Curt Doolittle

Theme: Truth

  • is the study of norms: existing norms, suggested norms, and the tools by which w

    http://www.capitalismv3.com/2012/03/10/nyt-followup-philosophy-needs-more-than-rebranding-it-needs-a-reformation/Philosophy is the study of norms: existing norms, suggested norms, and the tools by which we construct and deconstruct norms. And the discipline’s avoidance of the material value of norms was an abandonment of its purpose. And it’s why the discipline has lost respect of the public, and lost its relevance to contemporary society. The strange fear of empirical data is its most conspicuous failing.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-03-10 13:15:00 UTC

  • The NYT: A New Name For Philosophy? Branding Wont Solve The Problem. Propertarianism Might.

    via Philosophy by Another Name – NYTimes.com.

    I would like to launch the Campaign for Renaming Philosophy (C.R.P.) — or perhaps more accurately, the Campaign for Renaming Academic Philosophy (which has a less attractive abbreviation). I suggest meeting with other philosophers informally to discuss the question and forming small groups of people dedicated to the cause. If you are on board, start using the new terminology among yourselves, just to get accustomed to it. It might then be brought up in a department meeting, and a vote taken as to the merits of the case.

    Leif Parsons

    It won’t be easy to change our name. We have more than 2000 years of linguistic usage bearing down on us. There will be resistance. But keep in mind that scientists changed their “philosophy” name too, no doubt against entrenched opposition; even today the heads of some physics departments are still described as chairs of “natural philosophy.” But that was a necessary and sound decision.

    Perhaps in 100 years’ time the process will be complete and our universities will all have a “department of ontics.” Don’t you want to be part of this historical movement? I believe that once the matter is seen clearly the eventual renaming will be well nigh inevitable.

    Are the humanities a set of tools for the analysis and perpetuation of norms? I think so. Answering that question will provide an answer to the future of philosophy. The problem the discipline faces is that it has failed to produce an internally consistent framework for the discussion of norms for the post agrarian era. The economists have failed, the political philosophers have failed. Philosophers m@sturb@ted for more than half a century on the metaphysical and linguistic programs. Incorporating the clarity of the sciences, and sometimes the data, but clinging with every fiber of their conscious minds, to the concept of community inherent in christian and jewish theology. Humanity needs a series of norms that are a solution to modernity. It needs institutions that they can understand as assisting the the production of those norms. THey need a way of rationalizing those norms so that they can act. But philosophy is at its heart, mystical and antique. And humanity has suffered for it. And I suspect, as someone who tries to solve this problem myself, that it is because the antique norms within us — the very civic virtues that made philosophy exist as a discipline, — must be deconstructed and replaced with something new. Rorty and his like use the word ‘post-philosophy’. But I don’t think the name matters. Either the field solves a material problem, and it incorporates the physical sciences, and adopts a teleological framework that allows it to fully abandon its agrarian normative past, or it will continue to be irrelevant. And the norms that exist within the humanities, unless they are given a framework for the new era, are just as irrelevant. The western humanities are appeals for power by the middle class. Now that they have power, what will they do with it? There are no answers in that tradition. We need something new. Of course, I think it’s Propertarianism. But then, I’m shooting in the dark like everyone else.

  • The NYT: A New Name For Philosophy? Branding Wont Solve The Problem. Propertarianism Might.

    via Philosophy by Another Name – NYTimes.com.

    I would like to launch the Campaign for Renaming Philosophy (C.R.P.) — or perhaps more accurately, the Campaign for Renaming Academic Philosophy (which has a less attractive abbreviation). I suggest meeting with other philosophers informally to discuss the question and forming small groups of people dedicated to the cause. If you are on board, start using the new terminology among yourselves, just to get accustomed to it. It might then be brought up in a department meeting, and a vote taken as to the merits of the case.

    Leif Parsons

    It won’t be easy to change our name. We have more than 2000 years of linguistic usage bearing down on us. There will be resistance. But keep in mind that scientists changed their “philosophy” name too, no doubt against entrenched opposition; even today the heads of some physics departments are still described as chairs of “natural philosophy.” But that was a necessary and sound decision.

    Perhaps in 100 years’ time the process will be complete and our universities will all have a “department of ontics.” Don’t you want to be part of this historical movement? I believe that once the matter is seen clearly the eventual renaming will be well nigh inevitable.

    Are the humanities a set of tools for the analysis and perpetuation of norms? I think so. Answering that question will provide an answer to the future of philosophy. The problem the discipline faces is that it has failed to produce an internally consistent framework for the discussion of norms for the post agrarian era. The economists have failed, the political philosophers have failed. Philosophers m@sturb@ted for more than half a century on the metaphysical and linguistic programs. Incorporating the clarity of the sciences, and sometimes the data, but clinging with every fiber of their conscious minds, to the concept of community inherent in christian and jewish theology. Humanity needs a series of norms that are a solution to modernity. It needs institutions that they can understand as assisting the the production of those norms. THey need a way of rationalizing those norms so that they can act. But philosophy is at its heart, mystical and antique. And humanity has suffered for it. And I suspect, as someone who tries to solve this problem myself, that it is because the antique norms within us — the very civic virtues that made philosophy exist as a discipline, — must be deconstructed and replaced with something new. Rorty and his like use the word ‘post-philosophy’. But I don’t think the name matters. Either the field solves a material problem, and it incorporates the physical sciences, and adopts a teleological framework that allows it to fully abandon its agrarian normative past, or it will continue to be irrelevant. And the norms that exist within the humanities, unless they are given a framework for the new era, are just as irrelevant. The western humanities are appeals for power by the middle class. Now that they have power, what will they do with it? There are no answers in that tradition. We need something new. Of course, I think it’s Propertarianism. But then, I’m shooting in the dark like everyone else.

  • Why Doesn’t Philosophy Get Respect?

    Science consists of a network of externally testable hypotheses.Scientific statements are testable because the physical universe is internally consistent, and because of that consistency, subject to fixed categories that are reducible to numbers which can be manipulated by the process of ratios we call mathematics.

    As such, the physical universe is extremely simple compared to the conceptual universe. In the conceptual universe, the entire purpose of philosophy is to construct, reconstruct, and deconstruct plastic categories for the purpose of determining actions, so that we may establish cooperative norms, for human beings existing within that material universe consisting of pervasive but reducible material scarcity caused by the permanent scarcity of time. The purpose of thought its action, and the purpose of action is to outwit and therefore alter, the current course of events so that we may consume the difference within the time frames necessary to perpetuate our survival.

    Philosophy consists of a series of traditions which attempt to solve the conflict of our desire for perpetuating our norms — no matter how ludicrous they may be — while allowing us to adapt to changes in our material world. It took until Aristototle to develop reason as we understand it. We were infected by Persian and Abrahamic Mysticism, and only began to crawl out of it during the reformation and enlightenment. Philosophy undermined theology as the middle class undermined the landed aristocracy. Darwin cut both the magian tradition as well as the rules that our norms were based upon. Most philosophy is not testable. Much of it is terribly bad. Too much of it ignores the data from the physical sciences. Most remains introspective as a means of avoiding the data from the physical sciences. Although, the analytic program has in some reductio way, attempted to solve the problem of making testable statements, and incorporating data from the physical sciences, the discipilne was infected by pervasive religious derivatives and attempted to solve the metaphyisical problem as a way of regaining its prestige lost to the hard sciences. Philosophy struggled to remain relevant. The post analytics finally abandoned mysticism altogether. Some post analytical philosophers call their discipline “Post Philosophy” to openly and finally fully abandon philosophy’s magian ancestry. Meanwhile the sociologists and the economists tried to solve most of the problems of the social sciences through positivism but failed. And both the philosophers and the mystics have continued to fail — because we still hold our desperately to our agrarian norms and categories.

    Philosophy today is a form of fitness that allows one to not fall prey to the limited methodology of another technical discipline. As a discipline itself it has failed to solve the material problems of creating an internally consistent set of categories and relations that will assist us in the development of new norms without at the same time perishing because of our hubris. One cannot study economics, history, sociology, politics and philosophy as an integrated program. One must either choose an empirical course of study, or choose a narrative course of study. Until philosophy unites these fields, it will remain irrelevant. And synthesis is what we need of it.

    There is still room for philosophy precisely because all the disciplines have failed to produce a conceptual framework for adapting to modernity. But philosophy is as much a prisoner of its traditions as it benefits from them. And academic philosophy, mired in the error of the analytic program’s pursuit of the metaphysical problem has been, and simply perpetuates an error that renders the discipline ineffective and deprives society of answers to pressing problems of anonymity and insensitivity created by a division of knowledge and labor that yields an inverse relationship between material comforts and psychological comforts.

    Mankind suffers for their folly.

  • Why Doesn’t Philosophy Get Respect?

    Science consists of a network of externally testable hypotheses.Scientific statements are testable because the physical universe is internally consistent, and because of that consistency, subject to fixed categories that are reducible to numbers which can be manipulated by the process of ratios we call mathematics.

    As such, the physical universe is extremely simple compared to the conceptual universe. In the conceptual universe, the entire purpose of philosophy is to construct, reconstruct, and deconstruct plastic categories for the purpose of determining actions, so that we may establish cooperative norms, for human beings existing within that material universe consisting of pervasive but reducible material scarcity caused by the permanent scarcity of time. The purpose of thought its action, and the purpose of action is to outwit and therefore alter, the current course of events so that we may consume the difference within the time frames necessary to perpetuate our survival.

    Philosophy consists of a series of traditions which attempt to solve the conflict of our desire for perpetuating our norms — no matter how ludicrous they may be — while allowing us to adapt to changes in our material world. It took until Aristototle to develop reason as we understand it. We were infected by Persian and Abrahamic Mysticism, and only began to crawl out of it during the reformation and enlightenment. Philosophy undermined theology as the middle class undermined the landed aristocracy. Darwin cut both the magian tradition as well as the rules that our norms were based upon. Most philosophy is not testable. Much of it is terribly bad. Too much of it ignores the data from the physical sciences. Most remains introspective as a means of avoiding the data from the physical sciences. Although, the analytic program has in some reductio way, attempted to solve the problem of making testable statements, and incorporating data from the physical sciences, the discipilne was infected by pervasive religious derivatives and attempted to solve the metaphyisical problem as a way of regaining its prestige lost to the hard sciences. Philosophy struggled to remain relevant. The post analytics finally abandoned mysticism altogether. Some post analytical philosophers call their discipline “Post Philosophy” to openly and finally fully abandon philosophy’s magian ancestry. Meanwhile the sociologists and the economists tried to solve most of the problems of the social sciences through positivism but failed. And both the philosophers and the mystics have continued to fail — because we still hold our desperately to our agrarian norms and categories.

    Philosophy today is a form of fitness that allows one to not fall prey to the limited methodology of another technical discipline. As a discipline itself it has failed to solve the material problems of creating an internally consistent set of categories and relations that will assist us in the development of new norms without at the same time perishing because of our hubris. One cannot study economics, history, sociology, politics and philosophy as an integrated program. One must either choose an empirical course of study, or choose a narrative course of study. Until philosophy unites these fields, it will remain irrelevant. And synthesis is what we need of it.

    There is still room for philosophy precisely because all the disciplines have failed to produce a conceptual framework for adapting to modernity. But philosophy is as much a prisoner of its traditions as it benefits from them. And academic philosophy, mired in the error of the analytic program’s pursuit of the metaphysical problem has been, and simply perpetuates an error that renders the discipline ineffective and deprives society of answers to pressing problems of anonymity and insensitivity created by a division of knowledge and labor that yields an inverse relationship between material comforts and psychological comforts.

    Mankind suffers for their folly.

  • PROSECUTING IDEAS Intellectual honesty involves coming up with an idea, refining

    PROSECUTING IDEAS

    Intellectual honesty involves coming up with an idea, refining it, then refuting it. If it survives refutation, then it’s something to work with.

    As a CEO, I had an interesting time with board members. It took, in some cases, years before some board members would understand that I used the board as a vehicle for refuting my ideas. I would bring an idea to the board. Usually somewhat early in the process, and advocate for it. I advocated it to see if they could shoot holes in it. It’s a very rational process. If I cannot defeat their arguments, or find a way to solve them, then the idea isn’t viable.

    In the past, I feel pretty strongly that if your board consists of owners, and your owners are involved, then they should support an idea. They cannot usually anticipate the future well enough to support valuable ideas that are counter to trend. So involving them in the decision and getting them to adopt them makes them better independent actors despite their lack of visibility. I did succeed in that objective. I’ve succeeded every time.

    But I’ve also set the stage for making the organization fragile – vulnerable to a board who feels more confident and empowered than it should be: when you must act and act quickly to sieze opportunities, or avoid threats, your board is now trained to argue with you, and feels entitled to do so — even obligated to do so.

    Today I would do things differently. I would test my ideas with a management team, then use the board entirely as a financial counsel. And never the two shall meet.

    This is another example of where academic personalities and business personalities serve different purposes.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-02-27 15:24:00 UTC

  • An Propertarian Interpretation Of The Timeline Of Philosophy

    The history of philosophy can be reduced to the five struggles: 1) First, between man’s primary desire to retreat into the limits of his senses in the face of evolving complexity, and his reluctant acknowledgement that he must learn and employ the tools of reason and calculation in order to extend those limited senses, despite the discomfort these unintuitive abstract tools subject him to. 2) Second, the conflict between his preference for the material ease of the division of labor and his emotional discomfort at the consequential alienation caused by post-tribal, post familial, and increasingly individualistic commercial society. 3) Third, between the comfort of historical norms and the precious status we each achieve by adhering to them, and the opportunity of economic, technical and organizational innovation that of necessity disrupts those norms. 4) Fourth, the need to develop justification of our system of norms such that we can resist or conquer the economic strategies, organizational strategies, and status signals embedded in competing systems of norms.” 5) And fifth, the most disturbing: between the masculine aristocratic inter-temporal instinct to concentrate capital and to constrain the breeding and consumption of the lower classes, and the feminine communal instinct to perpetuate her genes no matter how she has bred them, and her defensive posture of granting others the same opportunity, despite that it threatens us with Malthusian fragility, and eternal poverty. These five conflicts define the history of philosophy as an attempt to justify existing norms, or an appeal to modify them so that we may adapt to the future or regress into the past. The Real Class Struggle is not hierarchical, it’s vertical. The proletarians are simply the tools of each. There are only three forms of human persuasion and three forms of political persuasion:

      Martial

            Public Intellectual

                  Entrepreneurial

                    The Philosophical Eras:

                    • POST ANALYTICAL PHILOSOPHY 1970-> ( Abandonment of the transcendental program and complete reliance on natural sciences )

                      2) Postanalytic philosophy makes use of the methods of analytic philosophy, but opposes its transcendental aspirations and its assumption that we’re engage in a process discovery rather than invention. 3) Postanalytic philosophy is also referred to as Postphilosophy: the notion that philosophy no longer serves its historical role in society, having been replaced by the natural sciences and the wide availability of literacy, media, and information. Notes:1)I have very little confidence in the symbolic system outside of using very simple diagrams. And political philosophy, by its nature, requires that we use common language in an effort to make our ideas accessible to non specialists who can then proselytize our ideas to the common man. As such, I see symbolic systems as a convenient but self-defeating shorthand that serves only to inhibit us from achieving our goals.)2)I believe the discipline of philosophy can add value to the post-analytical era, not just in ensuring the fitness of minds, but that philosophers must reorder causal categories using empirical information so that new useful narratives can be added to the political discourse in order to assist in the evolution of norms from those that are beneficial in and older technological and organizational state to those that will be more beneficial in the new technological and organizational state.

                      • ANALYTICAL PHILOSOPHY 1900-1960 ( Incorporation of Natural Sciences, abandoning history, abandoning religion, abandoning norms, while retaining the transcendental program. )

                      The term “analytic philosophy” refers to a method of argument that emphasizes clarity – testable rather than normative statements. It uses:

                              Analytic philosophy is identified with specific philosophical commitments (many of which are rejected by contemporary analytic philosophers), such as:

                              • THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC REVOLUTION
                              • THE CONTINENTAL COUNTER-REVOLUTION AGAINST ANGLO EMPIRICISM
                              • THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION III – ANGLO EMPIRICISM NORTHERN ITALIAN RATIONALISM AND GERMANIC LITERACY Empiricism, Restoration of monarchies, And The Return To Reason
                              • THE REVOLT AGAINST REASON AND MODERNITY 70AD->1400 ( Incorporation of Magianism – The Spread Of Ignorance From Augustine To William Of Ockham )
                              • THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION II – RATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE – The First Commercial Society ( Greek Rationalism – The Emphasis On Human Actions – Empirical Pragmatism )

                                2) The principle that the logical clarification of thoughts can only be achieved by analysis of the logical form of propositions, often using the formal grammar and symbolism of a logical system of notation. The logical form is a way of representing a proposition in similarity with all other propositions of the same type. 3) The rejection of heavily loaded and inarticulate philosophical systems in favor of attention to detail, exposing causal relations, using ordinary, clear language. But practically speaking, the analytical program was an attempt to turn philosophy into a natural science, to retain philosophy’s historical public importance by pursuing the transcendental program. And it was a total failure outside of improving the philosophy of science. Empiricists Adapt To Modernity ( Attempts To Retain Historical Norms In The Face Of The Agricultural and Industrial Revolution, Science and Darwin ) The Germans And The French Hold On To History, Hierarchy And Privilege. France As The Most Backward Country In Europe The Anti-Empirical French Moralists The Bloody Revolution As Proof Of Failure The Third Attempt At Germanic Expansion The Marxist Religion As A Revolt Against Modernity The Return Of Science The Return Of Commercial Society In Italy The Move Of Trade From The Mediterranean to the Atlantic The Rise Of British Empirical Pragmatism The Downfall Of Islamic Disruption Of Trade The Scholastic’s React To The Conquistadors The Printing Press And Germanic Craftsmanship The The Second Attempt At Germanic Expansion The Roman Problems Of Administering A Landed Empire Rather Than A Naval Empire The Abrahamic Invasion and Conquest The Surrender to Immigration and Over-expansion The Justinian Oppression Of Northern Europe The Augustinian Attempt At Assimilation. The Plagues And The Shortage Of Coinage The Jewish Revolt Against Reason The Islamic Revolt Against Reason The Hindu Revolt Against Reason The Chinese Revolt Against Reason The Arab Conquest of Mediterranean Trade  

                                  • GREAT TRANSFORMATION I – THE AGRARIAN REVOLUTION AND RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS ( The Scriptural Religions – Uniting The Tribes – The Agrarian Era )
                                  • NATURAL RELIGION ( Rituals Staring With Sacrifice )

                                  A Few Timelines Of Philosophy Elsewhere: The Basic Philosophy Alternative To WikipediaThe Thompson Wadsworth Philosophy TimelineThe Western Philosophy Movements TimelineRIT’s Timeline of Major PhilosophersThe HyperHistory Wall ChartPeter von Stackelberg’s Comparative History Chart

                                • A SWEET PARAGRAPH FROM THIS MORING’S WORK ON PHILOSOPHY “This history of philoso

                                  A SWEET PARAGRAPH FROM THIS MORING’S WORK ON PHILOSOPHY

                                  “This history of philosophy can be reduced to the five struggles:

                                  1) First, between man’s primary desire to retreat into the limits of his senses in the face of evolving complexity, and his reluctant acknowledgement that he must learn and employ the tools of reason and calculation in order to extend those limited senses, despite the discomfort these unintuitive abstract tools subject him to.

                                  2) Second, the conflict between his preference for the material ease of commercial society and his emotional discomfort at the consequential alienation caused by post-tribal, post familial, and increasingly individualistic commercial society.

                                  3) Third, between the comfort of historical norms and the precious status we achieve by adhering to them, and the opportunity of economic, technical and organizational innovation that of necessity disrupts those norms.

                                  4) Fourth, the need to develop justification of our system of norms such that we can resist or conquer the economic strategies, organizational strategies, and status signals embedded in competing systems of norms.”

                                  5) And fifth, between the masculine aristocratic inter-temporal instinct to concentrate capital and to constrain the breeding and consumption of the lower classes, and the feminine communal instinct to perpetuate her genes no matter how she has bred them, and her defensive posture of granting others the same opportunity, despite that it threatens us with Malthusian fragility.

                                  These five conflicts define the history of philosophy as an attempt to justify existing norms, or an appeal to modify them so that we may adapt to the future or regress into the past.”

                                  Source date (UTC): 2012-02-19 12:15:00 UTC

                                • Boettke Quoting Evans: Priceless “Whether we “blame” central bankers or not is r

                                  Boettke Quoting Evans: Priceless

                                  “Whether we “blame” central bankers or not is really a secondary consideration to our attempts to understand what happened and why. By assigning blame we suggest that the Fed should have done better. … But the problem isn’t that individuals focused on the wrong targets, and the solution isn’t to work out how they can improve. The lesson should be that the nature of central banking – the attempt to centrally plan the monetary system – imposes an epistemic burden on policymakers that they cannot possibly ever fulfill. “

                                  Yep. Priceless.

                                  We should not attempt to find or train humans to suit our ideal concept of government. We should make a government that will tolerate the existence of the limits and frailty of humans.

                                  And that is to say, the least government that is possible.

                                  I don’t mean to say that we should eschew development of public services by private means. I simply mean to say that government is outside of the information system of the market, and as such, it is as blind as the statue of Justice was ever imagined to be.

                                  While my libertarian friends do not agree, men do not hate government per se. They hate the abuse of it that is endemic to any bureaucracy, and in particular a monopolistic bureaucracy that exists outside of the market.

                                  Source date (UTC): 2012-01-05 15:27:00 UTC

                                • are things we don’t want to know

                                  http://www.capitalismv3.com/index.php/2011/11/can-we-predict-bubbles-and-dont-we-really-want-them/There are things we don’t want to know.

                                  Source date (UTC): 2011-11-15 11:03:00 UTC