New Developments re Harriman Induction book

[Robert Campbell]

It will be interesting how Greg Salmieri comes down in the McCaskey-HarriPei split, given his reported role in persuading Leonard Peikoff that gens are as certain as perception.

Robert Campbell

[sjw]

I just hope Peikoff lives long enough and has a vigorous enough constitution that he continues in this path, such that he causes a significantly greater number of Objectivists get shook up enough over Peikoff's irrationalism that they start thinking independently.

The risk of course is that today's more radically irrational Peikoff is set aside while they still cling to the Peikoff of ten or so years ago. Ironically, the worst thing that could happen to the intellectual independence of Objectivists is that most of them *not* follow Peikoff over the cliff.

[Robert Campbell]

Shayne,

Granted that Peikoff has drawn lots of negative attention with his appearances on the Bill O'Reilly show and his fatwa to vote Democratic, not to mention his DIM lectures and bomb-the-mosque rant...

OPAR is already plenty nutty, if you read it carefully and ponder the details.

And it came out in 1991.

Robert Campbell

[Ellen Stuttle]

Credit where it's due, Robert. I think that your post #325 explains with admirable clarity how HarriPei have "left the whole damn [correspondence theory of truth] out on the curb."

Ellen

Edited September 24, 2010 by Ellen Stuttle

[merjet]

And when Harriman takes a poke at Popper, for maintaining that one's generalizations apply to data and in circumstances one has never encountered—even in ones that one will never encounter—he seems to be going after Sir Karl for adhering to the correspondence theory.

Huh? Harriman doesn't even mention the correspondence theory of truth. He chides Popper for rejecting the validity of induction and as follows. "Popper upheld a mystical view of 'truth' that is forever outside the reach of man and accessible only to an omniscient god. In the end he was left with two types of generalization: those that have been proven false and those that will be proven false" (p. 189-90).

[Robert Campbell]

Merlin,

The passage you quoted from Harriman begins as follows (I've put the opening clause in italics):

By demanding that a true generalization must apply with unlimited precision to an unlimited domain, Popper upheld a mystical view of "truth" that is forever outside the reach of man and accessible to an omniscient god.(p. 189)

This is a ham-handed rendition, noticeably misstated, of one of Popper's positions. Still, we can discern which one it is. Popper often emphasized that our generalizations apply to instances that we do not know, and may not anticipate the existence of—which both makes our generalizations powerful and makes them vulnerable to falsification.

Meanwhile, Harriman is also trying to "prove" that Popper's views lead to universal epistemological skepticism. He has to mangle them a lot more severely to make such a conclusion appear to follow, but that's a distinct issue.

Next, we read

Such skeptics [supposedly including Popper] commit—on a grand scale—the fallacy of dropping context. The meaning of our generalizations is determined by the context that gives rise to them; to claim that a generalization is true is to claim that it applies within a specific context. The data subsumed by that context are necessarily limited in both range and precision. (p. 190)

As I and others have already noted, Harriman never actually specifies the context of any particular generalization. He seems to want to say that gerenalizations apply to data not yet collected—even to data not yet suspected to exist—but only, of course, when the data won't require putting restrictions on the generalization or substantially revising it in any other way.

Had Popper encountered views like Harriman's, a key part of his response would have been that if a generalization does not state boundary conditions or qualifications, it is, expressly or by implication, being taken to apply without boundary conditions—and it will, in fact, be true or false depending on whether it corresponds to the facts. Appeals to context won't make the generalization true if there are facts, even facts not presently known, that are actually inconsistent with it.

So Popper defended the portion of his views under contention here by appealing to the correspondence theory of truth.

Harriman clearly and emphatically rejects that portion of Popper's views, and invokes contextual certainty or contextual truth as his basis for rejecting them.

By implication—a straightforward implication—Harriman may not be referring to the correspondence theory of truth by name, but he is nonetheless leaving it at the curb.

Robert Campbell

[George H. Smith]

Stephen and George,

Do you think Whewell's "consilience of inductions" is similar to Harriman's "integration"?

I peeked at Whewell's Theory of Scientific Method on Google Books and it seems so. See page 18.

There are definitely some similarities.

I should add that there are some significant differences as well.

In John Herschel's Preliminary Discourse of Natural Philosophy (1830), we find the first explicit distinction between the "context of discovery" and the "context of justification" -- a distinction that Karl Popper and other philosophers of science would later emphasize. According to Herschel, the procedure used to formulate a theory is strictly irrelevant to the question of its scientific value, so long as the deductive implications of a theory are confirmed by observation.

Harriman objects to this dichotomy, and many examples in his book are designed to show how induction enabled scientists to arrive at sound hypotheses. William Whewell agrees to a point, but he also emphasizes how many successful hypotheses have resulted from "happy guesses." It is interesting to note that Whewell even uses the word "conjectures," a Popperian favorite, in this regard.

According to Whewell, the process of scientific discovery "cannot be limited by rules, or expressed in definitions." Rather, this talent "belongs to the genius of a Discoverer" who has "what are commonly spoken of as felicitous and inexplicable strokes of inventive talent....No rules can ensure to us similar success in new cases; or can enable men who do not possess similar endowments, to make like advances in knowledge." Whewell continues:

Yet still, we may do something in tracing the process by which such discoveries are made; and this it is here our business to do. We may observe that these, and the like discoveries, are not improperly described as happy Guesses; and that Guesses, in these as in other instances, imply various suppositions made, of which some one turns out to be the right one. We may, in such cases, conceive the discoverer as inventing and trying many conjectures, till he finds one which answers the purpose of combining the scattered facts into a single rule. The discovery of general truths from general facts is performed, commonly at least, and more commonly than at first appears, by the use of a series of Suppositions, or Hypotheses, which are looked at in quick succession, and of which the one which really leads to truth is rapidly detected, and when caught sight of, firmly held, verified, and followed to its consequences. In the minds of most discoverers, this process of invention, trial, and acceptance or rejection of the hypothesis, goes on so rapidly that we cannot trace it in its successive steps. But in some instances, we can do so; and we can also see that the other examples of discovery do not differ essentially from these. The same intellectual operations take place in other cases, although this often happens so instantaneously that we lose the trace of the progression.... [Whewell then gives examples from Kepler and Galileo.] "Novum Organon Renovatum," from Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, reprinted in William Whewell's Theory of Scientific Method, ed. Robert E. Butts, p. 134.

Of course, Harriman could reply that scientific geniuses are not always explicitly aware of their reasoning, but his accounts of the discoveries of Kepler and Galileo in particular are much "cleaner" (i.e., more explicitly rational) than we find in the accounts of Whewell and most later historians of science.

Ghs

[9thdoctor]

Don’t click play until you have an airsickness bag close at hand. I’ve got to add, though, that this girl is pretty cute.

[kiaer.ts]

Don't click play until you have an airsickness bag close at hand. I've got to add, though, that this girl is pretty cute.

Flattery will get her nowhere.

"Reverence" is a noun. The verb is revere.

[sjw]

Don't click play until you have an airsickness bag close at hand. I've got to add, though, that this girl is pretty cute.

Flattery will get her nowhere.

"Reverence" is a noun. The verb is revere.

She's not going for flattery she's going for an appeal to commonly-held values, but since they are not held in common it will indeed get her nowhere.

Shayne

[BaalChatzaf]

William Whewell and C.S.Peirce in some respects anticipated Karl Popper's work.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[James Heaps-Nelson]

Don't click play until you have an airsickness bag close at hand. I've got to add, though, that this girl is pretty cute.

Flattery will get her nowhere.

"Reverence" is a noun. The verb is revere.

She's not going for flattery she's going for an appeal to commonly-held values, but since they are not held in common it will indeed get her nowhere.

Shayne

I have to agree with Shayne here. Also, to the youth the controversy that grips them the most is the one they're living through. Better for her independence that she learn a hard lesson now.

Jim

[George H. Smith]

Don’t click play until you have an airsickness bag close at hand. I’ve got to add, though, that this girl is pretty cute.

[video deleted]

"This man I address is, in essence, a good man."

Interesting qualifier. I, too, am in essence a good man. It's those damned "accidental" characteristics that I have trouble with.

How would I rate this video on the Geometer of 1 to 10? The same words, if spoken by a geeky, pot-marked guy -- maybe a 5. However, as delivered by an attractive and engaging young woman -- a definite 8 or better.

A sexist evaluation? Yup, sure is. At my age I no longer give a shit.

Ghs

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Did I hear the message right?

From what I understood, Peikoff-wise, she did not make the video to state as fact that Peikoff was a good man--merely to affirm it to find out if it is true.

By what means, I don't know other than making and posting this video.

She also criticized his appeal to authority as an argument.

That's the message I heard. Did I miss something?

I also like that fact that she called him "Ayn Rand's chosen heir" rather than the standard "Ayn Rand's intellectual heir" that seems to mysteriously and spontaneously crop up around Peikoff acolytes. Her way is the precise way to put it.

Michael

[James Heaps-Nelson]

Did I hear the message right?

From what I understood, Peikoff-wise, she did not make the video to state as fact that Peikoff was a good man--merely to affirm it to find out if it is true.

By what means, I don't know other than making and posting this video.

She also criticized his appeal to authority as an argument.

That's the message I heard. Did I miss something?

I also like that fact that she called him "Ayn Rand's chosen heir" rather than the standard "Ayn Rand's intellectual heir" that seems to mysteriously and spontaneously crop up around Peikoff acolytes. Her way is the precise way to put it.

Michael

Michael,

One thing I've never quite been able to figure out about the shunning thing and coordinated group moral judgment is why people would choose to construct their social lives like that. Hanging around people like that is a ticking time bomb. If they take issue with some intellectual stand you take and you don't come around with repeated efforts at persuasion, they're going to drop you like a hot potato. It is precisely the exercise of your intellectual independence that will sever the relationship. Not only that, but they'll go around to their known associates like busybodies demanding that they not associate with you. The only proper response to that is: their loss.

Dr. Peikoff's do you know who I am puffery is laughable. It's that Emperor has no clothes moment when any self-respecting person would run for the hills. It's Peikoff's standing that's the issue not the merits of the case. Notice also the self-respecting embarrassment of most of the scientifically literate segment of Objectivists who've reviewed Harriman's book. To take a line from Groucho Marx: who do trust, me or your own eyes.

Jim

[Robert Campbell]

Ms. Zavarella has put her appeal in language that Leonard Peikoff wants people to think he is ready to respond to.

I'm afraid, though, that he gave up on the "inspiring examplar of rationality" thing some time ago.

Robert Campbell

[Robert Campbell]

Meanwhile, Ms. Hsieh has yet to post her reactions to the Peikoff-McCaskey schism.

The wind direction must be continually shifting.

Robert Campbell

Note added Monday 9/27 4:44 PM: Although Ms. Hsieh has yet to post anything on NoodleFood, I've heard she put a message on Roderick Fitts' Facebook page that expressed support for McCaskey. Roderick Fitts, it turns out, has blocked me from seeing any of his Facebook page, but most other readers here should be able to see what Dr. Hsieh put on his wall.

[sjw]

Michael,

One thing I've never quite been able to figure out about the shunning thing and coordinated group moral judgment is why people would choose to construct their social lives like that. Hanging around people like that is a ticking time bomb. If they take issue with some intellectual stand you take and you don't come around with repeated efforts at persuasion, they're going to drop you like a hot potato. It is precisely the exercise of your intellectual independence that will sever the relationship. Not only that, but they'll go around to their known associates like busybodies demanding that they not associate with you. The only proper response to that is: their loss.

Dr. Peikoff's do you know who I am puffery is laughable. It's that Emperor has no clothes moment when any self-respecting person would run for the hills. It's Peikoff's standing that's the issue not the merits of the case. Notice also the self-respecting embarrassment of most of the scientifically literate segment of Objectivists who've reviewed Harriman's book. To take a line from Groucho Marx: who do trust, me or your own eyes.

Jim

Well said.

Shayne

[kiaer.ts]

How would I rate this video on the Geometer of 1 to 10? The same words, if spoken by a geeky, pot-marked guy -- maybe a 5. However, as delivered by an attractive and engaging young woman -- a definite 8 or better.

At the risk of starving to death - I think you mean pock-marked.

[9thdoctor]

Ms. Zavarella has put her appeal in language that Leonard Peikoff wants people to think he is ready to respond to.

I think that’s what I found so nauseating about it. She comes across as a recently disappointed cult member, hoping for reassurance.

[Selene]

Ms. Zavarella has put her appeal in language that Leonard Peikoff wants people to think he is ready to respond to.

I think that's what I found so nauseating about it. She comes across as a recently disappointed cult member, hoping for reassurance.

9th:

Her body language is so intensely strained and entreating, almost desperately pleading for him to be the image that is in her head.

The truly sad part is that she still does not realize that Ayn, genius that she was, was extremely conflicted in her personal choices. Cultish, most certainly.

What does she do when it all comes crashing down, which, if she keeps her mind and eyes open, it will.

I know when I got that Objectivist that let the cat out of the bag about Ayn and Nathanial, I was not as stunned and shocked as most apparently were.

However, it hurt beecause I knew it would be used to destroy the movement which exponentially growing. That was the tragedy for me.

However, I have never stopped exposing anyone who comes within three (3) feet of me to her ideas because en toto they are the best I have seen to build

your life on, with the eyes wide open qualificaion to her glaring errors, omissions and downright mistakes.

How did others handle the news? I would love to hear from them.

Adam

[Robert Campbell]

Two comments on the Peikoff-McCaskey schism were sent to me by a person who is not blocked from Roderick Fitts' Facebook page.

If you are able to view the page, you might want to check it to confirm that these are accurate.

My understanding is that both appeared under Fitts' latest and longest treatment of the issue on his Facebook page, which is dated September 13.

On September 15, responding to one Jason McCurdy, who claimed, after reading McCaskey's resignation letter and Leonard Peikoff's email to Arline Mann, that Peikoff was perfectly justified in demanding McCaskey's expulsion:

Your judgment is based on misunderstanding of the basic facts of the case. Please re-read McCaskey's resignation letter and Dr. Peikoff's letter again. As you can tell from them, McCaskey's criticisms were entirely private until Dr. Peikoff issued his ultimatum to the ARI Board, McCaskey had resigned, etc. Dr. Peikoff objected to any criticism of the book from McCaskey, even though limited to private e-mail with the author and private scholarly forums. As a scholar, I find that strange and troublesome, to say the least.

And on September 16, responding to one Hoyt Chang, who not only backed Peikoff but complained that ARI donors' money might have gone to a non-outreach activity such as the in-house workshop on Harriman's book:

Your conclusions seem totally inapt here. ARI donor money was not used to fund any kind of academic forum, nor would it be. ARI money was used to fund a book -- on a topic outside of Objectivism, i.e. history of science and induction -- that McCaskey, a scholar on the ARI Board, raised some concerns and objections about in private e-mails and with other Objectivist scholars in a private forum. I cannot see what's wrong with what McCaskey has done: it's exactly what I'd expect any Objectivist scholar concerned with the truth to do.

Dr. Hsieh is adhering to the official, closed-system definition, whereby any latter-day productions by Harriman and Peikoff on the philosophy of science are "not Objectivism."

Problem is, Peikoff never really meant that. He obviously expects DIM and The Logical Leap to be counted as canonical, his own official definitions notwithstanding. And Dr. Hsieh backed his fatwa in 2006, which was supposedly grounded in DIM.

So where is all this going?

Stay tuned.

Robert Campbell

[sjw]

So where is all this going?

Stay tuned.

Robert Campbell

A leopard can't change its spots, so that should give one some idea where it is going. Whether it goes there with Peikoff or not is a question, albeit not a very important one. Any improvement in policy that appeases the more reasonable elements of ARI will be a step backward, because even the reasonable elements are essentially unreasonable. The best thing that could happen is if ARI shrinks its intellectual pursuits even further and explicitly becomes what it always was: a fan club and marketing engine for Rand's books. They should cease and desist all interpretive works, all letters to the editor, all attempts to get Objectivists into universities. Objectivist qua movement needs to die, as indeed it has been trying to do for many decades. Time to unplug the life support.

Shayne

[Selene]

Excellent observation Shayne.

I have been personally advocating that for roughly three (3) decades - at times, though, I said to myself, well at least they are getting her name and through her books, her ideas out in the public.

However, poisonous messengers can only make the consumers sickly and sometimes deathly sick.

Good statement.

Adam

[Robert Campbell]

The best thing that could happen is if ARI shrinks its intellectual pursuits even further and explicitly becomes what it always was: a fan club and marketing engine for Rand's books. They should cease and desist all interpretive works, all letters to the editor, all attempts to get Objectivists into universities. Objectivism qua movement needs to die, as indeed it has been trying to do for many decades.

Shayne,

I agree with you.

There is no need for an Objectivist movement today, and attempts to build or keep one pose too many liabilities.

This why any expectation on Yaron Brook's part of absorbing the vanquished remnants of TAS is nutty and hubristic.

And why Will Thomas's dream of uniting the Objectivist movement behind TAS was no less so.

Robert Campbell