The Logical Leap: Induction in Physics

[Robert Campbell]

Can you be concretely specific as to what you are calling her a priori positions? A quote and a citation would help, if possible.

Ted,

I'm surprised that you aren't familiar with the standard Objectivist teachings about the nature of space and time. Leonard Peikoff's history of philosophy lectures from the early 1970s would do as a source; so would his 1976 lectures on the philosophy of Objectivism. If you want references to OPAR, I'll dig them up for you.

One instance, Rand's Ford Hall Forum answer to John Enright's question about the nature of time, is sitting right here on OL:

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=7801&view=findpost&p=85652

On the nature of space, the standard Objectivist claims are that it must be finite, not infinite; that it must be relative, not absolute; and that space cannot exist without entities. "There is no nothing," Nathaniel Branden and Leonard Peikoff have both announced in lecture. Some lines of inquiry in 20th century physics are therefore rejected a priori because they allegedly reify empty space.

Like the claims about time (time is in the universe; the universe isn't in time) the arguments derive from Ancient Greek philosophy, specifically from Aristotle (and with specific regard to the denial of empty space) Parmenides.

This may be true, but her sources are introspection and anecdote. She admits the crow epistemology is something she heard somewhere, and it is to illustrate, not to prove a point. That humans can only hold about seven items in working memory is a commonplace. I am unaware of any serious contradictions between her and Piaget, Damasio, Sacks, Merlin Donald, Jeff Hawkins, or others. The objections you give are are procedural. Do you have factual objections?

Are introspection and anecdote satisfactory or sufficient means of answering psychological questions?

The "crow epistemology," as far as I've been able to determine, derives from Rand's memory of Nathaniel Branden telling her about his psychology professor referring in lecture to George Miller's new (1956) article on the limited capacity of working memory. The crow story that the professor seems to have used to illustrate the point goes back to various 18th century French naturalists.

There are signficant points of disagreement between Rand and Piaget, Damasio, and Sacks, as well as significant points of agreement. (Can't speak to Merlin Donald and Jeff Hawkins, because I haven't read them.) Are you aware that Piaget didn't consider his theory to be a theory of concepts and their acquisition, because he considered concepts to be a derivative, less important form of knowledge?

One example that's been brought up on this site a couple of times: Rand adhered to the doctrine that newborn babies experience a "bloomin', buzzin' confusion" (given that formulation by William James in 1890, but in circulation well before that time). The notion that neonates experience nothing but pure sensations is now rejected by all schools of thought in developmental psychology.

Again, can you give specific, and preferably cited examples?

The one-way traffic between philosophy and science is enunciated in the appendix to ITOE as well as in OPAR. The piece on psychologizing tends to equate psychology with the study of psychopathology, further laying out this bogus correspondence:

Philosophy <-> Conscious thinking

Psychology <-> Subconscious functioning

Interesting. Can you provide more information about this Cram character, an explain the reasons for your speculation?

I have some more research to do on this question, but I suspect that Rand actually read something by Albert Jay Nock that invoked Cram's theories. She might also have heard about them from Isabel Paterson. I doubt she read anything by Cram himself.

While I personally find her lack of biological knowledge problematic, especially for her theory of human nature, and its implications for the origin of individual values, I cannot fault her for failing to take a stand on a technical matter which she admitted she did not understand well enough to pronounce upon.

Agnosticism in the matter of religion is a sin because religious claims are arbitrary. No evidence is offered in their favor. Evolution is a complex technical matter for which all sorts of evidence is provided, evidence which most layman find it very difficult to weigh. Most laymen I know who say they accept evolution actually hold some sort of confused Lamarckian ideas. They accept the fact of evolution, given the presence of fossils, and so forth. As for the theory of how it works, most would do better to take Rand's stance.

I refer you to Chapter 5 of Peikoff's opus, in which he extends the notion of agnosticism well beyond religious questions. (For Peikoff lots of non-religious claims are arbitrary, too.) Peikoff says that if there is a lot of evidence to support the truth of a proposition and none to contradict it, and you know this, then you are obliged to judge it is as probable. Withholding your judgment when you are in a position to render it is agnosticism, which for Peikoff is cowardly irrationality.

If Rand genuinely believed that lots of evidence supported neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, and that it was the best theory in its field (that's what she said in 1981), then her decision to withhold judgment was cowardly and irrational by Peikoff's criteria.

I tend to agree with Neil Parille that in Rand's case something was getting in the way of her accepting evolutionary theory. Had she lived longer, she might have embraced it.

Although Peikoff has never referred (so far as I know) to Rand's 1981 comments, in OPAR he ringingly condemns religious resistance to evolutionary theories and indignantly denies their significance or relevance to philiosophy.

Robert Campbell

PS. I've written about some of these issues for publication. See my Corner for links to "Ayn Rand and the Cognitive Revolution" and "The Peikovian Doctrine of the Arbitrary Assertion." And see here for a piece on Piaget that I originally prepared for an IOS conference. I would also recommend two Journal of Ayn Rand Studies articles on the emotions (by Steve Shmurak and Marsha Enright) and Richard Shedenhelm's short piece for JARS on 18th century naturalists and crows.

[George H. Smith]

I would like to know what "the philosophical relevance of experimental results in physics" might mean. Does it mean, for example, that if physics has established that what we refer to as 'space' and 'time' is actually better described as 'space-time' then philosophers (laypeople) should quit speculating about space and time as if they were separable? If a layperson cannot understand this then they can learn the math and study the equations to convince themselves if they want to but it has no bearing on what physicists do. Actually, many people write books that are fairly non-technical for the interested layperson but to suggest that a layperson (philosopher ignorant of physics) can somehow direct a scientist's work is ridiculous. Science is self-correcting, if there is some major "epistemological corruption" it will be exposed and corrected eventually.

The notion of the inseparabilty of time from "events" (i.e., changes ocurring in space) long predates Eintein:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time/#RedPlaResTim

Aristotle and others (including, especially, Leibniz) have argued that time does not exist independently of the events that occur in time. This view is typically called either "Reductionism with Respect to Time" or "Relationism with Respect to Time," since according to this view, all talk that appears to be about time can somehow be reduced to talk about temporal relations among things and events. The opposing view, normally referred to either as "Platonism with Respect to Time" or as "Substantivalism with Respect to Time" or as "Absolutism with Respect to Time," has been defended by Plato, Newton, and others. On this view, time is like an empty container into which things and events may be placed; but it is a container that exists independently of what (if anything) is placed in it.

This is obviously not the same a physicists' mathematical descriptions of spacetime in relation to the speed of light, but its wrong to assume that philosophers have always held a naive conventional view of time and space or that they were unable to think about such ideas until physicists came along. Indeed, if my memory is right, wasn't Einstein influenced by Leibniz?

Some ancient religious skeptics had posed questions such as: Why did God wait so long before creating the universe? And what was he doing during all that time before creation?

Augustine, in a famous and influential argument, replied that it makes no sense to speak of time except in relation to matter, so there was no "time" before creation. This became the basis for the standard Christian argument that God, who is incorporeal, does not exist in time at all, thereby making time a matter of perspective. (Again, I don't wish to claim a scientific status for such speculations, but they are interesting.)

Ghs

[sjw]

The one-way traffic between philosophy and science is enunciated in the appendix to ITOE as well as in OPAR.

I think she didn't just make this error on the level of philosophy, I also recall something about a "trickle-down" theory of ideas from science to engineering (It's been years since this came up so I forget the exact source, but I'm pretty sure I remember reading Rand say this). That is most certainly not the way it works in the real world.

Shayne

[George H. Smith]

Can you be concretely specific as to what you are calling her a priori positions? A quote and a citation would help, if possible.

Ted,

I'm surprised that you aren't familiar with the standard Objectivist teachings about the nature of space and time. Leonard Peikoff's history of philosophy lectures from the early 1970s would do as a source; so would his 1976 lectures on the philosophy of Objectivism. If you want references to OPAR, I'll dig them up for you.

One instance, Rand's Ford Hall Forum answer to John Enright's question about the nature of time, is sitting right here on OL:

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=7801&view=findpost&p=85652

On the nature of space, the standard Objectivist claims are that it must be finite, not infinite; that it must be relative, not absolute; and that space cannot exist without entities. "There is no nothing," Nathaniel Branden and Leonard Peikoff have both announced in lecture. Some lines of inquiry in 20th century physics are therefore rejected a priori because they allegedly reify empty space.

Like the claims about time (time is in the universe; the universe isn't in time) the arguments derive from Ancient Greek philosophy, specifically from Aristotle (and with specific regard to the denial of empty space) Parmenides.

This may be true, but her sources are introspection and anecdote. She admits the crow epistemology is something she heard somewhere, and it is to illustrate, not to prove a point. That humans can only hold about seven items in working memory is a commonplace. I am unaware of any serious contradictions between her and Piaget, Damasio, Sacks, Merlin Donald, Jeff Hawkins, or others. The objections you give are are procedural. Do you have factual objections?

Are introspection and anecdote satisfactory or sufficient means of answering psychological questions?

The "crow epistemology," as far as I've been able to determine, derives from Rand's memory of Nathaniel Branden telling her about his psychology professor referring in lecture to George Miller's new (1956) article on the limited capacity of working memory. The crow story that the professor seems to have used to illustrate the point goes back to various 18th century French naturalists.

There are significant points of disagreement between Rand and Piaget, Damasio, and Sacks, as well as significant points of agreement. (Can't speak to Merlin Donald and Jeff Hawkins, because I haven't read them.) Are you aware that Piaget didn't consider his theory to be a theory of concepts and their acquisition, because he considered concepts to be a derivative, less important form of knowledge?

One example that's been brought up on this site a couple of times: Rand adhered to the doctrine that newborn babies experience a "bloomin', buzzin' confusion" (given that formulation by William James in 1890, but in circulation well before that time). The notion that neonates experience nothing but pure sensations is now rejected by all schools of thought in developmental psychology.

I know very little about cognitive psychology, so I cannot speak to some of these issues. However, I don't think that Rand's ideas about the sequence of cognitive development, however mistaken, have any bearing on her epistemological theory. Rand somewhere says in ITOE that many children may not follow the stages of concept formation that she outlines. She was primarily concerned with the logic (so to speak) of concepts and their implications for knowledge, so I think it is fair to say that she posited an ideal model of cognitive development in order to illustrate her points. .

This reminds me very much of Aristotle's famous distinction between the temporal order by which we acquire ideas and the logical order of those ideas. As I recall, this comment was made in regard to the axioms of logic. Although these are the foundation of our knowledge, according to Aristotle, and therefore first in the order of knowledge, they are not the first things we learn. Far from it; we cannot even understand what it means to speak of self-evident truths without a good deal of prior knowledge.

Many epistemologists other than Rand, such as John Locke and Herbert Spencer (both of whom wrote books on the education of children) had their own views on cognitive development. But for the most part their psychological theories about how we first acquire ideas, whether right or wrong, are logically distinct from their philosophical arguments. That's why I don't take this hullabaloo about Rand's supposed errors in cognitive development very seriously. Take a magic marker and black out every mention of this subject in ITOE. This will have little if any impact on her substantive epistemology.

Ghs

[Dragonfly]

You mentioned not the last century but 1962 as the dividing line, stating that controversies before then may have historical interest but little else. Perhaps you forgot about that.

Is it really so difficult to understand? No doubt the whole 20th century has been a period of revolutionary developments in science, special and general relativity, quantum mechanics. But if you limit yourself to the period before 1962, you're missing the later developments, like the Standard Model, new insights in cosmology, the Aspect experiments, the decoherence phenomenon, which are all essential to an understanding of the modern physics. That's no different from saying that the work of Darwin and Mendel may have revolutionized biology, but that knowledge about biology is pretty outdated if you don't know the developments in the second half of the 20th century, know nothing about molecular biology, DNA, etc.

The dividing line isn't always sharp, but in many cases it is.

Yes, when the subject is ethics, esthetics or political philosophy. But not when it concerns questions about the nature of reality, determinism, causality, the study of space and time. For a real understanding of those issues a thorough understanding of the physical theories is indispensable. If the philosopher takes the effort to really study the field, fine. But when he ex cathedra proclaims such things as "space cannot be curved", "QM is contradictory", "the universe cannot contain an infinite number of objects", then he shouldn't be surprised when the physicist doesn't take him seriously.

In fact it is the philosopher who is the layman as soon as he starts to argue about the relevance of experimental results to philosophy, as he doesn't have the knowledge for a real understanding of that relevance of those results.

First, many physicists have little or no knowledge of philosophy, so they are in the same boat.

No they're not. First many physicists are engaged in fundamental research, so they don't need to bother about philosophical issues. But in the fundamental research there is no sharp division between the physical theory and its philosophical implications.

You are quite the kiss-ass when it comes to "experts." I doubt if you have given the philosophical issues involved here more than a few minutes of thought, if that much.

Is somebody who is seriously ill a "kiss-ass when it comes to experts" when he prefers the opinion of the medical expert over the quack and the faith-healer?

Rand doesn't delve all that much into developmental psychology. How about you? You are not a psychologist, so does this mean that you never render psychological judgments? You certainly are not an economist, so how can you possibly reject, say, the labor theory of value or Keynesian macroeconomics or econometrics, without a certificate from a state institution that dubs you qualified? You are not an economic historian, so how can you possibly judge between socialists who claim that the Industrial Revolution lowered the standard of living for the "working classes" and those free-market historians who claim the opposite? It must be a nightmare not to reason for yourself but instead take a poll of the experts in a given field and then march in lockstep to the majority opinion.

This is unbelievable. Don't you really see the difference between having an opinion and writing a supposedly authoritative treatise on a subject? I do have my ideas about psychology or economy and many other subjects, but I wouldn't dream in a thousand years to write a book about them, pretending to be an expert in those fields.

Btw, have you consulted the majority of theologians about the existence of God? Of course, you cannot reject theology out of hand, since you are not yourself a theologian and therefore lack the specialized knowledge. I guess you will just have to believe in God. Don't you dare think for yourself.

I won't have to bother about theologians, as theology is not a science.

What pretentious drivel this is. I don't have the patience to deal with this Philosophy 101 nonsense.

Ah, surely a convincing argument.

And just how did QM prove that not every event has a cause? I assume you know that an inability to identify the cause of a given event is not the same as claiming that no such cause exists, so I presume your highly sophisticated argument will avoid this elementary fallacy. But I have my doubts.... In any case, you should start by defining what you mean by a "cause."

Wrong question. The claim is that every event does have a cause. This is not something that is self-evident, but is based on the empirical evidence in the macroscopic world. A study of the world of elementary particles has shown that in certain cases no such evidence exists. The philosopher now claims that there must be yet a cause. That is an extraordinary claim that the philosopher has to prove.

And making sense is not your strong suit. I don't know which philosophers you are supposedly referring to, but few if any would say something so vague and misleading as "everything is still precisely defined." (For one thing, we define words and concepts, not things.) As for "their intuitive vision," I can't think of any philosopher offhand who would defend such a thing. It takes a physicist to utter gibberish like this.

Then I'll make it somewhat more explicit: QM has shown that there is no such thing as a well defined trajectory of a particle (meaning that the momentum and the position of that particle are simultaneously well-defined). It may be a useful approximation at macroscopic scales, but it breaks down at the subatomic level. Now I've heard many Objectivists claim that such a trajectory in fact does exist, but that we only cannot measure it, which shows that they do not understand the physical principles involved.

[Dragonfly]

Does a physicist claim that I don't know enough about physics to fully comprehend the details of his theory? Fine, that may be true, but all the physicist need do is state his scientific conclusions in a coherent manner. If he cannot do this, then he has defaulted on a basic requirement for a productive discussion, and all of his ramblings about philosophical implications don't mean a goddamned thing. He is a pretentious twit who doesn't even understand his own area of supposed expertise. The physicist should tend to his own garden before telling others how to tend to theirs.

How do you know that it is his fault? His may present his conclusions in a coherent manner, but if they don't make sense to you, it isn't the fault of the physicist, but the fact that reality turns out to be much stranger and more counterintuitive than you'd might have expected. Don't blame the messenger. And if you don't trust the messenger, by all means improve the results, but then you have to study the subject first, you can't dismiss them just because they don't make sense to you.

[Dragonfly]

I don't agree that George's analogy is "spot on," that DF is being dishonest, or that he's "adopting the theologian's method of inscrutable authority." What I understand DF to be saying is that if you want to understand physics, you have to learn some physics. There is no road to doing this short of some work at learning a difficult subject.

At last someone who really can read what I've written. Nowhere I've talked about the "authority" let alone "inscrutable authority" of physicists. People who claim that I've done that are putting words into my mouth and twisting the meaning of my words for their own purpose. It's exactly as you say: nobody claims that physicists are infallible authorities in their field, but if you want to criticize their results, you'll have to study the subject first.

Also, I've always found DF's explanations of physics remarkably good, considering that he's at the disadvantage of writing in a language which isn't his native language and at which he isn't as fluid as I gather he is at French.

Thanks. Only my French isn't that good, my English is better, if only because in the course of the years I've written thousands of posts on English forums, and sometimes people have been kind enough to point out grammatical or idiomatic errors (you've been one of them), while it's years ago that I've been in France and written anything in French, although I've translated a number of French books into Dutch.

[Dragonfly]

Perhaps, but when he says such things as:

In fact it is the philosopher who is the layman as soon as he starts to argue about the relevance of experimental results to philosophy, as he doesn't have the knowledge for a real understanding of that relevance of those results. He can perhaps find a work by some scientist for the general reader that seems to be in line with his own ideas and consider that as a vindication of his ideas. But that is only a rationalization supported by confirmation bias, as he doesn't understand all the aspects of those experiments, as that requires specialized knowledge that he doesn't have. You can see the same pretension of the philosopher in Robert's example of Rand's epistemology when she ventures into the field of developmental psychology as if she were a specialist in that field. Or are we to believe that this is also the domain of philosophy instead of that of psychologists and biologists who are just amateurs in that regard?

he sure as hell opens himself up to the charge of being a credentialist "authoritarian." Note that he doesn't say that a philosopher should know physics if he is going to comment on it.

That's because I've said that before. See for example here:

An intelligent person would understand that physics not a question of "initiating into the mysteries", but of (gasp!) studying the subject first and that means learning it the hard way, including the math.

or here:

Therefore my opinion is that I can attack the false propaganda, but not the theories themselves, as I just can't judge them without studying them thoroughly in detail.

He says philosophers simply do not have the knowledge.

It's obvious from the context that I'm talking here about those philosophers, particularly of the Objectivist brand, who do not have such knowledge. In the past I've also said that there are some philosophers who are also scientists and therefore know what they're talking about.

He sounds just like a global warming scientist. His a priori assertion that no book written for a layman (including philosophers) can convey the philosophical implications of modern physics may be an indictment of the authors he's read. Would you accept the reverse argument, that physicists cannot say anything menaingful about philosophy, because philosophy books directed to a lay audience cannot convey the relevant knowledge?

The difference is in the subject. The philosophical implications of modern physics are difficult to understand, not because physicists are such lousy writers or bad popularizers, but because the facts are so counterintuitive. I think that for example Feynman's QED - The Strange Theory of Light and Matter is an excellent book for the general reader, but as the title already indicates: it's a strange theory (for which Feynman got the Nobel Prize, BTW).

[sjw]

Then I'll make it somewhat more explicit: QM has shown that there is no such thing as a well defined trajectory of a particle (meaning that the momentum and the position of that particle are simultaneously well-defined). It may be a useful approximation at macroscopic scales, but it breaks down at the subatomic level. Now I've heard many Objectivists claim that such a trajectory in fact does exist, but that we only cannot measure it, which shows that they do not understand the physical principles involved.

I haven't seen anyone here doing that, but if a layman did I wouldn't blame them given how confusedly you're putting it here. What QM is actually saying is that there are no particles. If you say there are, and then say they don't have well-defined trajectories, then it's no wonder you're causing laymen to object. I know that you know what you are talking about (on this level), but you should be aware that it matters how you express yourself. That's part of what GS has been criticizing physicists in general for, and lo and behold...

Shayne

[Dennis Hardin]

Wrong question. The claim is that every event does have a cause. This is not something that is self-evident, but is based on the empirical evidence in the macroscopic world. A study of the world of elementary particles has shown that in certain cases no such evidence exists. The philosopher now claims that there must be yet a cause. That is an extraordinary claim that the philosopher has to prove.

To demand a proof of causality is to steal the concept of proof. Causality is an axiomatic corollary of the law of identity: the nature of an action or event is caused and determined by the nature of the entities that act. Causality is logically anterior to the concept of proof: you can only prove something when there is a necessary connection between the data being described. You can prove the connection between entity X and event P if and only if X has a specific identity that limits what X can and cannot do.

The following comments by David Kelley are relevant here, because he highlights a rational approach to the nature of the controversy—i.e., how do we go about reconciling causality and quantum physics? He does not imply that there is any need to prove causality, which is logically impossible.

David Kelley (in private correspondence)

[T]here is a metaphysical question that does seem to depend on the status of entities. The law of causality rests on the fact that any action is the action of an entity; actions are derivative, entities primary. That’s why an action is dictated by the identity of that which acts. But if entities existed only in relation to our senses, in the way colors do, then what grounds would we have for saying that the law of causality applies outside that realm?

This is one of the questions raised by quantum physics. The wave-like nature of elementary particles suggests that they aren’t really entities, so it isn’t surprising that many people claim that the law of causality breaks down at this level, and things just happen, by chance.

This is one of the issues raised at a recent Institute colloquium on quantum physics, and in the course of the discussion, we tried to separate the concept of entity from that of particle. The idea is that particles or discrete objects as we know them perceptually are only one form of entities. An entity can also be a kind of stuff, and it remains true that an action must be the action of something (some stuff).

Kelley acknowledges that this conclusion is somewhat vague, but I think he is suggesting a valuable perspective on a potential resolution.

[kiaer.ts]

oops - duplicate deleted

Edited September 1, 2010 by Ted Keer

[kiaer.ts]

Wrong question. The claim is that every event does have a cause. This is not something that is self-evident, but is based on the empirical evidence in the macroscopic world. A study of the world of elementary particles has shown that in certain cases no such evidence exists. The philosopher now claims that there must be yet a cause. That is an extraordinary claim that the philosopher has to prove.

Dragonfly is leaving unstated the words "prior event". He wants to deny that every event is caused - by some prior event.

That's fine. Objectivists do not hold, a priori, that every event must be caused by some prior event. That is a matter for scientists to study. But neither do Objectivists hold that efficient causation is the only kind of causation.

Edited September 1, 2010 by Ted Keer

[kiaer.ts]

The following comments by David Kelley are relevant here, because he highlights a rational approach to the nature of the controversy—i.e., how do we go about reconciling causality and quantum physics? He does not imply that there is any need to prove causality, which is logically impossible.

David Kelley (in private correspondence)

[T]here is a metaphysical question that does seem to depend on the status of entities. The law of causality rests on the fact that any action is the action of an entity; actions are derivative, entities primary. That's why an action is dictated by the identity of that which acts. But if entities existed only in relation to our senses, in the way colors do, then what grounds would we have for saying that the law of causality applies outside that realm?

This is one of the questions raised by quantum physics. The wave-like nature of elementary particles suggests that they aren't really entities, so it isn't surprising that many people claim that the law of causality breaks down at this level, and things just happen, by chance.

This is one of the issues raised at a recent Institute colloquium on quantum physics, and in the course of the discussion, we tried to separate the concept of entity from that of particle. The idea is that particles or discrete objects as we know them perceptually are only one form of entities. An entity can also be a kind of stuff, and it remains true that an action must be the action of something (some stuff).

Kelley acknowledges that this conclusion is somewhat vague, but I think he is suggesting a valuable perspective on a potential resolution.

This is interesting. Kelley seems to be conflating the concepts body and entity and then saying we need a new type of entity which is not a body, but perhaps a stuff.

First, he should not be treating entity as if it means the same thing as body. Rand treats any unitary whole of defined form and of which we may predicate attributes and relations as an entity. This can include things like people, storms, or atoms. Barack Obama, Hurricane Earl, and the iron atom in a heme group are all entities. But not all primary ousia are treated as entites. We talk of substances (in the sense of materials, not universals) as beings of which things are predicated, without regard to their limits or form. (The limit or form exists, but is not specified or taken into account.) Such subtances would include velvet which is blue, air which is humid, or porridge which is too hot. The distinction is one of perspective and scale. A shadow is an entity, (but not a body!) while shade is a substance. We can look at Hurricane Earl from a satellite or we can say the wind is brisk. We can say the porridge is hot or we can say he choked on a lump of porridge.

Also, Kelley should not be treating entities as only physical. Concepts and mental images are entities. We can say the child integrated the concepts of lizard, turtle, snake, and crocodile under the concept of reptile. Here we are viewing them as mental entities. We can say the child has a broad range of knowledge, speaking as if it were a substance. Substance and entity are concepts which bridge metaphysics and epistemology. Metaphysics because they deal with things. Epistemology because they are a matter of perspective. Keep in mind that we can even, following Shakespeare, speak of a pound of Antonio, as if he were a substance.

Body and entity are two different concepts. Entities are primary ousia viewed as unified wholes with defined forms. Bodies are material entities extended in space. Subatomic parties are not made of matter - they are what makes up matter. Whether we treat them as entities or substances depends on what the physicist discovers and finds to be the appropriate perspective. To treat subatomic particles as if the were bodies because they are entities is a failure to make the proper distinctins and to properly differentiate one's concepts - the frozen concept fallacy.

Edited September 1, 2010 by Ted Keer

[kiaer.ts]

Can you be concretely specific as to what you are calling her a priori positions? A quote and a citation would help, if possible.

Ted,

I'm surprised that you aren't familiar with the standard Objectivist teachings about the nature of space and time. Leonard Peikoff's history of philosophy lectures from the early 1970s would do as a source; so would his 1976 lectures on the philosophy of Objectivism. If you want references to OPAR, I'll dig them up for you.

One instance, Rand's Ford Hall Forum answer to John Enright's question about the nature of time, is sitting right here on OL:

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=7801&view=findpost&p=85652

On the nature of space, the standard Objectivist claims are that it must be finite, not infinite; that it must be relative, not absolute; and that space cannot exist without entities. "There is no nothing," Nathaniel Branden and Leonard Peikoff have both announced in lecture. Some lines of inquiry in 20th century physics are therefore rejected a priori because they allegedly reify empty space.

Like the claims about time (time is in the universe; the universe isn't in time) the arguments derive from Ancient Greek philosophy, specifically from Aristotle (and with specific regard to the denial of empty space) Parmenides.

This may be true, but her sources are introspection and anecdote. She admits the crow epistemology is something she heard somewhere, and it is to illustrate, not to prove a point. That humans can only hold about seven items in working memory is a commonplace. I am unaware of any serious contradictions between her and Piaget, Damasio, Sacks, Merlin Donald, Jeff Hawkins, or others. The objections you give are are procedural. Do you have factual objections?

Are introspection and anecdote satisfactory or sufficient means of answering psychological questions?

The "crow epistemology," as far as I've been able to determine, derives from Rand's memory of Nathaniel Branden telling her about his psychology professor referring in lecture to George Miller's new (1956) article on the limited capacity of working memory. The crow story that the professor seems to have used to illustrate the point goes back to various 18th century French naturalists.

There are signficant points of disagreement between Rand and Piaget, Damasio, and Sacks, as well as significant points of agreement. (Can't speak to Merlin Donald and Jeff Hawkins, because I haven't read them.) Are you aware that Piaget didn't consider his theory to be a theory of concepts and their acquisition, because he considered concepts to be a derivative, less important form of knowledge?

One example that's been brought up on this site a couple of times: Rand adhered to the doctrine that newborn babies experience a "bloomin', buzzin' confusion" (given that formulation by William James in 1890, but in circulation well before that time). The notion that neonates experience nothing but pure sensations is now rejected by all schools of thought in developmental psychology.

Again, can you give specific, and preferably cited examples?

The one-way traffic between philosophy and science is enunciated in the appendix to ITOE as well as in OPAR. The piece on psychologizing tends to equate psychology with the study of psychopathology, further laying out this bogus correspondence:

Philosophy <-> Conscious thinking

Psychology <-> Subconscious functioning

Interesting. Can you provide more information about this Cram character, an explain the reasons for your speculation?

I have some more research to do on this question, but I suspect that Rand actually read something by Albert Jay Nock that invoked Cram's theories. She might also have heard about them from Isabel Paterson. I doubt she read anything by Cram himself.

While I personally find her lack of biological knowledge problematic, especially for her theory of human nature, and its implications for the origin of individual values, I cannot fault her for failing to take a stand on a technical matter which she admitted she did not understand well enough to pronounce upon.

Agnosticism in the matter of religion is a sin because religious claims are arbitrary. No evidence is offered in their favor. Evolution is a complex technical matter for which all sorts of evidence is provided, evidence which most layman find it very difficult to weigh. Most laymen I know who say they accept evolution actually hold some sort of confused Lamarckian ideas. They accept the fact of evolution, given the presence of fossils, and so forth. As for the theory of how it works, most would do better to take Rand's stance.

I refer you to Chapter 5 of Peikoff's opus, in which he extends the notion of agnosticism well beyond religious questions. (For Peikoff lots of non-religious claims are arbitrary, too.) Peikoff says that if there is a lot of evidence to support the truth of a proposition and none to contradict it, and you know this, then you are obliged to judge it is as probable. Withholding your judgment when you are in a position to render it is agnosticism, which for Peikoff is cowardly irrationality.

If Rand genuinely believed that lots of evidence supported neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, and that it was the best theory in its field (that's what she said in 1981), then her decision to withhold judgment was cowardly and irrational by Peikoff's criteria.

I tend to agree with Neil Parille that in Rand's case something was getting in the way of her accepting evolutionary theory. Had she lived longer, she might have embraced it.

Although Peikoff has never referred (so far as I know) to Rand's 1981 comments, in OPAR he ringingly condemns religious resistance to evolutionary theories and indignantly denies their significance or relevance to philiosophy.

Robert Campbell

PS. I've written about some of these issues for publication. See my Corner for links to "Ayn Rand and the Cognitive Revolution" and "The Peikovian Doctrine of the Arbitrary Assertion." And see here for a piece on Piaget that I originally prepared for an IOS conference. I would also recommend two Journal of Ayn Rand Studies articles on the emotions (by Steve Shmurak and Marsha Enright) and Richard Shedenhelm's short piece for JARS on 18th century naturalists and crows.

Thanks, Robert. I'll reply later.

[George H. Smith]

Wrong question. The claim is that every event does have a cause. This is not something that is self-evident, but is based on the empirical evidence in the macroscopic world. A study of the world of elementary particles has shown that in certain cases no such evidence exists. The philosopher now claims that there must be yet a cause. That is an extraordinary claim that the philosopher has to prove.

To demand a proof of causality is to steal the concept of proof. Causality is an axiomatic corollary of the law of identity: the nature of an action or event is caused and determined by the nature of the entities that act. Causality is logically anterior to the concept of proof: you can only prove something when there is a necessary connection between the data being described. You can prove the connection between entity X and event P if and only if X has a specific identity that limits what X can and cannot do.

The following comments by David Kelley are relevant here, because he highlights a rational approach to the nature of the controversy—i.e., how do we go about reconciling causality and quantum physics? He does not imply that there is any need to prove causality, which is logically impossible.

David Kelley (in private correspondence)

[T]here is a metaphysical question that does seem to depend on the status of entities. The law of causality rests on the fact that any action is the action of an entity; actions are derivative, entities primary. That’s why an action is dictated by the identity of that which acts. But if entities existed only in relation to our senses, in the way colors do, then what grounds would we have for saying that the law of causality applies outside that realm?

This is one of the questions raised by quantum physics. The wave-like nature of elementary particles suggests that they aren’t really entities, so it isn’t surprising that many people claim that the law of causality breaks down at this level, and things just happen, by chance.

This is one of the issues raised at a recent Institute colloquium on quantum physics, and in the course of the discussion, we tried to separate the concept of entity from that of particle. The idea is that particles or discrete objects as we know them perceptually are only one form of entities. An entity can also be a kind of stuff, and it remains true that an action must be the action of something (some stuff).

Kelley acknowledges that this conclusion is somewhat vague, but I think he is suggesting a valuable perspective on a potential resolution.

Good post.

There are other problems as well. All the sciences, including physics, would not be possible without presupposing causation -- sometimes called the uniformity of nature. Physicists do not, because they cannot, directly observe subatomic phenomena. They must rely on instruments , and from these instruments they get readings of one kind or another. Unless it is assumed that the same instruments will register the same readings (i.e., effects) in the same causal conditions such readings would be meaningless. The same event could register one reading at one time, an entirely different reading at another time, and so on indefinitely.

Moreover, physicists must rely on sense perception in order to conduct experiments, and this raises the question: How can the physicist know that he is observing the same phenomenon from one point in time to another? Perception involves causal relationships between the observer and the observed, and unless we assume casual continuity between one moment and the next, we would have no rational basis to assume that we are observing the same phenomenon over time. (This argument was defended by David Hume, who understood the nihilistic implications of his denial of causal necessity for science.)

Similarly, controlled experiments would be impossible without presupposing causation. To control an experiment is to put certain causal conditions in place. Without causation there would be no way to "control" anything.

Lastly, the replication of experiments, which is vital when one physicist wishes to confirm the experimental findings of another physicist, would be impossible without causation. If we are dealing with causeless events, the initial conditions of an experiment would be pointless. The occurrence or nonoccurence of a given causeless event could not be traced or attributed to anything. If the event occurs in one experiment, this does not mean we should expect it to recur when the same experiment is repeated. It might or might not, and experimental findings in regard to such events would be theoretically impossible, because its occurrence would be no more significant than its non-occurrence. This would negate the role of predictions in corroborating or falsifying hypotheses. There is no way to predict a causeless event; whatever happens just happens, randomly, for no reason, so a causeless event would be consistent with any conceivable hypothesis, even those that are contradictory. Nor could any estimates of statistical probability be made in regard to causeless events. If such an event occurred, all the physicist could justifiably say is, "I detected a causeless event, but I can't say any more about it. It may or may not be related to my experiments, but I cannot say, because it happened for no reason at all. That causeless event had no connection to anything else in the universe, so there is nothing we can relate it to. It was an isolated event. so it has no theoretical significance whatsoever."

In short, every generalization about the physical world, and therefore every scientific law about the world, presupposes regular causal relationships. To affirm the existence of a causeless event (CE) is to state that no event preceding CE and no event concurrent with CE had the least bit of influence on CE. There is no way this could ever be proven, and if the physicist were able to prove it, he would destroy science itself.

Btw, there is another name for causeless events. They have traditionally been known as miracles. Did Moses really part the Red Sea? Who is to say? It might have been a causeless event. Did Jesus really rise from the dead after three days? Who knows? It might have been a causeless event.

There is a reason why some of the most enthusiastic fans of QM are theologians and religious philosophers. Causeless events made new room for a God of the Gaps and, by repudiating the mechanistic view of causation, introduced a spiritual element into the universe -- new mysteries that scientists will never understand. So say the theologians.

Ghs

[Ellen Stuttle]

[...] nothing of substance to offer on this "spooky action" issue. [...] an estimate of the state of the art. I don't think *anyone* has anything of substance to offer here. (But I would be pleased to find out that I was wrong)

I have an image to offer. Spiders.

I keep thinking about spiders.

(An aside to DF: You won't like the next part. It involves violence to spiders. Sorry. Both L and I are allergic to spider bites -- he's potentially life-threateningly allergic -- and we swat to kill the beasties when we see them in the house.)

On attempting to kill a spider, I have many times had the experience, if I swat quickly with a dry tissue so as not to let the thing get away before I can go wet a tissue, the spider will withdraw its extended legs close to its central body producing a tight ball which doesn't easily crush. The result might be that I think I've done for the creature, but upon my lifting the tissue, the spider re-extends its legs and scurries off.

The extended, contracting, extended motions lead me to think of wave-particle duality -- a central area of relative concentration surrounded by wavelike extrusions. Only with the "wavicle," it's particlelike traveling in vacuum and then forms a wavelike "halo" producing an interference pattern in the double-slit experiments.

Further analogizing to spiders... There's a back room in our house which has a screened door to the backyard. Spiders will crawl up the outside of the screen extruding trails of web along their path. If I'm in the back room and see one crawling up the outside of the screen, I whap the inside of the screen hard with the palm of my hand on the other side from where the spider is sitting. This knocks the spider off into the back yard.

But... Lo and behold, often if I wait there a few minutes, the spider is back where it was. How did it get there? Crawling up the web trailer which has extruded behind it as it was catapulted into the yard.

So... Probably you can see where I'm going with this. Suppose entangled photons were like *two* spiders (wavicles) originally joined and then separated but with a "filament" trail of VERY fine "webbing" still linking them. Then something happening to one of the pair could be communicated along the "webbing" to the other member of the pair. Obviously the communication would have to be very fast, since we're talking superluminal, but it wouldn't be instantaneous.

The "webbing" connection could also explain why, as Shayne noted in post #1063:

What they [the researchers] observe are statistical correlations over many runs of an experiment [...].

Sometimes, you see, a spider which I've whapped into the backyard off the screen doesn't return up the extruded webbing because the filament breaks, so the spider has lost its mooring. Similarly, maybe in traveling apart from each other, sometimes the (hypothesized) fine connection between the pair of photons breaks, thus only part of the time does an "entanglement" result occur.

Probably someone has already thought of the idea of a super-fine filament on which a super-fast "vibration" travels between the pair. Probably there're problems with the idea which rule it out.

Comments from those here who have studied the experiments?

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

[...] I don't think that Rand's ideas about the sequence of cognitive development, however mistaken, have any bearing on her epistemological theory. Rand somewhere says in ITOE that many children may not follow the stages of concept formation that she outlines. She was primarily concerned with the logic (so to speak) of concepts and their implications for knowledge, so I think it is fair to say that she posited an ideal model of cognitive development in order to illustrate her points.

[....]

[...] I don't take this hullabaloo about Rand's supposed errors in cognitive development very seriously. Take a magic marker and black out every mention of this subject in ITOE. This will have little if any impact on her substantive epistemology.

I agree with that. The correctness of her views on the logic of the grounding, nesting, and hierarchical interrelation of one's conceptual "architecture" isn't dependent on the degree of accuracy of what she says about cognitive development.

Ellen

[sjw]

[...] nothing of substance to offer on this "spooky action" issue. [...] an estimate of the state of the art. I don't think *anyone* has anything of substance to offer here. (But I would be pleased to find out that I was wrong)

I have an image to offer. Spiders.

Spiders are worse than spooky action at a distance!

[Ellen Stuttle]

[DF] sounds just like a global warming scientist.

Ted, that remark really made me laugh. Here's why:

For the last 4+ years, I have been a daily audience to and commentator on up-to-the-minute reports of what global warming (so-called) scientists are saying and doing, and details of the ins and outs of lengthy battles in process trying to get some scientific integrity from persons in power in certain physics organizations, and other aspects of the activities of a devoted group of scientists trying to combat the, in this case, horrifically real corruption occurring in the physics community radiating (ha) from the global-warming issue.

I see no resemblance between anything DF has ever written that I've ever read and the sound of a global warming (so-called) scientist. No resemblance. I know what those folks are, and DF isn't like them.

What I see in Dragonfly is a scientist who's well informed about the area under discussion, well aware of its conundra and complexities, and is no authoritarian, just someone who isn't impressed by philosophers pronouncing on subject matter they don't understand.

He's already answered you on the charge that he was speaking of all philosophers, and on other points.

I recommend bearing in mind that he's writing in a language which isn't his native language, and he's trying to explain difficult stuff. Although you're fairly informed on the subject matter, you might even learn further information from him about the physics.

Ellen

[tjohnson]

There are other problems as well. All the sciences, including physics, would not be possible without presupposing causation -- sometimes called the uniformity of nature. Physicists do not, because they cannot, directly observe subatomic phenomena. They must rely on instruments , and from these instruments they get readings of one kind or another. Unless it is assumed that the same instruments will register the same readings (i.e., effects) in the same causal conditions such readings would be meaningless. The same event could register one reading at one time, an entirely different reading at another time, and so on indefinitely.

But even our own eyes (and senses) must be regarded as instruments. The scientific instruments we have created merely enhance our own "built-in" ones. There is nothing wrong with the idea of 'causation' but there is something wrong with the idea of "one cause => one effect". Instead, science has shown us that there are many variables involved and it is better to speak about about 'states' and the conditions required to move from one state to another. The idea of simple "cause and effect" is simplistic and outdated.

[Robert Campbell]

I know very little about cognitive psychology, so I cannot speak to some of these issues. However, I don't think that Rand's ideas about the sequence of cognitive development, however mistaken, have any bearing on her epistemological theory. Rand somewhere says in ITOE that many children may not follow the stages of concept formation that she outlines. She was primarily concerned with the logic (so to speak) of concepts and their implications for knowledge, so I think it is fair to say that she posited an ideal model of cognitive development in order to illustrate her points.

George,

The reason why sequence in cognitive development is considered important is that not all possible developmental processes can produce the sequences that people actually go through.

An idealized model (what some 20th century philosophers call a "rational reconstruction") of development presupposes the answers to questions about developmental processes and constraints, instead of checking them.

Here's a section from my 1999 article that might be germane:

Philosophy versus Psychology

I have mapped out the points of contact between Rand's philosophy and the Cognitive Revolution in psychology. It is clear that Rand made significant use of ideas from the Cognitive Revolution (most importantly, the idea of limited cognitive capacity). Yet, she remained largely unaffected by the computational side of the new psychology, and she did not comprehend the full impact that the revolution was having, especially its overthrow of behaviorism.

In some respects, as we have seen, Rand went farther than cognitive psychologists were willing to go in the 1950's and 1960's. She was more developmental in her orientation than many participants in the Cognitive Revolution. She had no legacy of operationism to shake off, no taboo against questioning psychological determinism. But as any careful reader of her essays from this period has probably noticed, Rand evinced a certain distrust of the empirical findings of psychology. While psychologists often express caution when interpreting their findings (and those who do not would frequently be well advised to), Rand's repetition of such caveats in her rendition of the sensory deprivation studies gives them more than customary status: "The scientists pursuing these inquiries state emphatically that no theoretical conclusions can yet be drawn from these and other, similar experiments, because they involve too many variables, as well as undefined differences in the psychological character of the subjects, which led to significant differences in their reactions" (Rand 1966, 4:1).

She also seeks to distance herself from the crow subitizing study: "I cannot vouch for the validity of the specific numerical conclusions drawn from it" (1967, 57). It is particularly odd that she would attach a disclaimer to a study that indicates tight limitations on the perception of numerosity--it is much easier to identify the limits of subitizing experimentally than it is to measure the capacity of working memory. A great many experiments, some of them in areas of psychological inquiry much better established than the study of sensory deprivation, were cited in Miller's 1956 review--but Rand never mentioned Miller, or sought to trace his sources, which could be found in any library reasonably well stocked with psychology journals. One gets the impression, in fact, that Rand actually inverted the positivists' methodological priorities.

Even today, some cognitive psychologists distrust introspective evidence (e.g., Reisberg 1997). But this positivistic holdover has become [p. 124] completely senseless now that their colleagues freely use "thinking aloud" and psychologists of every stripe rely on self-report questionnaires. Contrariwise, Rand (1967) seems to be saying that behavioral evidence is actively inferior to introspection: "Whether this particular experiment is accurate or not, the truth of the principle it illustrates can be ascertained introspectively..." (57). Something more is at work here than Rand's view that a scientific theory must pass a broad variety of tough empirical tests before its claims can be accepted as fact, or the concerns she might have harbored about operating without a comprehensive philosophy of science (Binswanger & Peikoff 1990, 301-4). Whatever else it requires, an adequate philosophy of science for psychology must provide a balanced appreciation of what introspection is good for, and of what behavioral measurements are good for (besides, if crow psychology cannot be done with behavioral measurements, it cannot be done at all!). Distrust of behavioral measurements and behavioral data indicates distrust of psychology as a discipline.

There is further evidence of such distrust. According to Branden, who introduced Rand to what she knew of academic psychology, she held some common misapprehensions about the subject. Any academic psychologist who has ever attended a cocktail party knows how many people regard psychology as the exclusive preserve of "shrinks" and clinicians, confined to the irrational and to psychopathology. Rand's conception of the discipline was not that different:

Her attitude, in effect, was that rational minds do not require psychology. Philosophy is enough. Psychology is essentially for pathology--that is, for the irrational in people. I argued with her about this, and she would always concede that I was right: "Yes, of course, Nathan, we all have a psychology, and the operations of the mind do need to be studied, but ..." And a week or two later, she would say, "Oh, how I hate your profession, Nathan. How I hate the irrational. How I hate having to deal with it or to struggle to understand it" (Branden 1999, 97-98).

Rand insisted that philosophy in no way depends on the theories or findings of psychology. This tenet is usually not taken to indicate a distrust of psychology per se, although a pejorative comment can be found in her epistemology workshops (Binswanger & Peikoff 1990, 216): [p. 125] when another participant brings up mathematicians who are interested only in mathematical concepts, not their referents, she reacts, "That would be psychology, or psychopathology, and I can't go into that." Normally her position is understood as an old-fashioned separation between philosophy and the "special sciences."

Philosophy by its nature has to be based only on that which is available to the knowledge of any man with a normal mental equipment. Philosophy is not dependent on the discoveries of science; the reverse is true.

So whenever you are in doubt about what is or is not a philosophical subject, ask yourself whether you need a specialized knowledge, beyond the knowledge available to you as a normal adult, unaided by any special knowledge or special instruments. And if the answer is possible to you on that basis alone, you are dealing with a philosophical question. If to answer it you would need training in physics, or psychology, or special equipment, etc., then you are dealing with a derivative or scientific field of knowledge, not philosophy. (289)

Such a demarcation procedure runs up against the fact that what is considered specialized training has changed over human history; knowledge that was once highly specialized has become available to any educated person. Rand, of course, presumes that the ability to read is not a specialized skill. In our culture it is not so regarded. But in Ancient Egypt, where learning to read and write usually required a long apprenticeship in the guild of scribes, reading surely qualified as a specialized skill. In chemistry as taught in better American high schools in the 1990's, students learn to explain the behavior of acids and bases in terms of subatomic particles such as protons and electrons. Such explanations would not have been part of high school chemistry in 1930. And in 1830 they could not have been part of the most advanced training in chemistry, for no one yet knew that there were protons, neutrons or electrons. The sort of partition that Rand sought to establish between philosophy and the sciences, natural or social, would, at the very least, have to be movable over time.

More to the point, it is hard to believe that epistemology can be [p. 126] successfully walled off from the relevant subdisciplines within psychology. Psychology only began to differentiate from philosophy around 1860 (Boring 1950), and a philosophical account of the way human beings ought to think might be expected to pay some attention to the way human beings actually do think (cognitive psychology) or the way in which their thinking actually develops (developmental psychology).

Rand not only borrowed her conception of limited cognitive capacity from cognitive psychologists, she made frequent assertions about the manner and the sequence in which children form and use concepts. In Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, the most prominent (but by no means the only) discussion of child development is the developmental sequence of definitions of the concept man (42-43). Are we to conclude that the data collected by child psychologists have no bearing on whether children form and define their concepts of human being in the manner and order that Rand specified? That is what we would have to conclude, if we adhered to Rand's stated views on philosophy and psychology. In the epistemology workshops that were later published as an appendix to the Introduction, Rand makes frequent and confident assertions about the way that children (and sometimes infants) develop cognitively. [6] These assertions cannot have been based on Rand's introspection! And if they are supported by observations of children, what makes Rand's observations of children admissible evidence for a philosopher, whereas the observations or experiments conducted by a trained child psychologist are to be rejected as inadmissible? For instance, are philosophers supposed to ignore the data of developmental psychology when they evaluate the assertion that children do not begin to count until well after they learn to use words for other purposes, or when they set out to analyze the cognitive prerequisites for the correct employment of counting (200)? Jean Piaget (1950) also considered the means by which children acquire new knowledge to be crucial to an account of concept formation (or, for that matter, of any other problem area in epistemology). But for that very reason he rejected all attempts to assert that philosophy has priority over psychology, and all attempts to wall off philosophical inquiry from the theories and findings of psychology (Campbell 1997).

Rand's understanding of the critical role of cognitive capacity limitations and her interest in cognitive development should have led her to regard epistemology as a cognitive science (as Ó Nualláin 1995 does), or even as a developmental science (à la Piaget, or Feldman 1993). A truly systematic and integrative conception of knowledge of the sort that Rand [p. 127] aimed at (Sciabarra 1995) would overcome another dichotomy, the dichotomy between epistemology and psychology. Instead, her attempts to isolate philosophy from the sciences [7] have obstructed the assimilation of cognitive psychology by most Objectivists. Even David Kelley, who once taught in a cognitive science program, and has made his own extensive use of ideas from cognitive psychology, still accepts the formulations of Quine (1969), a philosopher who never gave up his allegiance to behaviorism, as circumscribing the potential of "naturalized epistemology," and continues to insist on one-way traffic between philosophy and psychology (Kelley 1986; 1998). I am convinced that Rand's antipsychological metatheory (a set of declarations more than a little at odds with her actual practice) has significantly inhibited the further growth of the Objectivist epistemology, within the areas sketched by Rand as well as beyond them

Robert Campbell

[Dragonfly]

To demand a proof of causality is to steal the concept of proof. Causality is an axiomatic corollary of the law of identity: the nature of an action or event is caused and determined by the nature of the entities that act.

That is a weird and meaningless definition (see for the common definition for example the wikipedia article on causality), as it is as tautological as the law of identity. Because how do we know what the "nature" is of the entities that act? The only way is to observe how those entities act and that is what we call its "nature". So the event consists of the acting of the entities that act as they are observed to act. Well, duh. This doesn't preclude the possibility that such entities will act completely random, that for example that a table will the next moment become a chair and then a canary. In general we don't see such things happen, but that is an empirical fact, not something that can be derived a priori from the law of identity.

Causality is logically anterior to the concept of proof: you can only prove something when there is a necessary connection between the data being described. You can prove the connection between entity X and event P if and only if X has a specific identity that limits what X can and cannot do.

Again: what is a specific identity? Unless you can rely on divine revelation you can only empirically determine what that identity is, by observing the behavior of that entity. Saying then that its behavior is determined by its identity is merely repeating a tautology.

Now it may be true that it would be hard to live in a world were all entities would behave in a random way (that is a kind of anthropic principle), but that doesn't imply that no entity could behave in a random way.

[Dragonfly]

There are other problems as well. All the sciences, including physics, would not be possible without presupposing causation -- sometimes called the uniformity of nature. Physicists do not, because they cannot, directly observe subatomic phenomena. They must rely on instruments , and from these instruments they get readings of one kind or another. Unless it is assumed that the same instruments will register the same readings (i.e., effects) in the same causal conditions such readings would be meaningless. The same event could register one reading at one time, an entirely different reading at another time, and so on indefinitely.

And that is exactly what happens in some cases. I can't remember that anyone claimed that events are never caused, I must have missed that. Moreover, the fact that for example the event of the decay of a radioactive atom is acausal (it may decay the next second or in a billion years, there is no cause that makes it happen at a particular moment), does not mean that the behavior of an ensemble of such atoms cannot be predicted, as there is a definite probability that such an atom will decay, resulting in the well-known exponential decay laws with their half-life values.

[kiaer.ts]

[DF] sounds just like a global warming scientist.

Ted, that remark really made me laugh. Here's why:

For the last 4+ years, I have been a daily audience to and commentator on up-to-the-minute reports of what global warming (so-called) scientists are saying and doing, and details of the ins and outs of lengthy battles in process trying to get some scientific integrity from persons in power in certain physics organizations, and other aspects of the activities of a devoted group of scientists trying to combat the, in this case, horrifically real corruption occurring in the physics community radiating (ha) from the global-warming issue.

I see no resemblance between anything DF has ever written that I've ever read and the sound of a global warming (so-called) scientist. No resemblance. I know what those folks are, and DF isn't like them.

What I see in Dragonfly is a scientist who's well informed about the area under discussion, well aware of its conundra and complexities, and is no authoritarian, just someone who isn't impressed by philosophers pronouncing on subject matter they don't understand.

He's already answered you on the charge that he was speaking of all philosophers, and on other points.

I recommend bearing in mind that he's writing in a language which isn't his native language, and he's trying to explain difficult stuff. Although you're fairly informed on the subject matter, you might even learn further information from him about the physics.

Ellen

Yes, I noticed DF's retreat under fire.

The subject matter Df and and the GWers (just like theologians) study may differ in its underlying validity but the elite authoritarian attitude is exactly the same.

[BaalChatzaf]

The subject matter Df and and the GWers (just like theologians) study may differ in its underlying validity but the elite authoritarian attitude is exactly the same.

DF writes on point. He knows his stuff. You don't so it sounds authoritarian to you. But that is your ignorance manifesting itself.

How much physics and math do you know?

Ba'al Chatzaf