David Harriman's Book

[George H. Smith]

An arbitrary proposition -- i.e., a proposition for which absolutely no evidence and/or arguments (reasons in the generic sense) have been given -- is not credible and therefore does not merit serious consideration. But this doesn't entail that an arbitrary proposition is meaningless. The proposition Elephants exist on Mars (assuming no evidence is presented for this claim) is arbitrary but not meaningless.

Does an arbitrary proposition have truth value? Yes, in the sense that it is either true or false. The point is that, lacking credibility, an arbitrary proposition doesn't reach the point where we need concern ourselves about its truth value. Without evidence and/or arguments in its favor, it has not earned this cognitive status. It should be dismissed out of hand without further consideration.

George,

Here is what Peikoff says in OPAR (all quotations from Chapter 5):

A relationship between a conceptual content and reality is a

relationship between man’s consciousness and reality. There

can be no “correspondence” or “recognition” without the

mind that corresponds or recognizes. If a wind blows the

sand on a desert island into configurations spelling out “A is

A,” that does not make the wind a superior metaphysician.

The wind did not achieve any conformity to reality; it did not

produce any truth but merely shapes in the sand. Similarly, if

a parrot is trained to squawk “2 + 2 = 4,” this does not make

it a mathematician. The parrot’s consciousness did not attain

thereby any contact with reality or any relation to it, positive

or negative; the parrot did not recognize or contradict any

fact; what it created was not merely falsehood, but merely

sounds. Sounds that are not the vehicle of conceptual

awareness have no cognitive status. (p. 165)

(I have deleted the other quotations.)

Peikoff's wind and parrot examples go way back. I recall hearing about them during the late 1960s or early 1970s, so they may have been included in his Theory of Knowledge course, in which case they probably had the approval of Rand.

As I'm sure you know -- I haven't read your JARS article yet, but I will -- there is a great deal of ambiguity in these examples. The random etchings of the wind and the squawking of a parrot have no meaning to the wind and (presumably) to the parrot, but humans can (and do) transform the etching and sounds into symbols, and when translated into this context they do acquire meaning. The parrot did not, from his perspective, utter a truth, but the same sounds when processed by humans do become a true statement.

When a person makes an arbitrary assertion, e.g., There is intelligent life on other planets in our galaxy , it is absurd to say that this proposition has no meaning. We know perfectly well what it means. When no evidence is offered in support of this assertion, however, there is no reason to take it seriously.

If this statement is meaningless without evidence, then we could not even discuss it as an abstract proposition in order to determine what kind of evidence would be necessary to establish its truth. We wouldn't even know what we are talking about.

Moreover, if someone were to say, There is intelligent life on other planets in our galaxy , it would be pointless to demand evidence for this claim, for we would not know what we are demanding evidence for prior to the presentation of evidence. And if we understand what this proposition means before we hear the evidence for it, then it does not suddenly become meaningless after we learn that no evidence will be forthcoming.

Peikoff is all balled up on this topic.

Ghs

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Peikoff is all balled up on this topic.

George,

Not only that, when you start looking into this a bit deeper, you will discover that Peikoff appears to be quite random in the manner he applies this thing.

Making pronouncement about "The Arbitrary" sounds good and original, so he runs with it, But underneath, I have little doubt he knows the idea is flawed. If actually cornered on why he calls x arbitrary, but not a similar y, I have no doubt at all that he would start in with the, "Do you know who I am?" routine. Here is what I mean by x and y:

x = Something Peikoff does not approve of

y = Something similar to x that Peikoff does approve of

I want to make a quip about that being arbitrary, but that's way too easy.

Michael

[George H. Smith]

Robert,

In the quotations you provided, Peikoff does not expressly say that arbitrary propositions are meaningless. But this is clearly implied in his claim that arbitrary assertions, like the squawking of a parrot, are merely sounds.

As I indicated in an earlier post, I agree with Peikoff that arbitrary assertions lack cognitive status. But I take this to mean that arbitrary assertions should not be taken seriously as knowledge (i.e., cognitive) claims. Whether or not such assertions have meaning or can be true or false pertain to their semantic status.

Ghs

[Robert Campbell]

When a person makes an arbitrary assertion, e.g., There is intelligent life on other planets in our galaxy , it is absurd to say that this proposition has no meaning. We know perfectly well what it means. When no evidence is offered in support of this assertion, however, there is no reason to take it seriously.

If this statement is meaningless without evidence, then we could not even discuss it as an abstract proposition in order to determine what kind of evidence would be necessary to establish its truth. We wouldn't even know what we are talking about.

Moreover, if someone were to say, There is intelligent life on other planets in our galaxy, it would be pointless to demand evidence for this claim, for we would not know what we are demanding evidence for prior to the presentation of evidence. And if we understand what this proposition means before we hear the evidence for it, then it does not suddenly become meaningless after we learn that no evidence will be forthcoming.

Peikoff is all balled up on this topic.

Yup—if you can't understand it, how can you know what would constitute evidence for it?

Maybe Peikoff has been through too many bouts of his brand of paralysis...

If the wind and the parrot examples were already in "Objectivism's Theory of Knowledge" (are any recordings of this series preserved anywhere?), the question then becomes how Ayn Rand could have found such arguments persuasive in 1965.

For that matter, i wonder when Peikoff started declaring that

— You can't respond to an arbitrary assertion, because it can't be "cognitively processed" and so you wouldn't know how to;

— You needn't respond to an arbitrary assertion, because it has nothing going for it epistemologically, you owe nothing to the person who produced it, and it won't normally be worth the bother of responding to;

— You mustn't respond to an arbitrary assertion, because producing one is an unforgivable act of primal irrationality, which you must never sanction by responding

In OPAR, he insists on all three—in the same paragraph (see pp. 168-169).

Robert Campbell

[Robert Campbell]

As I indicated in an earlier post, I agree with Peikoff that arbitrary assertions lack cognitive status. But I take this to mean that arbitrary assertions should not be taken seriously as knowledge (i.e., cognitive) claims. Whether or not such assertions have meaning or can be true or false pertain to their semantic status.

George,

Your position resembles Nathaniel Branden's, as of the early 1960s. He obviously thought that propositions arbitrarily asserted (which he roughly equated with propositions that the audience is being asked to accept on faith) could be true or false.

I don't believe that the latter-day Peikoff would differentiate between cognitive and semantic status. The relevant portions of OPAR imply that there is no such distinction.

Robert Campbell

[George H. Smith]

Peikoff is all balled up on this topic.

George,

Not only that, when you start looking into this a bit deeper, you will discover that Peikoff appears to be quite random in the manner he applies this thing.

Making pronouncement about "The Arbitrary" sounds good and original, so he runs with it, But underneath, I have little doubt he knows the idea is flawed. If actually cornered on why he calls x arbitrary, but not a similar y, I have no doubt at all that he would start in with the, "Do you know who I am?" routine. Here is what I mean by x and y:

x = Something Peikoff does not approve of

y = Something similar to x that Peikoff does approve of

I want to make a quip about that being arbitrary, but that's way too easy.

Michael

For many years I owned a copy of Peikoff's doctoral dissertation. (I got it from University Microfilms during my college years.) I may be off a little but its title is something like The Status of the Law of Non-Contradiction in Classical Logical Ontologism.

This is a fine piece -- though it was written in Peikoff's natural style rather than in his imitative Randian style -- and showed that Peikoff had considerable promise in philosophy. I also think some of his early lectures and courses showed promise, however much I disagreed with parts of them. But something happened after Rand died and Peikoff became the Sun King of Objectivism.

I used to have a tape of a lecture by Peikoff on happiness, one that he apparently delivered at a dinner or some other formal occasion during the 1960s. I thought it was very well done. Peikoff began by quoting a "poem" by Edith Efron: "A is A. How gay. I like it that way."

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

If the wind and the parrot examples were already in "Objectivism's Theory of Knowledge" (are any recordings of this series preserved anywhere?), the question then becomes how Ayn Rand could have found such arguments persuasive in 1965.

Around 1973, while I was writing ATCAG and living in the same Hollywood apartment building as Roy Childs, Roy borrowed copies of several of Peikoff's courses from a friend, and we listened to the tapes together. I distinctly remember Peikoff's high pitched voice talking about the wind etching "A is A" into the sand. That is something not easily forgotten.

I know where Roy got the tapes, but since they were technically bootlegged copies, I don't want to say. I don't want to cause legal problems for the source by subjecting him or her to the mercies of Peikoff's goon platoon.

Ghs

[Ellen Stuttle]

I happen to be sympathetic to Popper's "conjectures and refutations" approach to physics -- an approach that should have put you on my side in the recent discussion of the philosophy of science on another thread. (Perhaps you didn't want to spoil your perfect record by saying anything that would support my claims.)

Had I but known you would have had my sword, dull as it is, by your side in a moment. Of course Popper's "conjectures and refutations" is the right approach to physics. What puzzles me then, is why this seems to be a point of difference between you and Ellen. Because that's definitely her position on science in general, including physics. But I'm not sure what thread you're referring to.

Must be an invisible thread on which I didn't participate. The only thread on which I saw posts by George on physics was the "The Logical Leap" thread, but I noticed no "conjectures and refutations" approach in those posts.

Ellen

[George H. Smith]

I happen to be sympathetic to Popper's "conjectures and refutations" approach to physics -- an approach that should have put you on my side in the recent discussion of the philosophy of science on another thread. (Perhaps you didn't want to spoil your perfect record by saying anything that would support my claims.)

Had I but known you would have had my sword, dull as it is, by your side in a moment. Of course Popper's "conjectures and refutations" is the right approach to physics. What puzzles me then, is why this seems to be a point of difference between you and Ellen. Because that's definitely her position on science in general, including physics. But I'm not sure what thread you're referring to.

Must be an invisible thread on which I didn't participate. The only thread on which I saw posts by George on physics was the "The Logical Leap" thread, but I noticed no "conjectures and refutations" approach in those posts.

Ellen

Yup, it was an invisible thread.

Ghs

[Ellen Stuttle]

Thus, however intelligent you think Popper's views on induction are, your own views are much different than his. Popper's objections to induction are not of the run-of-the-mill variety, whereas yours are. By this I mean that the problems you express go back at least to Aristotle, who also maintained that induction, in and of itself, is incapable of yielding certainty.

No, my views aren't much different from Popper's, judging from what I've read so far of Popper's. I know that the problems I expressed go back at least to Aristotle. I was merely answering Brant's question as to why there's a "problem of induction." It seemed he didn't understand why the idea of there being a problem arose to begin with, i.e., why there's any fuss over the issue of the validity of induction.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

I've yet to learn why "The Problem of Induction" is a problem.

Because there is no way you can be certain that a generalization you arrive at will be true for all cases. NO WAY.

Are you certain of this for all cases, Ellen?

Yes, but not on the basis of generalization from experience, on the basis of logical contradiction in the claim that you could arrive at certainty generalizing from experience.

Ellen

[Robert Campbell]

For many years I owned a copy of Peikoff's doctoral dissertation. (I got it from University Microfilms during my college years.) I may be off a little but its title is something like The Status of the Law of Non-Contradiction in Classical Logical Ontologism.

This is a fine piece -- though it was written in Peikoff's natural style rather than in his imitative Randian style -- and showed that Peikoff had considerable promise in philosophy. I also think some of his early lectures and courses showed promise, however much I disagreed with parts of them. But something happened after Rand died and Peikoff became the Sun King of Objectivism.

I used to have a tape of a lecture by Peikoff on happiness, one that he apparently delivered at a dinner or some other formal occasion during the 1960s. I thought it was very well done. Peikoff began by quoting a "poem" by Edith Efron: "A is A. How gay. I like it that way."

Ghs

George,

You're off slightly on one word: it's Classic Logical Ontologism. Tsk tsk

I've obtained it on PDF (which is what UMI mainly does now) and read parts of it. If you'd like a copy, just let me know offline.

The parts I've read look like solid work, though one fault is that Peikoff doesn't address Quine's views. That's unusual for an American philosophy dissertation completed in 1964.

Recall that Leonard Peikoff was sent into exile (at the University of Denver) not long after he completed this dissertation.

I really think it was progressively downhill for him after 1965.

First, the ouster of Nathaniel and Barbara Branden opened up a path to inherit the kingdom.

Then the weight of Rand's expectations bore down on him, more and more heavily with each year.

The 1976 lectures, despite their lighter and less censorious elements, are already showing signs of sclerosis. For instance, nearly all of his doctrine of the arbitrary was in place by then.

Finally, there were Rand's death, the loss of his job at Brooklyn Polytechnic (which meant that he would no longer be teaching non-acolytes), and the publication of Barbara's book.

Robert Campbell

PS. When Doug Rasmussen (who has known the dissertation for years) referred to it in a session of the Ayn Rand Society, Diana Hsieh excoriated him for citing it. She alleged that this was "unprofessional."

[Robert Campbell]

I know where Roy got the tapes, but since they were technically bootlegged copies, I don't want to say. I don't want to cause legal problems for the source by subjecting him or her to the mercies of Peikoff's goon platoon.

George,

If what you were listening to was an early-1970s Peikoff course, those are still publicly available.

If it was an NBI-era Peikoff course, all are now either lost, or hidden away by persons who don't want others to know their location.

If the alleged bootlegger (or someone who dealt with the alleged bootlegger) still has a copy of an NBI-era Peikoff course, it's prudent to assume that it may be the only surviving copy.

Obviously, in such a case recordings can't be offered for sale on the open market, but the material should be duplicated and circulated so as to guard against permanent loss.

Robert Campbell

[George H. Smith]

I know where Roy got the tapes, but since they were technically bootlegged copies, I don't want to say. I don't want to cause legal problems for the source by subjecting him or her to the mercies of Peikoff's goon platoon.

George,

If what you were listening to was an early-1970s Peikoff course, those are still publicly available.

If it was an NBI-era Peikoff course, all are now either lost, or hidden away by persons who don't want others to know their location.

If the alleged bootlegger (or someone who dealt with the alleged bootlegger) still has a copy of an NBI-era Peikoff course, it's prudent to assume that it may be the only surviving copy.

Obviously, in such a case recordings can't be offered for sale on the open market, but the material should be duplicated and circulated so as to guard against permanent loss.

Robert Campbell

These were all original NBI courses. But I don't know if they still exist.

Ghs

[Reidy]

How well attested is this exile-to-Denver story? Jobs for humanities PhDs are oversubscribed, and aspirants take what they can get. I suspect that if we knew the whole truth it would turn out to be a post-hoc inference: Peikoff was in trouble and Peikoff took a job in Denver; ergo...

[George H. Smith]

I know where Roy got the tapes, but since they were technically bootlegged copies, I don't want to say. I don't want to cause legal problems for the source by subjecting him or her to the mercies of Peikoff's goon platoon.

George,

If what you were listening to was an early-1970s Peikoff course, those are still publicly available.

If it was an NBI-era Peikoff course, all are now either lost, or hidden away by persons who don't want others to know their location.

If the alleged bootlegger (or someone who dealt with the alleged bootlegger) still has a copy of an NBI-era Peikoff course, it's prudent to assume that it may be the only surviving copy.

Obviously, in such a case recordings can't be offered for sale on the open market, but the material should be duplicated and circulated so as to guard against permanent loss.

Robert Campbell

These were all original NBI courses. But I don't know if they still exist.

Ghs

One more thing. I know that Roy Childs made copies of some of the tapes, possibly all of them. (Knowing Roy, the latter is more likely.) Roy was typically very careful in taking care of things like records and tapes, so he probably still had them at the time of his death in 1992.

I think Roy's papers ended up at the Hoover Institute at Stanford, but the last I heard over a decade ago, everything was being stored in boxes and no effort had been made to catalogue the material. Moreover, I don't know if Roy's "papers" included stuff like audio tapes.

Joan Kennedy Taylor was the literary executor of Roy's estate -- it was she who told me that Roy's papers had not been processed at Hoover -- but Joan passed away in 2005.

Ghs

[Reidy]

Point of information: Peikoff's talk on happiness, quoted above, was at an NBI ball in San Francisco. NBI sold an audio of it, so a copy isn't necessarily be a bootleg. Who owns copyright would be a tricky question.

[George H. Smith]

How well attested is this exile-to-Denver story? Jobs for humanities PhDs are oversubscribed, and aspirants take what they can get. I suspect that if we knew the whole truth it would turn out to be a post-hoc inference: Peikoff was in trouble and Peikoff took a job in Denver; ergo...

I sometimes wonder how much demand there would be for professional philosophers in a completely free-market educational system. There is no way to tell for sure, but it's a safe guess that more philosophers would be out of work.

[sjw]

How well attested is this exile-to-Denver story? Jobs for humanities PhDs are oversubscribed, and aspirants take what they can get. I suspect that if we knew the whole truth it would turn out to be a post-hoc inference: Peikoff was in trouble and Peikoff took a job in Denver; ergo...

I sometimes wonder how much demand there would be for professional philosophers in a completely free-market educational system. There is no way to tell for sure, but it's a safe guess that more philosophers would be out of work.

There would be a far greater need for rational philosophers throughout education and business because we would be pursuing far more sophisticated objectives, far more broadly. It seems to many that we're achieving great things but what we are doing is paltry in comparison to what is really possible, and much of what we're achieving has more to do with the limited liberties we had in the past than with the corrupt political context we now suffer with.

Shayne

[Brant Gaede]

How well attested is this exile-to-Denver story? Jobs for humanities PhDs are oversubscribed, and aspirants take what they can get. I suspect that if we knew the whole truth it would turn out to be a post-hoc inference: Peikoff was in trouble and Peikoff took a job in Denver; ergo...

A young prof goes where the jobs are. S. Hook was no help to him. You have to pay your bills. My bro-in-law was teaching anthro at the U of D at the same time, but he got tenure. I don't think the "exile" story holds up or there would have been people exiled out of NYC to all over the country. I don't doubt that Rand was pissed off at him, then and many other times. I can't imagine her telling him to leave the city much less "Go to Denver!" But the idea that someone has high status deserving of being exiled by the Goddess herself is very dramatic and a good story.

--Brant

Edited September 8, 2010 by Brant Gaede

[Robert Campbell]

How well attested is this exile-to-Denver story? Jobs for humanities PhDs are oversubscribed, and aspirants take what they can get. I suspect that if we knew the whole truth it would turn out to be a post-hoc inference: Peikoff was in trouble and Peikoff took a job in Denver; ergo...

Peter R,

I haven't reread Nathaniel Branden's first Reason interview for a good while now, but my recollection is that the exile story was included there.

Other than that, I have noticed that in some capsule bios of Leonard Peikoff, his time at U of D goes unmentioned.

Robert C

[George H. Smith]

I happen to be sympathetic to Popper's "conjectures and refutations" approach to physics -- an approach that should have put you on my side in the recent discussion of the philosophy of science on another thread. (Perhaps you didn't want to spoil your perfect record by saying anything that would support my claims.)

Had I but known you would have had my sword, dull as it is, by your side in a moment. Of course Popper's "conjectures and refutations" is the right approach to physics. What puzzles me then, is why this seems to be a point of difference between you and Ellen. Because that's definitely her position on science in general, including physics. But I'm not sure what thread you're referring to.

Must be an invisible thread on which I didn't participate. The only thread on which I saw posts by George on physics was the "The Logical Leap" thread, but I noticed no "conjectures and refutations" approach in those posts.

Ellen

A more serious answer this time....

I didn't mean to say that I had defended a Popperian approach on "The Logical Leap" Thread. I was thinking of Popper's line of demarcation between science and metaphysics. Although I don't agree with Popper's specific criterion, that kind of bright line distinction is similar to the one I was making.

Ghs

[Ellen Stuttle]

My opinion for years, without knowledge of Peikoff's or anyone else's, has been that concept formation is induction, pure and simple.

Rand already stated that concept formation was essentially a process of induction. ITOE, p. 36: "The process of observing facts of reality and of integrating them into concepts is, in essence, a process of induction."

The full statement is three sentences:

ITOE

Expanded 2nd edition, 1990

hardcover

pg. 28

Thus the process of forming and applying concepts contains the essential pattern of two fundamental methods of cognition: induction and deduction.

The process of observing the facts of reality and of integrating them into concepts is, in essence, a process of induction. The process of subsuming new instances under a known concept is, in essence, a process of deduction.

Deletion of that statement is #1 on my list of wished-for corrections of Rand's publications.

It's a throw-away statement, a tack-on which could have been deleted without loss.

It's at variance with her own theory of how concepts are formed (by abstraction from pattern recognition).

It's conducive to confusion in the views of her followers on the historic meaning of "induction" and how that relates to concept-formation.

It's one of the two statements which provided basis and license for Peikoff's Project on Induction.

(The other is her saying in the ITOE workshop, pg. 304, after saying that she "[hasn't] worked on that subject enough to even begin to formulate it," that "it would take an accomplished scientist in a given field to illustrate the whole process in that field." Ta-da! Peikoff/Harriman duo answer the call.)

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

I think that what maybe confuses people of O'ist orientation is the term "valid."

It's a stolen concept..;-)

An equivocation (the frequent O'ist employment of "valid") between the formal-logic meaning and the soft meaning "legitimate." The equivocation lulls the O'ist unwary into becoming righteously indignant against those who, strictly meaning the formal logic sense, assert that induction isn't valid.

Ellen

[sjw]

ITOE

Expanded 2nd edition, 1990

hardcover

pg. 28

Thus the process of forming and applying concepts contains the essential pattern of two fundamental methods of cognition: induction and deduction.

The process of observing the facts of reality and of integrating them into concepts is, in essence, a process of induction. The process of subsuming new instances under a known concept is, in essence, a process of deduction.

Deletion of that statement is #1 on my list of wished-for corrections of Rand's publications.

It's a throw-away statement, a tack-on which could have been deleted without loss.

It's at variance with her own theory of how concepts are formed (by abstraction from pattern recognition).

It's conducive to confusion in the views of her followers on the historic meaning of "induction" and how that relates to concept-formation.

It's one of the two statements which provided basis and license for Peikoff's Project on Induction.

(The other is her saying in the ITOE workshop, pg. 304, after saying that she "[hasn't] worked on that subject enough to even begin to formulate it," that "it would take an accomplished scientist in a given field to illustrate the whole process in that field." Ta-da! Peikoff/Harriman duo answer the call.)

Ellen

I don't see how you're concluding that there's a necessary contradiction between Rand's different descriptions of the use and formation of concepts. You list the two perspectives, and indeed they are different perspectives, but different perspectives is not the same as contradictory perspectives.

Shayne