by From Iconoclast The above discussion “The new minds of young people will be open to the new empirical evidence.” illustrates the difficulties encountered by heterodox thinkers. Orthodox thinkers share a dogma, or at least a set of a priori assumptions, and usually a methodology. In essence, this makes orthodox thinking an echo chamber where basic ontology is never questioned. When the heterodox argue, as in the economically heterodox here, the argument eventually descends (or ascends?) into metaphysics; into ontology and epistemology. This is both the benefit and drawback of thinking and arguing from any kind of heterodox position. While we are all drawn here by our rejection of orthodox economics, each of us has a particular perspective. That perspective is drawn from our
Topics:
Editor considers the following as important: Uncategorized
This could be interesting, too:
John Quiggin writes Trump’s dictatorship is a fait accompli
Peter Radford writes Election: Take Four
Merijn T. Knibbe writes Employment growth in Europe. Stark differences.
Merijn T. Knibbe writes In Greece, gross fixed investment still is at a pre-industrial level.
from Iconoclast
The above discussion “The new minds of young people will be open to the new empirical evidence.” illustrates the difficulties encountered by heterodox thinkers. Orthodox thinkers share a dogma, or at least a set of a priori assumptions, and usually a methodology. In essence, this makes orthodox thinking an echo chamber where basic ontology is never questioned. When the heterodox argue, as in the economically heterodox here, the argument eventually descends (or ascends?) into metaphysics; into ontology and epistemology. This is both the benefit and drawback of thinking and arguing from any kind of heterodox position.
While we are all drawn here by our rejection of orthodox economics, each of us has a particular perspective. That perspective is drawn from our enculteration and areas of study. That perspective is a kind of filter through which we see and interpret the world. Our only commonality appears to be a rejection of orthodox economics. Thus I suppose, in theory, if we pooled our arguments of disagreement with orthodox economics, searched for commonalities there and then backtracked or “reverse engineered” our way to the implied ontologies and epistemologies of such disagreements with orthodox economics, we might then begin to find common ground.
This, in effect, is what is beginning to happen in the discussion above. After rejecting orthodox economics, which unavoidably involves critiquing and rejecting its patently fallacious ontology, we are faced with the task of constructing a new ontology suitable for modern political economy. It’s not an easy task and there will be many disagreements on perspective as above.
There are two keys in my view. Empiricism is one. “It is a fundamental part of the scientific method that all hypotheses and theories must be tested against observations of the natural world rather than resting solely on a priori reasoning, intuition, or revelation.” [1] The second key is moral philosophy where we must decide on consequentialist or deontological ethics. Taking empiricism seriously must perforce mean a choice for consequentialist ethics. In my view, the choice for deontological ethics violates the empirical requirement for no reliance on pure reason or revelation. Note, I said “in my view”.
At some point, we have to declare for something. I declare for empiricism and consequentialist ethics. I declare for the Correspondence Theory of Truth. From a complex systems perspective, models, truths and facts are human ideational systems about which we intend or claim they have some correspondence with other real systems. (An idea is actually a real system too in one sense, namely that it is instantiated in a brain via chemical and electrical activity or instantiated in media like books and computer chips via information patterns encoding languages.)
“That truth is the correspondence of a representation to its object is, as Kant says, merely the nominal definition of it. Truth belongs exclusively to propositions. A proposition has a subject (or set of subjects) and a predicate. The subject is a sign; the predicate is a sign; and the proposition is a sign that the predicate is a sign of that which the subject is a sign. If it be so, it is true.” – Charles Sanders Peirce
Truth (or falsity) belongs to propositions. “Fact” or “fallacy” belongs to propositions. I think Ken Zimmerman is simply saying that a “fact” is a constructed proposition. A “fallacy” is also a constructed proposition. However, if we are going to talk about facts and fallacies at all, and to argue that they are different and indeed diametrically opposed, then we introduce the notion of their correspondence or non-correspondence with something objectively real outside of human ideas per se and to which ideas may refer. This too is an ideational proposition. Any extended propositional logic is also constructed. In the final analysis, the only support for any of our propositional logic (like the correspondence theory of truth) is empiricism itself. The pragmatist notes that we experience something external and apparently real in a way the mind’s mere ideas and impressions are not. There is a consistency and persistence to this apparently real, objective, external world (consistent laws etc.) which said consistency and persistence is NOT a mirror of the qualia of the mind itself, the ideas and perceptions of which are fickle, inconsistent, given to fabrications, fancies, unconsciousness, sleep and finally death.
Before the fact or fallacy is constructed, something real and external to the mind exists upon which the fact or fallacy is constructed. Relationally this must be so. Neither facts nor fallacies are constructed upon nothing. Before the fact which is correspondent there is and/or was the existent to which it corresponds in some degree. The fact is certainly constructed but it is constructed upon something.