Words, Concepts and Mental Slavery

Miscellaneous General
21

Equity stems from a legal term for an alternative court system from the Common Law court. (See the Constitution Art 3 Sec 2 clause 1 “…all cases in Law and Equity…”) Cases seeking monetary damages would be adjudicated by Equity Law, i.e. they would fix the fair and equitable value due - just like the fair and equitable value of the portion of the property owned.

Radical is good example of the connotation overtaking the etymon yet still not shaking itself free from its roots.

[radical](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=radical&allowed_in_frame=0)
late 14c. (adj.), in a medieval philosophical sense, from L.L. radicalis "of or having roots," from L. radix (gen. radicis) "root" (see [radish](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=radish&allowed_in_frame=0)). Meaning "going to the origin, essential" is from 1650s. Political sense of "reformist" (via notion of "change from the roots") is first recorded 1802 (n.), 1820 (adj.), of the extreme section of the British Liberal party (radical reform had been a current phrase since 1786); meaning "unconventional" is from 1921.
capital (adj[.)](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=capital&allowed_in_frame=0)[](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=capital&searchmode=none)
early 13c., from L. capitalis "of the head," hence "capital, chief, first," from caput (gen. capitis) "head" (see [head](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=head&allowed_in_frame=0)). A capital crime (1520s) is one that affects the life or "head;"capital had a sense of "deadly, mortal" from late 14c. in English, a sense also found in Latin. The connection between "head" and "life, mortality" also existed in O.E.: e.g. heafodgilt"deadly sin, capital offense," heafdes þolian "to forfeit life." Capital punishment was in Blackstone (1765). Capital gain is recorded from 1921. Capital goods is recorded from 1899. Of ships, "first-rate, of the line," attested from 1650s. Related: Capitally.
[capital (n.)](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=capital&allowed_in_frame=0)
early 15c., "a capital letter," from [capital](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=capital&allowed_in_frame=0) (adj.). The meaning "capital city" is first recorded 1660s (the O.E. word was heafodstol). The financial sense (1610s) is from L.L. capitale"stock, property," neut. of capitalis.
22

Yeah, you still didn’t give the proper etymology of capital in the context of ‘capitalism’. The very last one alludes to it - ‘property’, which as I said comes from the property of livestock - more specifically, the ‘head’ of cattle (as is also said in English). Cf. English ‘pecuniary’, which comes from Latin ‘pecunia’ (property, money), which in turn is derived from Latin ‘pecus’ (herd of cattle).

EDIT: Also, I’m sure you’ve read the Iliad and can recall that wealth is denoted in oxen. Like in Latin, the Greek word for capital comes from the word for head (of cattle) - kephale.

23
My humble apologies and entire recantation of my proposed etymology. The etymological essence of capital is __*movable property.*__ Capitalism would be the movement of property and a capitalist the mover of property.
Time to rethink. In manufacturing *capital* has the specific meaning of non-recurring costs which leverage production. A non-recurring capital expense is very different from a recurring operating expense and that is not at all illuminated by the etymology. Thanks Aristippus.
24

I’ve been thinking about an issue along these lines. See if you follow me:

We have the left’s attempt to literally change thought and behavior by changing what words means, or by adding in new connotations.

Beyond that, a lot of what is wrong with law and the legal system has at its heart the ambiguity of words, which you speak of here. Some even attack “right to bear arms” and the words “militia being necessary to the security of a free state” to pervert the intent of founding law.

So, I seek a way to make such an attack impossible.

Now, I haven’t done a lot of work on this yet, but the concept I’m working on I call ‘algorithmic law’, in which law would be more akin to computer programming than to writing in lawyerese as is currently done.

A law would come built in with a series of concrete tests, and definitions would be hyperlinked–containe within the words automatically.

Dunno if it’s a viable concept at this point, but moving to a system of formal language with rigid definitions, more akin to formal logic, would likely have benefits towards making law less obtuse and opaque and less easy to pervert by human hands. Could open the way to absolutely objective judgment, such as a computer program being able to judge whether you’d broken the law or not, simply by applying the concrete tests.

That’s the crux, more objectivity, less ambiguity.

A lot of law is written close to this already, with tests and the like, but the tests are not really concrete.

Listening to the supreme court arguments today on health care only made this even more obvious, where the question of whether the law imposes a fee or a tax, and whether one law applied to another law was the crux of the first day’s arguments. But where ambiguity creates cracks in the meaning of a structure, the justices legislate their own un-voted-upon decisions.

25

The Confucians were right - law ought not to be written down.

The problem with law has nothing to do with a lack of formalism. It has everything to do with the monopolization of law and the absence of competition, variation, experimentation and testing of different alternatives in law.

Clayton -

26

“Thoughts?”

Language, Logic, Knowledge and Action

In explicitly understanding knowledge as displayed in argumentation as a peculiar category of action, it becomes clear immediately why the perennial rationalist claim that the laws of logic*—beginning here with the most fundamental ones, i.e., of propositional logic and of Junctors (“and,” “or,” “if-then,” “not”) and Quantors (“there is,” “all,” “some”)—*are a priori true propositions about reality and not mere verbal stipulations regarding the transformation rules of arbitrarily chosen signs, as empiricist-formalists would have it, is indeed correct. They are as much laws of thinking as of reality; because they are laws that have their ultimate foundation in action and could not be undone by any actor. In each and every action, an actor identifies some specific situation and categorizes it one way rather than another in order to be able to make a choice. It is this which ultimately explains the structure of even the most elementary propositions (like “Socrates is a man”) consisting of a proper name or some identifying expression for the naming or identifying of something, and a predicate to assert or deny some specific property of the named or identified object; and which explains the cornerstones of logic: the laws of identity and contradiction. And it is this universal feature of action and choosing which also explains our understanding of the categories “there is,” “all” and, by implication, “some,” as well as “and,” “or,” “if-then” and “not.”[58]

One can say, of course, that something can be “a” and “non-a” at the same time, or that “and” means this rather than something else. But one cannot undo the law of contradiction; and one cannot undo the real definition of “and.” For simply by virtue of acting with a physical body in physical space we invariably affirm the law of contradiction and invariably display our true constructive knowledge of the meaning of “and” and “or.”

~ Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Economic Science and the Austrian Method, On Praxeology and the Praxeological Foundation of Epistemology, III, pg 71.

  • [58] On rationalist interpretations of logic see Blanshard, Reason and Analysis, chapters 6, 10; P. Lorenzen, Einfuhrung in die operative Logik und Mathematik (Frankfun/M.: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, 1970); K. Lorenz, Elemente der Sprachkritik (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1970); idem, “Diedialogische Rechtfertigung der effektiven Logik,” in: E Kambartel and J. Mittelstrass, eds., Zum normativen Fundament der Wissenschaft (Frankfurt/M.: Athenaum, 1973).
  • On the propositional character of language and experience, in particular, see W. Kamlah and P. Lorenzen, Logische Propiideutik, chapter 1; P. Lorenzen, Normative Logic and Ethics, chapter 1. Lorenzen writes:

“I call a usage a convention if I know of another usage which I could accept instead.·… However, I do not know of another behavior which could replace the use of elementary sentences. If I did not accept proper names and predicators, I would not know how to speak at all… . Each proper name is a convention … but to use proper names at all is not a convention: it is a unique pattern of linguistic behavior. Therefore, I am going to call it ‘logical’. The same is true with predicators. Each predicator is a convention. This is shown by the existence of more than one natural language. But all languages use predicators” (ibid., p. 16). See also J. Mittelstrass, “Die Wiederkehr des Gleichen,” Ratio (1966).

  • On the law of identity and contradiction, in particular, see B. Blanshard, Reason and Analysis, pp. 276ff, 423ff. On a critical evaluation of 3- or more-valued logics as either meaningless symbolic formalisms or as logically presupposing an understanding of the traditional two-valued logic see W Stegmiiller, HauptstrOmungen der Gegenwartsphilosophie vol. 2 (Stuttgart: Kroner, 1975), pp. 182-91; B. Blanshard, Reason and Analysis, pp. 269-75. Regarding, for instance, the many-valued or open-textured logic, proposed by E Waismann, Blanshard notes:

“We can only agree with Dr. Waismann-and with Hegel-that the black-and-white distinctions of formal logic are quite inadequate to living thought. But why should one say, as Dr. Waismann does, that in adopting a more differentiated logic one is adopting an alternative system which is incompatible with black-and-white logic? What he has actually done is to recognize a number of gradations within the older meaning of the word ‘not’. We do not doubt that such gradations are there, and indeed as many more as he cares to distinguish. But a refinement of the older logic is not an abandonment of it. It is still true that the colour I saw yesterday was either a determinate shade of yellow or not, even though the ‘not’ may cover a multitude of approximations, and even though I shall never know which was the shade I saw” (ibid., pp. 273-74).

27

This is a false dichotomy. Without a doubt, we have no choice but to act as if the laws of logic are absolute descriptions of huamn action and - more inclusively - all thought and physical reality. And the empiricist (I object to the hyphenation of empiricism with formalism since this is a formal argument) is trapped in the inherent contradiction of his assertion that all truth must be provable (from logic) or measurable.

But there is a serious conceptual problem with exalting the laws of logic to the place of accounting for language, which you are here implying they do. The laws of logic are provably incomplete, that is, not all true facts can be derived from the laws of logic. And once we expand the rules of language to a sufficient degree to permit proof of true facts which escape the descriptive power of the laws of logic, we must admit the possibility that we have chosen contradictory axioms. This is the meaning of Godel’s famous incompleteness theorems. And you can’t wiggle out by saying “oh but that’s only for formal logic, such as mathematics” since mathematics is a subset of natural language, that is, if this is true of mathematics, it is true of its parent, natural language.

Clayton -

28

“This is a false dichotomy.”

It’s not. Nor have you shown it to be.

“Without a doubt, we have no choice but to act as if the laws of logic are absolute descriptions of huamn action and - more inclusively - all thought and physical reality. And the empiricist (I object to the hyphenation of empiricism with formalism since this is a formal argument) is trapped in the inherent contradiction of his assertion that all truth must be provable (from logic) or measurable.”

“Recognizing knowledge as praxeologically constrained explains why the empiricist-formalist view is incorrect and why the empirical success of Euclidean geometry is no mere accident. Spatial knowledge is also included in the meaning of action. Action is the employment of a physical body in space. Without acting there could be no knowledge of spatial relations, and no measurement. Measuring is relating something to a standard. Without standards, there is no measurement; and there is no measurement, then, which could ever falsify the standard. Evidently, the ultimate standard must be provided by the norms underlying the construction of bodily movements in space and the construction of measurement instruments by means of one’s body and in accordance with the principles of spatial constructions embodied in it.”
— Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Economic Science and the Austrian Method

“But there is a serious conceptual problem with exalting the laws of logic to the place of accounting for language, which you are here implying they do. The laws of logic are provably incomplete, that is, not all true facts can be derived from the laws of logic.”

How quaint.

[T]he claim of having produced an a priori true proposition does not imply a claim of being infallible. No one is, and rationalism has never said anything to the contrary. Rationalism merely argues that the process of validating or falsifying a statement claiming to be true a priori is categorically different from that of validating or falsifying what is commonly referred to as an empirical proposition. … Revisions of mathematical arguments are themselves a priori. They only show that an argument thought to be a priori true is not.
— Hans-Hermann Hoppe, In Defense of Extreme Rationalism, p.208.

“And once we expand the rules of language to a sufficient degree to permit proof of true facts which escape the descriptive power of the laws of logic, we must admit the possibility that we have chosen contradictory axioms. This is the meaning of Godel’s famous incompleteness theorems. And you can’t wiggle out by saying “oh but that’s only for formal logic, such as mathematics” since mathematics is a subset of natural language, that is, if this is true of mathematics, it is true of its parent, natural language.”

K. Godel’s proof-which, as a proof, incidentally supports rather than undermines the rationalist claim of the possibility of a priori knowledge-only demonstrates that the early formalist Hilbert program cannot be successfully carried through, because in order to demonstrate the consistency of certain axiomatic theories one must have a metatheory with even stronger means than those formalized in the object-theory itself. Interestingly enough, the difficulties of the formalist program had led the old Hilbert already several years before Godel’s proof of 1931 to recognize the necessity of reintroducing a substantive interpretation of mathematics ala Kant, which would give its axioms a foundation and justification that was entirely independent of any formal consistency proofs.
— Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Economic Science and the Austrian Method

29

@Conza: I’m not sure what to respond to in your last post because - besides asserting that I haven’t “proven” my note regarding a false-dichotomy between rationalism and empiricism (a point on which books have been written and which, therefore, I will not delve into further) - you haven’t disagreed with anything I’ve said.

I’m in absolute agreement with Hoppe, here, and I will note that the modernists have spent nearly a century in a state of disbelief, confusion, despair and apathy regarding Godel’s proofs that show a Hilbertian formalization of truth is impossible. I will go further and note that their utter disconsolation regarding this point is caused by what motivated their original interest in formalization in the first place: central-planning. Godel’s proof shows that you could not calculate the long-run consequences of any action even if all the parameters were completely axiomatic and formalized. How much more is this the case for the real world where we can hardly hope to formalize even a tiny fraction of the information relevant for action, even on the most optimistic view of the amenability of subjective experience to quantization and formalization.

I don’t see how this quote is a rebuttal of my point. The deep lesson of the incompleteness theorems that few people are comfortable with confronting is that it is always possible that we have (mistakenly) chosen contradictory axioms, a mistake which may only be revealed much later or even never at all. You cannot prove a consistent set of axioms* is consistent! *(That is, for any set of axioms that can be used to express ordinary arithmetic which, by the way, the axioms of logic cannot, at least not without the introduction of other axioms.) The laws of logic simply do not contain enough “complexity” to account for language, much less describe the real world. Much more must be assumed - at least enough to do basic arithmetic, at which point we fall into the abyss of incompleteness and we are ever faced with the possibility that we have unwittingly chosen contradictory axioms.

Clayton -

30

That’s the title of my autobiography!

31

We’re never going to agree, obviously. I’d say the problem with law is that law is allowed to capture citizens, citizens thereby being unable to easily escape one body of law’s jurisdiction and then join another jurisdiction–which if instituted would have the effect of eliminating all bad effects of law, for law would no longer have a monopoly on citizens, and if all citizens leave a jurisdiction that body of law dies a natural death.

The corollary of this approach is that jurisdictions compete for citizens, making law both responsive to the actual demands of its citizen participants and eliminating all negatively coercive effects of law. You would never again have any need to live under a law you felt was being forced upon you.

What’s needed to bring about this state of affairs is a recognition of an individual right to secede from any jurisdiction at will, and the ability to easily form a new jurisdiction or join an existing one at will.

Not writing down law has the effect only of instituting pure whim, and whim-based rule is much worse than law-based rule where decisions can’t be made arbitrarily nor in the moment.

Some here continue to maintain that at least some kind of society is possible absent actual legal institutions designed to uphold individual rights and settle disputes, however even these people don’t put up a defense that such could be maintained in a large scale society.

And what history we do have on periods of actual anarchy are not encouraging. Such periods did not evolve into mutually respectful situations because not everyone has a commitment to the NAP, and such a society has few means of recourse against those who don’t (boycott? give me a break).

I’ll just leave this here and just one, of many, examples of actual anarchy, and among purported libertarian-types no less:

In the summer of 1967, the pirate radio ship Laissez Faire [in international waters] radioed a distress call. Two factions on board were fighting. There were threats of murder. The authorities did nothing, explaining that the pirates “had deliberately placed themselves outside the reach of the law.” Touché.

32

“not everyone has a commitment to the NAP”

When everyone does make the commitment to non-aggression then that becomes the principle or first law of the land. The mutually agreed deferral of violence is the originary scene of humanity. See generative anthropology for that imagined origin.

33

This is a separate question from the matter of what form a language will take (visual, linear, etc.), and I think it handles itself unless you mean to build a language totally from scratch, alone. What information is ignored by the language is always going to be a function of the communicators’ shared context. If one of us does not know the relative size of horses and barnyard gates, it is perhaps unlikely that we will make a picture of “The horse lept over the barnyard gate” and see essentially the same thing in our minds. To me, this question is one that will be answered by the practical considerations that arise as a language is cultivated, among individual people attempting to express and understand.

We have been building the language by simply using diagrams to communicate some of the things we would have said anyway, and seeing what sticks. There is a sort of constructed logical basis that is already basically finished, but everything on top of that is just through trial, error, and small insights that may come up each time we go to send a message that requires something new. We’re using English words for the nouns, verbs, adjective, and adverbs, because we’re first trying to build a visual “grammar” of conventions that involve orientation, enclosure, contact, and other easily apprehendable quasi-physical characteristics.

The only thing I’m aware of trying to do at this point is to communicate using 2D grammar as efficiently as possible. Basically just, “What would happen if humans had started out using nonlinear diagrams instead of strings of sounds?”

34

In some ways people just define “abstract thought” as every piece of language out there that doesn’t call up any definite picture. You can certainly notice or probably imagine a cat under a bed without words, and notice what that means for your situation without words. What is often called “abstract” is the generalization of the idea of “cats under beds,” or “things that are under other things.” But that is merely a larger set of pictures. Humans don’t really generalize, but rather think of a blur of perhaps two or three examples. The words only give the illusion that we are generalizing. In every case, to actually use the words “things that are under other things,” we have to imagine something.

Likewise, to actually understand something abstract like, “The state is responsible,” we have to imagine something, visually or otherwise. Insofar as we do not experience any sensations (other than the sound of the words or the appearance of the text), can we really say we understood the sentence? Or that we have thought that thought?

35

@AJ: That’s definitely interesting - I am a computer engineer so the first thing that comes to my mind is logic diagrams like this:

Might this sort of “circuit layout” be of use to you?

Clayton -

36

AJ,

Generalities are not necessarily abstractions but could merely be categories of observable (non-verbal) reality such as your things that are under things.

Abstractions are ideas pulled away from the observable reality and this requires language. I observe the reality of the cat under the bed but need words to think about subjectivism or about *objectivism (*in which case I would have to put the cat on top of the bed.)

“In every case, to actually use the words “things that are under other things,” we have to imagine something.”

Absolutely! That was my point. We understand all abstract ideas by analogy to observable reality. And at the same time we understand the meaning of all words by analogy to observable reality … which one can find in the etymon. For instance, to understand Subject the etymon is to throw under, like the observable reality of the cat under the bed. But we need words to relate the abstraction embodied in the word Subjectivism, to the observable reality. We need words to describe the abstract idea of subjectivism; that we can not clearly see something because it is obscured by the thing it is under … and the thing we may not see could be an unobservable ethic and the thing it might be under is an unobservable cultural conditioning. We understand that abstract though of subjectivism by analogy to a cat under the bed.

My point is that language is best understood by the analogies found in the etymon.

37

It might be. I’ve always been curious what connection circuit logic has to propositional logic, if any. Are those triangles and arrowheads in some way akin to grammatical function words?

38

Zerubbabel,

I’m not sure if you are agreeing or not. I agree we need words to describe “subjectivism” to another person, but not to understand it ourselves. Words like “justice” are further removed from direct sensory experience, but in every instance where we actually understand the word, we experience definite sensations, visual or otherwise. Insofar as it remains “abstract,” it remains meaningless to us.

39

AJ,

“we need words to describe “subjectivism” to another person, but not to understand it ourselves.”

The thinking process has been described by some as an “inner dialog.” I can’t speak for all humanity, but for me that is the form that my thinking takes when I think about an abstract idea. When I think about a material thing the form it takes is images, a sort of virtual reality. I can tacitly think about the virtual reality image of a cat under the bed, but to make the analogous connection between the image of a cat under the bed and the abstract idea of subjectivism I inevitably fall back upon words.

Can you think about subjectivism without the “inner dialog”?

40

Why not just go by this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_theory_of_value

or a more specified Misean definition.

I think when one comes to Mises.org they ought assume subjective means whatever Mises says unless specified otherwise, as it is a critical point. No reason to deconstruct or ponder of a meaning like that on this site.