Curt Doolittle

Theme: Truth

  • OPERATIONALISM, TRUTH AND HONESTY (a little deep for FB, but worth reading) (sho

    OPERATIONALISM, TRUTH AND HONESTY

    (a little deep for FB, but worth reading) (should be getting easier to understand)

    I’m going to ‘correct’ this statement by Brouwer, and say that the (law of the excluded middle) LEM was abstracted from contexts of correspondent precision, to general statements, independent of context and therefore of arbitrary precision. (The same criticism applies to the AOC: axiom of choice.)

    —“Intuitionistic logic can be succinctly described as classical logic without the Aristotelian law of excluded middle (LEM): (A ∨ ¬A) or the classical law of double negation elimination (¬ ¬A → A), but with the law of contradiction (A → B) → ((A → ¬B) → ¬A) and ex falso quodlibet: (¬A → (A → B)). Brouwer [1908] observed that LEM was abstracted from finite situations, then extended without justification to statements about infinite collections.”— S.E.P.

    The fact that these philosophers and mathematicians failed to see the implication of their work on intuitionism and operationalism as one of arbitrary precision, is as humorous or ironic, as it is that advocates of praxeology (operationalism in economics) rely passionately on apriorism. In hindsight (since I only intuited this problem and did not immediately understand it) this is all absurdly obvious. But the work to remove ‘spiritual and platonistic’ language from our vocabulary and our thoughts is still in need of a great deal of work. As an Operationalist, when I hear people rely upon Continental and Cosmopolitan arguments, I hear exactly what an atheist hears when he listens to religious arguments: really weak and ill founded analogy and nothing more.

    The insight that we find from studying the loss of precision (context) in the construction of general rules in mathematics, and therefore the loss of LEM and AOC, can be applied to economics, where we lost constant relations. We can no longer predict constant relations out of a causally dense, kaleidic system, open to black swans. But that does not prevent us from using analysis of events to describe general cases, and from those general cases, attempt to state those cases in operational language. And once stated in operational language to determine whether or not they possess the status of laws (subject to manipulation, shocks and black swans, but as general rules, subject to the limits of non-contradiction).

    In my attempt to reform ethics and politics, I am fighting an extraordinarily difficult battle that essentially boils down to ‘your linguistic conveniences and contrivances, which provide such utility, and as such which you understand as knowledge of use, are, like religious analogies, producers of profound social and economic external consequences, because those analogies are as devoid of knowledge of construction as are religious arguments.”

    Math works. Religion ‘works’ too. That something ‘works’ does not mean you understand its construction, or the external consequences of your employment of analogy rather than description. That mathematics, other than the natural numbers, consists entirely of functions, not numbers, is a matter of convention, not reality.

    if you cannot state something in operational language you do not understand it. If you do not understand it you cannot make truth claims about it. Its impossible. Period. You can state an hypothesis. But you cannot claim it is true. And once aware of this fact, you cannot claim you are making an honest statement either.

    This is the insight that I want to bring to praxeology and economics. To restore ethics and morality to economics and politics by the requirement for operational language. To require fully informed, warrantied, productive, voluntary exchange free of negative externality (free riding), rather than the construction of laws (commands), constructed of moralistic deceptions.

    Because cooperation is either mutually beneficial or it is parasitism, and that is a contradiction. Cooperation is either fully informed, warrantied, productive exchange free of negative externality (free riding) or it is by law of contradiction, not cooperation but parasitism, conquest, or destruction.

    And one need not abandon his wealth of violence, nor refrain from violence when he is the subject of non cooperation: parasitism, conquest, or destruction.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    The Philosophy of Aristocracy

    Kiev Ukraine.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-24 03:16:00 UTC

  • IN DEFENSE OF EMPIRICISM, OPERATIONALISM AND INSTRUMENTALISM. Theories must some

    IN DEFENSE OF EMPIRICISM, OPERATIONALISM AND INSTRUMENTALISM.

    Theories must somehow be made extant (constructed). What action renders them extant? If falsification hardens theories, why must they be hardened? What is the purpose of talking about that which we imagine, if not to test it? Why do we need truth except to test correspondence with reality?

    I intuit a problem. I imagine a theory. I describe it in words. I imagine a test of that theory. I construct a test of that theory using instrumentation. I test that theory by taking actions to do so. I observe the results of those actions with and without instrumentation. (repeat).

    This process requires observation (empiricism), instruments(instrumentalism), operations(operationalism). But in all cases, we start with intuition (pre-cognitive) and imagination (cognitive), and in all cases, all observations of actions in the real world must be reduced to an analogy to experience such that we can apprehend it with our senses. With practice we can learn to habituate general rules that we in turn can apprehend, because of habituation of individual cases. But in all cases, we apprehend only what we can apprehend with our senses.

    Likewise we lack the ability to compare and contrast complex information, and as such we must rely on instrumentation (numbers, symbols, transformations (operations) to assist us in our thinking.

    Note that In the preceding three paragraphs I rely upon actions, not platonism or obscurantism (the use of ‘is’).

    Falsification forces us to overcome the cognitive bias of confirmation (a biological necessity for the conservation of energy). Operationalism forces us to overcome the cognitive bias of conflating imagination and action such that we know whether or not we understand the means of constructing (acting) such that the concepts we rely upon are understood, and therefore our claims are ‘true’ – or whether they are conveniently not understood and therefore our claims CANNOT be true and are therefore ‘false’.

    One cannot attest to unconstructed imagination and make a true statement, any more than one can attest to the truth of a theory that has not been subject to falsification.

    As far as I know it is impossible to refute this argument, and it is, at least in sketch, a refutation of Kant’s appeal to the authority of apriorism. And that refutation is supported by the relatively recent findings of cognitive science and experimental psychology.

    This bundle of ideas meaning that the failure of the previous generation in which popper was a member, was an insufficient disregard for remnants of religion and platonist philosophy, entrapment in the russellian program’s attempt at claiming philosophy as science, and an insufficient regard for the operational methods of science.

    If one cannot state one’s concepts in operational language, one does not understand them. And as failing to understand them, cannot levy truth claims about them. Knowledge of use != Knowledge of construction. I may ACT with knowledge of use, but I may not make truth claims without knowledge of construction.

    This constraint for operational language places higher demands on speakers in the same way that falsification places higher demand on speakers.

    Cheers

    Curt

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-24 00:51:00 UTC

  • WHY REFORM IT? JUST REPLACE IT. DIVORCE AND START OVER? I am pretty confident th

    WHY REFORM IT? JUST REPLACE IT. DIVORCE AND START OVER?

    I am pretty confident that the praxeological line of reasoning, as currently constructed, is a dead end, as I’ve argued elsewhere. In no small part because it cannot compete with the universality of the language and processes of the ratio-scientific method. But while an inferior method, it’s still a useful method. And if it helps people understand micro and ethics then that’s good enough.

    The challenge at this inflection point in intellectual history, is that Hoppe has created the formal language of political ethics and political economy, and taught most of us to argue politics ethics and morality in economic terms. Yet that language is unnecessarily dependent upon Argumentation, Continental Rationalism, and a misguided attempt to conflate logic and science, in order to defend against a positivism that is not present in the philosophy or practice of science – if it ever was.

    Logic is axiomatic, and therefore both prescriptive and deductive. Science is theoretic, and therefore descriptive and deductive. But we can make statements in logic that are internally consistent yet not externally correspondent, yet we cannot make theories that fail external correspondence, whether or not our language is internally consistent.

    Comparative ethics, empirically studied, yields a universal descriptive ethics that is theoretically rigid and more sustainable from criticism than rothbardian ethics.

    In all cultures and all civilizations, manners, ethics and morals reflect the necessary rules for organizing reproduction (the family) and the polity of families, such that they may cooperate in whatever structure of production is available to them. The content of those rules, under analysis, can be represented as property rights, each of which is distributed between the individual to the commons. Demand for third party authority as a means of resolving differences (the state) is determined by the degree of suppression of free riding (parasitism), and the number of competing sets of rules (family structures and classes) within any given structure of production. These sets of rules can be expressed as a simple formal grammar, which allows us to render all moral and ethical systems commensurable.

    Macro economics, experimental psychology, and cognitive science have contributed all economic insights over the past three decades, and none of these insights were deducible (cognitive biases in particular), or were emergent effects of economic cooperation (stickiness of prices, the time delay until money achieves neutrality, and the quantitative impact on interest and production in the interim, within each sustainable pattern of specialization and trade.)

    So, WHICH IS MORE PARSIMONIOUS A THEORY?

    Which theory is easier to understand?

    Which theory is more obscurant?

    Which more accurately reflects reality?

    I can explain and demonstrate this theory to anyone with a ratio-scientific background. I know this because it is simply an advancement to Ostrom’s work on institutions and she was able to do so.

    Cheers.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-21 04:37:00 UTC

  • OF POPPER BY WAY OF REVIEW OF ‘MISREADING POPPER’. Great book. Got a chance to r

    http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00K9FYT62REVIEW OF POPPER BY WAY OF REVIEW OF ‘MISREADING POPPER’.

    Great book. Got a chance to read it this morning.

    THOUGHTS

    I do not know if it is fair to say that people misread popper, or that popper failed to make his case, but that he failed to reduce his ideas to general assertions that obviate the need to sympathetically (intuitively) agree with him in the first place in order to understand his case. Popper attempts to speak analytically at times, but he remains (as Alex Naraniecki has pointed out) a cosmopolitan author. The Popperian work that needs to be written is the one that this one ALMOST is, and that is to construct assertions that render the criticisms unnecessary.

    The historical parts of this book are exceptional and contextual, and in my view the best to date. A few of Rafe’s insights are in the book and they are insights that I learned from him years ago. The most important of which was the project to develop a philosophy of the social sciences, and the multiple authors who failed to succeed at that project, and the consequences for all of us, not so much scientifically, but politically an economically , precisely because they failed to succeed in that project.

    However, of those authors, Popper appears, perhaps not so well as Hayek did with law, but better than Mises with his pseudoscience of praxeology, to have come closer to articulating general universal statement of epistemology than anyone else. None the less, all of these authors failed to complete the project. (I think I understand why now.)

    So, Popper did not, like Hume (or Kant who I despise) take us across the finish line. And I suspect, that as Rafe points out in the book, it is because he did not lay out his project, because he was unsure of what it was. He wanted to criticize a prevailing trend, and he succeeded in that criticism. But a criticism in itself is not a positive assertion reducible to analytic terms describing an analogy to experience: a usable theory.

    CR/CP can be reduced to a list of assertions. Falsification is not the central proposition, but a contingent one, and as Rafe points out, an unfortunate choice of words. The scientific method can be generalized as the universal epistemological method, independent of purpose. And perhaps solve the problem of the social sciences. However, that project is incomplete. Given that Popper was largely correct, and that Hayek was largely correct, ( do not value the other authors terribly much), it should be possible to complete this project. But as yet, no one has.

    So again, I think it is an unjust burden to place the error of interpretation upon readers, and instead, to place the failure to organize, prosecute, and articulate the program and his solution to it.

    It is instead, proper I think, to state that Popper made correct assertions, in CR/CP, left his effort at falsification incomplete, and failed to complete the program he intuited but could not articulate. Most of this I believe, is a problem of language and culture. He had the right pieces. But our minds are structured by the language we use, and the culture that we live in, and he could no more escape his than we ours.

    Hopefully someone will write that book. Hopefully the person who writes that book will complete the program. As someone who tries to complete the overarching program myself – although I do not see it as Popperian but as a general problem of false distraction by extant platonic concepts, and the near magical results of the mathematical program despite its platonic concepts and language – legitimizing Popper is not terribly interesting to me. Nor is further promotion of his work as it stands. Nor is suppressing the absurdly persistent human cognitive bias toward justification. The matter at hand is to complete the research program. Hero worship is for priests. Some of us are out working in the mines. And the answer lies there not in hermeneutic interpretation of Popper’s extant works, or those of his successors.

    Great book. I wouldn’t have given it this much thought if it wasn’t. 🙂

    Cheers

    Curt

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-19 06:17:00 UTC

  • Why Did The Philosophers Of Science Only Partly Succeed?

    WHY DID THE PHILOSOPHERS OF SCIENCE ONLY PARTLY SUCCEED? (cross posted for archival purposes) [D]id you ever read a novel, which you felt passionate about, and thought that the story was enthralling and insightful, then returned years later to re-read it thinking it was ok, but childish? You wonder what you were thinking? The story didn’t change, you did. I’ve spent a lot of time on the problems of ethics and politics and found my way to Instrumentalism, Operationalism, and Intuitionism as means of placing higher constraints on our theories (and arguments) such that we are unable to engage in deception and self-deception. So when I read almost all philosophers, popper included, I have the same reaction to their ‘allegorical’ imaginary arguments, that others would have to even weaker allegorical religious or platonist arguments. Now, in many cases, you can convey the same relationships (understanding) through supernatural, platonist, abstract imaginary, and operational terms. But the difference in correspondence between your terms and reality is narrowest at the operational end of that spectrum, and widest at the supernatural end. Popper is one of the best philosophers of the past century. Certainly one who had the most impact upon me. But he had the most impact on me because I am predisposed to think scientifically, and in the manner that he sought to convince us. Only a minority of us are predisposed to think as such. For those who are not so predisposed, they fail to grasp Popper’s arguments. And unlike other philosophers (Smith and Hume for example) Popper failed to sufficiently articulate his ideas such that one not be predisposed to agree with them. And the evidence confirms this. The reverse test is also telling: if one cannot articulate poppers ideas operationally, then one merely agrees with them allegorically, but does not understand them operationally. Now, I can articulate CR/CP operationally, but I’m less certain about falsificationary ideas, and I’m less sure about verisimilitude. If we put popper’s work into the context of ethics and politics, he is in the same position as Taleb, Hayek, and the rest: the moral prohibition on government, is to make small tests and measure the results, rather than large risk-inducing, fragility-creating irreversible programs. However, it is in the interests of the redistributionists, if not all rent-seekers, to do precisely that. Telling us what NOT to do, is very different from telling us WHAT to do. And this is the problem with taking the philosophy of science, which pursues absolute, most parsimonious theories, in pursue of absolute truth, regardless of time and cost, and applying it to human affairs whose purpose is to outwit the dark forces of time and ignorance at the lowest possible current cost. [H]uman cooperation requires solutions to the problem of institutions that facilitate our cooperation in ever expanding ways, most quickly, at the lowest cost. To tell us what we should not do, is not very useful in telling us what we should do. But they cannot tell us what we should do, because they failed to solve the problem of the social science. And they failed to solve that problem, because the dramatic increase in the legitimacy of science due to its successes encouraged philosophers to copy the methods and assumptions of science, which does not equilibrate in reaction to investigation, and apply those methods to human cooperation which does equilibrate in reaction to investigation. As such, Popper remains, largely a moral philosopher. He tells us what not to do. His recommendations are simple enough to apply to the problem of science, which does NOT require complex coordination in real time, and incentives needed to construct a voluntary organization of production. But it is not explanatory enough, that he could provide a solution to the problem of I suspect that he maintained the error of classical liberalism: “Us and We where there is neither.” Once we abandon that fallacy, politics and ethics are no longer an impossible equation to solve, they are solvable entirely. Because one can calculate means of cooperation, but one cannot calculate ends of cooperation. So, this is why I have a different perspective from you. To move from A to B is one thing. To move from B to C is another. Popper brings us to B. But in light of the fact that the problem is to bring us to C, he fails, like all other philosophers of his era failed. And we continue to bear the problem of that failure. I hope that adds some clarity to my position. Cheers

  • Why Did The Philosophers Of Science Only Partly Succeed?

    WHY DID THE PHILOSOPHERS OF SCIENCE ONLY PARTLY SUCCEED? (cross posted for archival purposes) [D]id you ever read a novel, which you felt passionate about, and thought that the story was enthralling and insightful, then returned years later to re-read it thinking it was ok, but childish? You wonder what you were thinking? The story didn’t change, you did. I’ve spent a lot of time on the problems of ethics and politics and found my way to Instrumentalism, Operationalism, and Intuitionism as means of placing higher constraints on our theories (and arguments) such that we are unable to engage in deception and self-deception. So when I read almost all philosophers, popper included, I have the same reaction to their ‘allegorical’ imaginary arguments, that others would have to even weaker allegorical religious or platonist arguments. Now, in many cases, you can convey the same relationships (understanding) through supernatural, platonist, abstract imaginary, and operational terms. But the difference in correspondence between your terms and reality is narrowest at the operational end of that spectrum, and widest at the supernatural end. Popper is one of the best philosophers of the past century. Certainly one who had the most impact upon me. But he had the most impact on me because I am predisposed to think scientifically, and in the manner that he sought to convince us. Only a minority of us are predisposed to think as such. For those who are not so predisposed, they fail to grasp Popper’s arguments. And unlike other philosophers (Smith and Hume for example) Popper failed to sufficiently articulate his ideas such that one not be predisposed to agree with them. And the evidence confirms this. The reverse test is also telling: if one cannot articulate poppers ideas operationally, then one merely agrees with them allegorically, but does not understand them operationally. Now, I can articulate CR/CP operationally, but I’m less certain about falsificationary ideas, and I’m less sure about verisimilitude. If we put popper’s work into the context of ethics and politics, he is in the same position as Taleb, Hayek, and the rest: the moral prohibition on government, is to make small tests and measure the results, rather than large risk-inducing, fragility-creating irreversible programs. However, it is in the interests of the redistributionists, if not all rent-seekers, to do precisely that. Telling us what NOT to do, is very different from telling us WHAT to do. And this is the problem with taking the philosophy of science, which pursues absolute, most parsimonious theories, in pursue of absolute truth, regardless of time and cost, and applying it to human affairs whose purpose is to outwit the dark forces of time and ignorance at the lowest possible current cost. [H]uman cooperation requires solutions to the problem of institutions that facilitate our cooperation in ever expanding ways, most quickly, at the lowest cost. To tell us what we should not do, is not very useful in telling us what we should do. But they cannot tell us what we should do, because they failed to solve the problem of the social science. And they failed to solve that problem, because the dramatic increase in the legitimacy of science due to its successes encouraged philosophers to copy the methods and assumptions of science, which does not equilibrate in reaction to investigation, and apply those methods to human cooperation which does equilibrate in reaction to investigation. As such, Popper remains, largely a moral philosopher. He tells us what not to do. His recommendations are simple enough to apply to the problem of science, which does NOT require complex coordination in real time, and incentives needed to construct a voluntary organization of production. But it is not explanatory enough, that he could provide a solution to the problem of I suspect that he maintained the error of classical liberalism: “Us and We where there is neither.” Once we abandon that fallacy, politics and ethics are no longer an impossible equation to solve, they are solvable entirely. Because one can calculate means of cooperation, but one cannot calculate ends of cooperation. So, this is why I have a different perspective from you. To move from A to B is one thing. To move from B to C is another. Popper brings us to B. But in light of the fact that the problem is to bring us to C, he fails, like all other philosophers of his era failed. And we continue to bear the problem of that failure. I hope that adds some clarity to my position. Cheers

  • REVELATIONS There are revelations that you are glad you had, and revelations tha

    REVELATIONS

    There are revelations that you are glad you had, and revelations that you’re sad you’ve had. I’ve had a lot of great revelations that filled me with awe. And a small number that have filled me with …. depression.

    Most of us remember when we realized our parents are not people we really should listen to any longer.

    The hard one for me was realizing just how dim most people were. They weren’t evil really. The just don’t know better. The idea of going through life like that, as an ordinary person, was terrifying. I was depressed for months.

    Today was just one of those days where you realize that the number of ‘human’ humans is actually very, very small. And the rest are just trained apes that we hope don’t do too much damage.

    How do you know you’re talking to a human? You know when you cross disciplinary boundaries and someone can follow you, and you them. Because the ultimate wisdom is in how we know what we can know, and how to go about the possibility of knowing it. Regardless of discipline.

    Everyone else is just imitating some behavior or other, like a well trained pet.

    I know why Socrates tried to walk out of athens, and why Lao Tzu and St Patrick did. It seems completely hopeless.

    Sigh. Bad day.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-17 16:54:00 UTC

  • OCCAM’S RAZOR : ARISTOCRATIC EGALITARIAN PROPERTY RIGHTS Under constructionism,

    OCCAM’S RAZOR : ARISTOCRATIC EGALITARIAN PROPERTY RIGHTS

    Under constructionism, you cannot rely upon an argument that you cannot construct. If you cannot construct apriorism, you do not understand it. If one does not understand a truth claim, he cannot claim it is true. Since one cannot construct apriorism, or at least, the matter is in deep dispute, you cannot rely upon it.

    If you cannot construct natural rights, you do not understand them. SInce one cannot construct natural rights, you cannot honestly rely upon it.

    I can construct an agreement for insuring one another’s property rights with any man who is willing and able. This is the source of property rights.

    It is the only source.

    And that is occam’s razor.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-16 10:22:00 UTC

  • ETHICAL REALISM: OPERATIONALISM, INSTRUMENTALISM, INTUITIONISM, EMPIRICISM *Or,

    http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/operationalism/PROPERTARIAN ETHICAL REALISM: OPERATIONALISM, INSTRUMENTALISM, INTUITIONISM, EMPIRICISM

    *Or, how to cure yourself of continental and cosmopolitan obscurantism*

    We can only know enough to act, with the information at our disposal. We can only attest to the truth of statements that we can demonstrate operationally. By articulating a set of statements operationally, as actions in sequence, in time, we expose each statement to subjective tests of truth and rationality. As such, unless we have knowledge of construction, stated in operational language, for all concepts upon which we rely, we cannot honestly make truth claims. That this constraint is already held in the ethics of science, but not in ethics or politics, is the reason why false economic, political, legal, moral, and ethical arguments proliferate. There is no reason extant why we cannot constraint political speech to the same standards of truth as witness in court, or scientific testimony – other than to directly license deception. Our long semi-supernatural history with mathematics has provided false legitimacy to logic and argument for centuries. Operationalism ends this fallacy, and enables us to constrain politics just as we have constrained science, to a requirement for honest statements. It was not possible to levy this constraint until we understood that the unit of commensurability in all moral actions is that of property and fully informed, voluntary exchange. However, with that knowledge nothing prevents us from making universally moral and ethical statements, nor requiring individuals to speak in operational language in order to prevent deception and theft by obscurantist means.

    EMPIRICISM (VS RATIONALISM)

    http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/

    OPERATIONALISM

    Only if we can describe a sequence of actions can we claim to know what it is that we say, and as such make truth claims about our statements.

    http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/operationalism/

    KNOWLEDGE OF USE VS KNOWLEDGE OF CONSTRUCTION

    Operationalism requires that we demonstrate knowledge of construction (causality) while knowledge of use merely demonstrates correlation

    http://www.propertarianism.com/2014/02/15/knowledge-knowlege-of-construction-vs-knowledge-of-use/

    CRITICAL RATIONALISM

    We may make many true statements in the construction of our theories, but whether or not we have made the most parsimonious statements with the greatest explanatory power that is ultimately possible (“The Absolute Truth”) is not available to us. There are no quantifiable measurable denominators to knowledge. The exploration of theories is not tautological, and therefore not logically closed.

    http://www.iep.utm.edu/cr-ratio/

    MATHEMATICAL INTUITIONISM

    http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intuitionism/

    LOGICAL INTUITIONISM

    http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-intuitionistic/

    ETHICAL INTUITIONISM

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_intuitionism

    NATURALISM

    http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism/

    REALISM

    http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/realism/

    SCIENTIFIC REALISM

    http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-realism/

    THE LIMITS OF REASON

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17841838-the-outer-limits-of-reason

    OBSCURANTISM

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obscurantism

    THE PRETENSE OF KNOWLEDGE

    http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/1974/hayek-lecture.html

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-16 06:26:00 UTC

  • The Virtue Of Critical Rationalism

    [T]he chief personal virtue that Critical Rationalism bestows upon you, is the understanding that you never know the ultimate truth, you merely know enough to take action given the knowledge at your disposal, and only by our failures do we learn more about the truth, than we knew before – confirmation may be efficient and rewarding but it does not increase our competitive ability against each other, or against the forces of universe itself.