(important) [T]he signature property (the ‘tell’) of continental argument is conflation, in which the purpose of argument is an attempt to construct authority. (German and French) Signature property (the ‘tell’) of cosmopolitan thought is ‘the prestige’ (distraction), in which the purpose of an argument is to distract from the central, more obvious one by means of cunning. (Jewish). The signature property (the ‘tell’) of anglo enlightenment thought is the assumption of universalism. These three ‘tells’ are all means of deception and error in order to justify the metaphysical assumption about what is ‘good’.
Theme: Truth
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The ‘Tells’ Of Continental, Cosmopolitan And Enlightenment Arguments
(important) [T]he signature property (the ‘tell’) of continental argument is conflation, in which the purpose of argument is an attempt to construct authority. (German and French) Signature property (the ‘tell’) of cosmopolitan thought is ‘the prestige’ (distraction), in which the purpose of an argument is to distract from the central, more obvious one by means of cunning. (Jewish). The signature property (the ‘tell’) of anglo enlightenment thought is the assumption of universalism. These three ‘tells’ are all means of deception and error in order to justify the metaphysical assumption about what is ‘good’.
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The ‘Tells’ Of Continental, Cosmopolitan And Enlightenment Arguments
(important) [T]he signature property (the ‘tell’) of continental argument is conflation, in which the purpose of argument is an attempt to construct authority. (German and French) Signature property (the ‘tell’) of cosmopolitan thought is ‘the prestige’ (distraction), in which the purpose of an argument is to distract from the central, more obvious one by means of cunning. (Jewish). The signature property (the ‘tell’) of anglo enlightenment thought is the assumption of universalism. These three ‘tells’ are all means of deception and error in order to justify the metaphysical assumption about what is ‘good’.
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The Attestation Theory Of Truth
[I] supposed I should state this clearly, and probably write a little history of Truth in order to get across why we tend to use Platonic truth. But I’ll have to get to that in my chapter on Truth. If we require, as does science, that we reduce all statements to operational language, then what action are we describing when we use the term ‘Truth”? We are using its original meaning as “as true as possible given the best of my abilities”. All other truths are platonist. Described as human action, ‘Truth’ can only describe attestation because it is only such attestation that can be brought into observable existence. This solves the long standing problem of the hierarchy of truth. Cheers.
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The Attestation Theory Of Truth
[I] supposed I should state this clearly, and probably write a little history of Truth in order to get across why we tend to use Platonic truth. But I’ll have to get to that in my chapter on Truth. If we require, as does science, that we reduce all statements to operational language, then what action are we describing when we use the term ‘Truth”? We are using its original meaning as “as true as possible given the best of my abilities”. All other truths are platonist. Described as human action, ‘Truth’ can only describe attestation because it is only such attestation that can be brought into observable existence. This solves the long standing problem of the hierarchy of truth. Cheers.
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The End Of Praxeology As A Pseudoscience
[P]roofs are properties of axiomatic systems. Axiomatic arguments are complete by definition. Proof and completeness are why axiomatic systems merely state internal consistency not external correspondence. As such axiomatic systems allow us to construct proofs – not truths. One cannot prove a theory, only falsify it. A theory corresponds with reality, but is forever incomplete, or it is not a theory but a tautology. Axiomatic arguments are bounded only by the imaginary, and theoretic arguments are bounded by correspondence with reality. This is why axiomatic systems are argumentatively weak (as we have seen in postwar physics) and theoretic arguments are strong: because the set of all possible and falsifiable theories is smaller than the set provable axiomatic statements. This delta in ability is why axiomatic systems are useful for assisting us in the construction of theoretical systems. Mathematics for example can represent more possible relations than the universe can represent since the combinations of elementary particles is smaller than can be represented by natural numbers. Logic can represent more combinations of language than humans can organize into meaningful statements. In both language and mathematics external correspondence is required, and axiomatic arguments are merely exploratory devices to help us in the further construction of theories. Economic statements allow us to test the rationality of actions and incentives. And we must always retest them if they are more than reductio statements, because no economic circumstance is unique enough that we can categorize it. That human interpretations are constant is not the same as saying that the circumstance is constant. Problem Theory Test stated correctly would be: Intuitive pattern->Imagination->theory->test of internal consistency->test of external correspondence->test of falsification->increase in knowledge->new intuitive pattern. [H]oppe’s arguments for example make these same errors: (from “Economic Science and the Austrian Method – Praxeology and Economic Science” 1 —” Whenever two people A and B engage in a voluntary exchange, they must both expect to profit from it. And they must have reverse preference orders for the goods and services exchanged so that A values what he receives from B more highly than what he gives to him, and B must evaluate the same things the other way around.”— However, this is not correct. They must expect satisfaction from it, not profit. As an axiomatic statement it is false.
I’ve been corrected by a reader since Hoppe is referring to ‘psychic profit’. On the other hand I do not think blackmail gives us a psychic profit, and blackmail is a voluntary exchagne. As such, I think that the statement fails since voluntary exchange is not a sufficient test of ethical and moral exchange and therefor politically possible property rights.
–“Whenever an exchange is not voluntary but coerced, one party profits at the expense of the other.”— This is not correct. All we can know is that on party is unsatisfied with the exchange. Involuntary restitution is unsatisfying or it would be unnecessary. The statement is not axiomatic, it’s false. —“Whenever the supply of a good increases by one additional unit, provided each unit is regarded as of equal serviceability by a person, the value attached to this unit must decrease.”— Subjective value is not moderated on a unit basis but on a utility basis. As such this statement is not axiomatic (its false) —“Of two producers, if A is more productive in the production of two types of goods than is B, they can still engage in a mutually beneficial division of labor. This is because overall physical productivity is higher if A specializes in producing one good which he can produce most efficiently, rather than both A and B producing both goods separately and autonomously.”— But demonstrably this is untrue, since the effort to produce an inferior good at a lower profit does not remove it’s portfolio value, and as such profibabilty is a property of the set of effort and risk involved, not the price and profiablity of any element of the portfolio of goods and services. Again, this statemetn is not axiomatic, and it’s false. —“Whenever the quantity of money is increased while the demand for money to be held as cash reserve on hand is unchanged, the purchasing power of money will fall.”— First, the question remains as to whether demand for cash on hand CAN remain constant, or if there is value to holding it constant, because while money is neutral, it is only neutral over time, and as such it is not unclear that even savers benefit (profit) if consumption is increased during the period, OR whether it is moral to refrain from encouraging consumption simply so that savers can obtain higher interest rates than consumers can consume and producers profit. So no, the statemetn is not axiomatic and I at least suspect it is either questionably moral, if not empirically false. —” is the validation process involved in establishing them as true or false of the same type as that involved in establishing a proposition in the natural sciences?”— Evidently, yes. As we have just seen, economic statemsts are set-theoretical and incomplete, general rules. Not axiomatic, complete, and open to deduction absent empirical test. What separates economic science from the physical sciences both of the material world (physics et al) and cognitive science, Is that we require instrumentation to test statements about the physical world to compensate for the limits of our sense and perception, and likewise we require instrumentation to test the mind – since our senses are limited at the act of introspection. HOwever, economic statements that are reduced to operational language – a series of steps of human action in sequence – are universally perceptible or we could not take those actions. As such economic statements are testable by sympathetic experience. We are marginally indifferent in our reactions to specific circumstances, and as such over subjective sympathy can be expressed as a general rule (theory). But given the uniqueness of every experience in time, these can never be more than general rules (theories), and are subject to testing each example incident. One may say that economics is a science in which we need not rely upon instrumentation for testing statements. One may say that we can produce a logic of human action, consisting of the empirically derived theories. Man’s reaction may be consistent throughout time, and consistent across all humans – at least to some degree. But since no two instances are the same, economics remains a theoretical rather than axiomatic discipline. Theories do not require completeness and axioms do by definition. This post should be one of the more profound arguments that you will have encountered on a FB – that’s pretty likely from my experience. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev (PS very dense above. I may have to edit and expand it for additional clarity. But as an argument it’s pretty rock solid. And eventually I expect to put a permanent bullet in Misesian nonsense with it.)
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The End Of Praxeology As A Pseudoscience
[P]roofs are properties of axiomatic systems. Axiomatic arguments are complete by definition. Proof and completeness are why axiomatic systems merely state internal consistency not external correspondence. As such axiomatic systems allow us to construct proofs – not truths. One cannot prove a theory, only falsify it. A theory corresponds with reality, but is forever incomplete, or it is not a theory but a tautology. Axiomatic arguments are bounded only by the imaginary, and theoretic arguments are bounded by correspondence with reality. This is why axiomatic systems are argumentatively weak (as we have seen in postwar physics) and theoretic arguments are strong: because the set of all possible and falsifiable theories is smaller than the set provable axiomatic statements. This delta in ability is why axiomatic systems are useful for assisting us in the construction of theoretical systems. Mathematics for example can represent more possible relations than the universe can represent since the combinations of elementary particles is smaller than can be represented by natural numbers. Logic can represent more combinations of language than humans can organize into meaningful statements. In both language and mathematics external correspondence is required, and axiomatic arguments are merely exploratory devices to help us in the further construction of theories. Economic statements allow us to test the rationality of actions and incentives. And we must always retest them if they are more than reductio statements, because no economic circumstance is unique enough that we can categorize it. That human interpretations are constant is not the same as saying that the circumstance is constant. Problem Theory Test stated correctly would be: Intuitive pattern->Imagination->theory->test of internal consistency->test of external correspondence->test of falsification->increase in knowledge->new intuitive pattern. [H]oppe’s arguments for example make these same errors: (from “Economic Science and the Austrian Method – Praxeology and Economic Science” 1 —” Whenever two people A and B engage in a voluntary exchange, they must both expect to profit from it. And they must have reverse preference orders for the goods and services exchanged so that A values what he receives from B more highly than what he gives to him, and B must evaluate the same things the other way around.”— However, this is not correct. They must expect satisfaction from it, not profit. As an axiomatic statement it is false.
I’ve been corrected by a reader since Hoppe is referring to ‘psychic profit’. On the other hand I do not think blackmail gives us a psychic profit, and blackmail is a voluntary exchagne. As such, I think that the statement fails since voluntary exchange is not a sufficient test of ethical and moral exchange and therefor politically possible property rights.
–“Whenever an exchange is not voluntary but coerced, one party profits at the expense of the other.”— This is not correct. All we can know is that on party is unsatisfied with the exchange. Involuntary restitution is unsatisfying or it would be unnecessary. The statement is not axiomatic, it’s false. —“Whenever the supply of a good increases by one additional unit, provided each unit is regarded as of equal serviceability by a person, the value attached to this unit must decrease.”— Subjective value is not moderated on a unit basis but on a utility basis. As such this statement is not axiomatic (its false) —“Of two producers, if A is more productive in the production of two types of goods than is B, they can still engage in a mutually beneficial division of labor. This is because overall physical productivity is higher if A specializes in producing one good which he can produce most efficiently, rather than both A and B producing both goods separately and autonomously.”— But demonstrably this is untrue, since the effort to produce an inferior good at a lower profit does not remove it’s portfolio value, and as such profibabilty is a property of the set of effort and risk involved, not the price and profiablity of any element of the portfolio of goods and services. Again, this statemetn is not axiomatic, and it’s false. —“Whenever the quantity of money is increased while the demand for money to be held as cash reserve on hand is unchanged, the purchasing power of money will fall.”— First, the question remains as to whether demand for cash on hand CAN remain constant, or if there is value to holding it constant, because while money is neutral, it is only neutral over time, and as such it is not unclear that even savers benefit (profit) if consumption is increased during the period, OR whether it is moral to refrain from encouraging consumption simply so that savers can obtain higher interest rates than consumers can consume and producers profit. So no, the statemetn is not axiomatic and I at least suspect it is either questionably moral, if not empirically false. —” is the validation process involved in establishing them as true or false of the same type as that involved in establishing a proposition in the natural sciences?”— Evidently, yes. As we have just seen, economic statemsts are set-theoretical and incomplete, general rules. Not axiomatic, complete, and open to deduction absent empirical test. What separates economic science from the physical sciences both of the material world (physics et al) and cognitive science, Is that we require instrumentation to test statements about the physical world to compensate for the limits of our sense and perception, and likewise we require instrumentation to test the mind – since our senses are limited at the act of introspection. HOwever, economic statements that are reduced to operational language – a series of steps of human action in sequence – are universally perceptible or we could not take those actions. As such economic statements are testable by sympathetic experience. We are marginally indifferent in our reactions to specific circumstances, and as such over subjective sympathy can be expressed as a general rule (theory). But given the uniqueness of every experience in time, these can never be more than general rules (theories), and are subject to testing each example incident. One may say that economics is a science in which we need not rely upon instrumentation for testing statements. One may say that we can produce a logic of human action, consisting of the empirically derived theories. Man’s reaction may be consistent throughout time, and consistent across all humans – at least to some degree. But since no two instances are the same, economics remains a theoretical rather than axiomatic discipline. Theories do not require completeness and axioms do by definition. This post should be one of the more profound arguments that you will have encountered on a FB – that’s pretty likely from my experience. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev (PS very dense above. I may have to edit and expand it for additional clarity. But as an argument it’s pretty rock solid. And eventually I expect to put a permanent bullet in Misesian nonsense with it.)
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CRANKISH? Rationalist Pseudoscience Like Praxeology is Crankish. Science and Logic are Parsimonious.
WHICH IS MORE CRANKISH? SIMPLE SCIENCE AND LOGIC, OR RATIONALIST PSEUDOSCIENCE? 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. But the empirical test is obvious: if praxeology and rothbardian ethics are correct, then why are they both rejected almost universally? If these things are true, then why do we fail? 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.
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CRANKISH? Rationalist Pseudoscience Like Praxeology is Crankish. Science and Logic are Parsimonious.
WHICH IS MORE CRANKISH? SIMPLE SCIENCE AND LOGIC, OR RATIONALIST PSEUDOSCIENCE? 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. But the empirical test is obvious: if praxeology and rothbardian ethics are correct, then why are they both rejected almost universally? If these things are true, then why do we fail? 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.
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More On The Axiomatic (consistent) Vs Theoretic (correspondent)
[A]xiomatic vs Theoretic 1 – axiomatic (independent of action and observation) versus theoretic (action and observation) a) Axiomatic systems allow us to make statements independent of any correspondence with reality. b) Theoretical systems require us to make statements dependent upon correspondence with reality. c) It is universally possible to create axiomatic systems by copying theoretical statements. d) But it is not universally possible to create theoretical statements by copying axiomatic statements. 2 – Testing against our perception in an empirical test. Not a logical one. If economic statements are reduced to human actions which we can observe, then we are not in fact making a logical test, but an empirical one. 3 – What separates economics from the other sciences, (where science means observation) is that we can sense and perceive changes in state without the use of instrumentation. That does not mean that because we do not require instrumentation, we are not making observations. Introspection is still observation. Our statements are not logical, they are empirical because they are based upon that form of observation we call introspection. 4 – Praxeology, if it’s a science, cannot depend on axiomatic statements since sciences are not axiomatically based, but theoretically based. But if we claim it is axiomatic then it does not require observation and if it does not require observation than must include a prohibition on introspection as a means of testing, and that all such tests are truth or false independent of our sense perception. 5 – metaphysics states that reality is deterministic or knowledge of the universe is impossible. This stipulation required prior theory or axiom. Reason is impossible without it. We must assume regularity of the universe, even if we tend to construct history in retrospect for our ease of use. BACKWARDS [M]ises got it backwards. Economics is an observational science which we have the power of introspection to test. We can, from those observations both introspective and external, We can test the rationality of any statement (it’s truth content) but we cannot deduce much of anything from it. Because complex properties of action are emergent and impossible to forecast. Kant was an intellectual criminal, and the continental and cosmopolitan schools have done nothing to help us eliminate obscurantism and pseudoscience favored by the left. In fact, All the triumvirate have seemed to want to do is create yet another pseudoscience. I can’t save Hoppe unless I can fix this problem. Otherwise our movement is done when he is. Either we reform this nonsense, or libertarianism dies as a continental and cosmopolitan pseudosciences like the rest of the 20th century pseudosciences, or we convert libertarian language from the pseudoscientific to the scientific. Science won. Cognitive science, experimental psychology, and empirical economics have provided all the insights. Meanwhile we’ve spent thirty to forty years now masturbating with a pseudoscience only an autistic moron could possibly fall for. Time for libertarians to grow up. If you can’t answer my objections above, with statements of human action you’re just a sucker for pseudoscience. Because that’s what Praxeology is. It doesn’t have to be. But that’s what it is. LIBERTARIANS OUGHT TO STUDY MORE THAN “SCRIPTURE”. Because while knowledgable about economics, libertarians tend to be absolutely ignorant of anything outside the approved canon. I gain more understanding of the autistic nature of libertarians every day. Even though I’m one of them. I see that the lack of empathic comprehension applies to all disciplines. Time to grow up kiddies.