Epistemology In Business

Anyone with human limitations, including consumers or members of a business catering to the consumers, does not have the ability to prove which of any logically possible events will happen in the future.  Anything that is possible could happen, regardless of how much or little real or imagined evidence there was for any specific event.  Business is no less subject to this epistemological (and metaphysical) truth than everything else in the spectrum of occurrences.  While there are moments where both businesspeople and consumers seem to truly grasp the objective fact that they cannot respectively know if their market contribution will succeed or if their purchase will be one they will not regret, they speak and act as if they no longer believe this in other situations, meaning they look to mere perceptions and situations instead of to reason in their doomed attempt to understand business apart from the truths of rationalism.

Cryptocurrency, the stock market, the popularity of a new product or service, and the approval of the public or other stakeholders on the businessperson side have this in common with the quality of a product, the long-term appeal it will have, and so on with the consumer side: nothing but possibilities and probabilities and what will happen if certain events occur are all that one can prove ahead of time.  In other words, no one can prove anything about the future except that logical truths will remain true by necessity and that some possibilities seem more likely than others.  There is no way to know that an investment will pay off even when all signs suggest that it will, and there is no way to know that a product will genuinely have the quality one might hope for when making a purchase.  Uncertainty permeates the business world even though some executives, employees, and consumers think they are rational or safe to believe otherwise.

This is just another side of how non-rationalists might complain about not knowing something they cannot possibly know and then refuse the epistemological truth of the matter at the same time.  They might complain about one positive online product review on the basis of epistemological uncertainty even if they would not call it that, but then accept the next positive online or word of mouth review on faith.  They might also lament the unverifiability of an investment's return in one situation and pretend to actually know another investment will give them what they want.  Like all non-rationalists, such people are to varying degrees adrift in their own delusions about even something like business that is on the more practical side of philosophy/reality.  What they believe is on the basis of momentary persuasion or subjective preferences instead of logical proof--not consensus, scientific hearsay, inductive reasoning, or mere perceptions, but logical proof.

It can be deeply amusing to see people fall for something in one scenario or in one aspect of their worldview what they might try to avoid in another.  Someone who realizes the unknowability of one future event might still believe that another event will or must happen despite both of them being unprovable.  One might see family members or strangers do this routinely, acting as if they know something that cannot be proven by past trends, intuition, collective agreement, or appeals to authority.  Of course, businesses and those who buy from them must still operate despite this uncertainty.  The solution is simply not assumptions.  Although different assumptions might be appealing to various non-rationalists, the certainty of identifying assumptions to sidestep them while recognizing the self-verifying nature of reason is the key to handling business transactions rationally.

Moreover, that there is no way to prove the durability of a purchased item, the level of satisfaction one will have even five minutes after buying something, the eventual payoff of hiring a new employee, and so on does not mean that possibilities and probabilities are not knowable.  Yes, no amount of mere perception-based evidence proves that a large or small part of the business world will see any particular change, but there are still objective truths, possibilities, and likelihoods that pertain to business specifically.  Anyone who approaches general business as if the profitability or satisfaction of an endeavor is certain beyond this has set themselves up for failure and disappointment if a career or product does not turn out as they would wish, besides it merely being irrational to believe in that which cannot be proven.  Relinquishing favorable assumptions in business, like in all other areas of life, is both rational and far better at preparing someone for the needless personal complications they will probably face if they try to treat an idea contrary to reality as true.