Betsy

I didn't. it was raised by those claiming that 100% certainty was possible when it comes to assessing the honesty of others. In my view, to have 100% certainty, you need to be able to identify the cause of something. When it comes to another person's behavior, the causes are his motives and his knowledge, but these are not directly perceivable and must be inferred from the behavior of someone who is capable of trying to deceive you. Me too! I'm 100% certain of my observations of the behavior of others. I am 100% certain of my own motivation and other things I can introspect about. I am 100% certain of many principles of human psychology that I have learned or developed over the years. What I am not certain of are exactly what may cause or motivate a given person to take a particular action. All I can do is use the 100% certain, but limited, knowledge I do have to make the best judgment I can. Estimating someone else's honesty with 100% certainty can't be done. Estimating as carefully as you can with all the information you you actually have should be done. It is not arbitrary to assume that people can be honest or dishonest, since that is possible given free will. It is not arbitrary to assume that someone is probably honest or dishonest based on available evidence. It is arbitrary to assume that someone else is 100% honest because that requires evidence that is just not available to us.

Yes, which would be true of anyone whose minds we cannot directly access and whose intent we must infer from their actions. I'm not a lawyer, but as I understand it, the prosecution has to prove motive, method, and opportunity. It is more than that. I have heard that to be convicted of a crime, a person has to have criminal intent -- i.e., have the motive to do something that violates rights. People who are not of sound mind may not be able to have a criminal intent because they don't have what it takes to know the difference between right and wrong. It might also be that the act was an accident and the defendant never intended to hurt the victim. It could also be an act of self defense where the motive was to protect oneself rather than initiate force. I think it is possible to be 100% certain that a person did a particular act, especially if you are an eyewitness to it, but you can't have the same certainty about someone else's motives. You'd have to get inside his head to know for sure whether he had criminal intent, was able to understand the nature of his act, was trying to defend himself, etc.That is why, in this context, the required evidence is not 100% certainty but "beyond a reasonable doubt."

I think it is necessary to distinguish between two different concepts both denoted by the word "certainty." C1 is what is called 100% certainty, absolute certainty, or something that could not be otherwise without contradiction. C2 refers conclusions that may or may not be C1, but have such a high degree of probability that they are considered conclusive because they have met the epistemological standard of proof for the particular class of entities that are the subject of the conclusion. This is what I think you mean by conclusions having "full evidentiary support." My view is that one can have C1 about axioms, sense perception, and many conclusions derived and inferred from sense perception using rules of logic to preserve identity throughout. It is also legitimate to speak of C2, and I believe that is what Dr. Peikoff is referring to in the passage we have been quoting where he talks about conclusive evidence, logically validated, that fulfills a standard of proof. In some contexts, like judging a defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, the applicable standard of proof allows for C2, but not C1.

I am using certainty to mean more than axiomatic truths. I am also using it with regard to sense perception and anything that follows from it without contradiction.

If I could read his mind and be as aware of his every action as I am of my own, I would know whether he ever tells little white lies when I'm not around, says things he knows aren't true to avoid blame or embarrassment, shades the truth to give people the wrong impression, lies to himself about his true motives, etc. I would know that, despite what I have seen, he isn't totally honest. On the other hand, if my mindreading reveals he is so cognitively conscientious that, for him, it is a matter of pride and his own self-interest that he verifies his statements carefully before he ever utters a word, I would know that he is a totally honest man. Unfortunately, I am not a mindreader, and unlike many I have encountered, I don't pretend to be. While I can see and appraise another person's statements and actions, I cannot access what causes them -- the inner operations of his mind.

The problem is that the word "certainty" is used for two different, but related concepts. It is similar to the way "value" is used to mean both rational values and anything a person seeks to gain and/or keep regardless of whether it is rational. The only way I see around this is to define one's terms and qualify one's use of the terms ("100% certain" vs. "certain beyond a reasonable doubt"), as necessary, to maintain clarity.

No it doesn't. Here's what Peikoff said with my emphasis added to show his basis for certainty. What is unspecified, and what may differ depending on the context, is what constitutes conclusive evidence, how one logically validates the conclusion, and what is the standard of proof. Conclusive proof in a criminal case requires a different standard of proof than in a civil case and is different from the standard of proof in physics. I disagree. There are plenty of truths of which we can be 100% certain (and not just beyond a reasonable doubt) ranging from direct sense perception to complex abstract propositions like "It is only the concept of life that makes the concept of value possible." As someone (Dr. Peikoff?) put it, "Fantasy is not a form of cognition." The ability to imagine something grants it no cognitive status. The senses are valid and that is self-evidently, axiomatically true. The grounds are that, with certain entities (those with free will) our knowledge must be inferred from limited evidence and we must form our conclusions with that in mind. With other entities, we can directly perceive the entities and all their relevant causal properties by direct sense perception or introspection. So don't do it. I think it is when you are dealing with principles, generalizations, and other truths that can be reduced, by identifying causes, to statements of identity. Any idea that can be stated in the form of "A is A," is 100% certain.

This is what I wrote. The first paragraph refers to "100% certainty" and the second to the kind of knowledge that might be "certain beyond reasonable doubt." The problem is that there are two different meanings being used here for the word "certainty." One is what some refer to as "100% certainty" or "absolute certainty" for a truth that, by its nature can never be contradicted. It is also used, as Peikoff does, to mean certain enough to form a logically valid conclusion. Thus, I don't think I am disagreeing with Peikoff because his concept is a different -- and wider -- concept than my "100% certainty."

100% certain means certain beyond ALL doubt. It means that for it to be otherwise would be a contradiction. The following is 100% certain. Absolutely nothing will ever contradict that. On the other hand, there have been criminal cases where all 12 members of the jury justly decided that there was sufficient evidence to show, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant had the motive, means, and opportunity to commit a particular crime and, therefore, convicted him. Years later evidence surfaced proving he could not have committed the crime, and he was acquitted.

That too. "Innocent" means "without guilt." That's why the principle is innocent until proven guilty. "Innocent" does not mean "virtuous." Virtue is a positive quality of character and not merely the absence of vice. It is contextual. Telling a lie to force-initiators is not wrong, but telling a lie to gain or keep a value you have no right to is dishonesty. How much dishonesty and whether dishonesty rises to the level of a character trait is also contextual. If the worst thing someone ever did is tell a lie seven years ago which he corrected and regretted ever since, he is definitely an honest man as compared to, say, Bill Clinton. Yes! plus the Laws of Logic and all proper logical inferences from sense perception. Sense perception is the base, reference point, and gold standard of all knowledge. If an idea cannot be reduced to sense perception it is suspect. If it contradicts sense perception it is WRONG. The principle here is that you go with the evidence you DO have and don't question it until and unless you have a reason to -- which means until and unless you have evidence that contradicts your conclusion. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Nope. If a person was immoral occasionally but has reformed and is now 100% moral, the correct conclusion is "the person was not moral and he is (now) not immoral." No contradiction.

Yes. To be honest means to be 100% honest all the time. To be dishonest, as I recall Dr. Peikoff saying, a person doesn't have to be dishonest all the time. A few venal whoppers will do. I wouldn't quantify it that way, but one can judge such a man to be probably honest or likely to be honest and, therefore, worthy of one's trust.

The legal standard for innocence is "innocent until proved guilty" with "beyond a reasonable doubt" as the standard of guilt. That strikes me as a reasonable and useful standard of proof when evaluating people in general and not just legally. Dr. Peikoff makes the point, I believe it is in his lecture "Why Should One Live by Principle," that to be moral, a man has to be moral all the time, but to be immoral, a man only has to be immoral occasionally. You can't prove a Mafia hit man isn't a murderer by pointing to 58 days in which he didn't kill anybody. It applies to all virtues. To be virtuous means to be virtuous all the time. Unless you are with someone all the time -- as you are with yourself -- you do not know what they actually do all the time. All you know is what they have done some of the time. Using that information, you make the best evaluation you can. I haven't been as certain of others as I have been of myself, but with people I know very well, who have never exhibited any vice, and whose statements and actions integrate extremely well with the idea that they are virtuous, I am almost as certain of them as I am with myself.

Human consciousness is open to awareness and cognition, but only the contents of our own minds are available to each of us directly by introspection. The minds of others are not and must be inferred. Thus, the cognitive process is different for understanding the minds of others and, being more steps removed from direct perception, more prone to error.

The concept of "certainty" has been used to mean different things by different posters. For what I mean by certainty, see this post.

The most important thing about Kant -- and what really ought to concern us most -- is that his ideas are evil and they lead to misery and death. That being the case, whether he was personally evil, crazy, or honestly mistaken pales by comparison.

No, that is not my point. Sometimes you do have incontrovertable evidence of immorality -- too many contradictory statements and actions -- that a conclusion of immorality is certain. When it comes to someone's morality, however it's a different story. You can't conclude that someone is virtuous simply because you don't have conclusive evidence about their immorality. You can conclude, with 100% certainty, that someone is dishonest if you catch him telling too many lies or contradicting reality too many times. You can't be certain that he is totally honest just because you haven't caught him telling a lie yet. The principle applicable here is that absence of proof is not proof of absence.

I agree with the above statement but it doesn't specify the standard of conclusiveness nor what the process of logical validation consists of. That, I would hold, depends on the nature of the entities that are the subject of the conclusion. The way you evaluate the evidence concerning physical entities is different than the way you evaluate people who have free will. Also, the purpose of the evaluation affects the standard of proof used. In civil cases, the standard is the "preponderance of the evidence" while in criminal cases it is "beyond a reasonable doubt."

You can't be 100% certain that someone else is moral in his past and present actions either, just certain beyond a reasonable doubt which is as good as it gets. That's how Branden was able to deceive an excellent judge of character like Ayn Rand -- at least for a while.

Ad Verecundiam (note the spelling) is an irrelevant or fallacious appeal to authority. Are you saying that what Ayn Rand had to say about the matter is irrelevant to what the Objectivist position is or ought to be? Are you saying that what Ayn Rand said, and I agree with, is fallacious?

The process is neither a mathematical calculation nor a process of deductive logic. It is an inductive integration of all the information I have or can obtain that is relevant to evaluating the reliability of another person's introspection. It involves answers to questions like: How honest is this person? Have I ever caught him in a lie? Has he been honest even when it is not to his immediate advantage and/or he could get away with lying? What motivation would he have for lying about his thoughts and feelings? Has he been trying to impress me? Does he seem to be hiding something? How good an introspecter is he? Is he repressed or defensive? Is he afraid of what his thoughts and feelings might reveal about himself. Does he have rigid or unrealistic ideas about he ought to think and feel? Do his reported introspections make sense in the light of his actions? Are his emotional reactions in sync with his reported values? Would lying about his introspections be to his advantage in this situation? Could he be seeking a value that way? How well does what he says about himself integrate with what I know about myself and about people I know who have been in situations similar to his? Etc.

I agree, but it is a related matter. That's why it came up in this thread (or the original thread from which it was split?). When predicting future actions was discussed, I took a stand that some disagreed with. The Ayn Rand quote I supplied tends to support my side of that particular controversy.

I know what Betsy wants to do better than you do -- and you're wrong.

I stand by what I wrote there. I have presented my facts and my reasoning. If anyone takes issue with what I wrote, let them present their facts and reasoning, but I have no desire to repeat myself.

So far I haven't seen any comments on this quote I posted yesterday. I have been taking the exact same position on this issue as the author of this quote, to considerable opposition, and have even been accused of being a Kelleyite tolerationist, and worse. The above quote comes from Page 155 of Ayn Rand Answers.

You guess wrong. I have been the owner of my own business, Speicher Systems, registered in the State of California since 1978. Before that I worked as a senior consultant employed by several software companies in New York City. I have fired employees who stole from me or lied to me. It's not the money. It's the principle of the thing. I will not rely on, nor have the fate of my company at the mercy of, someone I don't trust.