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Beyond logic, linguistics, and logico-linguistics

Besides (a) using British empiricism as a foundation for Austrian economics, (b) using that British-empiricist Austrian economics as a model for how to do logic, linguistics, and logico-linguistics, and then (c) using mathematics as a model for how to put the insights that I come up with in those fields into notation à la The Laws of Thought, George Boole (1854), I want to:

  1. Explain how the natural order of civilization uses wheat, rice, milk, tea, coffee, tobacco, and other psychoactives—yes, wheat, rice, and milk are psychoactives, albeit difficult to introspect as such—in order to adapt the mind, which evolved for the pre-civilizational world, to civilization. If you (a) fast periodically, (b) eat, say, only meat, only fruit, or only meat and fruit, and (c) get a lot of exercise outside in the sun, especially in a socially meaningful way, then you’ll be healthy. The problem, though, is that your mind (and indeed your body too) will no longer be adapted to civilization.
  2. More generally, found a new kind of field about health: a field that’s not only about the above (i.e., the natural order of psychoactives) but also about the natural order of the body and its signals to the mind.
  3. Explain male sexual psychology, female sexual psychology, and how the natural order adapts those psychologies to civilization.
  4. More generally, work on the most controversial psychological and sociological questions: the questions of sex, race, and other unchoosable identities.
  5. Explain why there used to be more people like me, people with an interest in the foundational questions of logic, mathematics, etc. And in doing so, tell my story: the story of somebody out of place.
  6. Tell the story of “my people,” whoever they are—that’s one of the questions that I want to answer—especially the story of the World Wars and their aftermath. The World Wars were a catastrophe for the West.

Logic, linguistics, and logico-linguistics

Some of my goals:

  1. I not only want to contribute to logic and linguistics but also answer the question of what the relationship is between logic and linguistics.
  2. I want to answer the question of what the relationship is between mathematical notation and natural language (especially arithmetical and algebraic notation).
  3. I want to (a) integrate Austrian economics, especially Misesian-Hayekian economics, with British empiricism, and then (b) found a field of logic, linguistics, and logico-linguistics which is epistemologically the same as British-empiricist Austrian economics. That is, I want to do logic, linguistics, and logico-linguistics in the spirit of Misesian-Hayekian-Humean economics.
  4. I want to design a certain kind of artificial language and in doing so, abstract out the logical substructure of natural language. (If you understand my artificial language, then you’ll also understand my insights in logic, linguistics, and logico-linguistics.)

In testing whether my insights in logic, linguistics, and logico-linguistics are right (including the British-empiricist-Austrian-economics-like epistemology of those fields), I’ll use those insights not only for (a) designing the artificial language—if the artificial language doesn’t work, then I’m wrong—but also (b) studying Japanese, German, etc. That is, the rubber will hit the road in at least two places.

Hume, Mises, and Humean-Misesian linguistics

My most significant early influences were David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739) and Ludwig von Mises, Human Action (1940). The former author and book are part of the school of thought called “British empiricism,” and the latter author and book are part of the school of thought called “Austrian economics.” Nothing has influenced me more than (a) reading Hume in my late teens, (b) reading Mises at the same time, and then (c) realizing that I could use Humean phenomenalism as a foundation for Misesian economics.

Interestingly, though, it wasn’t that I wanted to use Hume’s insights in order to put Misesian economics on a stronger foundation for the sake of economics. It was that I was working on an artificial language, a language natural-language-like in some aspects but not others, and nothing had been more helpful to me in that endeavor than putting Hume and Mises together.

Ultimately, I decided to:

  1. Put Misesian economics on a foundation of Humean phenomenalism. That is, integrate Austrian economics with British empiricism.
  2. Use that Humean-Misesian phenomenalism-economics synthesis as a model science. Build a science analogous to that model science except for linguistics.
  3. Use that new kind of linguistics in order to better build the artificial language.

Subjective and objective propositions

The different subjective propositions “he saw the mailman ring the doorbell” and “she heard the mailman ring the doorbell” both reduce to the same objective proposition “the mailman rang the doorbell.” Subjective propositions specify the agent (e.g., “he,” “she”) and the sensory modality (e.g., “saw,” “heard”). Objective propositions, by contrast, specify neither the agent nor the sensory modality.

One of my goals for the notational system that I’m working on is to distinguish between subjective and objective propositions. Subjective propositions, which will be marked as such, will take:

  1. One or more agents (e.g., “he,” “she,” “John”)
  2. One or more sensory modalities per agent (e.g., his visual modality, her auditory modality)

From the subjective to the objective:

  1. More subjective. I both believe that I saw and believe that I heard the mailman ring the doorbell.
  2. Less subjective. Thus, I believe that the mailman rang the doorbell.
  3. More subjective. You both believe that you saw and believe that you heard the mailman ring the doorbell.
  4. Less subjective. Thus, you believe that the mailman rang the doorbell.
  5. Objective. Thus, the mailman rang the doorbell.

Physics and universalism

For example, it’s possible for me to hear footsteps behind me and then imagine, vividly enough such that I believe what I’m imagining, that I’m seeing somebody walking behind me. That is, it’s possible for (a) my auditory sense, which is one of my sensory modalities, to pick up on what’s happening directly, (b) my visual sense to not pick up on what’s happening directly, and (c) my mind to use the auditory information, directly given in the present hypothetical example, in order to fill in the missing visual information. Ultimately, I associate certain auditory information so strongly with certain visual information that getting the auditory information is enough to assume the visual information.

The different sensory modalities (e.g., the auditory sense, the visual sense, the tactile sense) are different ways of learning about the same world. Whether I hear a burglar break into my house (without seeing him) and then I call the police or I see the burglar break into my house (without hearing him) and then I call the police, what (purportedly) happened in the world is the same: A burglar broke into my house, and then I called the police. The subjective experience of hearing something without seeing it is different than the subjective experience of seeing something without hearing it, but what’s objective is the same. That is, the mental experience is different, but what’s physical is the same.

Imagine that you hear something surprising without seeing it. What would you do? You’d probably try to corroborate the surprising auditory information with visual information, tactile information, etc. You’d also probably try to get other people to corroborate what you heard etc.

That’s a lot of redundant information: my visual sense, another person’s visual sense, my auditory sense, another person’s auditory sense, etc.

Physics, being the study of the physical world, is a radically corroborative system. There are deaf people, blind people, people who are both deaf and blind, men (who usually have a worse sense of smell), women (who usually have a better sense of smell), etc. Physics doesn’t study the different ways of learning about the world. It studies the world. Whether you’re deaf, blind, both deaf and blind, somebody with a bad sense of smell, or somebody with a good sense of smell, physics tells you about the same world. In that way, physics is one of the most radically universalistic systems. In fact, physicalism (which is the metaphysical position of a lot of people with a background in physics, understandably) is in effect a kind of universalism.

Physics studies not only “visible” but also “invisible” light, not only “audible” but also “inaudible” sound. The electromagnetic spectrum, for instance, which is a model in physics that I’ll take on faith for now—I haven’t looked into the relevant physics myself yet—is a lot wider than what we as humans can sense without technology. We use technology in order to “see” X rays, FM radio waves, AM radio waves, etc.

Even an illiterate farmer a thousand years ago, though, would take the first small step toward physics when thinking to himself that his bloodhound has a much better sense of smell than he does.

Social-science denialism

I’ve always been interested in the questions of why people do what they do and why people feel and think as they do. Being of a philosophical and scientific orientation, my interest in those questions led me to wander on my own until as a teenager I found and started studying the most philosophically deep schools of thought in economics, linguistics, and some of the other sciences of human action and the human mind.

To my surprise, though, it turned out in my experience—I was born and raised in America in the 1990s—that many or even most people that I shared my insights with, whether they were intellectual or not, found my insights uncomfortable. Why? Because they found it uncomfortable to generalize about people.

But the fact of the matter is that science, whether about people or things, is about generalization. To find it uncomfortable to generalize about people is to find it uncomfortable to do science about people. I was shocked, bewildered, at my experience with the people around me, until I looked into the history of the epistemological and methodological controversies in the social sciences. There’s a long history to being uncomfortable generalizing about people—indeed being uncomfortable in that way is natural to the leftist temperament. That revelation led me to take a step back from the debate and look at it from the outside, to go meta. It helped me not only clarify my side of the debate but also stop being shocked that the other side exists.

The leftist infection, which started in the 19th century, spread to the heart of the West after the World Wars, and part and parcel to the leftist temperament is social-science denialism.

Ignoring the obvious exceptions

Consider the utterance “Chinese people are good at mathematics.” People who think logically often have the habit of asking for clarification when met with that kind of utterance: “What do you mean? That all Chinese people are good at mathematics? That some Chinese people are good at mathematics?” Tradition in logic, mathematics, and other strongholds of logical thinking make many people interpret utterances like that as ambiguous, almost as if they’re fragmentary. Without a quantifier like “all” or “some,” the utterance “Chinese people are good at mathematics” is too slippery to hold onto. There’s no way to do anything with it. But the well-formed proposition “all Chinese people are good at mathematics”? False. The well-formed proposition “some Chinese people are good at mathematics”? True.

Some people who think logically reply more presumptuously: “Do you mean that all Chinese people are good at mathematics? That there are no Chinese people bad at mathematics? Preposterous!”

Next, consider the utterance “John makes good pancakes.” Imagine replying in a way analogous to the aforementioned tradition: “What do you mean? That John always makes good pancakes? That John sometimes makes good pancakes?”

More presumptuously: “Do you mean that John always makes good pancakes? That he never makes bad pancakes? Preposterous!”

The truth is that utterances like “Chinese people are good at mathematics” (which are normal to criticize) and “John makes good pancakes” (which, interestingly, are not normal to criticize, despite being analogous in that they also overgeneralize, in that they also take attention away from the exceptions) are ambiguous and fragmentary only logically—the logical meaning of such utterances is unclear, yes, but the social meaning, which is overwhelmingly the intended meaning too, is clear: Ultimately, the function of such utterances is to set up expectations, to pressure people to conform to standards. “Chinese people are good at mathematics” encourages Chinese people to live up to that expectation, and “John makes good pancakes” encourages John in the same way.

Conjuration

My definition of the term “conjuration” in the context of extending logico-linguistic analysis to the social is the phenomenon of using descriptive phrasing in order to prescribe. That is, descriptive phrasing used descriptively informs the interlocutor that X is true, but descriptive phrasing used prescriptively directs the interlocutor to make X true. For example, imagine that your boss says to you about your upcoming trip to Japan: “You’ll land in Osaka on the 15th, and then you’ll take the train to Kyoto on the 20th.” Is that a description of what you’ll do, a prediction? Before I answer that question, imagine instead that your boss says (again to you): “John will land in Osaka on the 15th, and then he’ll take the train to Kyoto on the 20th.”

The key insight: The former utterance is such that the utterance itself is what makes the utterance true. It’s only in your boss saying to you that you’ll do X that you’ll do X. By contrast, the latter utterance isn’t like that—well as long as John isn’t there to hear it.

So yes, the former utterance is a description of what you’ll do, a prediction, but only under the assumption that your boss has the right kind of power. That is, the former utterance, which uses descriptive phrasing prescriptively, is an incantation, a conjuration. The words conjure up what they describe.

It’s important to stress that the same linguistics forms (e.g., “X will Y”) are used both descriptively and descriptively-prescriptively. The linguistic forms are the same between the typical usage of “John will go to Kyoto on the 15th” (which is informative) and the typical usage of “you will go to Kyoto on the 15th” (which is directive), but the substances are different. It’s also important to stress the linguistic universality: That descriptive-prescriptive ambiguity, which I’ll give more examples of below, is shot through English, Japanese, and every other natural language.

Examples:

  1. Uttered from father to son when the son is crying: “Boys don’t cry!” (Stop crying!)
  2. Uttered from mother to daughter: “Men are the breadwinners, and women are the homemakers.” (Become a homemaker.)

No true Scotsman

If person A gives a generalization about a category of people, person B gives a counterexample (which is an exception to the supposedly exceptionless generalization), and then person A defines away the counterexample, then that’s the famous no-true-Scotsman fallacy: “No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge,” person A says. “But my uncle Angus is a Scotsman, and he puts sugar on his porridge,” person B replies. “But no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge,” person A replies to the reply.

Contrary to the mainstream, though: Whether person A’s no-true-Scotsman move is fallacious depends on their definition of the term “Scotsman.” If their definition is, say, “has a Scottish passport,” then yes, their move is fallacious: Person B’s uncle Angus, who puts sugar on his porridge—that fact isn’t in contention in the dialogue given above—either has a Scottish passport or not. And if he does, then he’s an exception, a counterexample. He disproves the generalization. But what if person A’s definition isn’t like that? What if person A’s definition is instead identity-related? For example: “No Christian believes in polytheism.” “But my uncle John is a Christian, and he believes in polytheism.” “But no true Christian believes in polytheism.” There’s nothing fallacious about that. Put differently: “Your uncle John believes in polytheism? No Christian believes in polytheism, definitionally speaking, and thus he’s not a Christian.” The term “Christian” in that context is a group identity that’s defined in part as excluding polytheists from the group.

The question of whether to believe in polytheism is of course much more profound than the question of whether to put sugar on your porridge—that’s why the idea of denying polytheists the right to identify as Christian is so much easier to take seriously than the idea of denying people who put sugar on their porridge the right to identify as Scotsmen—but the logic is the same: The no-true Scotsman (or “no-true-Christian”) move is fallacious only insofar as the definition of the term for the category of people isn’t an identity. Otherwise it’s just person A being inclusive and person B being exclusive.

Generalization in social science

In The Poverty of Historicism (1944), Karl Popper argued against “historicism,” which is a term that he popularized for an influential system of arguments among the social scientists of the 19th and 20th centuries—(at least the spirit of) historicism is still influential in the 21st century, which is why I’m motivated to write about it, but Popper himself lived from 1902 to 1994 and in writing about historicism he was pushing back against an influential way of thinking among his 20th-century contemporaries that came from Hegel, Comte, Marx, Spengler, etc.

In explaining one of the aspects of historicism, Popper brought up an insight that I’ve long considered to be of great importance: that when met with a generalization about, say, men or women, whites or blacks, most people interpret the generalization not scientifically, but socially or politically. That is, most people interpret generalizations in the social sciences not descriptively, but prescriptively: not as scientific propositions, but as rightist or conservative social or political moves. For example, if you make the dangerous argument that the most brilliant, ambitious philosophers and scientists have always been and will always be men, that no woman can match what the best men do in that regard, then most people will interpret you not as arguing for a scientific proposition that’s either true or false, but as making a social-political rightist-conservative move that’s either good or bad. “You obviously want to keep women in their place,” the typical leftist-liberal modern pushback goes against what’s interpreted as your reactionary move against the threat of female power. “Being a misogynist, you obviously don’t want to let women get to the top.”