions formal and informal for a voluntary system of cooperation.

    WEAKNESSES? SUFFICIENCY.

    (Now, lest you assume I am an apologist, I’ll take this a little farther.)

    “BUT” (and it’s a big but) is the set {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP} sufficient for voluntary and therefore preferential adoption of such set, either empirically (historically) or rationally (praxeologically)?

    And I think that is probably where it fails to sustain scrutiny, because we can demonstrate that the demand for external intervention (the state) does not decrease sufficiently in any population, to permit the rational and praxeologically testable, preferential and demonstrably voluntary, adoption of anarchy, in any population by other than by a tiny minority – at least as it stands.

    So while {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP} may be sufficient for the DEDUCTION of all means of voluntary cooperation, it does not provide sufficient INCENTIVE to reduce demand for external (state) intervention by a sufficient body of the population such that the a self-interested monopoly bureaucracy is not necessary for either:

    (a) the systematic enforcement, of private property for the prevention of free riding, theft and violence, or;

    (b) necessary for the systematic violation of private property to compensate for predation, as well as preventing theft and violence.

    Again, it appears that {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP} is sufficient for deduction of the informal and formal institutions of voluntary cooperation, but provides an insufficient incentive for the voluntary adoption of informal and informal institutions of voluntary cooperation.

    In that case, if the incentives are insufficient, then we have two possible means of constructing anarchy under {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP}:

    (i) involuntary coercion under threat of boycott, ostracization, and/or threat of violence.

    (ii) improvement of incentives such that anarchy is voluntarily adoptable (praxeologically possible).

    (iii) A combination of both.

    So, let us see if either or both solutions are possible or necessary.

    HISTORY

    History tells us that liberty only exists where nearly all involuntary transfers of property are prohibited – including those which are not visible or known of.

    And the few circumstances where all involuntary transfers of property were prohibited was limited to european warriors who granted each other prohibition on involuntary transfer (property rights) in exchange for military service. Property rights were a ‘right’ that was obtained in a contract for voluntary exchange. The incentive to gain access to the privilege of private property was one that was both materially, and reproductively advantageous.

    These property rights were an artifact of the accumulation of wealth first in simple goods, cattle and horses, later in land and built capital. Fighters who took risks, kept their winnings. Later, all free men kept their property.

    Later under manorialism and agrarian farming, a married couple was needed for the rental of land. This delayed marriage, and forced the absolute nuclear family that we understand today.

    When the church sought to break up the large landholders they interfered with inheritance rights, which are the source of the family structure, and consequently, the source of moral code variation, throughout the world. To break up the families they prohibited inbreeding out to as many as eight or even twelve generations, and granted women property rights.

    The combination of property rights for all, the near elimination of free riding, even by family members (offspring), and the persistence of the militia as a fighting force, created the high trust universal social order we call the protestant ethic.

    The enlightenment’s intellectual effort was an experiment in both justifying the middle class seizure of political power, and transferring the rights of the upper and ‘middle’ classes (small business owners : ie: farmers) to all land holders.

    The culmination of this experiment was the near prohibition on involuntary transfers that was embodied in the American Constitution. The aristocracy of everyone who had a stake in the preservation of property rights.

    (Unfortunately, that experiment has shown that universal enfranchisement, especially the enfranchisement of women, was incompatible with liberty, because participatory government by those whose interest is to seek rents and free riding, is an organized means of disempowering armed property owners, and systematically removing their property rights. Thereby returning us to the consanguineous or serial-marriage family structure in corporate (state) form.

    LIBERTARIAN ETHICS: NECESSITY. BUT SUFFICIENCY?

    It’s kind of hard to disagree with libertarian ethics as stated in {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP}. If only because they’re necessary, and the alternative to disagreeing with libertarian ethics, is demonstrably, a nearly universally undesirable state of affairs involving constant property violations (theft and violence) that make cooperation in a division of labor all but impossible – even among members of a consanguineous community of primitive hunter gatherers it may be beneficial.

    Lets look at classes of involuntary transfers of property as people demonstrate them:

    (1) Criminal statements are those that involve violence and theft.

    (2) Ethical statements are those which prohibit involuntary transfer of property by asymmetry of information between those internal to the action.

    (3) Moral statements are those which by definition apply to unknown persons external to the action: anonymous involuntary transfers of property.

    (4) Conspiratorial Statements: Statements of Political Morality (conspiracy) are those which prevent the organized and systemic involuntary transfer of property, whether criminal, ethical, or moral.

    The NAP only has a mechanism for fairly simple, obvious property violations: criminal violence and theft of class (1)

    The NAP has no mechanism for any of class (2) or class (3), and arguably sanctions and encourages these involuntary transfers by NOT preventing them.

    The NAP prevents class (1) PORTIONS of class (4), but it does not prohibit class (2) and (3) portions of class (4).

    Now, if you are a member of the majority tribe, you will suppress (1) to increase trust and therefore productivity. But if you are an extractive minority tribe without political power, you may in fact prefer to preserve (1) as a means of competing with and draining the majority of resources.

    We libertarians tend to laud intersubjectively verifiable actions. But again, those actions that are intersubjectively verifiable may be visible, they may be verifiable. But they are trivially primitive in scope because they are limited to merely theft and violence – and only to fraud where it is specifically defended against by written warranty in advance.

    As such intersubjective verifiability is, like the NAP too simple a test for the suppression of ethical and moral violations that are required for the development of sufficient trust that liberty can exist by voluntary adoption, because the demand for a third party to prevent these transgressions by way of law-making, and institutional formation, is all but eliminated.

    The NAP is insufficient criteria for the suppression of sufficient involuntary transfers of property to counter the demonstrated universal human disdain for ‘cheating’.

    This is because private property open to intersubjective verifiability is insufficient a description for the types of property people demonstrate that they TREAT as their property.

    So it is one thing to state that we can deduce all necessary formal and informal institutions for the support of private property from the {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP}. It is another to state that we can either deduce sufficient institutions formal and informal, or create sufficient incentives for the voluntary adoption of those institutions, from {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP}.

    Just as it is demonstrable both rationally and empirically that socialism is impossible because of the impossibility of twin problems of economic calculation, and the absence of incentives, we also must observe that the set {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP} is demonstrably impossible because of the impossibility of suppressing sufficient cheating that people will possess the rational incentives, because planning and organizing are higher risk and more expensive under a low trust ethic, to adopt {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP}.

    This is a very damning criticism of the sufficiency of {SO,PP+H+VE,NAP}. Or correctly stated, it is a just as damning and inescapable criticism of the NAP, as economic calculation and incentives were for the socialist means of production.

    Once you understand this you will realize that {SO,PP+H+VE} survive, but that {NAP} is as great a logical failure as was the socialist means of production. It is non rational to ask humans to adopt the NAP since it suppresses crime, but not ethical, moral, and arguably, not even conspiratorial, violations of one’s property rights, as people demonstrate their understanding of property rights by their behavior.

    PART 2:

    THE RESISTANCE TO LIBERTY: GENDERS, RACES, CLASSES, AND AGES: VOLUNTARY COOPERATION, COMPETITIVENESS AND PROPORTIONALITY.

    (Going have to wait on this. It’s 2am.) 🙁

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-14 19:14:00 UTC

  • PROHIBITING MAGICAL, SOCIALIST, POSTMODERN, AND PSEUDOSCIENTIFIC ARGUMENTS AS IM

    PROHIBITING MAGICAL, SOCIALIST, POSTMODERN, AND PSEUDOSCIENTIFIC ARGUMENTS AS IMMORAL DECEPTIONS

    (This is profound, and a lot to grasp. I have copied it here from elsewhere.)

    While one might say that ‘it does not matter what we do, that discipline over there, is none of our concern, because whether true or not, this technique is useful to us’. The fact is that such a statement is arbitrary and preferential and not ‘true’ remains.

    If instead of placing higher value on one’s personal utility in an isolated domain, one places higher value on suppressing immoral political speech such that freedom is possible, one might reach a different conclusion.

    Just as high trust ethics are possible by the suppression of additional immoral actions over low trust ethics, higher trust ethics are possibly by the suppression of further immoral actions.

    In low trust ethics, asymmetric knowledge is an ethical means of profit. In high trust ethics profit from asymmetric knowledge is immoral.

    In ‘higher trust ethics’ (In propertarianism) we place a greater ethical constraint, such that profit from obscurantism, mysticism, and platonism are prohibited.

    If operational language will allow you to express an idea and serves the needs of one’s function, then it is immoral to rely on platonic argument.

    If symmetrical knowledge will allow you to cooperate with another then it is immoral to express your thoughts in asymmetric terms. (incomplete information).

    If telling the truth will allow you to cooperate with another then it is immoral and unethical to express your thoughts in fraudulent terms.

    If voluntarily cooperating with someone such that you can obtain something without stealing, then it is immoral to steal from them.

    If is possible to cooperate with someone such that you can both survive then it is immoral to kill them.

    So, we must, in order to suppress increasingly complex forms of crime, ethical violation and immoral violation, we must forgo opportunities for self benefit by restraint, then to suppress the use of obscurant, mystical, platonic deceptions requires that we refrain, even at cost, from obscurant, mystical, and platonic statements.

    That this is in fact, what is required of Science (to make statements in operant language), then why is it that we cannot require this level of TRUTH in all other disciplines – especially if it prevents criminal, unethical, and immoral behavior, and enables as great a leap in cooperation as the high trust ethic did over the low trust ethic?

    Again, I believe I have solved the problem. But it may be just too much to ask for someone else to understand unless I am able to either condense it to a Confucian riddle, or extend it to a Hayekian narrative, or a Darwinian exposition of cases.

    ETHICAL BEHAVIOR COMES AT A HIGH COST.

    Ergo:

    If you want a politically ethical society we must pay this cost: the abandonment of the convenience of imaginary objects and confusing the utility of a conceptual tool with the existence and truth of that tool as a construction.

    This is how to make politics ‘scientific.’

    We outlawed violence.

    We outlawed theft.

    We outlawed fraud.

    We suppressed fraud-by-omission with warranty.

    We suppressed free riding with marital structure and property rights.

    We tried to suppress corruption with the constitution, but it failed. It failed because the constitution was not precise enough – in no small part because it should have specified original intent.

    We have failed to suppress mysticism, monotheism, marxian obscurantism, and Hegelian and postmodern conflation of mysticism and obscurantism.

    The requirement for scientific speech makes such arguments impossible. It means that public discourse is a property-commons, and one may not free ride or privatize it for one’s own convenience.

    Because it is immoral to do so.

    This is pretty profound. But again, it may be that such a profound statement is not of interest to you. But to me, as someone who has tried to solve the problem of ethics in an ethically and morally heterogeneious polity and to protect us from another dark age of ignorance and mysticism that Marx, Freud and Cantor have tried to drive us into, it is of a greater priority, and it is entirely worthy of the cost.

    -Cheers

    ================

    END NOTES FOR LATER REFERENCE

    1) If i say that the square root if two is the name for a function but is not reducible to a number, and cannot be demonstrated to be possible, that does not in fact prevent me from using the name of that function as a symbol in deduction, because in no circumstance is infinite precision applicable.

    2) (Lest we lose sight of the source of my argument here, I am trying to define extensions of political morality such that we can create institutions that permit the cooperation of individuals and groups holding heterogeneous moral codes, each of which reflects a different reproductive strategy. If you are going to create a means of resolving differences between moral codes, what constraints does one place upon the formation of argument, procedure, policy, and law, such that suppression of discounts would be possible, and theft by obscurant means would be impossible.

    How do we prevent the use of deception via various forms of obscurantism in a polity consisting of morally and ethically heterogeneous individuals and groups?

    If, as I’m arguing, mathematics is justificationary, but need not be, and need not be without sacrifice of functionality, and if it can be such that mathematicians (or members of this group) can be fooled into justificationary positions, then how would we prevent the ‘leakage’ from either this group’s ideology or the platonism of mathematics, (or that of socialists and totalitarians) into law?

    3) limits solve the problem of arbitrary precision (general rules) when in physics, correspondence with reality provides the ‘limit’ of precision. This is the difference between math (the study of pure relations independent of context) and the study of reality (relations within context).

    But that does not mean that when we make a reference to any mathematical object, we are naming a function (label for the result of operations) not naming an extant entity.

    That by definition a number system can be used to construct the rules for any n dimensional construct deterministically because of the constancy of relations, we should not confuse the determinacy we have ourselves described in constant relations, with existence.

    I cannot speak something into material existence other than the vibrations caused with my voice.

    I actually find this subject fascinating because it sort of renders most of the world ‘childish’.

    4) what good does a personal philosophy of ethical (interpersonal) action, and moral (political) action do you when the others do not share a marginally indifferent ethic and moral code?

    So, for example, what good does it do you if the vast majority economically, politically, or physically deprive you of any ability to act on this code?

    Politics is a contract, not a personal philosophy. And you might say that you will offer others these terms that you prefer. But if you must construct a contract (constitution) what terms must exist in this contract to make your personal philosophy both ethical and moral, possible to act upon?

    5) a) Empirical means “observable”, not quantifiable: “based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic.” Which is of course, the difference between the motion of planets vs unicorns (and infinity). That which is empirical is different from that which is imaginary. It is observable in time. (Very common mistake btw. You are not alone.)

    b) So, again, existence is different from utility. I can tell a fable with a unicorn, and I can imitate arbitrary precision with infinity. But that is different from saying such a thing exists scientifically (empirically). When you say that something is infinite, you are in fact, RELYING ON INDUCTION. (Ouch. I know.)

    c) God, and magic for that matter, are ‘older’ old hat. And they well served the purpose of their authors. Just as does infinity.

    d) Why is it that we need the ‘concept of limits’ (a form of justification)? It’s arbitrary precision instead of contextual precision – general rules independent of context versus precision determined by context. Why is it that we can use boolean logic (boolean algebra) for computation? (see Turing) And what utility does the function limit() serve in transforming contextual precision into arbitrary precision (general rule)?

    e) Constructivist, Intuitive, computational, operational, empirical, natural – all are expressions in math, logic, philosophy and science of attempts to circumvent the problem of reliance on justification.

    Departmental math, is justificationary.

    f) So, again, given that the difference is unnecessary and justificationary, and imaginary, while if stated operationally, math is descriptive, deductive, natural and ‘real’, and that the necessity of this conversation is DEMONSTRATION of the very problem of justificationary logic, even among people who assert that they deny the existence of justification, it should be somewhat obvious by now that there exists in fact the problem of externalizing immoral, unreal, illogical, platonism that is exported by justificationary departmental mathematics.

    g) Given that mathematical platonism is, like divine intervention, the hand of god, or some other magical mater of existence, ‘correctable’ without sacrifice of functionality in mathematics, then I will return to my asserted thesis that it is immoral to use non-operational, non-constructivist argument in public discourse (the export through obscurant language of error), because the institution of politics, exists for the purpose of transfer of wealth. Further, that we can, by placing the reuqirement for constructivist, operational, language on public discourse, we can (at least in theory) prohibit organized theft, corruption and immorality via justificationary psuedoscience, magic, or the pretense that mathematics can be used to describe phenomenon that is absent of constant relations (economics).

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-14 07:54:00 UTC

  • RIFFING A CRITIC: THE IMMORALITY OF PLATONISM (important piece) CRITIC: –“The w

    RIFFING A CRITIC: THE IMMORALITY OF PLATONISM

    (important piece)

    CRITIC:

    –“The word ‘operationalise’ is a mantra for you. I understand many things without being able to operationalise them, such as how to use English, how to ride a bicycle, etcetera . But it’s important to pint out that most of our understandings are incomplete – and sometimes for insuperable logical reasons. Understanding a scientific theory is never complete. It’s information content ( that set of statements that it logically excludes) is infinite and thus cannot be completely grasped by any mind. For example , newtons theory contradicts Einstein’ and therefore each is part of the information content of the other . It would be silly to require Newton to know this, and ipso facto silly to have required him to operationalise his understanding of his own theory. The point is understanding is much more than making operations.”–

    CURT:

    (a) operationalizing, demonstrating, constructing, using as instrument, each of these terms implies action in time. Each is is a test of whether something can exist or not; and whether something is loaded or not; and whether something is obscured or not.

    (b) There are many things I can do, but there are many things I should not do. I should not shout fire in a theater. And my question is whether it is moral, once understood, given that plantonism produces such externalities as it has, to refer to platonic NAMES as extant, rather than as names of functions for the purpose of brevity (and possibly comprehension.)

    I dont so much care about what one does in one’s bedroom, or in one’s math department, as I do about the construct of moral argument and law. However, since math is the gold standard of the logics (despite being the simplest of them), and contains the same errors, mathematical philosophy is useful in demonstrating the problem in a more simplistic domain. If such an error can occur in math (it does), then of course it can happen anywhere (it does).

    (c) In response to your question above, I would have to understand the meaning of “understand” as you use it.

    If you can ride a bike you can demonstrate it, whether you can articulate it or not. You understand how to RIDE. And it’s observable that you can ride.

    You can think without articulating it, and I an observe (and test via turing) that you appear to be thinking.

    But you would have to tell me how ‘understanding’ applies to abstract concepts like a large number (which you cannot imagine except as a name) or the square root of two, or, infinity. Both of which are concepts that you can use, but not understand.

    Because you can fail to use something. You can USE something even if you do not know how to construct it. You can construct something. You can possess the knowledge of how to construct something.

    But understanding of use is different from understanding of construction. And one must make different claims depending upon which of them one is referring to.

    You can say you understand how to USE something, but you may not in fact understand how to construct it.

    This lack of understanding (constructive vs utilitarian) places constraints upon your truth claims. Just as it places limits upon the math (which consists of proofs) and logic (which consists of proofs) but both of which may or may not correspond to reality – and instead only demonstrate internal consistency. In other words, internal consistency is a demonstration of internal consistency but it is not a demonstration of correspondence.

    Given a distinction between internal consistency and external correspondence, which is a higher standard of truth? What does internal consistency demonstrate and what does correspondence with reality demonstrate?

    What is the difference between that which is BOTH internally consistent and externally correspondent, and that which is EITHER internally consistent OR externally correspondent?

    (c) I am hardly scorning scholarship given that it’s pretty much what I do: read all day. But demonstrating the point that one can ride a bike and show me that he can, and one can conduct an argument and show me that he can, or one can say he can ride a bike, and one can say he can conduct an argument.

    But demonstration is a property of correspondence, which is a higher standard of truth than internal consistency. Because GENERAL RULES that are used for internal consistency come at the sacrifice of external correspondence – almost always because contextual correspondence provides greater precision (information) than does general rule independent of corespondent context.

    (d) Mathematics is quite simple because it is used to describe constant relations. It can describe more variation than the physical universe can demonstrate (which is both advantageous and a weakness). Economics does not consist of constant relations so that mathematics is of less use in predicting the future because those relations are not constant.

    Now, there is a great difference between internally consistent disciplines ( logic and math) and externally correspondent (science and economics). Mathematics and logic contain statements that are internally consistent yet not externally correspondent. Science and economics prohibit these statements. In those circumstances where there is a conflict, which is true?

    Furthermore, if something can be described in terms of correspondence why does one describe it in terms of internal consistency, except to create a general rule, through the loss of information provided by the context?

    (e) Now, the open questions apply to all of the logics: I can logically deduce general rules from the names of those functions that are incalculable and impossible (which is why mathematicians wish to retain the excluded middle, and require the axiom of choice). So why should I be prohibited from the logic of the excluded middle and the axiom of choice, when doing so comes at the cost of my ability to create general rules independent of context? Why should I be prohibited from using these deductive tools if their only purpose is to covert the analog (precision in context) to the boolean (general rule independent of context)?

    And the answer is, that of course, these “named functions” are entirely permissible for the purpose of creating and deducing general rules. These general rules demonstrably apply in a multitude of contexts.

    But just as calling fire in a theatre, or telling a lie, or stealing does in fact ‘work to achieve one’s ends’ that does not mean that it is moral to do so, because by such action, one externalizes the cost of one’s efficacy onto others (society).

    We do not permit theft. We do not permit fraud. We do not permit privatization of the commons. We resist privatizations of even the normative commons, and we try to resist socialization of losses. So, therefore why should we not resist efficacy in a discipline if it likewise produces externalities?

    Because that is what immorality and morality mean: the prohibition on the externalization of costs.

    Now, one could say that we should all have the right to pollute equally. One could say that we have the right to lie equally. One could say that we have the right to create obscurant language equally. One could say that we have the right to create Religious (magical) language equally. One could say that we have the right to create platonic language easily. Because in each of these circumstances, the utility to the users is in obtaining a discount on the cost of action, over the cost of NOT engaging in pollution, lying, obscurantism, mysticism, and platonism, because each is a form of theft from others for the purpose of personal convenience.

    So if you deny that one can use the falsehood of induction, or the falsehood of religion, or the falsehood of lying for utilitarian purposes, then why are you not equally prohibited from using the falsehood of infinity, and imaginary existence?

    Or are you selectively immoral when it suits you?

    CLOSING

    This should be a sufficient description of the relatedness of fields once they are united by morality. And that is the purpose of philosophy: comprehension that facilitates action by providing a framework for criticism of ideas.

    It should be sufficient for anyone with any philosophical or logical training to at least grasp.

    It should also be obvious that you will not be able to circumvent this argument.

    Thus endeth the lesson.

    Cheers

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-13 06:53:00 UTC

  • Another watershed couple of days. I have my arms around the problem of mathemati

    Another watershed couple of days.

    I have my arms around the problem of mathematical platonism, and therefore all platonism. And I can argue that platonism, like obscurantism, is immoral, at least in public speech. And since I can prove platonism is unnecessary, and a remnant of primitive religion, then one must choose to perpetuate the immoral for convenience.

    But perhaps, more importantly, I can sort of sense, in a tip-of-the-tongue sort of way, the degree to which ‘babylonian magic’ still remains in western thought. A kind of dependence on the dream state that is not present in the germanic mythos, but is pervasive in monotheistic thought.

    What does it mean for our society when we emphasize the real, versus the dream? The acting versus the observing?

    Again, from the naturalist view, we have only so much time to think about what corresponds with reality, OR dream about what does not. Is then, magian thought, simply lost opportunity cost? And is that the entire point of magianism? To deprive people of the opportunity of thinking about alternatives in the real?

    Is the magian the ultimate source of Popper’s ignorance?

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-08 06:54:00 UTC

  • ACADEMIC PHILOSOPHY – EVENTUALLY, IT WILL LOOK LIKE THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD Academ

    ACADEMIC PHILOSOPHY – EVENTUALLY, IT WILL LOOK LIKE THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

    Academic philosophy is pretty much a zombie profession. It’s actually humorous to read how bad the papers are. Every few months I just grab a dozen or two and read through them.

    And the consequences speak for themselves: the funding for philosophy departments, and administration’s tendency to group them in with religion has led to the progressive decline of departments.

    Conversely, economics and psychology together have pretty much taken over the social sciences. And that was probably a deterministic outcome, when late in the 19th century the analytical movement made the choice to try to make philosophy into a science, it was a pretty sizable bet that failed. And it was followed by a flurry of attempts to justify socialism in an effort to stay relevant. That failed too.

    It’s not that the study of philosophy has no value, it’s that except for very notable exceptions (Dennett) where philosophers are trying to integrate ethics and the product of scientific investigation, it’s pretty barren – like the study of medieval and ancient literature.

    **And given what I’ve learned from my own work, I’d argue that we can, within at most two generations, solve the problem of the logic of the social sciences. And when we do, I suspect that philosophy will, in practice, look not very much different from the scientific method, with each of the logical systems we have developed: language, logic, math, physics, and economics (cooperation), merely specializations for isolating one property of the universe or another, so that we are capable of reducing it to analogy to experience and therefore understanding it.**

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-07 17:37:00 UTC

  • IN THIS STRANGE LITTLE BIT OF LANGUAGE, BROUWER PROVIDES THE ANSWER TO PLATONIST

    IN THIS STRANGE LITTLE BIT OF LANGUAGE, BROUWER PROVIDES THE ANSWER TO PLATONISTS.

    (emphasis mine)

    “…mathematics is an essentially languageless activity of the mind having its ***origin in the perception of a move of time.*** This perception of a move of time may be described as the falling apart of a life moment into two distinct things, one of which gives way to the other, but is retained by memory. If the twoity thus born is divested of all quality, it passes into the empty form of the common substratum of all twoities.” — Brouwer.

    Genius.

    NELSON’S CRITIQUE

    –“Since the advent of digital computers, attention has turned from effective methods — functions computable in principle – to feasible algorithms and programs. There is strong evidence that polynomial time functions provide the correct formalization of the intuitive notion of a feasible computation, and unlike the situation for recursive functions there is a purely syntactical characterization of polynomial time functions. I am convinced that intuitionism reformulated in this context will become a powerful practical method for constructing and verifying feasible algorithms, and that Kleene’s realization predicate will provide an incisive tool for

    analyzing problems concerning interactive programs.”– Nelson.

    https://web.math.princeton.edu/~nelson/papers/int.pdf

    CURT: These are different contracts, for utility not different truths.

    As far as I can tell, if it is not computable it is questionable. But I need to learn more.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-04 18:00:00 UTC

  • Does The Separation Between Mathematical Truth And Mathematical Proof Necessarily Imply A Platonist View Of Mathematics?

    Here is the debate as I understand it:

    (And forgive me if I mix language from multiple domains please.)

    The Intuitionists argue that all mathematics can be stated operationally, and as such, for all intents and purposes, all mathematical symbols other than the glyphs we use to name the natural numbers, are nothing more than names for functions (sets of operations).

    However, the intuitionist (‘recursive’) solution causes a problem in that the excluded middle is impermissible – but without it, much of mathematics because much more difficult, and harder to prove. So with that constraint on the excluded middle, the higher truth requirement of computational and constructivist, intuitionist logic has been deemed not useful for departmental mathematicians.

    So under the ZFC+AC and ‘spontaneous platonic imaginary’ creation of sets, we obtain the ability to do mathematics that include both double negation and the excluded middle. 

    This ‘trick’ separates Pure math in one discipline and  Scientific math, Computational mathematics, and philosophical realism into different discipline, each with different standards of truth. In fact, technically speaking, mathematics is absent truth (correspondence) and relies entirely on proof. ie: there are no true statements in pure mathematics.

    IF ANYONE  KNOWS —>> It does not appear that Brouwer or any of his followers understood why their method failed and the set method succeeded.  But even if they failed, I am trying to figure out if the Formalists understood their ‘hack’ and why it worked. 

    And lastly, if anyone at all understood how Intuitionist, constructivist, and computational logic could be improved to solve the problem of retaining correspondence (truth) while also retaining the excluded middle (even if it was burdensome). 

    Someone smarter than I am has got to have addressed this problem already although for the life of me I can’t find anyone who has.

    https://www.quora.com/Does-the-separation-between-mathematical-truth-and-mathematical-proof-necessarily-imply-a-Platonist-view-of-mathematics