Now that man has been made blind by Hume and Kant, the pragmatists accept all of these unprovable premises (rather than exposing them as false) and build upon them a “practical” philosophy. If you think that is impossible, you are right. But that didn’t stop the philosophers grappling with Kant’s impossible dichotomy. Like Kant, they merely asserted their “deductions” and pretended that somehow they were talking about reality. Like Kant and Hume, they return us to mystical concoctions and deduce that the only thing man can do is his duty to others. Enter collectivism and altruism; the hallmarks of the modern state.
One of these philosophers was Karl Popper (the mentor of George Soros). Popper created an eclectic mixture (a sort of magic potion) that could, he thought, help man in his quest for understanding (considering the position in which he was placed by Hume and Kant). Since, as Hume and Kant taught, we could only deal with concrete disconnected existents that our senses were incapable of grasping, Popper concluded that geniuses like Newton and Galileo had been successful because they took “bold leaps” toward knowledge; and since these leaps worked at the time, the inductive method provides us with a blueprint for how to live practical lives in an impossible universe.
Needless to say, neither Newton nor Galileo took bold leaps in knowledge. Nor did they think that that their minds could not understand reality. On the contrary, Galileo especially knew that he was seeing something real and if his senses saw it, he could count on it.
Consider what it means to approach real-world problems with a basic premise that reality is unknowable for man. Consider what this means for decision-making, for the educational and psychological development of our children, for the principles we establish as a society. How can men know what to do if they are not able to evaluate reality and apply the principles of identity and causality? Even so-called experts in given fields can only be experts in “what has worked in the past” rather than “what will work” according to reason. This view destroys valid inductive method and replaces it with “trial and error” and “copying” the actions taken in the past. The only thing you can do, the pragmatists concluded, is “act first and think later.”
As Dr. Leonard Peikoff writes: “According to pragmatism, the rules governing every branch of knowledge apply equally to ethics: the standard of truth, in morality as in science, is expediency. On this view, ethical ideas, like all others, are provisional tools designed to serve men's purposes in a constantly changing world. Ethical ideas, like all others, are to be judged not by reference to the "unknowable" facts of reality (or to "preconceived" theory or to "dead" abstraction), but by the standard of "practical" success. It follows that any particular ethical idea is to be accepted only so long as it continues to promote the sort of consequences desired by its advocates, i.e., only so long as it continues to "work" successfully. Ethics is mutable; what is right (or good) today, may be wrong (or evil) tomorrow; virtue and vice—like truth and falsehood—are not "rigid," but relative. Again, by a somewhat different route, there are no moral absolutes.”[1]
The result politically can only be collectivism and altruism. This means that the only practical way to deal with people is to herd them into collectives with an imperative to self-sacrifice. This is perfect for politicians who do not know what to do and who don’t want to be held responsible for the damage they do. They need only “collectivize” their citizens into bold altruistic programs and re-distribution. When the programs fail, it is not the politician who has failed, it is the people who did not sacrifice enough.
Since there are no standards of knowledge and no principles for developing knowledge, pragmatists can only take polls of opinion. Since this approach is dependent upon groups, the only viable specialization for pragmatists is sociology and politics. This gives rise to politicians who read polls and pollsters who tailor the truth to the needs of the government.
A politician like Obama wants his policies to work but he has no idea if they will; he only knows that other people have asserted their practicality. And since they didn’t know either, we can be sure that whatever President Obama does, on this basis, will have no connection to history, reality, truth or even principles.
For Obama, history is that version of the past that has been rewritten to show that the problems of the past stemmed from an absence of sacrifice. Reality can only be corrected by the government’s imposing sacrifice on productive citizens. Truth is any statement that expresses this perspective and since the only moral principle is sacrifice, both human and government action must ensure as much sacrifice as possible.
Upon such a foundation is it any wonder that today few men stand on real principles; that the height of “practicality” is to test the winds of opinion; that the only way to power is to be the correct interpreter of the Will of the collective? The top leaders in such a climate, the men who are revered as geniuses and prophets, are those who are clever enough to tap into that Will and convince people that he/she has the best ideas for moving forward; in essence, he or she is the person who most successfully reflects back to the people what they are already thinking; that forced sacrifice for the collective is the only means toward prosperity. It is a deadly infinite loop that accomplishes nothing but repetition of the same mistakes engaged in the past.
Harvard graduates consider themselves to be intelligent because they think they know that there is nothing to know. It is the uneducated American worker who thinks that principles count and reality can be understood. Politicians, educated at Harvard and Princeton and other universities, think they are smarter than the average person because they have devoted themselves to the study of how to manipulate other men through statistics, polls and regulations. Most stupid of all, in their eyes, are people who advocate the very idea of a Constitution that defends individual rights to liberty and property. Why? The Constitution is based upon certainty, an idea that their professors have said has no validity. So they make millions of dollars in consulting fees by advising Presidents on which regulations will work based upon their best ‘scientific’ calculations. The smirk you see on their faces, when they explain their solutions, is their absolute certainty that you know nothing. How they know it is a question they haven’t asked themselves since that belief is an assertion of knowledge. They are too busy being 'practical' to answer any questions about the self-contradictions in their views.
This “superior intelligence” of our leaders creates the cover for the most atrocious graft, corruption and harmful regulations. Under cover of “trying things to see what works,” principles are thrown out, force and freedom are considered equally valid, but with a tendency to force because it is more assertive action. When politicians explain the reasoning behind their actions, they explain that they are being bold and aggressive in solving problems. Boldness and aggressiveness give the impression that they are men of action, decision-makers and leaders. The fact is they don’t have a clue about what to do.
On January 8th 2008, Barack Obama said, “"I don't believe it's too late to change course, but it will be if we don't take dramatic action as soon as possible."[2] Here you have the code language of pragmatism; the promise to take action now without any knowledge of whether the action will actually accomplish the desired result. Worse than this, Obama can only copy past pragmatists (such as FDR) whose propaganda says they were great leaders. Whether that is true is irrelevant. The lie has become the truth, they think.
When the ‘best’ economists tell Obama that FDR’s spending was not the problem; the problem was that he did not spend enough, he agrees and creates the most massive spending programs in the history of the world, programs that will enslave future generations to work for bare subsistence while they pay off the massive debt. Though he uses no factual data to prove that this kind of spending has ever worked, he assures himself and the world that economists of all political persuasions recommend it; and even though he does not know if it will work, they somehow do. At the very least, he can blame them when the “chickens come home to roost.”
"For every day we wait or point fingers or drag our feet, more Americans will lose their jobs. More families will lose their savings. More dreams will be deferred and denied. And our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse."[3] When the results do not come, they will say that it takes time for the solution to materialize...while people starve. Then, after some time, they will claim that they have not spent enough…there are still many people starving. This while every day more Americans lose their jobs, more families lose their savings and more dreams are deferred and denied. No one blames the government's actions for these results…instead the selfishness and greed are blamed. After more time, they will proclaim a new brilliant discovery: they didn’t demand enough sacrifice…while the bodies of starved citizens are buried in mass graves away from the eyes of the cameras.
A pragmatist is seldom concerned about economic facts of reality. He is concerned only about getting through the consequences he created in the immediate moment and then later getting through the consequences he is creating in next moment. If he can make it appear that he is “doing something” about the economy, he thinks, then the voters, those that are still alive, will be happy with his actions, regardless of whether the actions worked or not. All it takes is a little propaganda and a compliant, unquestioning media to obtain credit for the actions but not the consequences.
Where is the practical magic that will make us a productive, thriving country again? What bold new theory of economics will turn us into an advanced new society based on Obama's glowing and hopeful approach to the issues of our day? What principles can we count on when principles are to be avoided and mush is the order of the day?
With Obama saying that we must sacrifice for the common good, few understand what sacrifice means in practice...theft of savings, runaway inflation, labor camps, works projects, bloated government payrolls and utter decimation of the economy. Obama's swagger will soon turn to "failed man walking." By then it won’t matter; there will only be our heroic leader, leading us in a war of retribution against some resource-rich evil enemy.
To what kind of government does pragmatism lead? Since principles are invalid and the only ‘practical’ principle is acting today and thinking later, there is a historical precedent revealing that fascism is the form of government created by pragmatism. When a society comes to the conclusion that individual rights are an old idea and the new idea is central planning by a charismatic leader who tells the people what they want to hear (much like Mussolini), that the purpose of government is to advance the ‘common good’ by means of force, that the people should produce but the government should spend, then there will be no economy to speak of; there will only be the gun and quiet, complacent people trying to muster the energy to conquer hunger.
Pragmatism cannot save capitalism, and it is the destroyer of civilization, as attested by the devastation of Europe in the 20th Century. Nor can it provide a working philosophical model for our society in spite of George Soros' fascist Open Society. The only thing that will save our society is a successful battle for capitalism; in short a battle for reason, individual rights and principles rather than pragmatic experimentation. It is either pragmatism or freedom.
Where is Thomas Paine when you need him?
[1] The Ayn Rand Letter Vol. II, No. 5 December 4, 1972 Altruism, Pragmatism And Brutality By Leonard Peikoff
[2] http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2009/01/09/obama_prods_congress_on_economy/
[3] Ibid
Showing posts with label pragmatism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pragmatism. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Pragmatism is Killing You - Part 1
The biggest threat to your survival is the U.S. Government. Harvard and Yale graduates, among others, who think they are smarter than you, are making the most asinine decisions about our economy and money supply. Why would some of the most brilliant economists in the world give us advice that does not work? Why does every act of the government receive great praise and positive press but no good result?
Why do Republicans promise to solve big government and over-spending done by Democrats only to create bigger government and more spending? The answer to these questions is that there is a wider philosophical movement driving us into the abyss. This movement claims to have the ability to solve human problems through practical action – but the secret is that it does not work.
During the terms of many recent Presidents, the operating procedure has been to react to every catastrophic event with some form of government action, some regulation, law, program, Executive Order or military action that addresses what was wrong in the world. Is it possible that all of this Presidential “action” could be making things worse?
During my economic education, I learned how free markets operate. The core principle of a free economy was that better business decisions result when the government is prohibited from interfering in consensual transactions. Free people, buying and selling products, will most often make rational decisions. If they make mistakes the free market lets them correct so they can move forward. When the government attempts to “fix” or interfere in those transactions, it distorts the ability of people to adjust economically and accomplishes the opposite of the intended result. Writers like Ayn Rand, Henry Hazlitt and others saw free market economic principles as solid guidelines that brought about affluence and prosperity. They were a far cry from other thinkers like John Maynard Keynes who saw government action as a practical means of affecting prosperity. Yet it was Keynes who knew that his own recommendations would have long-term negative repercussions.
Today, the mantra from both conservatives and liberals is that the government should “do something” about economic problems. In fact, the sub-prime crisis was created by the government “doing something” about the economy. There is apparently no one on the scene today suggesting that the government should stop sending good money after bad. Instead we are moving headlong into more government action that will accomplish a worse economy.
A major stock market crash occurred in the late 1920s when President Hoover thought he could “do something” to improve the economy. With capitalism unfairly discredited, at virtually every turn, the progressives, who took power after Hoover, created new programs, new regulations, new laws, protected unions and nationalized industries using the excuse that government action would cure the emergency. Few questioned the fact that everything the government did made things worse. In fact, today, children are taught in school that government action during this period fixed the economy. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt is idolized as a hero for having saved the economy – through government action.
What is government action? What does it consist of and does it really help to improve the economy?
The only thing a government can do is coerce people. The government is essentially a “gun” with the power to force people to do as it demands. Every law, regulation or economic bailout is backed up by this gun. With free people, coercion is the last thing they need; the government can only keep them from doing the right thing. That’s it, nothing else.
When government commands actions, people working for their own self-interest will have to adjust their behavior. This causes losses to those people because it diverts them from taking proper actions. For instance, let’s assume the government decides that interest rates on loans are too high and sets the rate at a level it deems proper. The result is that people now have no ability to choose loans that fit their particular needs. Lenders can’t adjust their loans to the credit rating of the borrowers and as a result they will give some bad loans. Smaller lenders must go out of business because the larger companies can offer borrowers additional benefits due to their size. When the government sets interest rates on loans, it interferes with the interest rates that the free economy would set; rates that are dependent upon the needs of the lenders for profits and the ability of the borrowers to pay. Government thinks it is doing good but, in the name of ‘saving the economy’ it is causing millions of dollars in losses to the lenders and reducing the number of loans available to good borrowers. This is essentially what caused the sub-prime crisis when the government ‘suggested’ low-interest loans for risky buyers.
What is the philosophy that justifies all this practical action that is not practical? It is pragmatism, a philosophy that infects both left and right alike. The left pretends that re-distribution and massive spending schemes are practical ways to improve the economy while the right considers that the only way to gain and/or keep political power is to beat the left to the punch on massive spending programs.
Yet, Pragmatism is not really new in the sense that it is a philosophical outgrowth of Empiricism and holds many of the premises of that prior philosophy. In fact, it is Empiricism that makes pragmatism decidedly impractical. Starting with David Hume, philosophers have been telling us that principles do not matter, that man is incapable of understanding reality and the only thing one can do is take “bold leaps” in human knowledge.
There are essentially two premises that make pragmatism impractical. The first premise comes from Hume. Hume began his philosophical quest by attempting to examine the issues that relate to how man can develop certainty. Though most philosophers assume that Hume was led to his conclusions through rigorous empirical analysis, the truth is that Hume starts with the premise that there is something wrong with human thinking and then he builds his philosophy around that preconceived notion to conclude that there is something wrong with human thinking. He posits that man’s ignorance is created by the inefficacy of human memory. He says sensations are immediate, felt strongly, felt as real, but our recollection of them, our thinking, is fuzzy and this must be why people disagree; why they are contradictory and ignorant in the use of their minds. What he accomplished was to give skeptics the “certainty” needed to blatantly state that there was no certainty. The average man was left blind and incapable of thinking. And since man was incapable of reason, they thought, why should we even teach people how to think?
Hume revealed his view that we are basically fallible when he noted that his study was intended to provide a way for man to gain certainty but then concluded that there was only a fuzzy connection between ideas and impressions. He laid the foundation for an approach to induction that did nothing to advance induction or the acquisition of knowledge. Where scientists during his time, practicing scientific induction, were discovering whole areas of new knowledge and reaching new heights of understanding, Hume was saying that we could only look at concrete facts. While businessmen had the vision and intelligence to take inductively derived knowledge and create whole new industries and magnificent new inventions, Hume was teaching us that there is no necessity, no connection between cause and effect, because we can’t see it.
This conclusion came to him while he was involved in an effort to develop an impenetrable science that would rid the world of superstition. Yet, he provided us with a new form of doubt as the foundation of science and inquiry. Consider David Hume's views about necessity and the "inability" of man to understand reality. Hume held that there are no valid inferences in the jump from observed cases to unobserved cases, from observed specifics to generalization. Building upon his premise that impressions are superior to ideas, Hume uses what he thinks is “pure” empirical observation as a source of knowledge while denigrating the value of induction and conceptually developed knowledge. So science becomes arbitrary expressions of arbitrarily derived generalizations.
For Hume, because we could not see necessity, there is no necessity, there is no source of human knowledge; there is no human knowledge. The hard headed empiricist joins with the faithful rationalist.
This made the way for the second wrong premise of pragmatism offered by Immanuel Kant who pretended to answer Hume’s skepticism. Kant divided reality into what he called the noumenal and phenomenal spheres.
Kant asserted that the noumenal world was essentially unknowable, that the only thing we can comprehend about it is that it can’t be comprehended. This view is related to Plato’s view of the ‘essences’ thought to be only a memory of ideas that reside in another unknowable realm of reality.
For Kant, the phenomenal world was just as inaccessible as the noumenal. Although experience could acquaint man with the phenomenal world and it “felt” like we were dealing with the real world, the phenomenal world was really unreal.
With these Kantian distinctions, man is left with the unknowable in the noumenal world and the unreal in the phenomenal world. This is offered to man as an answer to Hume’s skepticism…yet it is arch skepticism.
Accept this view and you have made the ultimate sacrifice of your mind – which started in a quest for knowledge – to the view that there is no knowledge. Consider what this means: you now have no way of identifying practical action. The senses are invalid and you only have impressions of nothing in particular. And this is an ‘enlightened’ view, they tell us.
Why do Republicans promise to solve big government and over-spending done by Democrats only to create bigger government and more spending? The answer to these questions is that there is a wider philosophical movement driving us into the abyss. This movement claims to have the ability to solve human problems through practical action – but the secret is that it does not work.
During the terms of many recent Presidents, the operating procedure has been to react to every catastrophic event with some form of government action, some regulation, law, program, Executive Order or military action that addresses what was wrong in the world. Is it possible that all of this Presidential “action” could be making things worse?
During my economic education, I learned how free markets operate. The core principle of a free economy was that better business decisions result when the government is prohibited from interfering in consensual transactions. Free people, buying and selling products, will most often make rational decisions. If they make mistakes the free market lets them correct so they can move forward. When the government attempts to “fix” or interfere in those transactions, it distorts the ability of people to adjust economically and accomplishes the opposite of the intended result. Writers like Ayn Rand, Henry Hazlitt and others saw free market economic principles as solid guidelines that brought about affluence and prosperity. They were a far cry from other thinkers like John Maynard Keynes who saw government action as a practical means of affecting prosperity. Yet it was Keynes who knew that his own recommendations would have long-term negative repercussions.
Today, the mantra from both conservatives and liberals is that the government should “do something” about economic problems. In fact, the sub-prime crisis was created by the government “doing something” about the economy. There is apparently no one on the scene today suggesting that the government should stop sending good money after bad. Instead we are moving headlong into more government action that will accomplish a worse economy.
A major stock market crash occurred in the late 1920s when President Hoover thought he could “do something” to improve the economy. With capitalism unfairly discredited, at virtually every turn, the progressives, who took power after Hoover, created new programs, new regulations, new laws, protected unions and nationalized industries using the excuse that government action would cure the emergency. Few questioned the fact that everything the government did made things worse. In fact, today, children are taught in school that government action during this period fixed the economy. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt is idolized as a hero for having saved the economy – through government action.
What is government action? What does it consist of and does it really help to improve the economy?
The only thing a government can do is coerce people. The government is essentially a “gun” with the power to force people to do as it demands. Every law, regulation or economic bailout is backed up by this gun. With free people, coercion is the last thing they need; the government can only keep them from doing the right thing. That’s it, nothing else.
When government commands actions, people working for their own self-interest will have to adjust their behavior. This causes losses to those people because it diverts them from taking proper actions. For instance, let’s assume the government decides that interest rates on loans are too high and sets the rate at a level it deems proper. The result is that people now have no ability to choose loans that fit their particular needs. Lenders can’t adjust their loans to the credit rating of the borrowers and as a result they will give some bad loans. Smaller lenders must go out of business because the larger companies can offer borrowers additional benefits due to their size. When the government sets interest rates on loans, it interferes with the interest rates that the free economy would set; rates that are dependent upon the needs of the lenders for profits and the ability of the borrowers to pay. Government thinks it is doing good but, in the name of ‘saving the economy’ it is causing millions of dollars in losses to the lenders and reducing the number of loans available to good borrowers. This is essentially what caused the sub-prime crisis when the government ‘suggested’ low-interest loans for risky buyers.
What is the philosophy that justifies all this practical action that is not practical? It is pragmatism, a philosophy that infects both left and right alike. The left pretends that re-distribution and massive spending schemes are practical ways to improve the economy while the right considers that the only way to gain and/or keep political power is to beat the left to the punch on massive spending programs.
Yet, Pragmatism is not really new in the sense that it is a philosophical outgrowth of Empiricism and holds many of the premises of that prior philosophy. In fact, it is Empiricism that makes pragmatism decidedly impractical. Starting with David Hume, philosophers have been telling us that principles do not matter, that man is incapable of understanding reality and the only thing one can do is take “bold leaps” in human knowledge.
There are essentially two premises that make pragmatism impractical. The first premise comes from Hume. Hume began his philosophical quest by attempting to examine the issues that relate to how man can develop certainty. Though most philosophers assume that Hume was led to his conclusions through rigorous empirical analysis, the truth is that Hume starts with the premise that there is something wrong with human thinking and then he builds his philosophy around that preconceived notion to conclude that there is something wrong with human thinking. He posits that man’s ignorance is created by the inefficacy of human memory. He says sensations are immediate, felt strongly, felt as real, but our recollection of them, our thinking, is fuzzy and this must be why people disagree; why they are contradictory and ignorant in the use of their minds. What he accomplished was to give skeptics the “certainty” needed to blatantly state that there was no certainty. The average man was left blind and incapable of thinking. And since man was incapable of reason, they thought, why should we even teach people how to think?
Hume revealed his view that we are basically fallible when he noted that his study was intended to provide a way for man to gain certainty but then concluded that there was only a fuzzy connection between ideas and impressions. He laid the foundation for an approach to induction that did nothing to advance induction or the acquisition of knowledge. Where scientists during his time, practicing scientific induction, were discovering whole areas of new knowledge and reaching new heights of understanding, Hume was saying that we could only look at concrete facts. While businessmen had the vision and intelligence to take inductively derived knowledge and create whole new industries and magnificent new inventions, Hume was teaching us that there is no necessity, no connection between cause and effect, because we can’t see it.
This conclusion came to him while he was involved in an effort to develop an impenetrable science that would rid the world of superstition. Yet, he provided us with a new form of doubt as the foundation of science and inquiry. Consider David Hume's views about necessity and the "inability" of man to understand reality. Hume held that there are no valid inferences in the jump from observed cases to unobserved cases, from observed specifics to generalization. Building upon his premise that impressions are superior to ideas, Hume uses what he thinks is “pure” empirical observation as a source of knowledge while denigrating the value of induction and conceptually developed knowledge. So science becomes arbitrary expressions of arbitrarily derived generalizations.
For Hume, because we could not see necessity, there is no necessity, there is no source of human knowledge; there is no human knowledge. The hard headed empiricist joins with the faithful rationalist.
This made the way for the second wrong premise of pragmatism offered by Immanuel Kant who pretended to answer Hume’s skepticism. Kant divided reality into what he called the noumenal and phenomenal spheres.
Kant asserted that the noumenal world was essentially unknowable, that the only thing we can comprehend about it is that it can’t be comprehended. This view is related to Plato’s view of the ‘essences’ thought to be only a memory of ideas that reside in another unknowable realm of reality.
For Kant, the phenomenal world was just as inaccessible as the noumenal. Although experience could acquaint man with the phenomenal world and it “felt” like we were dealing with the real world, the phenomenal world was really unreal.
With these Kantian distinctions, man is left with the unknowable in the noumenal world and the unreal in the phenomenal world. This is offered to man as an answer to Hume’s skepticism…yet it is arch skepticism.
Accept this view and you have made the ultimate sacrifice of your mind – which started in a quest for knowledge – to the view that there is no knowledge. Consider what this means: you now have no way of identifying practical action. The senses are invalid and you only have impressions of nothing in particular. And this is an ‘enlightened’ view, they tell us.
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