Curt Doolittle

Theme: Truth

  • THOUGHTS ON OPERATIONALISM AND FALSIFICATIONISM Still thinking because I can’t q

    THOUGHTS ON OPERATIONALISM AND FALSIFICATIONISM

    Still thinking because I can’t quite grasp ..hmm.. and I think it’s like falsification – that if an argument (a theory) isn’t falsifiable then it isn’t scientific. And that …. well, that something isn’t ‘scientific’ is a non-operational statement – its like saying it’s good or heavenly, but that doesn’t tell us anything. Internal consistency, external correspondence and existential possibility do tell us something.

    —“operationalise a concept likes suppression”–

    Damn…. finally… I know how to talk about it…. YAY!

    Thank you Ayelam Valentine Agaliba. For some reason you always give me the most helpful breadcrumbs…. the only people in this world worth anything in epistemology are CR’s.

    I am too under the weather this morning to write something meaningful. But I can now show that the way I am using operationalism is as a further extension of falsificationism for those cases where our sense and perceptions are sufficient for decidability (social sciences). Or I would invert it: that falsification is a lower standard of operationalism for those cases when our sense and perception are insufficient for decidability (the physical universe).

    Well that is a good way to start off a day even if it’s a day with a headache…

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-15 02:54:00 UTC

  • Postmodernism is Pointless, Viscious and Destructive

    (Guest post by Michael Phillip)

    Postmodernism (Pomo) is an intellectual blight, and a moral one. For, as Norman Geras has pointed out, if there is no truth, there is no justice. If there is no truth, there is also no heritage. Creating, in reaction to progressivist post-modernism, PoMo conservatives who are so unaware of the heritage they are supposed to be preserving that they actively undermine it. PoMo conservatism is another manifestation of the destructive intellectual and moral emptiness postmodernism’s attack on truth creates. A conservatism that is not founded in some strong sense of truth, heritage and consequence—but is mere attitude—is not merely pointless, it is vicious and destructive.

  • Postmodernism is Pointless, Viscious and Destructive

    (Guest post by Michael Phillip)

    Postmodernism (Pomo) is an intellectual blight, and a moral one. For, as Norman Geras has pointed out, if there is no truth, there is no justice. If there is no truth, there is also no heritage. Creating, in reaction to progressivist post-modernism, PoMo conservatives who are so unaware of the heritage they are supposed to be preserving that they actively undermine it. PoMo conservatism is another manifestation of the destructive intellectual and moral emptiness postmodernism’s attack on truth creates. A conservatism that is not founded in some strong sense of truth, heritage and consequence—but is mere attitude—is not merely pointless, it is vicious and destructive.

  • Michael Phillip on Postmodernism –“Postmodernism (Pomo) is an intellectual blig

    Michael Phillip on Postmodernism

    –“Postmodernism (Pomo) is an intellectual blight, and a moral one. For, as Norman Geras has pointed out, if there is no truth, there is no justice. If there is no truth, there is also no heritage. Creating, in reaction to progressivist post-modernism, PoMo conservatives who are so unaware of the heritage they are supposed to be preserving that they actively undermine it. PoMo conservatism is another manifestation of the destructive intellectual and moral emptiness postmodernism’s attack on truth creates. A conservatism that is not founded in some strong sense of truth, heritage and consequence—but is mere attitude—is not merely pointless, it is vicious and destructive.”–

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-14 17:28:00 UTC

  • (worth repeating) –“I would say, that I cannot force anyone to hear anything, o

    (worth repeating)

    –“I would say, that I cannot force anyone to hear anything, or to listen, or even to pay attention. What I can do is to punish them for lie and error in words just as we punish them for lie and error in deeds, when those words, like those deeds cause loss of property-en-toto.”–

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-14 03:28:00 UTC

  • They Taught Us To Lie. What is just punishment and restitution for teaching us,

    They Taught Us To Lie. What is just punishment and restitution for teaching us, forcing us, to lie?

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-13 14:39:00 UTC

  • Language Evolved To Negotiate – It Wasn’t Suitable for Truth Telling (Science)

    (Profound)

    [I]f language evolved for us to negotiate with, then it’s no wonder that it is so unsuitable for use as an internal language to understand truth with – to think with.

    Language wasn’t invented to lie with. But it was invented to negotiate with.  

     

  • Language Evolved To Negotiate – It Wasn’t Suitable for Truth Telling (Science)

    (Profound)

    [I]f language evolved for us to negotiate with, then it’s no wonder that it is so unsuitable for use as an internal language to understand truth with – to think with.

    Language wasn’t invented to lie with. But it was invented to negotiate with.  

     

  • Propertarianism Doesn’t Require Cunning – Just Effort and Honesty

    [P]ropertarian reasoning is a formal logic. Once you understand it, it isn’t like dodgy philosophy or dishonest mysticism: you don’t really need to be very cunning.

    Either some proposition is constructable out of human operations on property or it isn’t.

    Once you know the four categories of property that humans demonstrate and the different reproductive strategies we demonstrate, and the different group evolutionary strategies we demonstrate, you can pretty much explain all human political activity.

    And this is different from the physical sciences in the sense that we don’t know the first principles of the universe, but we do know the first principles of man: acquire, defend, cooperate, divide labor, develop information systems for extending cooperation – and justify our reproductive strategies constantly for the purpose of negotiating our cooperation.

    Man is simple it turns out.

  • Propertarianism Doesn’t Require Cunning – Just Effort and Honesty

    [P]ropertarian reasoning is a formal logic. Once you understand it, it isn’t like dodgy philosophy or dishonest mysticism: you don’t really need to be very cunning.

    Either some proposition is constructable out of human operations on property or it isn’t.

    Once you know the four categories of property that humans demonstrate and the different reproductive strategies we demonstrate, and the different group evolutionary strategies we demonstrate, you can pretty much explain all human political activity.

    And this is different from the physical sciences in the sense that we don’t know the first principles of the universe, but we do know the first principles of man: acquire, defend, cooperate, divide labor, develop information systems for extending cooperation – and justify our reproductive strategies constantly for the purpose of negotiating our cooperation.

    Man is simple it turns out.