THE PROBLEM OF COMMUNICATING IDEAS
Ideas are easy to communicate if you start with an assumption and then justify it.
They are a lot harder to communicate if you start with a problem and then try to solve it.
You can only make a simple statement at the end of the process.
Source date (UTC): 2014-04-23 06:26:00 UTC
(FACK) WE ANTHROPOMORPHIZED TRUTH FOR THE SAME REASON WE ANTHROPOMORPHIZED GODS.
Sigh. Argumentation Ethics did teach me something. The vast cost of what we surrender when we enter into debate.
Source date (UTC): 2014-04-23 06:22:00 UTC
–“I am a Popperian falliblist and critical rationalist — by making only forever fallible and likely wrong conjectures and theories I avoid making truth claims which carry burdens of proof/demonstration.”– Frank Lovell.
Conversely, as a Moral Realist, if one makes truth claims, one carries the burden of demonstration.
And, unfortunately, language is a terribly convenient tool for engaging in both deception and self deception. So to prohibit deception as well as self-deception, we must rely on a demonstration of knowledge of construction of terms, not just a knowledge of the use of terms. Just as we must rely upon the demonstration of internal consistency using logic, and external correspondence using tests.
This means that if you make a truth claim using platonic language, you are not demonstrating knowledge of construction.
And therefore is it is not possible to make truth claims under platonism.
You are claiming truth which you cannot demonstrate the knowledge to claim.
Which is unethical.
Source date (UTC): 2014-04-20 17:28:00 UTC
ON COMPREHENSION OF PROPERTARIANISM
I’m trying to put my arms around who understands what, and why. Because I can test pretty clearly each individual, and I see patterns between individuals.
LEVEL 1) POLITICS – Can you understand politics?
(a) The informal and formal institutions of cooperation and coercion, and the ability to model changes to those institutions, and to forecast the results.
(b) Can you distinguish the difference between personal philosophy, informal institutions and moral norms, and formal political institutions. And can you distinguish between making arguments of personal philosophy, moral norms, and political institutions?
The problem I encounter is the inability for individuals to model all three at once, since all three do function at once in any polity.
Eli Harman, Paul Bakhmut, and an increasing number of people who have conservative libertarian intuitions, seem to grasp these matters quickly. Although I think Eli may be a better communicator than I am.
LEVEL 2) ETHICS – Can you understand ethics?
The moral rules necessary for cooperation, and the ability to model changes to those rules given a heterogeneous polity whose incentives vary significantly.
The problem I encounter is moral blindness. Moral blindness combined with the inability to model ethics, or distinguish between philosophy, informal institutions and formal institutions. Or the selective choice of one rather than all three.
Roman Skaskiw grasps these matters immediately.
LEVEL 3) EPISTEMOLOGY – Can you understand epistemology?
The methods by which we ascertain the quality of our understanding of the correspondence between our ideas, our actions that result from our ideas, and the natural world.
I seem to be able to get pretty far with a few Critical Rationalists ( Frank Lovell for example. Ayelam Valentine Agaliba clearly can manage these issues. Better than I can I think.) But even CR’s are locked into pervasive platonism. A platonism they protect with religious zeal.
Philosophy is largely a Platonist discipline. So it’s actually pretty hard to find people with both scientific and economic backgrounds sufficient to grasp the differences between reason, exchange, and science.
I seem to get pretty far with a few mathematical philosophers and professors who were educated before the ‘mystical’ sixties and later.
If I can find mathematicians who have some experience with the problems of mathematical philosophy I seem to have no problem showing them the parallel of their problem in logic, ethics and science. But otherwise, epistemology is simply a pretty hard topic for most people to manage.
We certainly have a problem in libertarianism because of jewish pseudoscientific rationals. And we have a pervasive and crippling problem of german continental platonism. We have a problem of mathematical and logical platonism in anglo analytic philosophy.
LEVEL 4) Can you understand metaphysics?
I cant really get very far with anyone on metaphysics. Skye Stewart is better than I am at grasping different philosophical points of view. But in general, my view of metaphysics is on of absolute Scientific Realism, just as my view of ethics is one of absolute Ethical Realism.
This is not terribly difficult terrain for professional philosophers. But there are not a lot of professional philosophers with libertarian leanings.
SUMMARY
This is a ladder from the least to the most complex problems in political philsophy. And while I may engage some at the lowest level, by the time I reach the highest there are just very few people to converse with.
Source date (UTC): 2014-04-17 18:51:00 UTC
LIBERTARIAN MORAL-SPECTRUM BLINDNESS
You can’t reason with a libertarian who relies upon moral intuition any more than you can reason with a progressive who relies upon moral intuition.
So, it’s pretty clear to me today, that libertarians are as morally blind (or in Haidt’s terms ‘tasteless’) as progressives are (albeit at a different part of the spectrum), and that the only conservatives can carry on a rational moral discussion – because only conservatives are not affected by large moral blind spots. The data says it. But I just experienced it first hand. And I hate what it means. It means that libertarians are just as irrational and impenetrable as progressives.
That doesn’t mean that libertarians haven’t solved the problem of formal institutions. They have. (Hoppe has.) But it means that except as a sort of minority conducting intellectual experiments, libertarians are useless for the purpose of discussing political solutions. They’re by definition ‘immoral’. Or perhaps a form of moral color-blindness in which the majority of the spectrum is invisible to them.
I’m a conservative libertarian. I place a premium on liberty and discount all the other moral values. That’s the definition of the moral intuitions of a libertarian. But that PERSONAL intuition and personal objective, is different from my understanding of POLITICS as a set of institutions that allow heterogeneous peoples to cooperate on means even if they possess competing ends. (Give the citizenry a circus and let their actions sort them out.)
ANALOGY:
1) RED : PROGRESSIVISM – Sees only red. (Harm/Care : the adaptive challenge of caring for vulnerable children.)
2) BLUE : CONSERVATISM – Sees red, blue and yellow (Harm/Care, Proportionality, Authority/Hierarchy/Duty, Loyalty, Purity/Sanctity, Liberty/Oppression)
3) GREEN : LIBERTARIANISM – Sees only green (Liberty/Oppression : )
– Libertarians are “Red/Blue color blind.”
– Progressives are “Green/Blue color blind.”
– Conservatives are not color blind at all.
Just how it is.
YOU CAN”T REASON WITH A LIBERTARIAN EITHER
You can’t actually reason with a libertarian who relies upon moral intuition. It’s as irrational as trying to reason with a progressive who relies upon moral intuition. Both just justify their positions.
You can reason to a conservative, or conservative libertarian, *EVEN IF* they rely on moral intuition. Because they aren’t morally blind to any part of the spectrum.
And here I keep thinking (stupidly) that because I am not morally blind, even though I place a premium on liberty, and because I understand the RESULT of libertarian moral blindness: the reduction of all rights to property rights – that other libertarians will of course be as rational as I am.
But that’s not true. I am literally talking to people who are for all intents and purposes, physically incapable of moral discourse, just as a color blind person is physically incapable of aesthetic discourse on colors that he cannot see. (Or the disability called “Ageusia” which prohibits taste.)
THE INTELLECTUAL LIMIT
There is some point at which individuals abandon intuitionism (feelings) and resort to either rationalism (rules), or ratio-empirical science ( outcomes) for their epistemic judgements. The only libertarians that one can speak to rationally about morality are those that have abandoned intuitionism. And since it APPEARS to me that rationalism is just a form of justification, then further it appears that only those who adopt the ratio-scientific level of thought, abandon both intuition and justification, are capable of discourse.
That means that we are very limited in the number those people who possess the capacity for rational discourse on ethics and politics. And that since only conservatives are not morally spectrum blind, that it is only conservatives who can rationally discuss these issues EVEN IF they are relegated only to intuition.
THE TRIANGLE IS INVERTED
Conservatives form the base of an inverted pyramid.
Progressives and Libertarians are specialized variants of human.
Progressives are ‘excessively female’ and libertarians ‘excessively male’.
(I think some conservatives specialize in being ‘warriors’ but they’re indistinguishable because they have identical moral intuitions.)
Where progressive, conservative and libertarian refer to moral intuitions.
BUGS
The more I work on this problem the more I see humans of different moral persuasions just like specialized forms of ants. ‘Cause pretty much, that’s what we are.
Source date (UTC): 2014-04-16 18:21:00 UTC
THE VALUE OF PERFORMATIVE TRUTH
(cross posted for archival purposes)
The scope of problems [performative truth] solves is awe inspiring actually.
But if I want to (and must) morally forbid (outlaw) deception whether intentional (obscurantism) or accidental (platonism) I must show in every field where either intentional deception or accidental platonism is used, that all such uses are contrivances to obscure either a failure to understand (philosophy), an efficient utilitarianism (the verb to-be in language, and the conflation of number and function in mathematics), an analogistic pseudoscientific error ( infinity ) a necessary form of pedagogy (myth and religion). And a dozen others.
This does not mean that we cannot use the verb to-be, conflate numbers with functions, use infinity in calculations for the purpose of obtaining scale independence, or tell children fairy tales as a guide to moral norms.
It means that in philosophy we must know the difference between knowledge of construction and the testability of that knowledge, and the linguistic, conceptual, and procedural ‘hacks’ (contrivances) that allow us to stuff vast concepts through our minds which can only construct analogies within a few second window, and only out of a limited number of steps.
My problem isn’t the problem or the solution. I know the problem and the solution. My problem is understanding multitude of contrivances that we have constructed in all the fields so that I can cover all the applications such that there is no escaping the conclusion.
I don’t really like criticizing CR (or Popper) because it’s the best solution we have. But it is precisely because it is the closest to correct that it is the best candidate for reformation with the least amount of work.
—-
OK… I had to sleep on it. But I figured it out.
Performative Truth + The “Epistemic Method” (or the instrumental method, previously known as the scientific method) , in which the discipline of scientific inquiry places a premium on some outputs and discounts other outputs. By weighting different outputs we tailor the general rule (process) to the problem we wish to address. This accurately describes what humans do as a general rule. The process is universal because the problem is consistent across all domains of inquiry. However we weigh different outputs according to our needs. And as in any discipline we tend to ‘privatize’ the language within that discipline.
There is a supply and demand chart in there waiting to be drawn…. I have to figure out how that would look.
Source date (UTC): 2014-04-15 21:17:00 UTC
UNFORTUNATELY, PSEUDOSCIENTIFIC LANGUAGE IS REALLY USEFUL. 😉
(cross posted for archival purposes)
The question is whether “truth” in the context of Critical Rationalism is an analogy or not. I posit that it’s analogistic language just like nearly all uses of ‘truth’. The only action that can exist is attestation. And nothing can be said to be ‘true’ independent of someone’s cognition.
I’m trying to eliminate pseudoscientific language. Because pseudoscientific language is unethical and immoral. It may be efficient. It may be useful. It may even in some cases be conceptually necessary.
All disciplines rely upon such contrivances for the sake of brevity and ease.
These contrivances my be utilitarian, but that is different from saying that they are ‘true’.
Source date (UTC): 2014-04-15 21:15:00 UTC
ARGUMENT, MORAL BLINDNESS, AND INSTITUTIONS
I can tell your moral code and political preference by the method you use to argue, as much as I can the moral bias of your arguments.
And I’m still surprised at myself, despite knowing that (other than conservatives) people are morally blind, I try to reason with people.
Now the fact is, that I know when I’m doing it, that it’s impossible. Like anyone else I hope to do a little education – to provide a light into the moral darkness.
But, my objective is actually to learn how to state my arguments in a multitude of fashions, such that they explain those different areas of moral blindness. I know I cannot convince others to change their moral bias. It’s genetic. But I can consistently improve my arguments.
My arguments are prescriptive. I know that is impossible. What I can do is construct institutions that allow us to cooperate despite these moral biases.
But in the end, we are other than gene-machines, using very elaborate language to justify our reproductive strategies.
Source date (UTC): 2014-04-12 23:30:00 UTC
STAKES IN HEARTS OF LIBERTARIAN CONCEPTUAL VAMPIRES
(status) (against walking-dead libertarianism)
OK. So praxeology is dead. I’m done with that. Rothbardian ethics and the NAP are dead. I’m done with that. Intersubjectively verifiable private property as insufficient is done. Although I have a long post I’m almost done with on it.
I’m pretty much there on performative truth (testimony). The scientific method as a moral constraint under performative truth. And platonism, obscurantism, pseUdoscIence, mysticism, and ‘non-construction’ an non-operational language as immoral AND THEREFORE NOT TRUE.
So I’m pretty close on Moral Realism. I have a lot of work on formal grammar and logic of cooperation but that’s drudgery that I think is for the appendix. Because no matter where else I put it in the chapter order it’s a departure from the argument.
I still have the problem of stating the argument for the necessary scope of common law as one of eliminating demand for the state, rather than justifying liberty. I am pretty close but I need to work on the clarity of that argument a bit more. That will take me a couple of weeks – albeit I’ll be traveling so I won’t get as much done.
It’s been a very fruitful year. Really.
Source date (UTC): 2014-04-11 15:45:00 UTC
KNOWLEDGE
Wondering…. Hmmm.
I don’t like Mokyr’s categories of knowledge. I tend to state them as “knowledge of construction” and “knowledge of use”. Now he’s been trying to talk about the knowledge economy, so only usable knowledge is meaningful to him.
But I think this is the correct expanded hierarchy.
0) Knowledge of identity. (we are aware of it)
1) Knowledge of consequence. (what changes in state we can observe)
2) Knowledge of use. (how to put it under out control to change states)
3) Knowledge of construction. (what its made of and how its made)
Curt
Source date (UTC): 2014-04-11 15:19:00 UTC