THE END OF APRIORISM VS EMPIRICISM
(read it and weep) 😉
PROPOSITIONS
1) All domesticatable animals are domesticatable for five reasons. All undomesticatable animals are undomesticatable for any one of them.
2) All human personalities are highly functional for five or six reasons. All dysfunctional families are dysfunctional for any one of those six reasons.
3) All happy families are happy for the same five or six reasons. All unhappy families are unhappy any one of those five or six reasons.
4) All TRUE statements are true because of consistency in six dimensions. All FALSE statements are false because of inconsistency in any ONE of those six dimensions.
5) All analytically true (mathematically true) statements correspondingly model reality because of consistency of correspondence of six dimensions. All analytically false statements are false because they fail to correspond to reality in any one of those six dimensions.
6) Existential(actionable) reality is composed of only so many ACTIONABLE dimensions, followed by only so many CAUSALLY RELATABLE dimensions.
7) The ‘True Name’ (Most Parsimonious Truth) of any phenomenon (set of consistent relations at some scale of actionable utility), can be described by the number, scope, limits, relations, relative change, and ACTIONABLE change, of those dimensions.
THEREFORE
1) There exist fundamental laws of existentially possible action and comprehension in the existing universe as it is constructed (and likely must be constructed).
2) These laws can be described theoretically until known, and by analogy, axiomatically once they ARE known. By convention (by honesty and truthfulness) we distinguish between declarative axiomatic systems (analytic), and existential theoretic (existing) systems in order to NOT claim that axiomatic and declarative, and theoretical(laws), are equal in empirical content. They are not. To do so is to conduct either an analogy for the purpose of communication, or an error of understanding, or a fraud for the purpose of deception. We can determine whether ignorance, error, or deception by analysis of the speaker’s argument(error or ignorance) and incentives (fraud), including unconscious fraud (justification).
3) We can theorize from observation and imagination, to understanding (top down) or from understanding to imagination and observation (bottom up). But unless we can both construct (operationally and therefore existentially) as well as observe (empirically, and therefore existential) then we cannot say we possess the knowledge to make a truth claim about a theoretic system or an axiomatic system – although we must keep in mind that axiomatic systems are ‘complete and tautological’ and theoretic statements ‘incomplete and descriptive’.
4) To warranty against falsehood of any Statement, we must perform due diligence upon our free associations, ensuring that we have established consistent limits(invariant descriptions) for each of the dimensions:
i) categorical consistency (identity consistency)
ii) logical consistency (internal consistency)
iii) empirical consistency (external correspondence)
iv) existential consistency (operational correspondence)
v) moral consistency (voluntarily reciprocal)
vi) Scope, Limits and Parsimony (scope consistency)
5) The empirical measurement that Taleb, artificial intelligence researchers, and myself are seeking is how to quantify the information necessary for the human mind to form a free association (a pattern). This unit, if discovered, will be analogous to calories of heat, as the basic unit of state change in information. My theory is that this number, as Taleb has suggested is extremely large (logarithmically so) which accounts for the rarity of intelligence: the amount of memory, and the evolutionary and biological cost of memory, necessary to form even basic relations (free associations) appears to be extraordinarily high.
THEREFORE
1) Mises epistemology is false. MIses, Popper, Hayek, Bridgman, Brouwer all had a piece of the problem but they all failed to synthesize their findings into a complete reformation of the scientific method (the method of stating truthful propositions.
– economics is a scientific, not logical discipline.
– the categories mises uses to determine human action are insufficient (and constructed in my opinion as a justificationary fraud just as is Jewish law – which is my interpretation – only causal axis I can find – of why he failed.)
WHAT DID MISES ERR REGARDING?
1) Apriorism is but a special case of Empiricism, just as Prime Numbers are a special case in mathematics, and just as is any set of operations that returns a natural number; and again, is a special case, just as contradiction is a special case in logic.The laws of triangles form a particularly useful set of special cases. (But we must understand that it is because they possess the minimum dimensions necessary for spatial descriptions,)
Note: The human mind evolved to prey upon other creatures. Unlike frogs and cockroaches that just seek the closest dark spot, humans must prey. To prey we must anticipate velocity in time. This is why we can chase something, and we can throw rocks, spears, and arrows at moving things. And why we and canines can model the destination of a thrown or fallen object. But we also evolved the ability to choose. To model one set of conditions and compare it to another set of conditions. And to model the conditions of OTHERS (intentions), and to compare it to other conditions. So this is why we can hold about five things in mind at once before resorting to breaking a ‘vision’ into patterns. (I have elaborated on each of the dimensions elsewhere).
2) Few (possibly no non-tautological, or at least non-reductio) aprioristic statements survive scope consistency (I can find none in economics that are actionable).
3) We can establish free associations(hypotheses) empirically (top down) or constructively (bottom up). But the method of discovery places no truth constraint on the statement. All must survive the full test of dimensions.
4) This does NOT mean that we cannot use a ‘partial truth’ (an hypothesis that does not survive all six dimensions) to search for further associations (partial search criteria). It is this UTILITY IN SEARCHING that we have converted first into reason, second into rationalism, third into empiricism, fourth in to operationalism, and fifth into scope consistency, and sixth into ‘natural law’ or morality or ‘voluntary cooperation’ – volition which is necessary to ensure the information quality in small groups, just as norms and laws are necessary methods of establishing limits in larger groups, just as money is necessary for producing actionable information in very large groups.
5) there is but one epistemological method: accumulate information, identify pattern, search for hypothesis, criticize hypothesis to produce a theory, distribute the theory (speak), let others criticize the theory until it fails, or we create a conceptual norm of it (law), and finally until we habituate it entirely (metaphysical judgment).
6) There is nothing special about physical science other than philosophy was free of COST constraints but held by moral constraints, and science was free of MORAL constraints as well as cost constraints, and judicial law was bound by both.
So by these three disciplines: the imaginary and mental, the cooperative and existential, and the physical – we managed to slowly assemble a sufficient understanding of truth in each of those disciplines, that together we can establish tests for ANY PROPOSITION in ANY DISCIPLINE: Mental, Cooperative, and PHYSICAL by the due diligence of consistency in the dimensions that apply to that instance.
i) Categorical and Logical (mental)
ii) Operational and Existential (physical)
iii) Morality and Scope (cooperative)
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine
