Curt Doolittle

Theme: Science

  • Yes, Reforming Austrian Economics Is Necessary

    —“Calling Mises pseudoscientific is the typical positivistic criticism to Austrian Economics. It adds nothing. The young Austrian economists who are pupils of Don Lavoie had been working on Popper, Lakatos, Machlup and Hayek for a long time.”—Gabriel Zanotti, Philosophy Professor at Austral University

    [G]abriel

    1) Calling science positivistic (justificationary) is a typical Rothbardian/Misesian misrepresentation of the scientific method, which is critical not justificationary.

    2) Calling a logic (axiomatic, prescriptive, complete) a science (theoretical, descriptive, incomplete) is simply false. (And adds nothing, other than casting Austrian economics as a source of ridicule). Models can be built out of axioms or laws, but all axiomatic deductions are tautologies, producing proofs of operational possibility, while all laws remain incomplete and therefore non-tautological, producing additional hypotheses, which are candidates for theories and laws. But all theoretical statements remain theoretical. The reason being that all non-tautological premises remain forever theoretical.

    3) The ‘axiom’ of purposeful human action tells us precisely nothing since it may constitute a test, but not an axiom since it tells us nothing of the scope of possible purposeful human action. We can instead say that any economic hypothesis, theory, or law, must be reducible to a sequence of rational human actions, (operations) in order to be existentially possible.

    4) This difference is why we rely upon ratio-empiricism, not rationalism, and not positivism for scientific (truthful) investigation. Logical arguments test internal consistency but not external correspndence, and external correspondence does not tell us about the internal consistency of our arguments, and without operational-intuitionistic testing (operational definitions) we cannot know if what we imagine is existentially possible. And without falsification, assuming we are both internally consistent, externally correspondent, and existentially possible, we have not tested our internal, external, and operational theory for parsimony – leaving open the possibility of error, bias and deception in all three.

    5) The differences between mainstream (orthodox) economics, and Austrian (heterodox) economics, are (a)that manipulation of credit is disinformation (lying) which produces cumulative effects of disinformation (lying), and (b) that as an act of disinformation (fraud), manipulation of credit produces involuntary transfers (immorality), because it lacks fully informed, productive, warrantied, voluntary exchange, free of externality (moral constraint).

    6) Rationalists tend to be, and by definition, must be, justificationists – they are not critical. Justification in rationalism, is indifferent from positivism in science. They are identical propositions. No matter how much justification we do, we are merely engaging in confirmation bias. Instead, it is irrelevant which method we use to construct a theory. The means of constructing a theory are irrelevant. Justification is irrelevant. Truth candidates (internally consistent, externally correspondent, operationally possible, and ultimately parsimonious, yet incomplete statements) are produced by criticism: whether they survive scrutiny: testing.

    7) One *CAN* however, work through purely rational, non-positivistic processes, however, this is not to to say they are not working empirically (through observation). As far as I know this is impossible. But that does not mean they are not working ratio-empirically. It merely means that they are engaging in tests of internal consistency given current knowledge, and working using operational possibility (existential possibility), but that they are not criticizing their work through tests of external correspondence – although as far as we know, no one makes theories without tests of external correspondence, because that would mean we were not explaining economic phenomenon – which would be somewhat fruitless.
    (continued….) (…continued)

    8) This work remains ratio-empirical, and consistent with all other scientific investigation. However, so does mainstream economics (orthodoxy). And the ONLY DIFFERENCE between mainstream and Austrian economics then, is that the mainstream seeks to lie to us, and Austrians seek to speak the truth. So the difference is not methodological – it is whether we attempt to find improvements to institutions of cooperation that retain the western principle of truth telling, or we engage in lying. Keyenesian economics is dishonest, not usncientific. Austrian economics suggests only that economics must be practiced scientifically, not axiomatically, Economics is indifferent from all other sciences. The question is only whether we seek to tell the truth (Austrian) or to lie (Keynesian).

    9) And it is equally dishonest and pseudoscientific to state that an axiomatic system id identical to a theoretical system, and equally dishonest to cast mainstream economics as methodologically flawed. Particularly when Austrians have contributed nothing to the study of economics in nearly a century, while in the past twenty years alone, the orthodox community has expanded our knowledge of general rules and insight into our existing economies with regularity.

    10) The Cosmopolitan thinkers, like the german rationalists, are exceptional at this kind of deceptive conflation. A few of us think that it is a natural consequence of talumudic authoritarian dual ethics in the jewish community, and kantian authoritarian conflation of truth and duty in german philosophy. However, Mises and ROthbard and to some lesser degree Hoppe, have all tried to assert fallacies that cast the difference as possible, logical and methodological rather than as moral. Meanwhile the social democrats continue to justify the morality of takings (involuntary transfers) rather than treating every ‘taking’ as a lost opportunity for productive voluntary exchange – and therefore returning us to manorial era constraints upon the behavior of the unproductive classes that contributed to the rise of the west.

    CLOSING

    I hope this helped you understand my position. In my view I am attempting to restore Morality and truth-telling to economics. But that will not be done using fallacious arguments in the rationalist tradition. It will be by demonstrating that moral action using institutions that do not engage in lying, produce superior economic conditions: greater prosperity without the fragility caused by decade after decade of institutional lying.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    L’viv Ukraine

  • Yes, Reforming Austrian Economics Is Necessary

    —“Calling Mises pseudoscientific is the typical positivistic criticism to Austrian Economics. It adds nothing. The young Austrian economists who are pupils of Don Lavoie had been working on Popper, Lakatos, Machlup and Hayek for a long time.”—Gabriel Zanotti, Philosophy Professor at Austral University

    [G]abriel

    1) Calling science positivistic (justificationary) is a typical Rothbardian/Misesian misrepresentation of the scientific method, which is critical not justificationary.

    2) Calling a logic (axiomatic, prescriptive, complete) a science (theoretical, descriptive, incomplete) is simply false. (And adds nothing, other than casting Austrian economics as a source of ridicule). Models can be built out of axioms or laws, but all axiomatic deductions are tautologies, producing proofs of operational possibility, while all laws remain incomplete and therefore non-tautological, producing additional hypotheses, which are candidates for theories and laws. But all theoretical statements remain theoretical. The reason being that all non-tautological premises remain forever theoretical.

    3) The ‘axiom’ of purposeful human action tells us precisely nothing since it may constitute a test, but not an axiom since it tells us nothing of the scope of possible purposeful human action. We can instead say that any economic hypothesis, theory, or law, must be reducible to a sequence of rational human actions, (operations) in order to be existentially possible.

    4) This difference is why we rely upon ratio-empiricism, not rationalism, and not positivism for scientific (truthful) investigation. Logical arguments test internal consistency but not external correspndence, and external correspondence does not tell us about the internal consistency of our arguments, and without operational-intuitionistic testing (operational definitions) we cannot know if what we imagine is existentially possible. And without falsification, assuming we are both internally consistent, externally correspondent, and existentially possible, we have not tested our internal, external, and operational theory for parsimony – leaving open the possibility of error, bias and deception in all three.

    5) The differences between mainstream (orthodox) economics, and Austrian (heterodox) economics, are (a)that manipulation of credit is disinformation (lying) which produces cumulative effects of disinformation (lying), and (b) that as an act of disinformation (fraud), manipulation of credit produces involuntary transfers (immorality), because it lacks fully informed, productive, warrantied, voluntary exchange, free of externality (moral constraint).

    6) Rationalists tend to be, and by definition, must be, justificationists – they are not critical. Justification in rationalism, is indifferent from positivism in science. They are identical propositions. No matter how much justification we do, we are merely engaging in confirmation bias. Instead, it is irrelevant which method we use to construct a theory. The means of constructing a theory are irrelevant. Justification is irrelevant. Truth candidates (internally consistent, externally correspondent, operationally possible, and ultimately parsimonious, yet incomplete statements) are produced by criticism: whether they survive scrutiny: testing.

    7) One *CAN* however, work through purely rational, non-positivistic processes, however, this is not to to say they are not working empirically (through observation). As far as I know this is impossible. But that does not mean they are not working ratio-empirically. It merely means that they are engaging in tests of internal consistency given current knowledge, and working using operational possibility (existential possibility), but that they are not criticizing their work through tests of external correspondence – although as far as we know, no one makes theories without tests of external correspondence, because that would mean we were not explaining economic phenomenon – which would be somewhat fruitless.
    (continued….) (…continued)

    8) This work remains ratio-empirical, and consistent with all other scientific investigation. However, so does mainstream economics (orthodoxy). And the ONLY DIFFERENCE between mainstream and Austrian economics then, is that the mainstream seeks to lie to us, and Austrians seek to speak the truth. So the difference is not methodological – it is whether we attempt to find improvements to institutions of cooperation that retain the western principle of truth telling, or we engage in lying. Keyenesian economics is dishonest, not usncientific. Austrian economics suggests only that economics must be practiced scientifically, not axiomatically, Economics is indifferent from all other sciences. The question is only whether we seek to tell the truth (Austrian) or to lie (Keynesian).

    9) And it is equally dishonest and pseudoscientific to state that an axiomatic system id identical to a theoretical system, and equally dishonest to cast mainstream economics as methodologically flawed. Particularly when Austrians have contributed nothing to the study of economics in nearly a century, while in the past twenty years alone, the orthodox community has expanded our knowledge of general rules and insight into our existing economies with regularity.

    10) The Cosmopolitan thinkers, like the german rationalists, are exceptional at this kind of deceptive conflation. A few of us think that it is a natural consequence of talumudic authoritarian dual ethics in the jewish community, and kantian authoritarian conflation of truth and duty in german philosophy. However, Mises and ROthbard and to some lesser degree Hoppe, have all tried to assert fallacies that cast the difference as possible, logical and methodological rather than as moral. Meanwhile the social democrats continue to justify the morality of takings (involuntary transfers) rather than treating every ‘taking’ as a lost opportunity for productive voluntary exchange – and therefore returning us to manorial era constraints upon the behavior of the unproductive classes that contributed to the rise of the west.

    CLOSING

    I hope this helped you understand my position. In my view I am attempting to restore Morality and truth-telling to economics. But that will not be done using fallacious arguments in the rationalist tradition. It will be by demonstrating that moral action using institutions that do not engage in lying, produce superior economic conditions: greater prosperity without the fragility caused by decade after decade of institutional lying.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    L’viv Ukraine

  • YES, REFORMING AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS IS NECESSARY —“Calling Mises pseudoscientifi

    YES, REFORMING AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS IS NECESSARY

    —“Calling Mises pseudoscientific is the typical positivistic criticism to Austrian Economics. It adds nothing. The young Austrian economists who are pupils of Don Lavoie had been working on Popper, Lakatos, Machlup and Hayek for a long time.”—Gabriel Zanotti, Philosophy Professor at Austral University

    Gabriel

    1) Calling science positivistic (justificationary) is a typical Rothbardian/Misesian misrepresentation of the scientific method, which is critical not justificationary.

    2) Calling a logic (axiomatic, prescriptive, complete) a science (theoretical, descriptive, incomplete) is simply false. (And adds nothing, other than casting Austrian economics as a source of ridicule). Models can be built out of axioms or laws, but all axiomatic deductions are tautologies, producing proofs of operational possibility, while all laws remain incomplete and therefore non-tautological, producing additional hypotheses, which are candidates for theories and laws. But all theoretical statements remain theoretical. The reason being that all non-tautological premises remain forever theoretical.

    3) The ‘axiom’ of purposeful human action tells us precisely nothing since it may constitute a test, but not an axiom since it tells us nothing of the scope of possible purposeful human action. We can instead say that any economic hypothesis, theory, or law, must be reducible to a sequence of rational human actions, (operations) in order to be existentially possible.

    4) This difference is why we rely upon ratio-empiricism, not rationalism, and not positivism for scientific (truthful) investigation. Logical arguments test internal consistency but not external correspndence, and external correspondence does not tell us about the internal consistency of our arguments, and without operational-intuitionistic testing (operational definitions) we cannot know if what we imagine is existentially possible. And without falsification, assuming we are both internally consistent, externally correspondent, and existentially possible, we have not tested our internal, external, and operational theory for parsimony – leaving open the possibility of error, bias and deception in all three.

    5) The differences between mainstream (orthodox) economics, and Austrian (heterodox) economics, are (a)that manipulation of credit is disinformation (lying) which produces cumulative effects of disinformation (lying), and (b) that as an act of disinformation (fraud), manipulation of credit produces involuntary transfers (immorality), because it lacks fully informed, productive, warrantied, voluntary exchange, free of externality (moral constraint).

    6) Rationalists tend to be, and by definition, must be, justificationists – they are not critical. Justification in rationalism, is indifferent from positivism in science. They are identical propositions. No matter how much justification we do, we are merely engaging in confirmation bias. Instead, it is irrelevant which method we use to construct a theory. The means of constructing a theory are irrelevant. Justification is irrelevant. Truth candidates (internally consistent, externally correspondent, operationally possible, and ultimately parsimonious, yet incomplete statements) are produced by criticism: whether they survive scrutiny: testing.

    7) One *CAN* however, work through purely rational, non-positivistic processes, however, this is not to to say they are not working empirically (through observation). As far as I know this is impossible. But that does not mean they are not working ratio-empirically. It merely means that they are engaging in tests of internal consistency given current knowledge, and working using operational possibility (existential possibility), but that they are not criticizing their work through tests of external correspondence – although as far as we know, no one makes theories without tests of external correspondence, because that would mean we were not explaining economic phenomenon – which would be somewhat fruitless.

    (continued….) (…continued)

    8) This work remains ratio-empirical, and consistent with all other scientific investigation. However, so does mainstream economics (orthodoxy). And the ONLY DIFFERENCE between mainstream and Austrian economics then, is that the mainstream seeks to lie to us, and Austrians seek to speak the truth. So the difference is not methodological – it is whether we attempt to find improvements to institutions of cooperation that retain the western principle of truth telling, or we engage in lying. Keyenesian economics is dishonest, not usncientific. Austrian economics suggests only that economics must be practiced scientifically, not axiomatically, Economics is indifferent from all other sciences. The question is only whether we seek to tell the truth (Austrian) or to lie (Keynesian).

    9) And it is equally dishonest and pseudoscientific to state that an axiomatic system id identical to a theoretical system, and equally dishonest to cast mainstream economics as methodologically flawed. Particularly when Austrians have contributed nothing to the study of economics in nearly a century, while in the past twenty years alone, the orthodox community has expanded our knowledge of general rules and insight into our existing economies with regularity.

    10) The Cosmopolitan thinkers, like the german rationalists, are exceptional at this kind of deceptive conflation. A few of us think that it is a natural consequence of talumudic authoritarian dual ethics in the jewish community, and kantian authoritarian conflation of truth and duty in german philosophy. However, Mises and ROthbard and to some lesser degree Hoppe, have all tried to assert fallacies that cast the difference as possible, logical and methodological rather than as moral. Meanwhile the social democrats continue to justify the morality of takings (involuntary transfers) rather than treating every ‘taking’ as a lost opportunity for productive voluntary exchange – and therefore returning us to manorial era constraints upon the behavior of the unproductive classes that contributed to the rise of the west.

    CLOSING

    I hope this helped you understand my position. In my view I am attempting to restore Morality and truth telling to economics. But that will not be done using fallacious arguments in the rationalist tradition. It will be by demonstrating that moral action using institutions that do not engage in lying, produce superior economic conditions: greater prosperity without the fragility caused by decade after decade of institutional lying.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    L’viv Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2015-01-05 01:07:00 UTC

  • Improving On The Main Message – It’s Getting Easier

    (reposted from elsewhere)

    [T]he scientific method consists of a set of moral rules on what scientists must consider truthful testimony. Otherwise no ‘method’ exists. The scope of these moral rules has evolved during the twentieth century in ways that I think very few people, scientists included, understand. (I will go into this a bit later if need be.)||

    Scientists do not practice (or even pay any attention to) philosophy or philosophers. Philosophers tend to be justificationists, but scientists do not practice justification. So no, scientists do not defend arenas using logic at all. That is what philosophers do when they try to defend one epistemological justification or another. Scientists demonstrate. They do not justify.

    Philosphers justify. So no, they did not evolve nor are they practiced by similar means. Rationalism and science are practiced by opposite means: justification versus demonstration and warranty.

    Scientists, and the discipline of science operate upon these epistemological principles:

    (a) we know nothing for certain, and may never be able to know anything for certain. (the most parsimonious non tautological statement possible).
    (b) we know what works and what doesn’t work. Everything else we say is just hypothesis, theory and law
    (c) all knowledge is theoretical (intuition, hypothesis, theory, or law)
    (d) we can combine theories to create models, which themselves are theories.
    (e) To publish a theory (‘distribute an intellectual product for consumption’) one must subject it tests (Provide a Warranty) stating that it is:

    i) consistent (logical)
    ii) correspondent (correlative)
    iii) empirical (observable)
    iv) operational (existentially possible)
    v) falsifiable
    vi) reasonably falsified

    The scientific method consists, if anything, in meeting these moral constraints upon their statements. It is their job to speak truthfully. But they never claim to state the truth. Even mathematicians (of any degree of sophistication) will say that truth is a problem of philosophy, while proof is a problem of mathematics.

    Mises’ argument is false because there are no non-trivial, non-tautological, certain, premises. If, as Einstein demonstrated, even time and length are concepts that we cannot count upon (length is the argument used to demonstrate the fallacy of even geometric premises). While we may imagine a point or a line, we cannot construct one. While we may imagine infinite sets, we cannot construct one. While we may imagine the square root of two, it cannot exist without a physical context to determine its arbitrary precision and therefore its existence.

    So no. Mises’ rationalism is a good story. But it’s just a story. An analogy.

    In order to warranty a statement as truthfully represented, it must meet the criteria that scientists have put forward. Science is merely a moral discipline for the purpose of truth telling. If we cannot say it scientifically then we cannot warrant that we are saying it truthfully: free of all possible error, bias, and deception.

    Mises was trying to combat the abuse of pseudoscience in economics, but he did not, as Brouwer did in math and Bridgman did in physics, discover Intuitionism, Operationalism and Operationism: the necessary test of existential possibility that checks our premises against the context in which we apply them. Praxeology was very close. But he got it wrong. If we see him in this light, as failing in economics where others succeeded in math and science, we can see Mises as part of a triumvirate that tried to add a new moral constraint to the sciences consistent with, or perhaps as an extension of falsification.
    It is unfortunate, since the reason Brouwer and Bridgman were not influential was that they failed to grasp that they were making a moral argument to the externalities caused by failing to demonstrate tests of existential possibility. whereas in economics, EVERYTHING WE WORRY ABOUT IS A PRODUCT OF EXTERNALITIES.

    Had Mises gone with Science rather than Rationalism we might have saved a century of semi-pseudoscientific argument only recently overthrown. Because in economics, externalities matter. It matters that Keynesian macro is an attempt to justify the manufacture of vast, slowly accumulating, negative externalities that burn down social and genetic capital. It matters that mathematicians talk about a mathematical reality that does not and cannot exist; that Cantorian sets are a bit of verbal nonsense by which to substitute quantity in timeless state, with frequency in a state where time is present. It matters that mathematical physics has seem to be nearly fruitless compared to physical experimentation, and that the entire multiple-world hypothesis was as nonsensical as we intuited.

    Externalities matter. And that is before we start talking about postmodernism: the most elaborate lie developed since the invention of theism.

    So the truthful, testifiable statement, is not the one Mises makes, but that no economic statement that cannot be reduced to sympathetically testable operations can be true. AND any economic proposition that has not been reduced to a sequence of sympathetically testable operations can be stated to be ethical and or moral.

    So no statement that is not open to sympathetic testing (falsification) by operational means (sympathetic testing) can be ‘true’, nor ‘scientific’ since ‘scientific’ refers to morally warrantable constraint upon one’s statements.

    Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute 

    L’viv, Ukraine.

  • Improving On The Main Message – It’s Getting Easier

    (reposted from elsewhere)

    [T]he scientific method consists of a set of moral rules on what scientists must consider truthful testimony. Otherwise no ‘method’ exists. The scope of these moral rules has evolved during the twentieth century in ways that I think very few people, scientists included, understand. (I will go into this a bit later if need be.)||

    Scientists do not practice (or even pay any attention to) philosophy or philosophers. Philosophers tend to be justificationists, but scientists do not practice justification. So no, scientists do not defend arenas using logic at all. That is what philosophers do when they try to defend one epistemological justification or another. Scientists demonstrate. They do not justify.

    Philosphers justify. So no, they did not evolve nor are they practiced by similar means. Rationalism and science are practiced by opposite means: justification versus demonstration and warranty.

    Scientists, and the discipline of science operate upon these epistemological principles:

    (a) we know nothing for certain, and may never be able to know anything for certain. (the most parsimonious non tautological statement possible).
    (b) we know what works and what doesn’t work. Everything else we say is just hypothesis, theory and law
    (c) all knowledge is theoretical (intuition, hypothesis, theory, or law)
    (d) we can combine theories to create models, which themselves are theories.
    (e) To publish a theory (‘distribute an intellectual product for consumption’) one must subject it tests (Provide a Warranty) stating that it is:

    i) consistent (logical)
    ii) correspondent (correlative)
    iii) empirical (observable)
    iv) operational (existentially possible)
    v) falsifiable
    vi) reasonably falsified

    The scientific method consists, if anything, in meeting these moral constraints upon their statements. It is their job to speak truthfully. But they never claim to state the truth. Even mathematicians (of any degree of sophistication) will say that truth is a problem of philosophy, while proof is a problem of mathematics.

    Mises’ argument is false because there are no non-trivial, non-tautological, certain, premises. If, as Einstein demonstrated, even time and length are concepts that we cannot count upon (length is the argument used to demonstrate the fallacy of even geometric premises). While we may imagine a point or a line, we cannot construct one. While we may imagine infinite sets, we cannot construct one. While we may imagine the square root of two, it cannot exist without a physical context to determine its arbitrary precision and therefore its existence.

    So no. Mises’ rationalism is a good story. But it’s just a story. An analogy.

    In order to warranty a statement as truthfully represented, it must meet the criteria that scientists have put forward. Science is merely a moral discipline for the purpose of truth telling. If we cannot say it scientifically then we cannot warrant that we are saying it truthfully: free of all possible error, bias, and deception.

    Mises was trying to combat the abuse of pseudoscience in economics, but he did not, as Brouwer did in math and Bridgman did in physics, discover Intuitionism, Operationalism and Operationism: the necessary test of existential possibility that checks our premises against the context in which we apply them. Praxeology was very close. But he got it wrong. If we see him in this light, as failing in economics where others succeeded in math and science, we can see Mises as part of a triumvirate that tried to add a new moral constraint to the sciences consistent with, or perhaps as an extension of falsification.
    It is unfortunate, since the reason Brouwer and Bridgman were not influential was that they failed to grasp that they were making a moral argument to the externalities caused by failing to demonstrate tests of existential possibility. whereas in economics, EVERYTHING WE WORRY ABOUT IS A PRODUCT OF EXTERNALITIES.

    Had Mises gone with Science rather than Rationalism we might have saved a century of semi-pseudoscientific argument only recently overthrown. Because in economics, externalities matter. It matters that Keynesian macro is an attempt to justify the manufacture of vast, slowly accumulating, negative externalities that burn down social and genetic capital. It matters that mathematicians talk about a mathematical reality that does not and cannot exist; that Cantorian sets are a bit of verbal nonsense by which to substitute quantity in timeless state, with frequency in a state where time is present. It matters that mathematical physics has seem to be nearly fruitless compared to physical experimentation, and that the entire multiple-world hypothesis was as nonsensical as we intuited.

    Externalities matter. And that is before we start talking about postmodernism: the most elaborate lie developed since the invention of theism.

    So the truthful, testifiable statement, is not the one Mises makes, but that no economic statement that cannot be reduced to sympathetically testable operations can be true. AND any economic proposition that has not been reduced to a sequence of sympathetically testable operations can be stated to be ethical and or moral.

    So no statement that is not open to sympathetic testing (falsification) by operational means (sympathetic testing) can be ‘true’, nor ‘scientific’ since ‘scientific’ refers to morally warrantable constraint upon one’s statements.

    Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute 

    L’viv, Ukraine.

  • More Examples of Arguing With Well Intentioned But Misguided Folk

    –Still not a peep about: “Even though it is perfectly true and perfectly logical that humans are subjective beings there are some who cannot fathom a scientific subjective methodology.”– Bruce Koerber

    [T]he question is not whether we can practice a subjective methodology. Nor is it honest to use psychologism as a criticism when the question is whether such a method is a logical possibility or is empirically demonstrable. (It is dishonest actually – and psychological criticism is immoral because it is dishonest.) Instead, the question is whether subjectivity yields results – empirically it doesn’t, empirically it hasn’t, and logically it can’t. This is because of a tragically simple reason: subjective testing is not axiomatic in that it is complete (the distinguishing property of an axiom). But it is instead, that economic laws, constitute “laws” (in the spectrum of intuition, hypothesis, theory and law) meaning that it they are general rules of limited precision, widely accepted, that we cannot find false.

    We can certainly TEST economic statements. But we cannot deduce economic phenomenon, nor can we observe economic phenomenon, particularly emergent economic phenomenon, without empirical methods. We can test data all day long. We do.

    The logical possibility does not exist. We cannot and do not imagine (deduce) economic phenomenon, because economic phenomenon are emergent and inter-temporally equilibrating without every reaching equilibrium. Man is also fraught with an increasing number of cognitive biases. In other words, those phenomenon are too complicated to observe and predict. This is why there are so many outstanding problems in economic theory – it’s terribly complicated.

    So the unique property of economics is that we can test first principles (human subjectivity),rather than resort to purely correlative tests. In this sense we can know if economic theories can be true, in a way that we cannot know if theories in other science can be true. And even if we know that they CAN be true, we do not know if they are ‘true’ in the metaphysical sense, of being the most parsimonious theory possible.

    We can for example, construct a mathematica proof given any set of axioms. this mathematical proof demonstrates that any mathematical expression is can be constructed using mathematical operations. We can also demonstrate a proof in economics if any economic statement can be constructed from sympathetically testable existentially possible, human operations. But mathematical models cannot demonstrate innovation due to self awareness, and intentionally bend or break axioms in order to satisfy self interest – but humans can, and do – that is what even Keyensian economics combined with trade, fiscal and monetary policy attempt to do – and successfully do.

    It is therefore immoral and unscientific (an abuse of science) to claim that economic theories that are not operationally tested are true and moral. Whether we use empirical methods to observe and test our observations of economic phenomenon is merely a necessity of observation, and a necessity of compensating for our cognitive biases that forever jaundice our reason.

    There is no exit from the above box. Sorry.

    (Plenty of ‘peeps’ in there.)

  • More Examples of Arguing With Well Intentioned But Misguided Folk

    –Still not a peep about: “Even though it is perfectly true and perfectly logical that humans are subjective beings there are some who cannot fathom a scientific subjective methodology.”– Bruce Koerber

    [T]he question is not whether we can practice a subjective methodology. Nor is it honest to use psychologism as a criticism when the question is whether such a method is a logical possibility or is empirically demonstrable. (It is dishonest actually – and psychological criticism is immoral because it is dishonest.) Instead, the question is whether subjectivity yields results – empirically it doesn’t, empirically it hasn’t, and logically it can’t. This is because of a tragically simple reason: subjective testing is not axiomatic in that it is complete (the distinguishing property of an axiom). But it is instead, that economic laws, constitute “laws” (in the spectrum of intuition, hypothesis, theory and law) meaning that it they are general rules of limited precision, widely accepted, that we cannot find false.

    We can certainly TEST economic statements. But we cannot deduce economic phenomenon, nor can we observe economic phenomenon, particularly emergent economic phenomenon, without empirical methods. We can test data all day long. We do.

    The logical possibility does not exist. We cannot and do not imagine (deduce) economic phenomenon, because economic phenomenon are emergent and inter-temporally equilibrating without every reaching equilibrium. Man is also fraught with an increasing number of cognitive biases. In other words, those phenomenon are too complicated to observe and predict. This is why there are so many outstanding problems in economic theory – it’s terribly complicated.

    So the unique property of economics is that we can test first principles (human subjectivity),rather than resort to purely correlative tests. In this sense we can know if economic theories can be true, in a way that we cannot know if theories in other science can be true. And even if we know that they CAN be true, we do not know if they are ‘true’ in the metaphysical sense, of being the most parsimonious theory possible.

    We can for example, construct a mathematica proof given any set of axioms. this mathematical proof demonstrates that any mathematical expression is can be constructed using mathematical operations. We can also demonstrate a proof in economics if any economic statement can be constructed from sympathetically testable existentially possible, human operations. But mathematical models cannot demonstrate innovation due to self awareness, and intentionally bend or break axioms in order to satisfy self interest – but humans can, and do – that is what even Keyensian economics combined with trade, fiscal and monetary policy attempt to do – and successfully do.

    It is therefore immoral and unscientific (an abuse of science) to claim that economic theories that are not operationally tested are true and moral. Whether we use empirical methods to observe and test our observations of economic phenomenon is merely a necessity of observation, and a necessity of compensating for our cognitive biases that forever jaundice our reason.

    There is no exit from the above box. Sorry.

    (Plenty of ‘peeps’ in there.)

  • An Example of Confusing Positivism and Empiricism

    —“Empirical science requires controlled experiments. In economics no such experiments are possible. Even in physics the study of a lone particle does not give us enough information to predict its movement in a many-particle environment, which is basically indeterminate.”– Shivank

    [I]ntelligent response, thanks. But common errors.

    You are confusing Empiricism with Positivism (which is a common fallacy of libertine argument). Empiricism requires observation (sense experience); and measurement is an operational means of ensuring our observations are not as erroneous, biased, or deceptive as they would be without measurements (operationalism). Just as we can observe red shift in physics, we can observe economic phenomenon by means of the measurements (recorded monetary transactions). Furthermore,

    (a) while controlled experiments are helpful in the ascertainment of first principles (reductions), we know the first principles of human cooperation: we can sympathize with intent. We cannot likewise intuit the operations of the physical world – although we seem to be able to model it at various levels of precision. And;

    (b) property rights and rule of law are experiments in economics, and so are fiscal, monetary and trade policy. And we can, and do, experiment and observe them and the emergent (complex and unpredictable) effects non-neutral, pre-equilibration effects of those policies. Also;

    (c) I agree that local phenomenon are kaliedic, and that economic phenomenon equilibrate (are largely neutral). But that does not mean that the effects of actions do not produce consequences that influence the organization and rates of equilibration of the ‘particles’ (people). And finally;

    (d) we can construct theoretical models from economic laws. We cannot construct axiomatic models from economic axioms. This is because in any axiomatic (prescriptive) system all information is present, while in all theoretical (descriptive) systems, information is always incomplete.

    And so it is either erroneous or disingenuous to state that real world (incomplete) models, are identical to imaginary (complete) models. Even geometry failed Mises’ test: length was not what we thought it was at very great or very small scale.

    So while complete, prescriptive, axiomatic systems, and incomplete, descriptive, theoretical systems, are are similar – analogous – they are not identical. Deduction is possible in an axiomatic system, but such deduction is not possible in a system of laws with an equal level of precision. This is because in an axiomatic system, the principle of arbitrary precision remains constant, while in a theoretic system, the principle of arbitrary precision does not remain constant – local variation due to dynamic interaction in real time, as you suggest, produces kaleidic results, and attempts at measurement influence the the outcome.

    It is not that economic phenomenon cannot be stated as laws. It is that emergent phenomenon cannot be deduced from the axioms in economics for precisely the reasons you suggest that mises is correct. This is why economics is an empirical science just like any other science: because science is a set of moral constraint upon us, independent of the subject matter, in an attempt to eliminate error, bias, and deception. And Mises’ himself makes fairly significant errors in conflating the prescriptive, logical, axiomatic and deterministic, with the descriptive, theoretical, empirical and kaleidic.

    Mises was ostracized from economics for reasons. They were good reasons. He embraced pseudoscience.

    Ergo, my argument stands.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    L’viv Ukraine.

  • An Example of Confusing Positivism and Empiricism

    —“Empirical science requires controlled experiments. In economics no such experiments are possible. Even in physics the study of a lone particle does not give us enough information to predict its movement in a many-particle environment, which is basically indeterminate.”– Shivank

    [I]ntelligent response, thanks. But common errors.

    You are confusing Empiricism with Positivism (which is a common fallacy of libertine argument). Empiricism requires observation (sense experience); and measurement is an operational means of ensuring our observations are not as erroneous, biased, or deceptive as they would be without measurements (operationalism). Just as we can observe red shift in physics, we can observe economic phenomenon by means of the measurements (recorded monetary transactions). Furthermore,

    (a) while controlled experiments are helpful in the ascertainment of first principles (reductions), we know the first principles of human cooperation: we can sympathize with intent. We cannot likewise intuit the operations of the physical world – although we seem to be able to model it at various levels of precision. And;

    (b) property rights and rule of law are experiments in economics, and so are fiscal, monetary and trade policy. And we can, and do, experiment and observe them and the emergent (complex and unpredictable) effects non-neutral, pre-equilibration effects of those policies. Also;

    (c) I agree that local phenomenon are kaliedic, and that economic phenomenon equilibrate (are largely neutral). But that does not mean that the effects of actions do not produce consequences that influence the organization and rates of equilibration of the ‘particles’ (people). And finally;

    (d) we can construct theoretical models from economic laws. We cannot construct axiomatic models from economic axioms. This is because in any axiomatic (prescriptive) system all information is present, while in all theoretical (descriptive) systems, information is always incomplete.

    And so it is either erroneous or disingenuous to state that real world (incomplete) models, are identical to imaginary (complete) models. Even geometry failed Mises’ test: length was not what we thought it was at very great or very small scale.

    So while complete, prescriptive, axiomatic systems, and incomplete, descriptive, theoretical systems, are are similar – analogous – they are not identical. Deduction is possible in an axiomatic system, but such deduction is not possible in a system of laws with an equal level of precision. This is because in an axiomatic system, the principle of arbitrary precision remains constant, while in a theoretic system, the principle of arbitrary precision does not remain constant – local variation due to dynamic interaction in real time, as you suggest, produces kaleidic results, and attempts at measurement influence the the outcome.

    It is not that economic phenomenon cannot be stated as laws. It is that emergent phenomenon cannot be deduced from the axioms in economics for precisely the reasons you suggest that mises is correct. This is why economics is an empirical science just like any other science: because science is a set of moral constraint upon us, independent of the subject matter, in an attempt to eliminate error, bias, and deception. And Mises’ himself makes fairly significant errors in conflating the prescriptive, logical, axiomatic and deterministic, with the descriptive, theoretical, empirical and kaleidic.

    Mises was ostracized from economics for reasons. They were good reasons. He embraced pseudoscience.

    Ergo, my argument stands.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    L’viv Ukraine.

  • Learning From Debating Moral But Misguided People

    —“What is unscientific is the claim that a subjective being can be represented by a method that does not recognize subjectivity. No data can contain the information that it ‘supposedly’ contains. This is misrepresentation. And no person can interpret the data associated with another person since they are not that person at that time and place. This is not science it is hearsay. …. What the hermeneutic does not realize or care to reveal is that there is no alternative to the methodology of subjectivism in the human sciences if science is the pursuit. Science is not the captive of methodology but rather methodology (and it has to be the correct one) is the lens of science.”—Bruce Koerber


    [B]ruce,

    You know, you seem like a moral man, a deeply sentimental moral man, and I really don’t like fighting with moral men. But I have a job to do. And I think it’s an important job. And frankly you aren’t a problem because you are visibly a moral man. Like a wondering christian missionary you are trying to do good albeit doing good with mythology. And really, mythology is enough for simple people. Mythology conveys meaning by analogy. Meaning is all that is available to them since truth is too complicated for them to access and convert into new meaning. Truth devoid of meaning is expensive. Mentally expensive. And time intensive.


    So I am sorry that I stepped on you in the FB forum. In my world I am just doing my job. And I think it is an important one: to rescue moral economics from the lunatic fringe, by restating it scientifically – meaning truthfully. But it’s my moral duty, as a moral man, to do this job. That is how I see it.

    So lets look at your argument here and I’ll expose it for what it is:

    –“What is unscientific is the claim that a subjective being can be represented by a method that does not recognize subjectivity.”—

    AND
    —“No data can contain the information that it ‘supposedly’ contains.”—

    No one supposes data contains anything. That is a false argument. Facts exist within theories. They correspond to theories or they do not correspond to theories. We ether seek to falsify theories (criticism) or we seek to ‘support’ theories (confirmation bias). If we seek to falsify a theory and the result does not falsify it, but continues to confirm it, then the theory survives. Some theories defeat other theories by this means. And we largely defeat theories by narrowing their scope (parsimony). Because few theories outside of the mystical are non-correspondent (that is why we come up with them), but they fail under criticism (they are insufficiently correspondent). So the argument you are making assumes positivism not observation and criticism. Science progresses not through positivism, but through observation (empiricism) and criticism, in which we attempt to launder imaginary relations (content) from our theories, so that what remains is truth candidate.

    —“This is misrepresentation. And no person can interpret the data associated with another person since they are not that person at that time and place. This is not science it is hearsay. “—


    If this is true then no study of deductive human action is possible – you have falsified your how hypothesis. Instead, your statement is only true at the experiential level not at the demonstrated level. We cannot predict an individuals action at any given moment, but we can do two things (a) explain it afterward given the conditions – or at least falsify some large number of the possibilities (b) collect records of preferences demonstrated under similar conditions. So like any empirical observation we cannot predict the state of any very small thing (a molecule of hydrogen in a cloud), however, we can construct general rules of aggregate movements (we can describe cloud formation, and we can describe general rules of human aggregate behavior in an economy: economic laws).


    —“What the hermeneutic does not realize or care to reveal is that there is no alternative to the methodology of subjectivism in the human sciences if science is the pursuit. Science is not the captive of methodology but rather methodology (and it has to be the correct one) is the lens of science.”—

    This is demonstrably false. While we may not claim something is true unless we can explain it as a series of possible (rational, arational and irrational) human actions, (and in Propertarianism, further constrained by fully informed voluntary exchange), meaning that we have subjected it to operational and intuitionistic (subjective) testing, we certainly CAN use empirical observations in an attempt to understand the phenomenon that we cannot deduce.
    (continued…)
    (…continued)
    This does not mean that you cannot attempt to perform deductive analysis and research. It means that you cannot claim empirical analysis is unscientific, nor that economic analysis must be constrained to the deductive.


    This is why economics is no different from any other discipline. Truthful testimony must follow the same constraints no matter what discipline we discover. However, certain disciplines study different properties, and as such some disciplines such as chemistry rarely place contingency upon involuntary transfer (morality) and some such as economics and law always place contingency upon involuntary transfer. As such, in chemistry moral proof is an infrequent necessity, while as in economics it is a permanent necessity.


    As I have stated, (a) science is a moral discipline enumerating warranties that must be given for truthful testimony, (b) economics is bound by those same morals, and (c) operationalism and intuitionism are necessary constraints in all fields, and (d) morality is a necessary constraint in many fields – just less visible).


    Likewise internal consistency is necessary in mathematics, but external correspondence isn’t. Whereas in physics internal consistency and external correspondence and operational definitions are necessary, but morality is rarely a consideration. Whereas in economics, internal consistency, external correspondence, operational construction (proof of existence/falsification against imagination) and morality (falsification of involuntary transfer) are always necessary.


    This approach justifies Austrian economics, as a scientific and moral discipline. Whereas the misesian/rothbardian/hoppeian claims are both pseudoscientific and false both logically and demonstrably.


    So you see, I am trying to save Austrian Economics from the lunatic fringe by restating it as the moral discipline, consistent with all other disciplines, and where all disciplines are equally constrained by moral warranty.


    This is a profound innovation, and reconstruction of western thought and you should ponder it.

    Affections.

    Curt.