Betsy

Well, of course, our senses give us direct access to some of existence. I was not implying that our senses give us omniscience. When we use abstraction and tools, we abstract from direct perception and use direct perception to apply and read the tools and other instruments we haved devised.

Observe that the lack of doubt is an effect or consequence of the essential, defining characteristic of certainty: having conclusive evidence. Observe also that Peikoff says " There are, therefore, no longer any grounds for doubt. That means there is no evidence that the conclusion could be otherwise -- to doubt without evidence would be arbitrary -- but he does not say that there is no longer any possibility of doubt.

Unaided sense-perception gives us direct access to existence and introspection gives us direct access to own own consciousness. Do you disagree?

Not at all. Another person's consciousness is knowable, but by a process -- inference -- that does not give as much pertinent information, nor as much certainty, as the kind of direct awareness introspection gives us about our own minds. Be careful! To the degree that another person's psycho-epistemology and/or motivation is significantly different from your own, trying to understand others by projection and introspection will not work or will yield wrong answers. How would introspection help Roark understand Peter Keating?

The essential property of volitional consciousness is that it is self-caused. This does not close off to cognition "all knowledge (all absolute and certain knowledge) of volitional causation," but it definitely limits what we can know about an entity whose conscious operations are self-caused by their own minds since we don't have direct access to their minds.

A persons actions are caused by his choices, his context of knowledge, his values, and other conscious content. You can read your own mind and directly perceive the relationship between the content of your mind and your own actions, but you do not have that kind of access to anyone else's mind. Therefore you must infer the causes of another person's actions. Assuming you go only on the strict evidence you have of someone else's actions, it is still often very difficult to determine and infer what caused them. That is why, for instance, it took Roark so many years to figure out the "principle behind the Dean." That is why errors are possible. Not only that, but people are capable of deceiving themselves, and others, in order to make you come to erroneous conclusions about their motives -- e.g., Branden. That is why you can never be as certain of your inferences about what causes someone else's actions as you can be about your direct introspection of what causes your own actions.

Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems as if you are using "certainty" to mean an epistemological state whose essential characteristic is the absence of doubt. This is also in line with most dictionary definitions, but it defines a negative concept: certainty as the absence of doubt. This tells you what certainty is not. Observe that this is not Dr. Peikoff's definition of certainty (nor mine). Peikoff's definition is positive. It tells you what certainty is. If the evidence is conclusive (i.e., it fulfills the standard of proof) and has been logically validated, then it is certain. None of these ideas bear any resemblance to mine. I hold that many, many conclusions can, and do, meet the standards of certainty, positively defined, as Dr. Peikoff defines it. Certainty requires that the conclusion be based on axioms, sense perception, and demonstrate, or logically infer, a causal connection. In the case of some inferences or in situations where the evidence is incomplete, there may be room for some doubt (not "unspecified, insurmountable doubts"), but if there is enough of the right kind of evidence for it to be conclusive, it will meet Dr. Peikoff's standard of certainty regardless.

Don't you think it is easier to obtain and directly perceive information about non-volitional entities. like rocks, that it is about volitional creatures? You don't have to infer what the rock might have chosen to do that caused it to do what it did.

The latter. Observe that in the quote from Peikoff, he is saying that what modern philosophers call a tautology is really the same thing as identity and, because he upholds identity as one of the most important facts there are, that what modern philosophers call a tautology is not inconsequential, uninteresting, and utterly devoid of intellectual and conceptual content. That might be what modern philosphers are trying to do with the term, but both Dr. Peikoff and I would defend tautologies as we do identity, because they are the same thing. "All truths are 'tautological.'"

My position is none of the above. If you have enough evidence about a person such that you are certain beyond a reasonable doubt, you have met the appropriate standard of proof and one should never entertain or give any weight whatsoever to arbitrary and unreasonable doubts. A proper conclusion is based on the axioms, sense perception, and a valid, proper causal inference. A causal explanation would require getting inside someone's mind to be able to directly perceive the cause. We can to that with our own minds, but we cannot directly perceive what's going on in someone else's mind, so the best we can do is infer.

Far, from being "irrational," there is a good reason to judge others "beyond a reasonable doubt" but not beyond all doubt. Don't you have greater certainty about what you know and whether you are honest than you do about what any other human being knows and whether he is honest? If so, why is that the case? That's the reason, not for arbitrary doubt, but for qualifications on certainty when it comes to judging others.

Yes, given enough of the right kind of evidence. Unfortunately, we often have to form conclusions and choose courses of action based on incomplete evidence. In those cases, there are inductive principles we can use to come up with the best conclusion under the circumstances, but such conclusions will never be as certain as when we have all the evidence we need. There is nothing irrational about acknowledging the fact that our conclusions can only be as certain as the available evidence allows.

I agree with that. That is not my view. My position is that absence of evidence of dishonesty does not prove anything about a person's honesty or dishonesty or the probability thereof. Absence of evidene isn't any kind of evidence one way or another. You need more evidence of actual virtue to conclude a person is probably virtuous and you may never have enough evidence to conclude that they are virtuous with the same certainty you have about your own virtue.

You've got it! Yes, but what is an appropriate standard of proof is not arbitrary. It is determined by the nature of the entities you are judging. You judge what makes a rock move differently from what makes a person move. All knowledge is contextual and the context determines the standard of proof. For example, in civil cases the standard of proof is "the preponderance of evidence" while in criminal cases it is "beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty."

Yes I do use them both myself and I believe that they are both valid, but different, concepts denoted by the same word. In fact, I looked up "certain*" only the Objectivism CDROM and found Ayn Rand using the term "certainty" in both of the senses I indicated, depending on the context. (In addition, she also used it in a third sense to mean a feeling of confidence in a judgment whether justified or not.) The problem isn't "calling attention to the dangerous philosophical implications of someone's words," but claiming something is dangerous one has not proved to be someone's actual position or actually dangerous. Whittaker Chambers asserting that Ayn Rand wanted to send people to the gas chambers does not make it so.

There are so many interesting posts here I would like to answer right away, but I have limited time to do so. As a result, I am answering them as time allows, rather slowly, in the order in which they were posted. Noumenalself 's post #45 is next ... tomorrow.

Actually, I was comparing "100% certainty" (C1) to "certainty beyond a reasonable doubt" (C2). (C2 is "as good as it gets" when judging people. C1 is possible with other entities.) Sometimes. All conclusions that are beyond all doubt (C1) are also conclusive (C2), but not the other way around. Some conclusive (C2) conclusions are based on a standard of proof such as "beyond a reasonable doubt," that does not exclude all doubt. In the chain of reasoning that leads up to a such conclusive conclusion there may be unknowns such that the causal chain between perception and conclusion has gaps in it.

Sometimes I use "certainty" in the C2 sense to mean "conclusive" exactly as Dr. Peikoff does in Ch. 5. Sometimes I use "certainty" in the C1 sense to mean "beyond all doubt." I can also point to places in Ayn Rand's writings where she used the word "certainty" to mean C1 and other places where she used it to mean C2. Context is everything. Correct me if I am wrong, but you seem to be using the word "certain" as if it had only one, intrinsically correct, meaning. This is not the case. The same word can denote more than one concept which is why dictionaries have multiple definitions for the same word. More precisely, the fact that we cannot read minds does not prevent us from having "conclusive" (C2) certainty, but it is a barrier to ever having absolute, 100% (C1) certainty.

In this exchange, I am using "certainty" to mean "beyond all doubt" rather than "conclusive" and "beyond a reasonable doubt." As I said, above In this exchange I was trying to contrast the "beyond all doubt" "certainty" we have about the actions we see others doing and the lesser confidence we are able to have in inferring what motivated them to do it. I think they have. Some here have said that, since they have no evidence that a certain person ever was dishonest, therefore they are certain that he is honest. I think that is wrong. Absence of evidence of vice is not proof of virtue. On the other hand, I have seen people exhibit evidence of honesty. I have heard Dr. Peikoff tell stories about his interactions with Ayn Rand that do not portray him in a flattering light. He did not have to reveal any of that and nobody would be the wiser, but he did it anyway. He also readily and publicly admits his own errors. To be honest under those circumstances, is strong evidence that Dr. Peikoff is honest -- and courageous as well. Again, I was using "certainty" in the "100%, absolute, beyond all doubt" sense. I was doing it to contrast the 100% certainty we can have about a person's past actions and the lesser degree of confidence we can have about their future actions due to free will. I can conclude, beyond a reasonable doubt, that they have an honest character now and consider it highly probable, and have no reason to doubt, that they will remain honest in the future. I am not, however, as certain of their character as of my own nor as certain of their future character and actions as I am of their present character and actions.

That's not my position. That's not my position either. I'm not sure what this means, so I don't know if, and how, it has anything to do with my position.

That is what I mean as well when I use the word "certain" with regard to judging other people. I simply mean that the evidence is conclusive... that is, if I actually have enough evidence to form a conclusion. What about "degrees of certainty" to describe how close you are to having conclusive evidence? Correctamundo! I agree. That's right, but the reason she said that was that we cannot know the full context, in the present, of our own future choices. I deliberately omitted it because I wanted to focus on the reasons she gave why we cannot predict the actions of others.

Yes I am -- using "certainty" to mean the evidence is conclusive. I am inferring his intent from what I do know as a fact: what he did, what he said his intent was, what I know of similar people from past experience, what I know about possible motivations by imagining myself in his place and introspecting about what I would do, etc. If I integrate all that evidence, I can conclude, beyond a reasonable doubt (not beyond all doubt), that Branden deceived Ayn Rand.

I think you misunderstand what "my" view of certainty is. I agree that there is, in fact and in reality, "a state a mind in which the person has no doubt about that which he is certain of. He may find that he was wrong ..." Some call this state of mind "certainty" and I don't have a problem with that usage as long as someone defines his terms and uses it consistently. There is also, in fact and in reality, a state a mind in which the person has no doubt about that which he is certain of and cannot be wrong. Some reserve the word "certainty" only for this state and refer to your concept as "conclusive" or "with full intellectual confidence." I don't have a problem with that usage either as long as someone defines his terms, as you have, and uses it consistently. When it comes to "my" concept of "certainty," I sometimes use the word to refer to either concept depending on the context, but I have to be very careful to define exactly what I mean by the term, in whatever context I use it, so that I will not be misunderstood. So do I since that is not my position at all. To doubt someone without evidence is arbitrary. My point is that to assume virtue without evidence, or with insufficient evidence, is just as arbitrary. My working principle is "innocent until proved guilty" and "capable of virtue until proved virtuous."

This is an example of the confusion caused by equivocating between two concepts denoted by the same word. Our conclusions about others can be certain (C2) because they can be highly probable but not certain (C1). Using "highly probable" for conclusive conclusions (C2) and "certain" for conclusive conclusions that cannot be doubted (C1) is one way around the ambiguity and one I prefer myself. Nonetheless, I recognize that others are using the word "certain" for both C1 and C2. For instance, Ayn Rand herself used the phrase "degrees of certainty" which makes no sense if you hold that something is either certain or it is not.

Is he, or is he using quote quotes? Observe that in every instance where he puts the word "tautology" in quotes, you can replace that quoted word with the phrase "what they call a tautology" without losing any meaning whatsoever. The meaning of the above paragraph is that what modern philosophers call a "tautology" is what we consider to be an instance of the Law of Identity -- and it applies to all truths.