When you defend your use of philosophical rationalism, your presupposition is the disproportionate value of the communication of meaning(learning), under which we obtain explanatory power and opportunity for persuasion and negotiation; whereas you discount or ignore the equal value of prosecution(prevention), under which we eliminate error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion, overloading, pseudoscience, and deceit.
It would be all well and good to speak only with ‘good manners’ of positive language, if all men were of manners, ethics, morals, humility, study, achievement, and intelligence. But the central problem of our age – since the industrial revolution – has not been the communication of meaning within the limits of human perception, but the elimination of error, bias, wishful thinking, overloading, pseudoscience, and deceit, now that our action and our institutions can reach beyond the manners and prosecution of the ill-mannered, at human scale.
So you may wish to hold to the language of the primitive technologies of reason and meaning, just as others may wish to hold to the primitive technologies of theology and mysticism. But theology consists of little other than parable (analogy) for the purpose of discourse within the limits of pre-existing authority. And Rationalism consists of little other than a subset of reason for the purpose of discourse under the assumption of good intention and good character, independent of cost, and evidence, in order to obscure the cunning and deceit used to impose one’s will upon others by the pretense of truthfulness which is little more than selection bias.
In other words, if you wish to speak truthfully, you can communicate by analogy, if and only if you equally criticize by correspondence (truth), such that both the properties necessary for communication but untrue under criticism, and the persuasions necessary for stating preference, but untrue under criticism, and the error, bias, and deceit that we frail humans rely upon in lieu of truthful argument that are untrue under criticism, are laundered and exposed.
Men do not seek to preserve religious, moral, rational, pseudoscientific, and deceitful argument because they possess good manners, good ethics, good morals, good actions, and because we have good institutions.
Men seek to preserve religious, moral, rational, pseudoscientific, and deceitful argument for the simple reason that they want what they want, by whatever argumentative means is available, and by one cunning argumentative deception or another, they hope to escape blame for their acts of fraud, under pretense of mannered, ethical, moral, and knowing argument.
If you cannot speak in operational language, categorically consistent, empirically consistent, morally consistent, with scope consistency, then either you do not know how to, do not want to pay the costs of speaking truthfully, or if you spoke truthfully your fraud would be obvious.
Religion and Philosophy have been disproportionately the source of deception, conflict, and war. Whereas law and science have been disproportionately the source of truth.
If you cannot speak in the language of law and science, we can almost without exception assume that you are speaking in the league of fraud. And it is only after we pay the high cost of translating you use of the languages of fraud into the languages of law and science that we can determine whether you engage in fraud or engage in error, or engage in linguistic habit because you simply know no better.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine.
