I don’t think you understand the word useful.
Furthermore, inconsistency is the only criterion in logic, because internal consistency of systems + consistency of all simultaneous systems = coherence = truth. That’s what truth is. “Platonic” truth, some people, positivists, call it, who use truth as something without definition and intuitive or mere result of observation; but they rely on authority ultimately in this way.
Anyway, this argument has basically become this.
adjective
1.being of use or service; serving some purpose; advantageous, helpful, or of good effect: a useful member of society.
2. of practical use, as for doing work; producing material results; supplying common needs: the useful arts; useful work.
I think I understand just fine.
I’d love to hear what any of this has to do with your idiotic implication that anyone who doesn’t determine who they like and who they don’t by using your single-trait metric is “inconsistent”.
Spoken just as well as every other demolished Internet arguer with nothing left to stand on. I guess this means you’re going on your merry tail-tucked way.
Internal consistency is only as good as your premises. Just look at communism 
Oh dear Anenome. So much to learn…
In fact, I am above the fray. I observe that you missed the subtle point of that video.
I see also this as the Achilles and the Turtle argument that Dodgson published in the 19th century. One opponent merely rejects, no matter what X and Y are, that X AND Y imply Z. The solution to the paradox was the coherence theory of truth, i.e. logical platonism in its modern form. We define formal logic through identity relations and substitution, to preserve consistency, and use proof by necessity or empirical proof in ideal experiments.
However, now, you declare:
Logical consistency, avoidance of contradiction, you have not interest in, and
Utilitarian arguments don’t peruade you.
If so, why are you guys interested in capitalist economics in the first place? What for do you like, for instance, Human Action? Do you like it? What makes you different from, say, Hegel? If nothing, what are you doing here? You morally like capitalism, but not for any reason?
I have a sinking suspicion on why this board is being closed by the Mises Institute. Can you guess what it is?
Another thing: Communism is not internally consistent. It is contrary to its own goals. Read Human Action and Theory and History by Mises.
But forums are a good training ground for training in dialectic, if not logic. (Google Schopenhauer’s Art of Controversy. You’ve certainly used some of those methods to ditch any possible solution. For instance, refusing to accept any argument, whatever it is, and then claim that since you can verbally reject it, it must not be true. Leibniz in a preface pointed out, one can verbally claim not to prefer A to B. If you physically choose A instead of B, then your verbal claim to the contrary is not true, despite your assertion that it is. Because it’s not consistent by substitution of things asserted to be identical. There is a difference between what is necessary or what is possible and what you say or what you believe.)
And furthermore, as pointed out by Joachim, coherence is general universe-wide consistency, not merely internal consistency of several systems that are side by side inconsistent or isolated and non-comparable. For instance, mathematics and logic is coherent: fundamentally incomplete and yet every proposition that is true but yet to be discovered fits in and does not contradict any other one proposition. It’s everything or nothing, you gamble every time you lift your pen to write an equation, in the words of Hardy.
One of the attributes of truth is goodness, from the perspective of any person who wants to live and better satisfy their own preferences and who would have opportunity to do so if they knew the truth. This is a utilitarian arguement, and therefore subjective – it does not apply to someone who wants to commit suicide or to someone who has not opportunity to do anything, like a person inside a house during a flood (e.g. according to Thom).
Let’s follow Spencer’s example. A mountain falls on village. This is neither good nor bad, from the perspective of science. It is, and neither more nor less. From the perspective of the people in the village, who die, this is bad. From the perspective of other people who dislike them for some reason, this is good. Subjective. From the perspective of the person who wants to have more control over their own life by knowing how to manipulate their environment to better satisfy their wants, truth is something good. If they want to kill themselves as soon as possible, it is something bad.
The statement, “the mountain fell on village X” is good, preferable to the statement “the mountain did not fall on village X”, from the perspective of a person who does not intend to kill themselves, despite the event, the mountain falling on the village, being neither good nor bad objectively. The event itself may be viewed as bad, even, from the perspective of that person, if he or she liked the people in the village, or good if he or she disliked them personally; but the statement, “the mountain fell on village X”, is good in both cases, because it is true.
And why? For instance, because then he or she know that the road passing through the village is blocked and the least costly way of getting where he or she wants to go is to avoid trying to travel along that road.
Waddington the biologist, now that I think about it, also made a similar argument in a book once, if I recall correctly.
And now observe.
That turned out nicely. I use forums for playing around socially risk free with attempting to write popular versions of rather long technical arguments, in order to turn around and use later in conversations with people of all sorts that I meet. So despite you disagreeing with me, you were useful to me for provoking me to write it. Therefore I like you. Isn’t that nice!
