Thought of the Day...
"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." - Thomas Jefferson
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"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." - Thomas Jefferson
"[economic liberalism] regards competition as superior not only because it is in most circumstances the most efficient method known, but even more because it is the only method by which our activities can be adjusted to each other without coercive or arbitrary intervention of authority. Indeed, one of the main argument in the favour of competition is that is dispenses with the need for "conscious social control" and that it gives the individuals a chance to decide whether the prospects of a particular occupation are sufficient to compromise for the disadvantages and risks connected with it" - Friedrich Hayek
"The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but would assume an authority which could safely be trusted to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be more dangerous as in the hands of a man who had the folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it." - Adam Smith
"[liberty] is not a means to a higher end. It is itself the highest political end. It is not for the sake of a good public administration that it is required, but for the security in the pursuit of the highest objects of civil society, and of private life." - Lord Acton
"It is significant that one of the commonest objections to competition is that it is "blind". It is not irrelevant to recall that to the ancients blindness was an attribute of their deity of justice." - Friedrich Hayek
"It seems obvious to me now, though I have been slow, I must say, in coming to the conclusion--that the institution of private property is one of the main things that has given man that limited amount of freedom and equality that Marx hoped to render infinite by abolishing this institution. Strangely enough Marx was the first to see this. He is the one who informed us, looking backwards, that the evolution of private capitalism with its free market had been a precondition for the evolution of all our democratic freedoms. It never occurred to him, looking forward, that if this was so, these other freedoms might disappear with the abolition of the free market" - Max Eastman (ex-Communist)
"If one had not oneself experienced this process, it is difficult to appreciate the magnitude of this change in the meaning of words, the confusion which it causes, and the barriers to any rational discussion it creates. It has to be seen to be understood how, if one of two brothers embraces a new faith, after a short while he appears to speak a different language which makes any real communication between them impossible. And the confusion becomes worse because this change in the meaning of words describing political ideals is not a single event but a continuous process, a technique employed consciously or unconsciously to direct people. Gradually, as this process continues, the whole language becomes despoiled, words become empty shells devoid of any definite meaning, as capable of denoting one thing as its opposite and used solely for the emotional associations which still adhere to them." - Friedrich Hayek
"Popper’s philosophy was basically, 'I may be wrong, and you may be right, and through a discussion we might get nearer the truth.' He was troubled when people would point out some type of justification for an idea absolving themselves of the responsibility for having accepted the idea as the truth. In the case where there is disagreement, he didn’t want us to stand pigheadedly by our justification, but instead to admit potential fallibility and engage in argument. Of course, we do probably get it right sometimes, so hopefully in an earnest discussion and appraisal of an idea, we will get nearer to the truth." - Matthew Dioguardi
There are some who claim that it is impossible to see into the future, but only possible to see what is present and in front of our eyes. The future is uncertain, or so it is claimed, and only a God can see beyond the here and now. However, I do not share view. I think that we can see into the future, but it is not our eyes with which we do this, at least not the two eyes on our face. Instead, we peer into the future with our imagination, or our mind's eye. With this faculty we can see beyond the reports of our immediate senses, and plan our activities around events which have not yet occurred i.e. we can "see" them coming.
That said, the objection might be made that I am playing with words, and that I am simply talking about how we make predictions, not talking about seeing into the future. The future is uncertain, it is claimed, and our predictions can be mistaken. To this, I readily admit, at least that our predictions, or our imaginings, may be mistaken. However, by such a standard, it must also be impossible to see what is present in front of our eyes. The present is uncertain, I might claim, and only a God can see the here and now. The reporting of our senses, the two eyes on our face, can be mistaken about what is in front of them.
If it is to be said that we can see anything, then the majority of our seeing is not done with our immediate senses, but our imagination, or our mind's eye, which can see not only into the future, but also into the past, and far beyond the reaches of our immediate senses, far into the depths of the universe.
A few thoughts on the problem of demarcation and the criterion of falsifiability.
I think we must clearly distinguish between falsifiability and the criterion of falsifiability. The former is a characteristic of a theory, and it is either true or false that there exist falsifiable theories; whereas the latter is a criterion to demarcate science from nonscience, which may be good, bad, useful or useless, but not true or false. The falsificational theory of science is a proposal to adopt a convention, not a proposition which can be true or false. Therefore, the criterion of falsifiability cannot be criticised by evidence of preexisting conventions and norms, because it is the proposal for the adoption of new convention. For example, if someone proposes that everyone should speak English, it is not a criticism of that proposal to point to evidence that not everyone speaks English, and indeed anyone making the original proposal would likely have assumed as much.
The approach to the problem of demarcation sketched above, where its solution is found in the proposal of conventions, rather than propositions which are either true or false, has led to some confusion in its interpretation. It seems to me, that traditional attempts to solve the problem of demarcation have taken the form of propositions, with the implicit premise that there is an essence to science which can be discovered. I do not share this view, and do not believe that the criterion of falsifiability, or any alternative, can satisfy this expectation. It is my view that the problem of demarcation needs to be reconsidered, so that its solution lies in proposals rather than propositions. To that end, I consider the problem of demarcation to be something like the following: given that we are interested in rational criticism and the growth of knowledge, what criterion of demarcation between science and nonscience will be the most useful toward that end?
Once we have made a problem explicit, then we can engage in the critical evaluation of competing proposals. I propose the criterion of falsifiability. Why? In part, because it would seem strange to consider a statement or theory scientific if it could not be challenged by experiment and observation, and that is precisely what the criterion of falsifiability achieves.
From the The Library of Economics and Liberty, essays from Anthony de Jasay which I have been reading this morning; well-written, varied and informative, I recommend.
capitalist
n.
The irony is that an individual who fits the 2nd, 3rd and 4th definition of a "capitalist", will rarely be "a supporter of capitalism". In fact, many of the most effective opponents of capitalism are people "engaged in the private ownership of business", who own "much wealth used in business", or are otherwise people "of great wealth". Coincidently, today I wrote the following in response to someone who claimed that "the anti-competition, pro-multi-national-corporate-rule forces are out to get Barack [Obama]". I thought this was a peculiar thing to claim, especially because this person frequently decries what they call "corporatism" i.e. private business getting into bed with government officials, thereby gaining access to subsidies, monopoly rights, and protection from foreign competition.
Barack is a "big government" kinda guy, which always means taking decisions away from individuals and passing them onto politicians and bureaucrats. Big businesses fear individual decision-making, because people might decide to stop buying their products. If the millions of individual decisions can be transferred to a relatively small collection of politicians and bureaucrats, then business can solve its problem by corrupting the system with big business' big money. In other words, "persuading" politicians and bureaucrats, who are now making decisions on behalf of millions of individuals, to decide in favour of big businesses.
If decisions are decentralised, with each individual left free to make his own, then corrupting the decision-makers becomes impossible, and big business can serve its interests better in other ways; namely, by selling products and services at a compromise of quality and price which consumers prefer to competitors.
I think this is particularly relevent at the moment, given how Obama and Clinton are both proposing policies which are hostile to free trade e.g. subsidies for local industries and tariffs/quotas on foreign imports. There is a peculiar tendency for people to equate policies in favour of free trade for policies in favour of big business and corporate interests, but little could be further from the truth. What is good for free trade is not necessarily good for individual businesses, especially big businesses, who are therefore often hostile to free trade, and seek to woo politicians and bureaucrats who, given the power to make decisions on behalf of millions of individuals, can prevent competition from eating into to the profits of big business--millions of individual decision-makers are far less pliable.
This weblog is named after Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies, where Popper applies his critical rationalist philosophy to social and political problems, and from the beginning I had intended this weblog to have a strong critical rationalist theme. However, so far, I have yet to write about the one problem which people most strongly associate with Popper and critical rationalism, that is, the problem of demarcation between science and nonscience, and Popper's preferred solution: the criterion of falsifiability.
In part, I have neglected this issue because I do not consider the problem to be very important, nor anything like the heart of critical rationalism. That said, I do prefer, to any alternative, the criterion of falsifiability as a method of demarcating between science and nonscience, and I am frequently dismayed by the many ways that it is misunderstood. Therefore, I have decided to now write a defence of the criterion of falsifiability, to follow in a series of entries in this weblog, to both explain what the criterion is and, perhaps more importantly, what it is not.
James Otis, a politician of the American revolution, is reported to have said that "taxation without representation is tyranny". After reading this, it occurred to me, that representation without taxation is the welfare state.
