NEO-REACTION (REFUTATION OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT THEORIES OF MAN) IS RADICAL, NOT CONSERVATIVE.
It’s an attack on the status quo. But mostly, it’s a return to empiricism. To truth telling. After a century and a half of pseudoscientific and outright deceitful argument to suppress the Darwinian revolution.
Source date (UTC): 2015-04-18 06:25:00 UTC
—Debate is a game in which the interlocutors attempt to defeat each other, typically before an audience whose approbation they strive to secure. —
Wield truth without mercy
Inform the ignorant
Correct the wrong
Punish the wicked
Kill the evil
Source date (UTC): 2015-04-17 04:56:00 UTC
Your confusion is common. Inference and induction vs deduction. Validity vs Truth. Criticism vs Justification.
We can deduce logically within any tautology (in any axiomatic system), because the information is complete.
We can identify contradictions logically (in both axiomatic and rational systems), where information is sufficient to do so.
We cannot *infer* logically a truth proposition, we can only *theorize* logically. Because information is incomplete, and therefore insufficient for deduction.
That is the limit of what logic can do for us: assist us in the test of internal consistency and non-contradiction (an act of criticism or falsification), and assist us in the formation of theories.
In addition, once we construct a theory, we can test a theory:
– We can test for external correspondence (empiricism)
– We can attempt to falsify by external correspondence. (parsimony)
– We can test for existential possibility. (Operational Definitions, Operationalism, Operationism, Intuitionism) and that we are not substituting imaginary information.
– We can test for morality (the absence of involuntary transfer, Propertarianism)
And even then, when we have done our due diligence in internal consistency, external correspondence, attempts at falsification (parsimony), existential possibility free of imaginary substitution,
There are no non-tautological, non-trivial, and therefore certain premises. As such, the limit of logic (and why people like me criticize formal logic when used for other than its narrow utility) is in either falsification of statements, or the construction of theories that can be further tested. But you cannot determine truth propositions of non-tautological non-trivial propositions by logical means.
The function of logic is criticism, not truth. Once exhaustively criticized, you can say an argument or proposition is valid in the sense that it is well constructed. But this says nothing about the truth of the argument or proposition. It says only that it is well constructed.
A theory that survives all criticism has been validated (“strong”), not true. It is the tests themselves that are sufficiently critical to validate the theory. As such, tests are valid, and theories have been validated. Whether we want, in turn, to say that a theory is ‘valid’ is a matter of whether we want to suggest that the theory itself (an instance of an inference), is a criteria for action (worthy of risking costs).
I prefer to refer to “valid tests”, and to “warrantied” or “truthful” theories in order to avoid any taint of justificationism.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine.
Source date (UTC): 2015-04-13 22:49:00 UTC
—“Popularity is not an antidote to deception. … Truth and violence are.”–Christopher Bates
Source date (UTC): 2015-04-13 15:26:00 UTC
A Problem of Analogistic Language (Borrowed Terms)
—“it’s impossible to purge our minds of prejudice. Only after we have made a scientific advance can we then, retroactively, tell that we held onto a prejudice (such as the Earth not moving) that was hindering our progress.”—Michael Phillip
MEANINGS
(a) Prejudice (in the legal sense of the term) as in ‘with prejudice’ is meant to convey ‘punishment’ or ‘teaching of a lesson’. (b)Pre-judgement is necessary for the defeat of time – particularly when the cost of the failure of one’s assumptions is small. (c) Cognitive Bias is to be circumvented at all times. (d) Moral Bias is a reflection of our reproductive strategies, and only a problem when we claim it is a universal truth or good, rather than an expression of our genetic demand.
To avoid this problem I use Prejudice, Pre-judgement, Cognitive Bias, Moral Bias, as discreet terms and do not conflate them by the use of a familiar term (even if colloquially accepted).
INDIVIDUAL AND INTERPERSONAL, CLASS AND POLITICAL
In my experience, and the empirical data supports this, it is illogical to use prejudice on an individual basis, and illogical not to use prejudice in a political context. The reason being that while we cannot judge an individual by the properties of a class, we can judge the class by the demonstrated properties of its individuals. In fact, it is illogical to judge a class other than by the demonstrated properties of individuals.
Source date (UTC): 2015-04-12 03:52:00 UTC
CONFUCIUS AND HIS ANALECTS – NO TRUTH TO BE FOUND
Translated into western language, and read by western minds, the Analects of Confucius sound similar to the writings Plato attributed to Socrates.
But this is an illusion. A less than careful reading reveals that the origin of the sacred texts is indeed speaking of virtue, of fidelity, but not truth.
But… what good is the true, if not good for the commons?
Truth breaks the bias of familialism and renders all men kin.
The truth evolved in the west because it is more valuable than conformity.
This is why in both eras where the martial middle-class was sufficiently able to seize power, that innovation could continue.
Source date (UTC): 2015-04-11 06:42:00 UTC
PROPERTARIANISM AND SATISFACTION IN MORAL ARGUMENT
It is appealing to seek feelings of satisfaction by criticizing the morality of one’s opponents; or the rejection of others’ criticism of one’s opinions on moral grounds.
In propertarianism, we avoid almost all the various emotional distraction, loading, framing, overloading and consequential entanglements by identifying the various forms of property that are affected the described actions, and determine whether voluntary or involuntary transfer is being advocated (or caused), and whether such transfers are truthfully or untruthfully articulated. In this way we make clear arguments in economic terms that are free of loading and framing. But we do not escape the moral conclusion. Because, in the end, if you are a thief or a liar, we call you a thief and a liar. But we do it on logical, internally consistent, and unavoidable grounds.
Religious argument in the form of scriptural decree; it’s reformation into Moral argument as rationalism; and its reformation into pseudoscientific argument as psychologizing; are all forms of deception perpetrated through the use of analogy, loading, framing, overloading, and suggestion, in an attempt to abuse our cognitive and moral biases, by largely guilting and shaming us into justifying one form of parasitism or another: involuntary transfer.
Propertarianism replaces pseudoscientific psychologizing, moral rationalism, and religious scripturalism, with a single universal test, and a single universal operation. That single test being that the only moral action is the fully informed, warrantied, voluntary transfer of property-en-toto, and the single operation of voluntary exchange.
Propertarianism is a language for the logical analysis of the content of moral statements. In propertarianism all moral statements are commensurable. And and all moral questions are decidable.
Source date (UTC): 2015-04-10 16:09:00 UTC
TRUTH IN DISCOURSE ON RUSSIAS AGGRESSION AGAINST UKRAINE
It is one thing to say:
1) THE CONTRACTUAL:
–“–“We are obligated to assist those who desire liberty in the construction of liberty, because the exchange of such insurance is the only possible means by which liberty can be constructed. We believe that we cannot win this fight. But our contract with one another for the preservation and expansion of liberty is an inviolable one without self contradiction, and as such, I saddle up, and go to war in the hope the I err in my estimate of the enemy.”–
2) THE TRUTHFUL AND PRAGMATIC:
–“We are obligated to assist those who desire liberty in the construction of liberty, because the exchange of such insurance is the only possible means by which liberty can be constructed. However we believe that we cannot win this fight.”–
3) AN IRRELEVANT JUSTIFICTATION FOR FREE RIDING
“the USA does not need another war to fight, and it only expands the state and bureaucracy”.
OR
“I want americans to withdraw from around the world”
VERSUS
4) AN IMMORAL JUSTIFICATION OF FREE RIDING
–“Russians were justified in the combination of deceit and aggression.”—
VERSUS
5) AN OUTRIGHT DECEIT AND CONSPIRATORIAL ACTION
–“Russians did not commit an act of deceit or aggression”–
Immoral-tarians choose the fourth and fifth options. Classical liberal pragmatists the third, and aristocracy the first two.
There is only one liberty possible: aristocracy.
Source date (UTC): 2015-04-10 06:09:00 UTC
[I] have chosen the term ‘Operationalism’ over Praxeology, Actions, Intuitionism, and Operationism because it seems most intuitive given our language’s use of ‘Mathematical operations”, and “Human Actions”.
Ray (who is very helpful) does the logical thing which is treat critics of critical rationalism’s early errors as behind-the-times or ignorant, while himself making the same mistake. Because we all do. However, I have tried to repair the individual errors of the last century by uniting and repairing Critical Rationalism’s emphasis on criticsm (but painful use of analogy), and combining the various attempts to construct criticism in other fields.
So (Irony being what it is) critical rationalism (philosophy), intuitionism (mathematics), praxeology(economics), operationalism(physics), operationism(psychology), strict constructionism(law), are all parallel developments that occurred in human thought in multiple disciplines, as we evolved our scope of scientific inquiry beyond human scale; and therefore when the ‘arbitrary precision’ of the language and concepts that we had evolved WITHIN human scale, reached their limits and began to fail us. Or technically speaking, we assumed the continuous application properties predictively useful at a prior level of precision, into conditions where they no longer held.
Secondly, as as we converted from human-scale to beyond-human-scale, the problem we faced was not identifying success, but identifying error. (This is an information problem. And Taleb isn’t quite there in piecing this together yet, but he is getting very close with the math of late.) In other words, we changed from trying to find things that worked, to trying to find things that failed. And that is because we changed from individuals making discoveries, to a division of labor in the process of discovery. We changed from the high cost of experimentation, to the high cost of propagating error.
In Propertarianism I have tried to reform the 19th-20th century’s errors by completing the unification of the process of justification – which is necessary for moral testimony and in particular warranty – with criticism, which is necessary for scientific testimony. And where scientific testimony is more correctly stated as truthful testimony, that has been warrantied by due diligence (criticism) to be free of imaginary content.
I know that most people are interested in my political and moral arguments – because they advance their agendas (or refute them). But as far as I know this repair to philosophy and the merger of philosophy and science into a single discipline is my greatest achievement so far.
ORIGINAL POST:
***Ray Scott Percival***
Operationalism has insuperable problems similar to logical positivism. This article is a nice synopsis of the rise and fall of operationalism, Ala the physicist Bridgeman. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/operationalism/
***Curt Doolittle***
I cannot be accountable for the errors of prior generations, I can only seek to repair them. smile emoticon And as far as I know I have done so.
Operationalism(science), Intuitionism(mathematics), Operationism(psychology), Praxeology/Propertarianism(economics) must be seen as instances of criticism. It is the criticism first, that ensures that we have not misapplied extant concepts beyond the limits of their arbitrary precision; and second, that each named sequence of our observations is existentially possible, and third, free of imaginary content – particularly imaginary content supplied by analogy.
So, collectively, the set of criticisms must be seen as provisions for the issue of warranty of due diligence. In other words, that we have not polluted the informational commons in a world where investigation is distributed (and therefore one has exported costs upon others), and where the expectation of our contribution to the informational commons is a contribution, not a harm.
And, any theory, in order for one to attest that it is truthful, must be criticized( falsified) by tests of:
1) external correspondence
2) internal consistency (logic)
3) existential possibility and freedom from imaginary content (operationalism/intuitionism/operationism/propertarianism)
4) parsimony (falsification)
5) morality (consisting entirely of voluntary transfer)
6) warranty (promise of having performed all criticism)
We cannot know if something is true, but we can warranty that it is truthful. If a statement provides explanatory power, and is truthfully constructed, we can testify that it is true for known applications.
But as Bridgman pointed out, there are no certain premises, because any rule of arbitrary precision (theory) likely fails at some scale. (This is a superior restatement of infinitely parsimonious scientific truth in critical rationalism.) Since there are no certain premises there are no certain non-tautological deductions – at scale. However, it is problems of scale – those beyond our senses, and those at the margins of our instruments – that we struggle to solve.
As such, our definition of a ‘true’ theory is mistaken. A theory is truthful if we have performed due diligence. A theory is true if it works at scales we currently comprehend. If the scale changes, and we improve precision, that does not invalidate the theory, but improves it. A complete theory is one in which no further parsimony is possible.
Or stated differently, we cannot treat theories as analogies wherein properties are transferred for the purpose of transferring meaning. Theories are names for categories of similar operations that produce similar outcomes. We can theorize by any means possible, but no matter how we theorize, we cannot justify a theory, we can only criticize it or state that the cost of failure using the extant theory is less than the cost of investigating a new one. We can justify our actions but not our theories. We can justify adherence to moral, legal, an contractual norms, but we cannot justify our theories.
For example, Einstein improves upon Newton, he does not render Newton false. Just as someone will undoubtably improve Einstein, not necessarily render him false. The purpose of a theory is to provide us with case independent explanatory power.
That is all it can do for us. And as such good theories can save us effort and risk and provide us with rewards while useless theories do not – not because of the theory but because of the results. And bad theories merely waste our time and effort.
Even pure (non-correspondent) mathematics fails, since, for example, infinities are impossible to construct. So even mathematical rules that remain consistent regardless of scale (which is the point of logic of ratios), are only useful as ideals. And the failure of those ideals at scale assists us in identifying the physical properties of the universe.
So by whatever name we call it “warranty of existential possibility and freedom from imaginary content”, the form of criticism I refer to as Operationalism holds. It holds because it is the only means of warrantying that we are not substituting imaginary information into an observation.
Operations constitute names. All else is analogy. Analogies allow – if not mandate – the introduction of external, imaginary information, by the natural process of substitution that makes the human mind useful for theorizing.
Worse, analogies can be used for loading, framing, overloading and suggestion, and as such have been the source of error and deceit – not only in anglo, but in german, and jewish enlightenment thought.
(I solved it. That’s just how it is. I didn’t set out to. But I did. CR requires a minor reformation. Austrian econ a minor reformation. And political theory a major one – away from monopoly rule, and into a market for commons. Science can be more correctly described as the disciple of truth telling, and that there is no difference between philosophy and science any longer. And we can abandon psychology forever as one of the most destructive theoretical systems ever developed. Only monotheism and Marxism/Keynesianism were worse.)
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine.
[I] have chosen the term ‘Operationalism’ over Praxeology, Actions, Intuitionism, and Operationism because it seems most intuitive given our language’s use of ‘Mathematical operations”, and “Human Actions”.
Ray (who is very helpful) does the logical thing which is treat critics of critical rationalism’s early errors as behind-the-times or ignorant, while himself making the same mistake. Because we all do. However, I have tried to repair the individual errors of the last century by uniting and repairing Critical Rationalism’s emphasis on criticsm (but painful use of analogy), and combining the various attempts to construct criticism in other fields.
So (Irony being what it is) critical rationalism (philosophy), intuitionism (mathematics), praxeology(economics), operationalism(physics), operationism(psychology), strict constructionism(law), are all parallel developments that occurred in human thought in multiple disciplines, as we evolved our scope of scientific inquiry beyond human scale; and therefore when the ‘arbitrary precision’ of the language and concepts that we had evolved WITHIN human scale, reached their limits and began to fail us. Or technically speaking, we assumed the continuous application properties predictively useful at a prior level of precision, into conditions where they no longer held.
Secondly, as as we converted from human-scale to beyond-human-scale, the problem we faced was not identifying success, but identifying error. (This is an information problem. And Taleb isn’t quite there in piecing this together yet, but he is getting very close with the math of late.) In other words, we changed from trying to find things that worked, to trying to find things that failed. And that is because we changed from individuals making discoveries, to a division of labor in the process of discovery. We changed from the high cost of experimentation, to the high cost of propagating error.
In Propertarianism I have tried to reform the 19th-20th century’s errors by completing the unification of the process of justification – which is necessary for moral testimony and in particular warranty – with criticism, which is necessary for scientific testimony. And where scientific testimony is more correctly stated as truthful testimony, that has been warrantied by due diligence (criticism) to be free of imaginary content.
I know that most people are interested in my political and moral arguments – because they advance their agendas (or refute them). But as far as I know this repair to philosophy and the merger of philosophy and science into a single discipline is my greatest achievement so far.
ORIGINAL POST:
***Ray Scott Percival***
Operationalism has insuperable problems similar to logical positivism. This article is a nice synopsis of the rise and fall of operationalism, Ala the physicist Bridgeman. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/operationalism/
***Curt Doolittle***
I cannot be accountable for the errors of prior generations, I can only seek to repair them. smile emoticon And as far as I know I have done so.
Operationalism(science), Intuitionism(mathematics), Operationism(psychology), Praxeology/Propertarianism(economics) must be seen as instances of criticism. It is the criticism first, that ensures that we have not misapplied extant concepts beyond the limits of their arbitrary precision; and second, that each named sequence of our observations is existentially possible, and third, free of imaginary content – particularly imaginary content supplied by analogy.
So, collectively, the set of criticisms must be seen as provisions for the issue of warranty of due diligence. In other words, that we have not polluted the informational commons in a world where investigation is distributed (and therefore one has exported costs upon others), and where the expectation of our contribution to the informational commons is a contribution, not a harm.
And, any theory, in order for one to attest that it is truthful, must be criticized( falsified) by tests of:
1) external correspondence
2) internal consistency (logic)
3) existential possibility and freedom from imaginary content (operationalism/intuitionism/operationism/propertarianism)
4) parsimony (falsification)
5) morality (consisting entirely of voluntary transfer)
6) warranty (promise of having performed all criticism)
We cannot know if something is true, but we can warranty that it is truthful. If a statement provides explanatory power, and is truthfully constructed, we can testify that it is true for known applications.
But as Bridgman pointed out, there are no certain premises, because any rule of arbitrary precision (theory) likely fails at some scale. (This is a superior restatement of infinitely parsimonious scientific truth in critical rationalism.) Since there are no certain premises there are no certain non-tautological deductions – at scale. However, it is problems of scale – those beyond our senses, and those at the margins of our instruments – that we struggle to solve.
As such, our definition of a ‘true’ theory is mistaken. A theory is truthful if we have performed due diligence. A theory is true if it works at scales we currently comprehend. If the scale changes, and we improve precision, that does not invalidate the theory, but improves it. A complete theory is one in which no further parsimony is possible.
Or stated differently, we cannot treat theories as analogies wherein properties are transferred for the purpose of transferring meaning. Theories are names for categories of similar operations that produce similar outcomes. We can theorize by any means possible, but no matter how we theorize, we cannot justify a theory, we can only criticize it or state that the cost of failure using the extant theory is less than the cost of investigating a new one. We can justify our actions but not our theories. We can justify adherence to moral, legal, an contractual norms, but we cannot justify our theories.
For example, Einstein improves upon Newton, he does not render Newton false. Just as someone will undoubtably improve Einstein, not necessarily render him false. The purpose of a theory is to provide us with case independent explanatory power.
That is all it can do for us. And as such good theories can save us effort and risk and provide us with rewards while useless theories do not – not because of the theory but because of the results. And bad theories merely waste our time and effort.
Even pure (non-correspondent) mathematics fails, since, for example, infinities are impossible to construct. So even mathematical rules that remain consistent regardless of scale (which is the point of logic of ratios), are only useful as ideals. And the failure of those ideals at scale assists us in identifying the physical properties of the universe.
So by whatever name we call it “warranty of existential possibility and freedom from imaginary content”, the form of criticism I refer to as Operationalism holds. It holds because it is the only means of warrantying that we are not substituting imaginary information into an observation.
Operations constitute names. All else is analogy. Analogies allow – if not mandate – the introduction of external, imaginary information, by the natural process of substitution that makes the human mind useful for theorizing.
Worse, analogies can be used for loading, framing, overloading and suggestion, and as such have been the source of error and deceit – not only in anglo, but in german, and jewish enlightenment thought.
(I solved it. That’s just how it is. I didn’t set out to. But I did. CR requires a minor reformation. Austrian econ a minor reformation. And political theory a major one – away from monopoly rule, and into a market for commons. Science can be more correctly described as the disciple of truth telling, and that there is no difference between philosophy and science any longer. And we can abandon psychology forever as one of the most destructive theoretical systems ever developed. Only monotheism and Marxism/Keynesianism were worse.)
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine.