How Peikovians abuse the doctrine of arbitrary assertions

[Robert Campbell]

Here's a cross-posting from SOLOPassion that I thought might be of interest here. It's as response to Casey Fahy, who was defending the contention that any suggestion that Ayn Rand was uncomfortable with evolutionary issues must be dismissed out of hand, because it is arbitrary assertion.

To see it all in context, visit http://www.solopassion.com/node/798#comment-6059.

Casey,

Here's the big problem I have with the notion of the arbitrary assertion, as Peikoff and subsequently the ARI crowd have come to use it.

An arbitrary assertion is one for which no evidence or rational argument has been provided. (And the standard here is not whether the evidence or argument is sufficient to prove the assertion true, just whether's there's enough to regard it as plausible, to take it seriously as an assertion about a possibility).

Fine and dandy, so far. Against radical forms of doubt (say, Descartes' procedure), the doctrine of the arbitrary assertion is effective without much further elaboration. But most of what Objectivists complain is arbitrary is not part of some brief for skepticism. The real question becomes: What are the standards of evidence or argument that apply to some kind of assertion? What are the relevant classes of assertions, for that matter?

Objectivism as Rand left it includes old-fashioned deductive logic, a theory of concept-formation, and some distinctive tools for detecting and rejecting bad arguments, e.g., the fallacy of the stolen concept. (The stolen concept fallacy makes some nontrivial presuppositions, but I'll assume for purposes of the present argument that they are correct. I'll assume that the other tools are appropriate as well--with one exception that I'll single out below.)

What closed-system Objectivism does not include is a theory of induction or a philosophy of science. In other words, many, if not most of the standards of evidence or argument that would be needed to apply to particular assertions are missing.

So far as I know, there isn't even a clear treatment of hypothesis testing. In his 1970s logic course, Peikoff acknowledged that scientific thinking (and sometimes more ordinary thinking) involve testing hypotheses--and that generating such hypotheses involves creativity. So where do you draw the line between creative hypothesis generation and what Rand derided as a "flight of fancy"? (I don't know what Peikoff's current views on the subject are, but if he tries to account for induction entirely without hypothesis testing, he won't get very far.)

What's more, the Objectivist literature includes an essay by Rand titled "The Psychology of Psychologizing." Ellen Stuttle proposed an interesting test a while back. Can you recall Rand's precise definition of psychologizing? (I couldn't. I had to look it up.)

And if you can recall her definition--do you think that Rand successfully refrains from psychologizing. as she defines it, in the very article in which she declares that it's wrong to do it?

In defense of Mr. Watkins, and of others who find his arguments against Mr. Parille's essay persuasive, you say:

As for the arbitrary claim, ANY speculation about Rand's unspoken motives, mental processes, or methods concerning her sparse comments about evolution, especially when they contradict consistent examples of her motives, mental processes, and method in all other respects, is inevitably arbitrary.

What criteria of evidence apply to analyses of any thinker's motives, or procedures for approaching problems? (Not just to Ayn Rand's--to Isaac Newton's, Michael Faraday's, Charles Darwin's, or whoever's.)

Is what the thinker says about his or her ways of doing things sufficient? Or are there aspects of his or her thinking that are inaccessible to introspection and will need to be gotten at some other way?

Indeed, contemporary psychology says that much of what happens in problem-solving and decision making, let alone in remembering or recognizing, is subconscious.

What's more, Rand made many statements about the role of subconscious processes (and of emotions) in her own work--these come through very clearly even in the bowdlerized published versions of her workshops on writing.

So, I'm sorry, unless you have clear criteria for judgments about a thinker's operating procedures and motives--criteria that Rand's own statements about herself invariably meet, and that Mr. Parille's suggestions about Rand's dealings with evolution invariably do not meet--you lack a basis for ruling out Mr. Parille's suggestions. Instead, you and the others who agree with Mr. Watkins are declaring them to be arbitrary because they fail to meet criteria of evidence that you have not yet established.

If you don't believe me on this issue, ask some people who do good quality intellectual history or intellectual biography, and find out how many of them would reject Mr. Parille's suggestions out of hand. (For that's what must be done, if they're truly arbitrary.)

And if you say that Mr. Parille has to be wrong, because he is psychologizing, you have your work cut out for you.

I am prepared to argue that "psychologizing" is what Rand called an "anti-concept." In particular, I believe it's easy to show that Rand's advice for avoiding psychologizing is completely bogus--not to mention unreflective of her own ways of judging people's motives. But that will take at least another post.

If you say that Mr. Parille has to be wrong, because this is Ayn Rand we're talking about, and not some other thinker--then, I would submit, you are appealing to the supposed perfection of Ayn Rand. Which you insist that you are not doing.

To summarize:

You can't judge an assertion or hypothesis to be arbitrary, without clear criteria for the evidence or argument that would be required to establish its plausibility.

If you combine the doctrine that an arbitrary assertion must be dismissed (and, by the way, I agree that it must) with inadequately developed standards of evidence or argument, you're going to end up with gross unclarity about when an assertion is arbitrary. Consequently, nonobjective assessments of arbitrariness are going to proliferate.

And this, so far as I can determine, is precisely what the Peikovians have ended up doing. They reject a wide range of hypotheses or assertions as arbitrary, even though in many (most?) cases they haven't a bloody clue whether they're really arbitrary or not. They end up substituting their dislike for the assertions, or their judment that they are inconsistent with Objectivism as they understand it, for proper assessments of arbitrariness.

If the doctrine of the arbitrary assertion were in wider use, what we would see is dueling proclamations of arbitrariness: the Objectivists dismissing a wide array of non-Objectivist theses as arbitrary, and vice versa.

But since Objectivists are far more inclined than others to talk about arbitrary assertions, they may form the illusion that because only they are dismissing a wide range of assertions in this fashion, and their opponents aren't throwing judgments of arbitrariness back at them, they must be right.

Problem is, no one outside the Peikovian camp will ever accept many of these judgments of arbitrariness. Everyone else would sooner take wooden nickels. In the absence of clearer criteria for evidence and argument, I would say that they are right to reject the poor quality judgments and the poor imitations of coinage.

Robert Campbell

PS. For Ayn Rand, "charity" was at best a two-edged word, and "charitable" had a negative connotation that "benevolent" did not. (Recall the way that Rand portrayed social workers, in both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.) So calling something a "charity refutation" connotes inferiority on the part of the person who really shouldn't need it but evidently does. IF you don't know whether some assertion is really arbitrary or not, calling an argument against it a "charity refutation" is a pure show of arrogance-- if not an argument from intimidation.

[John Dailey]

Robert:

~ I DO think Peikoff is/was on the right track re arguing about varied assertion types being properly categorizable as 'arbitrary' (ergo, as worth paying attention to as much as a parrot's 'statements'.) Unfortunately, he didn't spend too much analysis on the subject (that I'm aware of...but then I've not bought ALL his lecture tapes) for distinctions as to how to identify what makes which, and when sometimes it's undecidable merely given an 'assertion.'

~ Anyways, I wouldn't fault him so much as so many of his Emulator-Wannabe unofficially-associated ARI 'supporters', who seem to feel a need for a new and good polemic style and blithely go (can one say 'overboard'?) whole-hog with it. --- Contempt-filled condescension/moral-condemnation was quite popular. Arguing that one has 'evidence' for whatever, and any disagreers must 'prove' (a different territory than 'evidence'-having, obviously) otherwise got popular; now, 'arbitrary' is the new polemic, by whatever supposed 'definition' the objective arguers...arbitrarily...go by.

~ I've come to wonder about the cavalier way this term is now so often used...by Rand/ARI 'supporters.' Properly (ie: 'objectively') speaking, isn't the accusation that someone's 'assertion' is arbitrary, not thereby a call for 'evidence' (or 'proof') THAT such is true? I never see such done. I mean, elsewise, the accusation/ASSertion is itself to be considered 'arbitrary' in and of itself, no? (Here's hoping any pertinent ones bandying the accusation around "think twice" next time they throw it out.)

LLAP

J:D

Edited September 24, 2006 by John Dailey