Curt Doolittle

Theme: Truth

  • FROM ELSEWHERE: ON RORTY AND THE POST ANALYTIC MOVEMENT Rorty is not important i

    FROM ELSEWHERE: ON RORTY AND THE POST ANALYTIC MOVEMENT

    Rorty is not important in the traditional contexts. If we consider the metaphysical and epistemological efforts in philosophy, then certainly the epistemological program has been fruitful, even if the metaphysical program has been a failure (in the sense of philosopher’s attempts to render philosophy into a science.)

    Rorty, and the post-analytic program have been important in specifically abandoning the metaphysical program, first, and even the epistemic program, in order to return philosophy to meaningful use as a tool by which we can determine right actions both public an private.

    The criticisms above do not account for the relative abandonment of philosophy outside of the discipline, specifically because the analytical program, which attempts to integrate physical sciences, while maintaining the dream of solving the metaphysical program, and therefore rendering philosophy into a science, and as a science, return it to legitimacy as an influential social program, which in turn will convey status upon its advocates – status that was lost when science and empiricism became dominant tools, abandoning philosophy altogether.

    The post-analytical movement is an attempt to correct this problem in philosophy and to return it to its relevance in society. Experimental psychology, biology and economics are providing us the answers that philosophical introspection cannot.

    While Rorty and others have not sufficiently divorced post analytic from analytic as thoroughly as analytic has been divorced from continental, and, continental and enlightenment from religion, they have at least acknowledged and attempted to work at solving the problem of making philosophical reasoning once again useful, by applying it to practical matters, and treating scientific information first and foremost, using philosophy to assist us in properly understanding that scientific information.

    I believe it is possible to create a unified philosophical framework for discussion of meaningful ideas

    I also realize that to make this argument forces those indoctrinated and habituated into philosophy that attempts to solve the metaphysical program to consider that their fascinations, problems, hobbies and careers are an outdated technology akin to cobol programming or water wheel construction. 🙂

    But then, an economist would argue that this makes sense, because it is too great an effort to change one’s point of view without material incentives. 🙂

    Cheers

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-15 02:59:00 UTC

  • TRUTH ABOUT THE MCDONALD’S HOT COFFEE CASE And how evolutionary law is superior

    http://latentparadigm.wordpress.com/2012/10/22/everything-you-think-you-know-about-the-mcdonalds-coffee-case-is-wrong/THE TRUTH ABOUT THE MCDONALD’S HOT COFFEE CASE

    And how evolutionary law is superior to legislative law.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-10-22 18:14:00 UTC

  • Is Austrian Economics Falsifiable?

    COMMENTS ON THE COMMENTS ABOVE

    1) Falsification requires the failure of an empirical test, sufficient to contradict the theory. The purpose of falsification is to require us to rely on evidence that is unobtainable by our senses alone, and independent of the frailty and error of the mind and its perceptions.  None of the criticisms above pass this criteria. 

    2) That austrianism, or any body of work, contains insufficiencies is not the same as it whether or not it contains errors.  The failure to see the stickiness of prices is a natural consequence of micro analysis.  Just as the failure to see cognitive biases and irrationality are a natural consequence of macro analysis.   The value in micro analysis is that it correctly informs us as to the behavior that will result from incentives. So it is perhaps best to understand that we need both macro and micro analysis (top down and bottom up).

    3) Austiranism (as ten basic principles:  http://www.capitalismv3.com/menu… )
    makes only one significantly controversial premise: the theory of the business cycle: that government actions increase the severity of necessary experiments and corrections we call booms and busts. Competing interpretations (Keynesianism and Modern Monetary) assert that the economy is a perpetual motion machine that is possible to universally correct with good policy.

    4) Praxeology contains both stated and unstated propositions.  The stated proposition is that the incentives of the rational actor are deducible from the incentives available to him.  The unstated proposition is that by exposing these propositions, it becomes visible when and where involuntary transfers of property are occurring.  It is the latter statement that is of value to the libertarian movement because a) humans detest involuntary transfer, even if their construct of property varies   and b) the progressives use involuntary transfer to fund programs which the libertarians object to.  c) all involuntary transfers can be enumerated as thefts, and as thefts, the state may be attacked as a system of legitimized theft.

    5) Most of the comments by others in this thread, confuse Rothbardianism libertarianism, or Misesian Praxeology, with austiranism.  While it may be true that Mises followed Menger, and Rothbard relied upon Mises, Rothbard’s assertions are  an attempt to restate the church’s Natural Law in the defense of property rights in order to preserve individual freedom, and to demonstrate the exploitation that will occur whenever we empower the state. While Rothbard does attempt to address the business cycle that is the central tenet of austrian economic argument, it is not clear that he added anything to the debate.  Rothbard was an ANARCHIST. and Mises was a CLASSICAL LIBERAL.  Rothbard however did not succeed. He effectively prohibited all organizations and their ability to add additional rights an obligations to personal property rights which would disallow privatization of the commons (“Cheating”). (An argument that is too technical for this forum but which I’ve addressed elsewhere.)  It required Hans Hoppe to finish Rothbard’s political work, and provide us with a solution to the problem of bureaucracy.  Hoppe succeeds in replacing the bureaucracy with private institutions where Rothbard only placed a universal moral ban them.

    6) Caplan’s “Why I am Not An Austrian” is a political piece that I have criticized elsewhere.  One should see this piece as a complaint against the Rothbardian wing’s attempt to hijack Austrianism for its political ends, more than an attack against Austrian economics.   To quote:

    “My equation of Austrian economics with Mises and Rothbard rather than F.A. Hayek is bound to be controversial.”  -Caplan

    Caplan (and the entire George Mason group), consistently express frustration that the anarchists have been ideologically successful and have intentionally conflated anarchism and austiranism such that austrianism’s dependence upon classical liberalism has been lost in the popular vernacular.

    Caplan’s argument must be understood in this context. Unfortunately the rather weak conflated argument he puts forth in his essay has posed a bit of trouble for all of us, myself included.  Since the article is mis-titled.  It should be “Why I am not a Rothbardian Praxeologist”. 

    I am a supporter of Caplan’s work (particularly his new work on education).  But as I am the only theorist trying to resolve this conflict by extending praxeological analysis to preserve the insights of both the anarchic and classical liberal wings, I find the use of Caplan’s essay unhelpful and confusing to the general reader.


    CLOSING
    I hope this somewhat clarifies the topic for readers here, rather than muddying the waters further.  There is a place for both micro analysis and it’s emphasis on prohibition of involuntary transfers in order to create a natural aristocracy, and macro analysis and its emphasis on maximizing involuntary transfers in support of redistribution in order to create communal egalitarianism.  These two ends of the spectrum promote different choices, not truths.  There are certainly statements within each set of preferences which can be subject to tests of truth. But the collections of statements we categorize as macro and micro, because they promote subjective preferences, are not subject to tests of truth or falsity.

    https://www.quora.com/Is-Austrian-economics-falsifiable

  • PROPERTARIANISM allows us to discourse on what people from different political b

    PROPERTARIANISM allows us to discourse on what people from different political biases ‘believe’ in rational terms that are commensurable.

    Thats something very special in the history of thought.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-10-02 10:01:00 UTC

  • ON NONSENSE “Some people think that nonsense is too silly to answer. But not ans

    ON NONSENSE

    “Some people think that nonsense is too silly to answer. But not answering it can just allow nonsense to prevail.”

    — Thomas Sowell

    (Thanks to Greg Ransom)

    Source date (UTC): 2012-09-19 12:18:00 UTC

  • OPAQUE PHILOSOPHY – IN HUMBLING COMPANY I’ve been extremely self critical about

    OPAQUE PHILOSOPHY – IN HUMBLING COMPANY

    I’ve been extremely self critical about the opacity of my writing, and struggling to make it digestible. It’s brutally difficult to follow Spinoza’s advice: “Speak in a manner comprehensible to the common people.” And, while I’ll never be able to address common people, I think I’ve finally reduced propertarianism to something that’s at least reasonably accessible, and analytically clear, regardless of one’s political preferences and moral codes. Perhaps I can get it down to twenty pages if I can figure out how to elegantly and succinctly tie the biology of moral codes, to the necessity of property, to the institutions necessary for property. Maybe thirty pages. My first draft was almost three hundred. So obviously i’m making progress.

    I still have years worth of work ahead of me. I’ve used Rothbard’s ideas to reframe classical liberalism and conservatism, and then social democracy, into Propertarian language. But the excruciating work of defending these ideas against the legion of very smart people both past and present is so daunting I become easily overwhelmed every time I pull my head out of one little problem or the other.

    And I don’t really find those defensive problems interesting. This is where my lack of academic training fails me. It is one thing to solve a conceptual problem. It is quite another to create an edifice with which to defend it against crushingly great minds. It is either the mark of an incredible fool, unconscionable hubris, or accidental ignorance, to take on this category of problem, and to even mention one’s feeble efforts in the same sentence with minds like this.

    Spinoza spent his entire life on two hundred pages. How did Murray work on one book for seven years full time? Rawls? And Rawls clearly needed to do a lot more work than he did. You have to be amazed by someone like Rothbard, who I’m honestly in awe of. If you look at his writing, while he oversimplifies the problem of political theory almost absurdly, he’s at least accessible and his breadth just daunting, even if you disagree with his premise.

    On the other hand, after re-reading those who don’t oversimplify the problem, namely Rawls and Nozick, I feel like the bar isn’t all that high. I mean, those works are highly influential despite being painfully inaccessible. Which is a small comfort. A very small comfort. But a comfort none the less.

    One cannot distill complex ideas to first principles expressed in analytical language unless one understands the problem thoroughly. The genius of Rothbard’s insight is a barrier to adoption because of his passion for his particular ethics of anarchism. But his Propertarianism is applicable to all political philosophy and ideology. In fact, it’s the only thing that makes them commensurable.

    Shoulders of giants and all that. Humbling. Witheringly humbling.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-08-26 23:35:00 UTC

  • IS NOT POSSIBLE IN AN EMPIRE

    http://blog.ted.com/2012/08/13/how-pervasive-has-government-distrust-gotten/TRUST IS NOT POSSIBLE IN AN EMPIRE

    Source date (UTC): 2012-08-13 16:09:00 UTC

  • @UmeshPatil @Hughman It is not racism to point out the truth. The west had the e

    http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/08/02/mitt_romney_is_living_every_social_scientists_nightmare @UmeshPatil @Hughman It is not racism to point out the truth. The west had the extraordinary luck to have the church forbid marriage to cousins, and to award women property rights. Combined with the manorial system, which required that a man demonstrate finess in order to obtain land to work, and therefore the ability to raise a family and reproduce, the west obtained the nuclear family, the work ethic, universalism, property rights, and a near absence of corruption endemic to all other human social orders. Culture matters. India’s power failed because corruption is endemic, and corruption is endemic because of familialism. Europeans are a dying culture because it turned on itself and lost its confidence after the world wars, and because feminism decreased the breeding rate of its women to below replacement levels and governments had to resort to immigration in order to maintain it’s intergenerational redistribution programs.And if that bothers you, race matters too. Because people demonstrably prefer to be around those who look like them, and the distribution of talents does differ between the races. Races might not matter if people did not aggregate and associate by race. But they do. Status signals are the human information system. And status signals are cheaper within group than across groups. So race matters.Many scientific realities are unpleasant. It is impolitic to discuss these realities. But they are still realities none the less. Choosing not to discuss them, is quite different from disbelieving them. One is a demonstration of manners. The other is a demonstration of ignorance.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-08-03 02:01:00 UTC

  • get academic-y about it, Romney is being “conceptually fuzzy” with his terms.”Co

    http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/08/02/mitt_romney_is_living_every_social_scientists_nightmare”To get academic-y about it, Romney is being “conceptually fuzzy” with his terms.”Complete nonsense. A population’s formal institutions are a reflection of it’s informal institutions. It’s informal institutions reflect it’s notions of property rights. – where property rights in this case includes several property, familial property, communal property, and cultural norms: morals, ethics, manners and rituals.Romney is a CONSERVATIVE. Conservatives think in terms of, and give higher priority to, moral capital: norms. His framework is that framework. And in that framework he is speaking quite clearly, and accurately, to his audience.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-08-03 01:50:00 UTC

  • Justice Scalia Explains Textualism And Originalism Without Explaining WHY We Must Rely Upon Them.

    Scalia is a bit of a personal hero. I adore his clarity.

    He appeared on Fox the other day, and explained Textualism and Originalism. (See wiki.) But I was frustrated that he kept stating what he believed, and how these things SHOULD be interpreted, but now WHY they should be interpreted that way. Now, I’m sure that’s because it’s obvious as the summer sun to him. But to the average person, it isn’t. The reason we should (and a new constitution should mandate) that we apply the original meaning to the precise text, is to prevent the court from circumventing the legislative process and effectively writing new law without the legislative process. Further, it prevents creative destruction of the constitution through reinterpretation, rather than legislation. And emphasis on originalism forces lawmakers to write clearer laws. The constitution contains a process by which it can be modified. That process achieves it’s goals. But our nation has been lost through the reinterpretation and creative expansion of the law via the courts, where the majority would not have approved such laws had they been subject to the constitutional amendment process. Any law that would modify the original intent of the constittuion, and the text, should be subject to the requrement that the amendment process be followed. This violates the democratic socialist secular humanist proposition, that the legislature, endowed by the people with power, can enact any law that they wish. Of course, this makes no sense, because, that is the very meaning of the ‘rule of law’: limits on what laws can be enacted. And it assumes, incorrectly, that we are wiser than we are.