Question for old-timer's: Peikoff's view on certainty

[sjw]

I was talking to a friend about some views he had on certainty, and he mentioned a story from Peikoff's old course on Objectivism (which I've not heard myself). He alleged that Peikoff said that one could be certain of landing safely if one got on a commercial airplane--unless one possessed specific knowledge such as that the pilot was drunk, or there was a hurricane you were flying through, etc.

I didn't get this idea of certainty from OPAR. Do any old-timer's remember what Peikoff said here, or other comments on certainty that fit or don't fit with this?

[Reidy]

WHAT a coincidence. I cited that same course earlier today about misdefinition of religion. As I recall, Peikoff made a distinction between what he called "metaphysical" and "epistemological" possibility. The first looks to me like what we usually call logical possibility; given what things are, this is how they can act. An airplane is heavier than air and subject to gravity, so it can crash. Epistemological possibility is the possession of particular evidences such as you mentioned. Without such evidence - i.e. without particular reason to believe the plane is going to crash - you can be certain that it won't.

[sjw]

WHAT a coincidence. I cited that same course earlier today about misdefinition of religion.

Yes, thanks for that

As I recall, Peikoff made a distinction between what he called "metaphysical" and "epistemological" possibility. The first looks to me like what we usually call logical possibility; given what things are, this is how they can act. An airplane is heavier than air and subject to gravity, so it can crash. Epistemological possibility is the possession of particular evidences such as you mentioned. Without such evidence - i.e. without particular reason to believe the plane is going to crash - you can be certain that it won't.

So "metaphysically", we're uncertain about the plane crashing or not, but "epistemologically" we're certain it won't? Was Ayn Rand around when he said that? Do you know of any writings of hers (or his) that corroborate this point of view?

[Ellen Stuttle]

I signed on specifically to respond to Shayne's query, which I'd noticed earlier, and to say (I wrote this before I signed on):

"Whoever told you that is right, Shayne, although the expression should be 'contextually certain.' Peikoff waxed at length on exactly that example, on which Rand (with her dislike and suspicion of statistics) had waxed at length to him. I haven't time for providing details. Maybe one of the other 'old-timers' here will notice your post and respond."

Peter Reidy has meanwhile posted to fill in some details. Rand was extremely sceptical of statistics as an epistemological method. (This scepticism, btw, was a significant factor in her not placing any credence in the early smoking-and-cancer studies. Another factor was that she thought cancer was caused by "bad premises.")

Ellen

___

[sjw]

I signed on specifically to respond to Shayne's query, which I'd noticed earlier, and to say (I wrote this before I signed on):

Thanks!

"Whoever told you that is right, Shayne, although the expression should be 'contextually certain.' Peikoff waxed at length on exactly that example, on which Rand (with her dislike and suspicion of statistics) had waxed at length to him. I haven't time for providing details. Maybe one of the other 'old-timers' here will notice your post and respond."

In my context of knowledge, planes can crash for various unforseeable reasons. I agree with the idea of contextual knowledge, I just don't apply it the same way to this case. But maybe the fact that I don't apply it that way means that I don't agree with Rand's exact view on contextual knowledge.

Peter Reidy has meanwhile posted to fill in some details. Rand was extremely sceptical of statistics as an epistemological method. (This scepticism, btw, was a significant factor in her not placing any credence in the early smoking-and-cancer studies. Another factor was that she thought cancer was caused by "bad premises.")

I wouldn't call that "contextual certainty", I'd call it "jumping to conclusions". Just as I'd call the non-crashing airplane certainty "ignoring uncomfortable facts".

[Ellen Stuttle]

Just correcting some misinformation in my post #4. I'd add an editing PS to the post itself, but the time window for doing that is way past.

I happened to re-read this brief thread a couple nights ago, in connection with a question raised on William Scherk's blog about Rand's views of statistics. I don't know where my mind was the night I posted the response to Shayne -- half asleep I suppose. Leonard Peikoff indeed did analyze the "Could this airplane crash?" and similar examples in terms of "metaphysical" vs "epistemological" possibility, as Peter Reidy describes. Insofar as I recall wide awake he didn't, contrary to my report, bring in the idea of "contextual certainty" there. I'm not sure when the idea of "contextual certainty" began to be talked about.

Ellen

___

[Laure]

I don't get why we should conclude that we are "epistemologically certain" the plane won't crash. What's wrong with the phrase "pretty sure" in this context?

[Dragonfly]

I don't get why we should conclude that we are "epistemologically certain" the plane won't crash. What's wrong with the phrase "pretty sure" in this context?

It doesn't contain the word "certain", and Objectivists are always certain.

[Ellen Stuttle]

I don't get why we should conclude that we are "epistemologically certain" the plane won't crash. What's wrong with the phrase "pretty sure" in this context?

Laure,

You'd have to ask LP himself, or someone with better recall for the details to get a "certain" (in the sense of surely accurate) answer. Best I recall, the idea was that you have to know something specific about problems pertaining to the particular airplane before you have grounds for speculating that THAT airplane might crash. The sheer fact that sometimes airplanes generically do crash is insufficient to say that any particular airplane might crash.

Possibly someone else reading knows more about the details of the argument.

Ellen

___

[Brant Gaede]

I don't get why we should conclude that we are "epistemologically certain" the plane won't crash. What's wrong with the phrase "pretty sure" in this context?

It doesn't contain the word "certain", and Objectivists are always certain.

You can be certain that once the plane goes up it will come back down (unless it's scooped up by a UFO).

--Brant

Edited July 22, 2007 by Brant Gaede

[BaalChatzaf]

Laure,

You'd have to ask LP himself, or someone with better recall for the details to get a "certain" (in the sense of surely accurate) answer. Best I recall, the idea was that you have to know something specific about problems pertaining to the particular airplane before you have grounds for speculating that THAT airplane might crash. The sheer fact that sometimes airplanes generically do crash is insufficient to say that any particular airplane might crash.

Possibly someone else reading knows more about the details of the argument.

Ellen

___

It is -always possible- for an airborne heavier than air vehicle to crash. While you could not say for certain that this flight or that will crash, neither can you say for certain that this flight or that will not crash. The possibility of mishap exists every time a heavier than air vessel becomes air borne.

Past safety records are no guarantee of future safety.

The idea of an accident-proof vessel went down with -Titanic- in 1912. The "unsinkable" ship sank on its maiden voyage.

There on no unsinkable steel ships. There are no uncrashable heavier than air vehicles. Anyone who is more than ten feet off the ground unsupported by something anchored into the ground is in The Ranks of Death.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Roger Bissell]

Just correcting some misinformation in my post #4. I'd add an editing PS to the post itself, but the time window for doing that is way past.

I happened to re-read this brief thread a couple nights ago, in connection with a question raised on William Scherk's blog about Rand's views of statistics. I don't know where my mind was the night I posted the response to Shayne -- half asleep I suppose. Leonard Peikoff indeed did analyze the "Could this airplane crash?" and similar examples in terms of "metaphysical" vs "epistemological" possibility, as Peter Reidy describes. Insofar as I recall wide awake he didn't, contrary to my report, bring in the idea of "contextual certainty" there. I'm not sure when the idea of "contextual certainty" began to be talked about.

Ellen

___

Peikoff first discussed "contextual certainty" in his course "Objectivism's Theory of Knowledge," which was delivered initially in the Fall of 1965 at the University of Denver, then in over 25 cities via tape transcription, under the auspices of the Nathaniel Branden Institute, from 1966 to 1968. He also discussed "the arbitrary" in these lectures. Actually, both ideas were discussed in lecture #8, on knowledge.

I did not hear these lectures, but I came into possession of two different sets of notes, and I compiled a side-by-side display of the two sets in one file, for study and as a check on the dependability of the notes.

I find everything Peikoff says about certainty, probability, and possibility to be completely on the mark, though I am still scratching my head (with others, including Bob Campbell) about the truth status of the arbitrary, and whether it is to be "dismissed out of hand" (as opposed to set aside, with the understanding that either it is true, or it isn't, but we have no current evidence to help us decide one way or the other).

REB

[Robert Campbell]

Leonard Peikoff has long used the constructions "possible for" and "possible that" to distinguish between "metaphysical" and "epistemological" possibility.

E.g., it is possible for any airplane to crash. But, according to Peikoff, one should not conclude that it is possible that this airplane will crash, without specific evidence of a factor or factors posing a particular risk of a crash.

Question for Roger: In Lecture 8 from "Objectivism's Theory of Knowledge," is Leonard Peikoff already claiming that an arbitrary assertion is neither true nor false? How about the claims that it "cannot be cognitively processed" or that it has no more meaning than the sounds of a sentence mimicked by a parrot?

Robert Campbell

[Roger Bissell]

Leonard Peikoff has long used the constructions "possible for" and "possible that" to distinguish between "metaphysical" and "epistemological" possibility.

E.g., it is possible for any airplane to crash. But, according to Peikoff, one should not conclude that it is possible that this airplane will crash, without specific evidence of a factor or factors posing a particular risk of a crash.

Question for Roger: In Lecture 8 from "Objectivism's Theory of Knowledge," is Leonard Peikoff already claiming that an arbitrary assertion is neither true nor false? How about the claims that it "cannot be cognitively processed" or that it has no more meaning than the sounds of a sentence mimicked by a parrot?

Robert Campbell

First, a correction: these points were discussed not in lecture 8, but lecture 9, which appears to have been titled "Certainty without Omniscience." (Peikoff also gave a stand-alone lecture on this topic at least once or twice during the late 1960s.)

Second, Peikoff seems emphatic in saying (in 1965) that arbitrary assertions are false. He speaks there of not just rejecting (dismissing) arbitrarily asserted positive statements, but of ~refuting~ them, i.e., establishing them as being false by showing that they are asserted without evidence. He says that in the absence of evidence for the positive, the negative should be accepted as true; and that an arbitrary positive is to be rejected as false and its negative automatically as true. You don't establish the truth of the negation of an arbitary positive by proving the negative; you establish its truth by ~disproving~ the arbitrary positive (by showing there to be no evidence to support it).

Yet, thirdly, he says quite clearly that the arbitary deserves ~no~ epistemological consideration or attention, and that it is not our duty to disprove it. Surely this is not quite correct. In order to dismiss it, we have to consider or attend to it ~at least~ to the extent of pointing out that there is no evidence to support it.

Also, it's interesting that even though it is not worthy of consideration or attention, we are still entitled to regard the arbitrarily asserted positive as ~false~.

Now, here's some Bissell-ism, take it or leave it. We know that every instance of the Law of the Excluded Middle must be true: a thing must be either a or non-a. So, it must be true that either there is life on other planets, or there is not. "There is life on other planets." "There is no life on other planets." One of these propositions must be true and the other false.

It seems that Peikoff would agree with this, at least to this point. But he would then say that it must be the case that "There is life on other planets" is false, since there is no evidence for it. Which puts him in an awkward position, if and when it turns out that there ~is~ life on other planets!

So, I would say instead that we simply don't ~know~ which of those propositions is true and which false, because we don't have evidence one way or the other.

And if you wanted to quarrel with that view and say that we ~do~ have some evidence, some reason to suspect there might be life on other planets, even in the absence of ~direct~ evidence, fine, I have no problem with that. It is because it is ~plausible~, that (for instance) planets do exist in the temperature ranges necessary for life "as we know it," that we entertain the idea of there being life on other planets, not just because we are engaging in idle speculation or whim-mongering. And Peikoff might rejoin and say that he would not include such questions in the category of the arbitrary, for the very reason of such factors making the idea plausible and not just a flight of fancy.

However, a lot of water has gone under the bridge since then, and I'm getting the impression that Peikoff now thinks that arbitrary assertions are neither true nor false -- even if they some day turn out to be true (or false)! Now, ~that~ is something I have trouble bending my mind around!

REB

[cjsmall]

However, a lot of water has gone under the bridge since then, and I'm getting the impression that Peikoff now thinks that arbitrary assertions are neither true nor false -- even if they some day turn out to be true (or false)! Now, ~that~ is something I have trouble bending my mind around!

Roger:

Maybe the solution to this "paradox" is to recognize that an assertion made arbitrarily (which can be neither true or false) is not the same thing as an assertion made at another point that is based upon some corroborating evidence, even if both assertions are framed using identical words. In other words, a truthless arbitrary assertion is not the thing as the later assertion that has the capability of being proven true or false. This implies that we always accord an evaluation of this type of epistemological status as a necessary attribute of any assertion. Given that, an arbitrary assertion can never turn out to be true or false, because it doesn't possess the epistemological attribute of provability.

Here I am making a distinction between an assertion, which must rest on concurrent facts of reality, and a conjecture, which may not.

--

Jeff

Edited July 23, 2007 by Jeffery Small

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I can't help suspect that the real reason for this whole "arbitrary" thing was to bash the notion of the existence of a God. And I can't help but suspect that this reason has had some influence on its evolution to the present state of "arbitrary" not having any cognitive content.

All the rest seems like gravy.

EDIT: I am not arguing for the existence of God, merely making an opinion about the quality of the argument used. The strange thing is that in this cosmology the existence of God is called arbitrary, but one can say with certainty that the universe is finite. Now how's that for arbitrary?

Michael

[Chris Grieb]

Roger;

I was at one of the "Certainty" lectures. It was at

The lecture was very good and it was Leonard at his best.

I do remember that was while not new material most of the people would not have heard it.

the first Charlottesville conference on Objectivism in 1967.'This has been switched around.

Edited July 23, 2007 by Chris Grieb

[Neil Parille]

Leonard Peikoff has long used the constructions "possible for" and "possible that" to distinguish between "metaphysical" and "epistemological" possibility.

E.g., it is possible for any airplane to crash. But, according to Peikoff, one should not conclude that it is possible that this airplane will crash, without specific evidence of a factor or factors posing a particular risk of a crash.

But doesn't this contradict Rand's view of concepts?

[Robert Campbell]

Michael,

I can't help suspect that the real reason for this whole "arbitrary" thing was to bash the notion of the existence of a God. And I can't help but suspect that this reason has had some influence on its evolution to the present state of "arbitrary" not having any cognitive content.

All the rest seems like gravy.

Well, yes, the initial application of the doctrine of the arbitrary assertion was to claims about God (Branden, 1963). Though unmotivated claims that someone committed a crime appeared as a sidebar...

In Branden (1963) and in Peikoff (1976, 1991) there is a close coupling between the doctrine of the arbitrary and the rejection of agnosticism. (I don't know whether these notions were yoked in Leonard Peikoff's Lecture 9 from 1965, but am willing to bet that they were.)

The gravy:

In Leonard Peikoff's later presentations, the doctrine was extended to astrology, ESP, "past lives," Marxist and Islamic imperialist conspiracy theories, and declarations about gremlins.

And of course Peter Schwartz stretched it out to cover anything that Nathaniel or Barbara Branden said about Ayn Rand.

Robert Campbell

[Robert Campbell]

Jeffery,

Maybe the solution to this "paradox" is to recognize that an assertion made arbitrarily (which can be neither true or false) is not the same thing as an assertion made at another point that is based upon some corroborating evidence, even if both assertions are framed using identical words. In other words, a truthless arbitrary assertion is not the thing as the later assertion that has the capability of being proven true or false. This implies that we always accord an evaluation of this type of epistemological status as a necessary attribute of any assertion. Given that, an arbitrary assertion can never turn out to be true or false, because it doesn't possess the epistemological attribute of provability.

This, of course, is the "solution" offered by Leonard Peikoff in his later work. I call it his redemption policy for arbitrary assertions. Much in the later Peikovian treatment is unclear, but he obviously is claiming that the same words said by different people can constitute an arbitrary assertion in one case, and a true or false assertion in another.

Problems:

(1) In OPAR, Dr. Peikoff is so emphatic about what is wrong with "the arbitrary" that it comes across as beyond redemption. If "the arbitrary" has no context, occupies no place in the hierarchy (making Peikovian reduction impossible), "cannot be cognitively processed," and qualifies for no "epistemological verdict," one wonders how it could be understood well enough to identify it as arbitrary (which, to make things worse, appears to be an epistemological verdict...). And how could it be given a context or a place in the hierarchy if it could not be "cognitively processed"?

(2) If you consider the examples that Dr. Peikoff gives of arbitrary assertions in his later work, you'll swear that he believes them all to be false. Claims about God, gremlins, international Zionist conspiracies, our destinies being influenced by the lineup of stars and planets... The only exception is the "savage" mouthing "2 + 2 = 4" without comprehension (here Dr. Peikoff is being manifestly unfair to savages, but I digress).

(3) Dr. Peikoff seems to think that arbitrary assertions are always put forward deliberately, in full knowledge of the absence of evidence in their favor--he attaches such epithets to them as "brazen," condemns "the apostles of the arbitrary," and so on. If so, identifying an assertion as arbitrary requires one to know not just the state of the relevant evidence, but also the state of knowledge and the motives of the person making the assertion.

(4) Dr. Peikoff can't decide whether one is not obliged to redeem an arbitrary assertion, or is obliged not to redeem any. At one point in OPAR, he says both in the same paragraph.

Robert Campbell

PS. Roger, in the old Theory of Knowledge lectures, did Dr. Peikoff merely say that one has no duty to respond to an arbitrary assertion? Or did he mix in language implying that one has an obligation not to respond?

[cjsmall]

Robert and Roger:

Thanks for the exposition on this topic. I really haven't paid too much attention to Peikoff's work over the years, so I am certainly not in a position to interpret what he meant.

I do think it is incumbent upon a person making an assertion to establish the context for the assertion if they wish to distinguish it from an arbitrary claim, but I also agree with Robert that it is pointless to consider the state of knowledge or motives of the claimer in judging the epistemological status or validity of any particular assertion. This sounds like another typical case of dragging moral condemnation into an area and, in this case, conflating it with epistemological evaluation.

The real problem with Peikoff and the ARI crowd is that in their hierarchy of Objectivist values, moral judgment is the primary concern. They seem incapable of discussing any subject without slipping into this realm. This is what separates many real-world Objectivists from Howard Roark or the heros in Atlas Shrugged. In the case of the literary figures, there is very little actual moral judgment, and what we do see is always in service of the achievement of some immediate concrete goal. By contrast, for many Objectivists, moral evaluation is an end in itself.

Regards,

--

Jeff

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

The real problem with Peikoff and the ARI crowd is that in their hierarchy of Objectivist values, moral judgment is the primary concern. They seem incapable of discussing any subject without slipping into this realm. This is what separates many real-world Objectivists from Howard Roark or the heros in Atlas Shrugged. In the case of the literary figures, there is very little actual moral judgment, and what we do see is always in service of the achievement of some immediate concrete goal. By contrast, for many Objectivists, moral evaluation is an end in itself.

Jeff,

I have seen the root is even deeper epistemologically. Peikoff wrote in OPAR, pp. 155-156:

There are four steps in the generation of an emotion: perception (or imagination), identification, evaluation, response. Normally, only the first and last of these are conscious. The two intellectual steps, identification and evaluation, occur as a rule without the need of conscious awareness and with lightninglike rapidity.

The cognitive parts of this (identification and evaluation) are automated. Since all moral condemnations are accompanied by emotions, I often see what I cannot call anything but an attempt to live on the level of emotions and pretend that the cognitive part has been carried out responsibly because it is automated.

There is another issue going back to Peikoff's essay, "Fact and Value," and even "The Objectivist Ethics" by Rand where (to quote them both): "every is implies an ought."

Taken literally, this means that cognitive awareness of anything is intrinsically a value judgment (which I strenuously disagree with). Once again, the attempt is to automate identification and live on the level of evaluation, i.e., live cognitively on the level of the emotions. I do not believe this was the case with Rand or even Peikoff (mostly), but the way they expressed it, the trap was set for those who do not want to think, but pretend that they do so they can feel justified in letting their whims and emotions guide them.

A good example is that if a person is in a nasty mood, it's OK to be obnoxious. That's "rational" because the person he is talking to said something "evil." He thinks it's automated cognition, so he can even feel superior to all others because he has performed "integration." This is nothing but kindergarten with a moral and intellectual sanction.

Likewise, this same method can be use to justify bigotry, theft, and a myriad of irrational behaviors (and I see these things promoted like that all the time).

Michael

[Robert Campbell]

Jeff,

You made a good point, about moral judgment taking over and becoming paramount.

In OPAR, Leonard Peikoff is so desperate to assimilate epistemological evaluation to moral judgment that in one passage he equates trying to refute an arbitrary assertion with "sanctioning" it.

Game over, as far as I'm concerned.

Robert Campbell

[Daniel Barnes]

Roger B:

>I'm getting the impression that Peikoff now thinks that arbitrary assertions are neither true nor false -- even if they some day turn out to be true (or false)

It seems more likely that Peikoff is merely confused, or being deliberately confusing, rather than having any deeper, more "mind bending" insight.

We might consider an arbitrary assertion to be like an arbitrary action - say, like hitting a golf ball while blindfolded. Now, if by some miracle you hit a hole in one, this still is a hole in one, regardless. An arbitrary statement is just the same. I might predict, arbitrarily (in fact there is no other way), tomorrow's winning Lotto numbers. If I do, it will be true that I have won Lotto (if I don't, it will be false). Someone might make an arbitrary guess on a multi-choice quiz show that Ayn Rand is the author of "Atlas Shrugged." Regardless of the fact the guess was arbitrary, it will still be true that Ayn Rand is the author of "Atlas Shrugged," and that person will be right. And so forth

The obvious lesson from this is that the arbitrary can be a source of truth, though of course it is not necessarily, nor even likely to be a source of truth. Certainly there is nothing about the arbitrary that would render it undecideable. It seems to me that Peikoff is simply resorting to obfuscation to deny this. I suspect his motive for this obfuscation is that he wants to install reason as the only possible source of truth, instead of, less exaltedly, our best guide to truth.

Edited July 24, 2007 by Daniel Barnes

[Daniel Barnes]

Jeff:

>The real problem with Peikoff and the ARI crowd is that in their hierarchy of Objectivist values, moral judgment is the primary concern. They seem incapable of discussing any subject without slipping into this realm.

I suspect this is an inevitable consequence of Rand's totalism (ie total integration). The integrating agent is philosophy, from which everything else in human thought, no matter how trivial, supposedly fundamentally stems. The obvious problem with this 'integration', however, is that it works in reverse too ie. that there is no trivial disagreement that, if the disputers are so inclined, cannot be attributed to a fundamental philosophical disagreement. (Usually moral disagreements are in fact reduced one step further to epistemological or philosophical ones). Of course, philosophical disagreements are usually so vague that they merely provide verbal cover for what are in reality far less sophisticated personal conflicts. I've written a little bit about this tendency here.