Roderick Fitts

Previous: Objections to the Axioms (Part 1) This next objection is about the utility of the axioms. Objection: “Axioms Must Have Deductive Implications” [...]A first principle is only useful and workable if you can deduce the rest of the worldview from it. You can't deduce anythingfrom 'whatever exists exists'. You can't deduce any kind of epistemology (ie, how we know that whatever exists exists, how we know that we know, etc); we can't deduce any kind of metaphysic (ie, what is the nature of existence, what is the ground of existence, etc); and we certainly can't deduce any ethical or anthropological propositions (ie, what is right and wrong, what is the nature of man, etc).[...][1] Continue...Link to Original

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--><br><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>JA</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>TH</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/> <w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/> <w:OverrideTableStyleHps/> <w:UseFELayout/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]-->The axioms lay the proper foundation for a philosophy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But for any statement or expression, there is almost always someone who disagrees.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Axioms are of no exceptions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of the people who are dismissive of Objectivism, I believe many are especially opposed to the Objectivist axioms. <br><div class="MsoNormal"><br></div><div class="MsoNormal">Since I covered the metaphysical axioms of Objectivism in this series of posts, I’ll take the time to answer a series of actual objections to the axioms of the philosophy, and one objection to the idea of axioms as unprovable, originally answered by Aristotle.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br></div></div><a href="http://inductivequest.blogspot.com/2015/07/objections-to-axioms-part-1.html#more">Continue...</a> Link to Original

Previous: The Order of the Objectivist Metaphysics The axioms lay the proper foundation for a philosophy. But for any statement or expression, there is almost always someone who disagrees. Axioms are of no exception. Of the people who are dismissive of Objectivism, I believe many are especially opposed to the Objectivist axioms. Since I covered the metaphysical axioms of Objectivism in this series of posts, I’ll take the time to answer a series of actual objections to the axioms of the philosophy, and one objection to the idea of axioms as unprovable, originally answered by Aristotle. Continue...Link to Original

Thanks for the catch Plasmatic. I was too caught up reading the Appendix of Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, and used the wrong category to describe consciousness. I'll make the change on my blog post momentarily. If anyone else catches any errors or confusing language, do let me know. I'm working on a series of posts that answer objections to the Objectivist axioms or axioms as such. I should have 1 or 2 of them up sometime today.

Previous: The Metaphysically Given as Absolute With the final principle of the Objectivist metaphysics articulated, we can now see the structure of this branch of philosophy. The Basic Axioms, and Their Corollaries We begin with the metaphysical axiomatic concepts and axioms, which I’ve already discussed in my essay on the axioms (the others will be discussed in the following essays on sense-perception and free will): Continue...Link to Original

With the final principle of the Objectivist metaphysics articulated, we can now see the structure of this branch of philosophy. The Basic Axioms, and Their Corollaries We begin with the metaphysical axiomatic concepts and axioms, which I’ve already discussed in my essay on the axioms (the others will be discussed in the following essays on sense-perception and free will): Whatever axioms and axiomatic concepts that are discovered in any future philosophical investigation, it is Objectivism’s position that the concepts of “existence,” “consciousness,” and “identity” are the basic axiomatic concepts, and the Existence, Identity (Law of Identity), and Consciousness axioms are the basic axioms of philosophy. This principle is known as “Existence, Consciousness, and Identity as the Basic Axioms.” This implies that the other axiomatic concepts are derivative, not basic. “Existent” is a specification or narrowing of the concept “existence.” “Entity” is a narrowing of “existent.” “Action” is a narrowing of “entity.” And lastly, the epistemological axiomatic concepts “sense-perception” (specifically its validity), “volition,” and “self” are corollaries of the fact of consciousness.[2] Once a person has conceptualized enough material, one can then reach other axiomatic concepts like “entity,” “existent,” and “action,” and thus comprehend the next intuitive induction/unhypothetical principle: “The Law of Causality.” The Law of Causality (Cause and Effect) is the Law of Identity as applied to the case of “action”; actions are expressions of an entity’s identity, and cannot contradict an entity’s nature. “Every action has a cause (the cause is the nature of the entity which acts); and the same cause leads to the same effect (the same entity, under the same circumstances, will perform the same action).”[3] Due to this perspective on causality, Objectivism emphasizes the principle as “Causality as a Corollary of Identity.” Notice that the principle is that causality is a corollary of identity. Objectivism does not say that causality is the only corollary of the law of identity. Because everything is something, all of the non-basic axioms and corollaries in metaphysics and epistemology are corollaries of the law of identity. While this point is implied in the description of each derivative axiom and all corollaries, it is explicitly discussed in the Objectivist principle, “Consciousness as Possessing Identity.” (This is an axiomatic corollary in epistemology that I’ll discuss in a future essay.) Expanding on the existence axiom, if we integrate it with the fact of consciousness, the law of identity, and the law of causality, then we can reach “The Primacy of Existence.” Existence comes first; consciousness is aware of existence but does not create or control the nature of existence. Consciousness is a mental entity that obeys the Law of Causality; it acts in a certain way and only in that way. And its chief action is to be aware of existence; it is incapable of creating or altering it. Such is the reason why the principle is expressed as “Existence as Possessing Primacy Over Consciousness.” The final principle, “The Metaphysically Given as Absolute,” is the culmination of the above principles. Human volition makes it possible for our actions to be otherwise, but everything else apart from human action necessarily exists by the laws of reality, unaffected by the actions of consciousness (The Primacy of Existence). They could not have been otherwise, so any alternatives to these facts of reality would be impossible. They exist as an absolute, as the standard for our knowledge and values, and as the immutable background for all man-made facts and actions. References [1]: "On Axiomatic Concepts and Axioms," http://inductivequest.blogspot.com/2014/01/on-axiomatic-concepts-and-axioms_1.html. [2]: Existent: Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (IOE), 2nd. Edition, Appendix, sub-section "Fact." Entity: Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand (OPAR), note 12 of Chapter 1, "Existence, Consciousness, and Identity as the Basic Axioms." Action: IOE, Appendix, sub-section "'Entity' vs. 'Attribute,' 'Action,' Etc." Validity of Sense-perception: OPAR, "The Senses as Necessarily Valid." Volition: Ibid., "Volition as Axiomatic." Self: ItOE, sub-section "Self." [3]: OPAR, "Causality as a Corollary of Identity." Link to Original

The Objectivist view of metaphysics ends with the principle that alternatives to facts of reality are impossible and unimaginable. These facts, which Ayn Rand called the “metaphysically given,” necessarily exist. Man-made facts, on the other hand, are conditional, not necessary. Due to this, metaphysically given facts are absolute. The Metaphysically Given vs. the Man-Made According to this distinction, there are facts that are necessarily a part of existence, and other facts that are not. The metaphysically given is the name for any such fact that exists apart from human action. Man-made facts are any objects, institutions, practices, or rules of conduct that we originated. A mountain range is metaphysically given; a skyline of buildings is man-made. The motions by which a horse gallops or a bird flies are metaphysically given; the mechanics behind a car being driven or an airplane being flown are man-made. The laws of thermodynamics are metaphysically given; the laws against assault and battery are man-made. This distinction is a culmination of the previous principles. If, let’s say, the Sun exists, then it is what it is (the law of identity). It is an entity of a certain nature, acting in accordance with its identity (the law of causality). And clearly, the Sun is independent of consciousness, unaffected by the thoughts or beliefs or feelings of anyone (the primacy of existence). Given all of this, the fact of the Sun had to be: given the circumstances of its origin, no alternative was possible. As this is the case with the Sun and every other metaphysically given fact, they are all absolute, which means in this case that the facts are necessitated by the nature of existence, and unchangeable by human action, or any other purported entity’s action. By articulating how metaphysically given facts are absolute, we’ve also explained why they are “necessary.” We call facts “necessary” if their nonexistence would involve a contradiction. (Which is to say that its nonexistence would be impossible; it had to be.) In this sense, “necessity” is a description of certain existents from a special angle: it names existents insofar as they are governed by the law of identity. The case is a little different for man-made facts. Of course, man-made facts (like a pencil or a sculpture) have identity, and have causes. Once they come to be, they exist independently of a person choosing to acknowledge them. The difference lies in their ultimate cause: human choice. Even though choice is an aspect of human identity, any given choice could have been otherwise. No human choice, and thus no man-made fact, had to be. A clarification should be made in regard to what human creativity is. By the nature of reality, it cannot mean the religious meaning ascribed to it, that of creating something out of a void or creating miracles, which equate to entities acting in contradiction to their natures. Both of these are attempts to alter the metaphysically given, which is impossible. Creativity is the power to rearrange the present combinations of natural elements and thus create something that did not exist before. Applying the Distinction The differences between the metaphysically given and the man-made have wide-reaching consequences: they impact every branch of philosophy and every area of human life. We must always keep in mind that metaphysically given facts are reality itself. This means that we must accept such facts without evaluation, whether of praise or blame. Metaphysically given facts are not “true” or “false.” And they are not “right” or “wrong.” The Appalachian Mountains, a lightning bolt, or a deer are not true, false, right or wrong; they simply exist. Such facts serve as the standard for truth, and as the standard for right and wrong; in this way, the metaphysically given impacts every judgment, goal, value, and choice of human life. As the name suggests, it is “the given,” the immutable background and setting in which we live our lives. This is not the case with man-made facts. These facts are products of human choice, and must be evaluated as a result. Human choices could have been different, and can be changed. The “Appalachian Mountains” could have been named something else if people chose to do so, for instance. People can express their thoughts of “lightning bolts” in different languages. And individuals can choose to write innumerable essays on the subject of the “deer.” These choices can be rational or irrational, morally right or wrong, and so they must be judged. Unlike the metaphysically given, which should be given unquestioned acceptance, the man-made must be judged, and accepted or rejected and changed when it is deemed necessary. Rejecting the Distinction If a person adheres to the distinction between these types of facts, he will clearly perceive what is in his power to change, and what he must accept as immutable and inalterable. Confusing the distinction or rejecting it will lead to two possible errors, both catastrophic: treating the man-made as if it were inalterable and unquestionable, and regarding the metaphysically given as not absolute. The first error consists in presuming that the choices and conclusions of men are sacred and inviolable. If racism and barbarism are traditional values or customs, then this person will regard opposing these principles as inconceivable and unrealistic. Such an individual would happily abandon whatever he regards as true and right if the status quo holds a different opinion on the matter. This sort of attitude will result in complete conformity to the views and choices of other people, no matter how erroneous or morally evil. Examples of this attitude are various religious persecutions, the Dark Ages, and the followers of Nazism. Even the uncritical acceptance of a boss’ decision could count as an example, if the decision is seen as an unalterable fact of reality. That first error has led to various disasters in history, but I believe that the second error is worse: that of regarding the metaphysically given as alterable. Ayn Rand called this erroneous thinking the fallacy of “rewriting reality.” These people don’t see such a thing as a “metaphysically given”: facts are not absolute to them, so they simply imagine alternatives to them. As Dr. Peikoff notes, “n effect, they regard the universe as being merely a first draft of reality, which anyone may decide at will to rewrite.” Examples of this type of thinking are all-pervasive. The claims of political theorists Engels and Marx that Socialism is the natural and inevitable evolution of Capitalism, as if the choices of human beings are the same as the evolutionary development of animals or plants; the view that in love, it is opposites that attract; the belief that reality is either material or spiritual: that it cannot contain multiple elements. All facts and reasoning to the contrary, these people proclaim that this is how the world is and has to be. This belief that the metaphysically given is alterable began with the religious belief that the universe was created by a God or Being that could have made things differently, and can still do so if He wills it. This attitude started in religious schools, but historically spread into secular schools of thought and affects the minds of many people even today. Another Intuitive Induction In my previous essay, I discussed intuitive inductions and their relation to the Objectivist principles. Since this is a corollary of the primacy of existence principle, I’ll explain how this is another intuitive induction. Grasping this principle requires a few more considerations than grasping the primacy of existence. The idea of something being “metaphysically given” is relevant because there is something to contrast it to: our volitional actions. A full, philosophical understanding of volition/free will is not necessary for understanding this principle. It is enough to recognize that people choose actions and that the choices are not set in stone or demanded by reality: they can be otherwise. A rock must obey the law of gravity: no choice or alternative is possible to it. A person can choose to obey the law against arson or not, the history of crime illustrates the possibility of breaking this kind of law. Once we recognize that there are things in reality that are not immutable, we have a reason to clarify their differences, and to explain how we must react to each respectively. Metaphysically given facts could not have been otherwise, they are the inevitable results of the facts of reality. They are not the result of human actions, and so we term them “necessary”: it is impossible for these facts not to exist, given the nature of reality. The opposite of metaphysically given facts are contradictions that could not exist. The designation “absolute” comes from the combination of the fact that metaphysically given facts are necessary with the primacy of existence. Human actions and choices cannot change the nature of the metaphysically given. And thus the metaphysically given is absolute; human actions and choices are neither necessary nor absolute; they can be otherwise, and they can be changed. Once we recognize that the metaphysically given really is absolute, the conclusion regarding it is obvious: we must acquiesce to the metaphysical facts, without evaluation. There is no reason to rebel against something that cannot be contested against by the nature of reality (by the primacy of existence). On the other hand, we must perforce recognize that the same affirmation cannot be automatically given to the man-made: we can and must judge human actions and decisions. These choices and decisions can be accepted or rejected, and then changed when we deem it necessary. The Origins of the “Mind-Body” Dichotomy The main lesson of this principle is that it is our responsibility to conform to reality, not the other way around. Respecting reality will not assure success in everything you do, but it is a necessary component for doing anything correctly. Sticking to this principle, however, is a guarantee that you will not blame existence for your failures; you won’t hold a metaphysical grudge. Someone who rejects or opposes the metaphysically given will expect existence to obey his desires. However, existence will not obey a person’s wish, the primary of consciousness is a false theory. This revelation might make a person form a high-reaching conclusion: that the core of human life is conflict with reality. He will perceive a clash between the self and the external world, an irreconcilable split. One side of the conflict are his desires and wishes that he seeks to instill within reality; on the other, the facts of reality that are mysteriously unaffected by his wishes. This erroneous type of thinking is responsible for the erection of many oppositions that are similar in their elements, which I’ll list shortly (many of them, at least). According to Objectivism, the broadest name for these dichotomies, the one which links them all and is the essential dichotomy, is between the spiritual/mental/mind realm and the material/physical/body realm. The mind-body dichotomy has infected every branch and problem of philosophy, and is thus one of philosophy’s hardest challenges to resolve. To drive this point home, consider the scale and breadth of these dichotomies: reason vs. emotion; fact vs. value; concepts vs. percepts; pure science vs. applied science/technology; love vs. sex; Idealism vs. Materialism; theory vs. practice; Rationalism vs. Empiricism; business vs. art; happiness vs. pleasure; moral vs. practical; Deontology (Duty Ethics) vs. Consequentialism; thought vs. action. Objectivism holds that all these conflicts are in error. Nothing about reality forces us to make impossible choices between the spiritual and the material sides of life. The proper relationship should be unity, harmony, integration. In order to attain this harmony and integration, one of the first steps is to serenely accept what can't be changed, courageously change what can be changed for the better, and wisely discern the difference.[2] Notes [1]: Leonard Peikoff, "The Metaphysically Given as Absolute," Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand, (1991). New York: Dutton. [2]: Referencing Reinhold Niebuhr's (1892–1971) prayer, part of which states: Ayn Rand approvingly quotes these lines in her essay "The Metaphysical vs. the Man-Made," and discusses her interpretation of them. Link to Original

Previous: The Primacy of Existence The Objectivist view of metaphysics ends with the principle that alternatives to facts of reality are impossible and unimaginable. These facts, which Ayn Rand called the “metaphysically given,” necessarily exist. Man-made facts, on the other hand, are conditional, not necessary. Due to this, metaphysically given facts are absolute. Continue...Link to Original

Objectivism is named for one of its key concepts that it emphasizes and upholds—the concept of “objectivity.” Ayn Rand said this about objectivity in part: “It pertains to the relationship of consciousness to existence. Metaphysically [by the nature of reality—my comment], it is the recognition of the fact that reality exists independent of any perceiver’s consciousness.”[1] In general philosophy, this “recognition” is a position called “metaphysical objectivity”; in Objectivism, it is known as the “Primacy of Existence.” Like the law of causality, it is a law inherent in existence, and it describes the precise role of consciousness in relation to existence. It is the most important principle in Metaphysics, and is a further corollary of the axioms and the law of causality. I will describe how one could reach the primacy of existence from experience. Then I will explain the opposition to this view, the primacy of consciousness. Afterwards, I’ll explain a process for reaching generalized knowledge like the axioms without using strict induction, using the process of Aristotle’s that has been named “intuitive induction.” Lastly, I’ll answer an objection about the mind’s control over the body in light of the primacy of existence. Continue... Link to Original

Causality is something inherent in reality; it is an inescapable law of existence. In Objectivism, it is the first principle of Metaphysics after the identification of the basic axioms. I will give an inductive investigation of sorts into how this law can be formed. Afterwards, I will show why it can’t be an induction strictly speaking, and is rather a self-evident corollary of the Law of Identity. Inducing Cause-and-Effect Causality, or cause-and-effect, is the view that the world is lawful, orderly, or uniform in its operations. To understand what this means, we’ll have to revisit a number of concepts I discussed previously in my essay on axiomatic concepts and axioms. Continue... Link to Original

Reaching the Axioms All topics and all fields of research have a beginning or starting point. Philosophy may be the most abstract field that we study, but it is no different. Whether they admit to them or deny them, all philosophies rest on a set of axioms, or starting points. Axioms are self-evident propositions that indicate the bases of all knowledge and are at the base of all statements and claims. Philosophical axioms must be accepted in order to make any statement or claim to knowledge of any subject, because philosophy is the backdrop for all other areas of study. Aristotle was perhaps the first individual to discuss the importance of axioms, and Objectivism is the most recent philosophy to emphasize their role in knowledge. Continue... Link to Original

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-fareast-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">I’ve shown what I think needs to be shown for the principle that “life is the standard of value.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That applies to all living things as such.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But humans are special, and it’s their special nature that brings in the necessity of morality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div></div><a href="http://inductivequest.blogspot.com/2012/08/short-induction-of-mans-life-as.html#more">Continue...</a><div'>http://inductivequest.blogspot.com/2012/08/short-induction-of-mans-life-as.html#more">Continue...</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7360316141951760499-8820438417691562633?l=inductivequest.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div> Original: http://inductivequest.blogspot.com/2012/08/short-induction-of-mans-life-as.html

Research Materials for Inducing Individual Rights (Founding Fathers): I've decided to include a list of sites and books that helped me really understand and flesh out the theory of individual rights as the Founding Fathers understood it. The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia. The quotes on the topic of "rights" were really helpful in quoting Jefferson in support of the points I made in this paper. Freedom Key's section, "About Rights." It has a good collection of quotes about rights, especially a few gems in particular by Jefferson, John Adams, and William Blackstone. The Founder's Constitution is the online version of a five-volume text on the historical context of the U.S.Constitution. It has primary materials from the Founding Fathers, including letters sent amongst themselves, records of debates or meetings, and contemporary law cases. I especially relied on the materials found in the sections, "Rights," "Republican Government,""Right of Revolution,""Popular Basis of Political Authority," "Equality," "Property," and "Epilogue: Securing the Republic." "Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand," by Leonard Peikoff. Despite having read Ayn Rand's books before reading this, I never considered the point that rights are inseparable and form a unity until I read Dr. Peikoff's discussion of them in chapter ten of the book, "Government." The book is also my original source for the Samuel Adams quote about the rights of man being branches of "the duty of self-preservation." "John Adams," by Anne Husted Burleigh. A republication of the biography Mrs. Burleigh wrote 40 years earlier, it is a very well-written work on the life of John Adams, and really gives you a sense of astonishment at the political victories this man accomplished in his life. I'm still in the middle of finishing it, but I used the pages relevant to rights and the government to inform my essay. "The Leadership Assumptions of the American Statesmen During the Federal Convention and Ratification Debates, 1787-1789," the dissertation of Dr. Darin Layton Gerdes. Chapter four features the assumptions and the conclusions of the Founders and others who participated in the Federal debates to ratify the U.S. Constitution. These assumptions and conclusions centered around their ideas of "the nature of man," "the nature of power," "the nature of government," "the nature of people," and "the nature of society." That chapter alone is great material for inducing many of the Founders' political principles from their personal context, such as inducing the corrupt nature of political power by examining cases where unchecked power led to needless violations of rights, destruction, and death. Those were my sources for the essay. I expect to use even more for my next essay, on republican government. I may delve into this topic more deeply when I get the chance, so if anyone knows any works that would be really relevant, please let me know in the comments. Original entry: See link at top of this post

Induction of the Principle of Individual Rights (Founding Fathers): Induction of the Principle of Individual Rights (Founding Fathers) The Founding Fathers studied history, philosophy,economics, political science, and law, among other subjects. They were all thinkers, and men of action. In their own ways, they discovered the elements of two literally revolutionary ideas that they intended to finalize and put into practice for the first time on Earth: the principles of individual rights combined with a republican government. With those two overarching principles in mind, they intended to change history, in a phenomenal way that has never been matched since. I will focus on the principles and facts underlying the idea of individual rights, from the perspectives of American legends George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, Thomas Paine, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison, as well as lesser known Founders James Wilson and William Gladstone. Continue... Original entry: See link at top of this post

The aim of this essay is to retrace the steps Aristotle had to reach in order to induce his revolutionary theory of causality, second only to his theory of logic in philosophical importance. In presenting these steps, we’ll also see several philosophical problems he solved in the process of reaching his theory of four causes. Continue... Meta-blog, automatic cross-post

Let’s start with the definition of “causality”: “the principle that agents bring something about; a person or thing that gives rise to an action, phenomenon, or condition.” In Aristotle’s mature view, there were four ways for something to be a cause, to be an explanation of a fact: the material, formal, efficient, and final. Continue... Meta-blog, automatic cross-post

(Previous posts: Advances in Baconian Induction: John Herschel (Part 1 of 3) Advances in Baconian Induction: John Herschel (Part 2 of 3)) John Herschel’s theory of induction is a kind of empiricist epistemology rooted in analogies, from which we can generalize to hypotheses, theories, and the laws which are the foundations for theories. This essay will present Herschel’s views on the higher-stage inductions he believes comprises true scientific theorizing. Analogical Reasoning in Induction “Analogy” is perhaps the most important term in Herschel’s philosophy of science and theory of induction. It’s so crucial that it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that his entire theory of induction is a progression of generalizations made mainly on the strength of analogous cases or analogous causes. Before I discuss this any further, however, I’ll briefly explain what Herschel means when he says “analogy.” As Dr. Gildenhuys states in his essay, “[a]nalogies between phenomena are what allow us to group them together as sharing the same explanation.” An analogy is a kind of inference in which a comparison of things that share certain features is used as a basis for inferring that these things share another aspect as well. In Herschel’s time, an argument from analogy would consist in showing similarities between two phenomena and from that inferring that they share another feature, in which it wasn’t already known that one of the two phenomena possesses that feature. Herschel’s view of analogy applies when different phenomena share a common cause, or an analogous cause, even if everything else about the phenomena is too different to warrant more analogies. (See page 149, aphorism 142 of his Preliminary Discourse for more on analogies.) What this means is that Herschel’s isn’t adopting an argument from analogy as the composition of scientific, inductive argument. (See Peter Gildenhuys, Darwin, Herschel, and the role of analogy in Darwin’s origin, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, vol. 35, 2004, p. 596-97. Letters in brackets mine.) When we seek to explain some phenomena, Herschel remarks, we first check our knowledge of real causes (vera causa) to determine if an analogous phenomena is produced naturally—if it is, then we have some reason to assign that real cause as the cause of the phenomena. (p. 148, aph. 141) If the cause of analogous phenomena doesn’t allow us to discover the phenomenon's explanation, then we’re allowed to propose a cause analogous to the cause of the analogous phenomena (that is, a similar effect warrants the suggestion of an analogous cause). (pp. 148-149) In the case of the analogous cause, how it causes one of the analogous phenomena isn’t obvious and requires argument, whereas it’s obvious or already known how the real cause causes one of the other analogous phenomena. (See Arnould Duwell, Philosophical Influences on the Large Scale Structure of Darwin’s Origin, p. 4, unpublished manuscript.) An example will help: Let’s say that you knew the function of a 18th century “manual fire pump,” which distributed water to be expelled from a hose towards an ongoing fire by a fire brigade. Most notably, you knew that it works by the operation of valves, including “one-way valves” that kept water circulating in only one direction. And let’s suppose that you knew this, but didn’t know how blood circulated in the body. If you tied off a living person’s arm, he would immediately feel the lack of blood flow, and any observer could begin to see the effects (like the pale pigment of the skin, swelling on the side that isn’t tied off, etc.), just as you could stop the flow of water in fire pump by closing off a valve. Further experiments on how blood circulates would lead you to conclude that the heart is a “blood pump,” analogous to the fire pump that you know much more about. The “pumping” action would be an analogous cause of two analogous phenomena, the circulation of water and the circulation of blood. (For more on “manual fire pumps,” see the informative “In the Line of Fire,” and the Wikipedia page on William Harvey, the scientist who proved that the heart is the cause of the circulation of blood.) I said earlier that Herschel only requires one similar trait for phenomena to be analogous: either the same cause or both phenomena having causes so similar that they are analogous to each other. However, he does note the benefits of having close or strong analogies among phenomena (meaning multiple, noteworthy analogies between two classes of things), as it makes generalizing and scientific classifying easier for scientists. The lack of such analogies doesn’t defeat the goal of scientific investigation, but does increase the work needed to discover the proximate cause or law of nature. Herschel advises generalizing based on the points of agreement of the analogous phenomena that are the subjects of investigation towards the construction of a law of nature. (p. 98-99) Strong analogy is not only useful for constructing a generalization, but it is also a good reason to not deny that something is a cause, a priori. This was explicitly advocated by Herschel in his third method of philosophizing, what I termed the “method of strong analogy,” that cautions us to avoid denying that something is the cause of a phenomenon “a priori,” without experience, when that thing has many strong analogies in support of it being the cause. So for Herschel, analogies play a role in reaching proximate causes and a role in inductive constraints on what we can properly deny and assent to, namely something with strong analogies supporting it (or the absence of this criterion). The inductive search for proximate causes being the first stage of induction, the discoveries of more fundamental laws of nature and theories are the second and highest stage of induction. In both, we’re investigating in order to discover the simplest phenomena, the most fundamental laws, and the highest theories possible to us, and the process by which we do both stages bears a close analogy to one another. (p. 191) “Hypotheses, with respect to theories, are what presumed proximate causes are with respect to particular inductions : they afford us motives for searching into analogies ; grounds of citation to bring before us all the cases which seem to bear upon them, for examination.” (p. 196) When enough analogies and probable evidence have been amassed, Herschel claims that we must accept one of two things: either (1) that the hypothesis is an actual statement of what really happens in nature or (2) that the hypothesis has named something that applies to both the phenomenon described within it and the actual reality of the situation, to the extent that we know it. In the forming of theories, the causal agents being referred to must create a change in the phenomena that is analogous to the change we’re attempting to explain by forming the theory. The difficulty of testing the laws referred to in a theory practically precludes the method of forming an hypothesis, fleshing it out, and then testing it against reality, unless an analogy or some other reasoning convinces us that the attempt will work out (or earlier partial inductions carried out lead us to this hypothesis). (p. 200) For Herschel, analogical reasoning plays a crucial part in the construction of inductions and in the progression of scientific knowledge more generally. It affords us the ground to investigate potential shared causes, and to halt any a priori rejections of purported proximate causes. It gives scientists the grounds for framing an inductive hypothesis, while also providing constraints on what hypotheses may and may not be tried. And analogies ultimately decide the veracity of a theory by how close the phenomena predicted by the theory run parallel with the actual facts. Hypothesis and Its Value Hypotheses, according to Herschel, are universal inductive principles that include several particular inductions or laws within them. Just as a well confirmed proximate causal law becomes a particular induction in the first stage of inductive reasoning, a well confirmed hypothesis becomes a theory in this second and highest stage. (p. 196) Hypotheses are valuable for a number of reasons, in Herschel’s view. Through inductive considerations of general laws, an inferred hypothesis will practically guarantee that we can generalize a level beyond those laws, thus subsuming them under a more universal formulation. (ibid.) More than sketching out a universal law to encompass general laws, however, hypotheses, when a sufficient amount of analogies and probability is gathered up on their side, convince us of one of two things: that it really explains what happens in nature, or that it’s very similar or approximates what really happens and thus expresses both the reality and the proposed reality of the situation. By allowing us to create theories that lead to us reaching general laws, hypotheses, Herschel remarks, “often have an eminent use”: And a facility in framing them, if attended with an equal facility in laying them aside when they have served their turn, is one of the most valuable qualities a philosopher can possess; while, on the other hand, a bigoted adherence to them, or indeed to peculiar views of any kind, in opposition to the tenor of facts as they arise, is the bane of all philosophy. (p. 204) Verae causae, true causes, are what hypotheses must propose, or in Herschel’s words, “n framing a theory which shall render a rational account of any natural phenomenon, we have first to consider the agents on which it depends, or the causes to which we regard it as ultimately referable.” (p. 197) As Laura Snyder notes in one of her essays, there are two requirements for something to be a “vera causa” for Herschel. “First, it must be a cause whose existence in other cases is already known. Secondly, it must be a cause whose ability to produce a similar –or analogous – effect is known independently of it putative responsibility for causing the phenomena in this case.” Despite the name, a vera causa might not be the literal, actual cause at work in a given case, but is rather a true cause in the sense that it is “a causally efficacious agent at work in analogous instances.” Another important relationship between analogies and Herschel’s view of vera causa is that a true cause can allow a person to hypothesize or infer a theoretical or unobservable cause, as long as this cause is analogous to other known causes. Snyder notes that, “indeed, this is the way in which Herschel allowed for theoretical science while still endorsing an empirical, inductive method.” (See Laura Snyder, “Hypotheses in 19th Century British Philosophy of Science: Herschel, Whewell, Mill,” pp. 11-12.) At the stage of hypothesis, we are dealing more with the elements of our reason than the first stage of induction, which deals mainly with the realm of sense. The phenomena of hypotheses and theories are general phenomena, “creatures of reason rather than of sense.” Herschel elaborates on this point: In raising these higher inductions, therefore, more scope is given to the exercise of pure reason than in slowly groping out our first results [that is, the “first results” were particular inductions]. The mind is more disencumbered of matter, and moves as it were in its own element. What is now before it, it perceives more intimately, and less through the medium of sense, or at least not in the same manner as when actually at work on the immediate objects of sense. (p. 190, words in brackets added) Because of his advocacy of hypotheses, it has been supposed that Herschel was an early advocate of the modern “hypothetical-deductive method,” in which a person forms a hypothesis without any requirement for inference or reasoning, but simply as a matter of conjecture or guessing, and then tests the hypothesis’s consequences to determine if they are true. But it should be clear from everything I’ve said about Herschel’s methodology, his intellectual mentor Francis Bacon, and his theory of science, that he was a proponent of induction, not of creating hypotheses without inference requirements. After discussing how the higher inductions are more abstract and more in the element of reason, he goes on to say: But it must not be therefore supposed that, in the formation of theories, we are abandoned to the unrestrained exercise of imagination, or at liberty to lay down arbitrary principles, or assume the existence of mere fanciful causes. The liberty of speculation which we possess in the domains of theory is not like the wild licence of the slave broke loose from his fetters, but rather like that of the freeman who has learned the lessons of self-restraint in the school of just subordination. (pp. 190-191) There are inductive constraints on Herschel’s account of hypotheses. Hypotheses are inferred from an inductive consideration of laws (laws that are less fundamental than what the hypothesis proposes), or are inferred from some other source, such as from analogy. (p. 196 and 200) Such is Herschel’s view of hypotheses. Theories A theory is a hypothesis which explains a natural phenomenon which is in the process of being verified, or has been verified. In Herschel’s view, we first make particular inductions to explain proximate causes we presume, and then go to create hypotheses to explain general, elementary laws which also serve as their foundation. These particular inductions lead to the positing of a general law. Deducing the particular cases of such a general law, and determining if what a given hypothesis asserts stands to scientific trial is what Herschel believes “constitutes theory in its largest sense.” (90) He gives a helpful example: Particular inductions were given by inferring the motions of the planets around the Sun, and of the satellites around their respective planets (by Newton) led us to the law of gravitation: an attractive force which is exerted by every particle of matter on every other in the universe. To verify such an induction, Herschel notes, we assume the law, and assume that the universe really operates according to it, and deduce previously unknown consequences. This allows us to notice that the planets must all attract each other, and pull each from the orbit they would have if it was only the sun were acting on them. For the theory of universal gravitation to be considered true, scientists would have to calculate the deviations in the projected orbits this new insight would lead to, and to determine if these new results match with the facts of observation. He notes that theories can be formed not only to explain laws that apply directly to materials (like gravity), but also in order to suggest a “system of mechanism, or a structure of parts,” through which some natural action becomes observable to us. (202) Sometimes, it is hard for someone to accept the hypothesis of a previously unknown mechanism or structure, thinking that it is too complex to be admitted. Understanding this worry, Herschel nonetheless states that: […]yet, if the admission of this or any other structure tenfold more artificial and complicated will enable any one to present in a general point of view a great number of particular facts,--to make them a part of one system, and enable us to reason from the known to the unknown, and actually to predict facts before trial,--we would ask, why should it not be granted? (203) In any event, our first concern for evaluating a theory shouldn’t be how well or poorly it proves its hypothetical structure or mechanism, something which we could only know indirectly anyway, only by it leading to the same results. The most important thing to know by far is whether or not a given theory “represent all the facts, and include all the laws, to which observation and induction lead.” (204) A theory which did include all relevant facts and laws would provide great support towards the validity of the hypothesized mechanism or structure. In verifying theories, we can check them against not merely particular facts and cases, but whole classes of facts, general laws that the theories are based on. (206) This fact has a very important application to the case where two theories are both capable of explaining a great wealth of facts: referring to general laws allows for a much greater range of cases to test the two theories against each other, in order to find a case in which a certain effect would occur in a certain way if one of the theories was right and the other wrong, and vice versa. The best way to verify a theory is to deliberately pick all varieties of cases, even extreme cases that might refute the theory, and a number of these that would be sufficient to reasonably detect any probable errors. Herschel’s view is that this means of verifying the theory will also verify the “whole train of induction” from the lowest, first stage inductions, onto the highest ones that compose the theory. (208) Lastly, Herschel notes that it shouldn’t matter how a theory was originally framed, or what postulates it contained, if it is capable of holding its own in the face of extensive tests, even if the critic believes that the postulates are strange and inadmissible. If the application of the theory consistently lead to logical conclusions in accordance with numerous observations, under a variety of circumstances that the theory must account for to be considered valid, then “we cannot refuse to admit” it. (208-209) He allows that a skeptic of the theory must at least consider the theory to be a temporary substitute for the truth until the full truth, that is, a better theory, can become known. Herschel elaborates: If they suffice to explain all the phenomena known, it becomes highly improbable that they will not explain more; and if all their conclusions we have tried have proved correct, it is probable that others yet untried will be found so too; so that in rejecting them altogether, we should reject all the discoveries to which they may lead. The “Three Ways” to Know the laws of a primary causal agent How do reach those elementary laws of nature that our theories will be based upon? Herschel believes that there are only three ways to do this: 1. By inductive reasoning; that is, by examining all the cases in which we know them to be exercised, inferring, as well as circumstances will permit, its amount or intensity in each particular case, and then piecing together, as it were, these disjecta membra [scattered members], generalizing from them, and so arriving at the laws desired… (Prelim. Disc., Aph. 210, p. 198, words in brackets mine.) More specifically, Herschel is referring to reaching inductive laws in which “one quantity depends on or varies with another.” (Consider Newton’s gravitational law, in which the effect of gravity differs depending on the distance between two given masses.) To inductively reach such laws, one must conduct a “series of careful and exact measures in every different state of the datum and quaesitum [fact; inquiry].” Here, the ultimate goal of the induction is to reach the mathematical form of the law. Herschel says that the greatest attention must be given to the extreme cases of the purported law, and to cases in which there’s a rapid change in one quantity accompanying the relatively small change of another quality. He informs us that the results of the measurements should be copied down on a table in which the fact being investigated increases in magnitude from the lowest to the highest limit that one can achieve. It then depends on our mathematical knowledge to determine if we can include this table with the statement of a mathematical law. (Aph. 185, p. 176-77) Such mathematical laws Herschel terms “empirical laws.” He claims that these same directions apply for the higher inductions of theories, since they connect lower inductive laws, not merely facts: There is no doubt, however, that the safest course, when it can be followed, is to rise by inductions carried on among laws, as among facts, from law to law, perceiving, as we go on, how laws which we have looked upon as unconnected become particular cases, either one of the other, or all of one still more general, and, at length, blend together in the point of view from which we learn to regard them. (Aph. 217, pp. 204-05) 2. “By forming at once a bold hypothesis, particularizing the law, and trying the truth of it by following out its consequences and comparing them with facts…” (Prelim. Disc., Aph. 210, p. 198-99) In this case, Herschel informs us, “the law assumes all the characters of a general phenomenon resulting from an induction of particulars, but not yet verified by comparison with all the particulars, nor extended to all that it is capable of including.” (Apr. 213, pp. 200-201) By assuming a hypothesis, one can analyze the circumstances which may “modify the effect of the cause whose laws of action we have arrived at and would verify.” Herschel explains this point in a well-reasoned discussion of the application of the law of gravitation to planetary orbits: …when we would verify this induction [the law of gravity], we must set out with assuming this law, considering the whole system as subjected to its influence and implicitly obeying it, and nothing interfering with its action; we then, for the first time, perceive a train of modifying circumstances which had not occurred to us when reasoning upwards from particulars to obtain the fundamental law: we perceive that all the planets must attract each other, must therefore draw each other out of the orbits which they would have if acted on only by the sun; and as this was never contemplated in the inductive process, its validity becomes a question, which can only be determined by ascertaining precisely how great a deviation this new class of mutual actions will produce. (Apr. 213, p. 201, words in brackets mine) Though the method of assuming a hypothesis and testing it had worked successfully on occasions, Herschel points out that the sheer difficulty in tracing out an assumed fundamental law into its consequences prevents this method from becoming common and widespread. The only exception would be if we had some form of inference, some reason, whether from analogy or something else, that convinces us that the attempt will be successful, or having reached some partial induction to particular, “empirical laws” which then point out the assumed fundamental law to be tried. (Aph. 212, p. 200) 3. Lastly: By a process partaking of both these, and combining the advantages of both without their defects, viz. by assuming indeed the laws we would discover, but so generally expressed, that they shall include an unlimited variety of particular laws; --following out the consequences of this assumption, by the application of such general principles as the case admits;--comparing them in succession with all the particular cases within our knowledge; and, lastly, on this comparison, so modifying and restricting the general enunciation of our laws as to make the results agree. (Prelim. Disc., Aph. 210, p. 199) This third and last method Herschel believes is the best, because it, as he says, combines the advantages of both without their defects. The inductive process (the first method) uses particular facts and empirical laws and leads to a very specified general law, but is susceptible to missing certain minor details and consequences that could be noticed as a result of using the assumption method (the second method). The second method works well at seeking out modifying circumstances that would change the specifics of the fundamental law being assumed, but we often lack the incentive, the evidence, whether analogical, inductive, or something else, that points towards the assumed law being a hypothesis with a basis, and thus warranting a deductive inquiry. Herschel observed that the mathematicians of his time found this third method to be the “most universally applicable, and the most efficacious.” He also comments that it is of particular benefit in cases where inductions of empirical laws have already been reached, thus capable of being expressed mathematically; this leads to tracing out the consequences of more fundamental laws by reference to inductively reached, empirical (less-fundamental) laws. The example of this Herschel gives are the inductive, mathematical laws of the elliptic motions of planets, and their relation to the assumed elementary law of force. Conclusion John Herschel was the most accomplished “man of science” of his age, and many future scientists would emulate the methods and advice he presents in this monumental work on the philosophy and methodology of science, most notably Charles Darwin. I do not have the necessary space to present his views of verifying the data of a theory, and the role of probability theory in science. (That discussion includes a response to a “vicious circle” objection regarding the use of observations assumed in a theory that are used simultaneously to verify it.) Those points will have to wait for another essay. I’ll end with a quote from Herschel, near the close of Part II of his book: In the foregoing pages we have endeavoured to explain the spirit of the methods to which, since the revival of philosophy, natural science has been indebted for the great and splendid advances it has made. What we have all along most earnestly desired to impress on the student is, that natural philosophy is essentially united in all its departments, through all which one spirit reigns and one method of enquiry applies. (Prelim. Disc., Aph. 231, p. 219) Meta-blog, automatic cross-post

[Previous Post in this series: "Induction of 'The Arbitrary as Neither True Nor False'" ] In this essay, we’ll cover the inductions needed to reach the Objectivist principle that “reason is man’s only means of gaining knowledge.” Here’s the outline of the essay, consisting of three inductions, and a formal, deductive conclusion: (1) Reason is a means of gaining knowledge. (2) Non-rational processes to knowledge reduce to feelings or emotions. (3) Emotions are products of ideas. (4) Reason is the only means of gaining knowledge. Reason is a Means of Gaining Knowledge “Knowledge” is a well-known concept, known to many cultures, and for many centuries. One dictionary defines it as “the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject.” Most people take it to mean some familiarity or acquaintance with certain facts and information in any field that one can learn about. “Knowledge” ranges from daily facts about life that most people take for granted (like washing and drying one’s clothes), to the most complicated, extraordinary theories of science and their applications to technology and human life. One of the most common things known about knowledge is that it is constitutive of power, or as Francis Bacon is claimed to have made the point: “knowledge is power”; the more you know, the more things that you can do, like archery, skiing, and becoming a pro basketball champion. (Bacon had a more complicated meaning behind that phrase, but I won’t explore that thought here. If you would like to know more about his view of knowledge, see my essays: “Bacon's Theory of Induction as Presented in his Novum Organum,” parts 1 and 2.) Given all of this, what is a process by which we gain knowledge? This is one of the essential questions posed by the science of Epistemology, and we’ve covered a great deal of the answer to that question in the previous inductions we’ve gone through. In the induction that “reason is man’s means of survival,” we saw that reason is a mental power that allows us to notice cause-and-effect relationships, plan long-range, abstract, draw inferences, generalize, and make judgments. We learned from the essay on inducing Aristotle’s understanding of “objectivity” that reason is the faculty that operates by concepts, ideas; that ideas come from perceptual observations by means of abstraction and generalization; that logic is a method for proving one’s ideas by checking them against laws applying to all thoughts, and reducing them to perceptual observations while checking for contradictions. And we learned from the essay on Rand’s view of “objectivity” that knowledge involves integrating all of its elements and it involves understanding a series of increasingly complex, high-level concepts; that the process of measurement-omission explains the nature of abstraction; that consciousness has an identity, it has specific characteristics; and proving ideas requires not just Aristotle’s theory of logic, but Rand’s additions as well, that every concept in an argument has to be validated, that the conclusion has to be related to the evidence of the senses, and that the conclusion must be integrated with everything else that one knows. So we have a wealth of information that gives us a way to know the induction that “reason is a means of gaining knowledge.” We know that reason starts with evidence, information of the senses, observations, etc. We know that the form or manifestation of reason is a concept, which is a cognitive unit that integrates endless amounts of perceptual information which, in turn, expands our consciousness beyond the perceptual level. And we know that the method that reason uses to check if its concepts truly correspond to reality (are knowledge, and not some fantasy) is the science of logic, the goal of which is non-contradictory identifications and conclusions. Non-rational Processes to Knowledge Reduce to Feelings or Emotions This is an induction that was known long before Objectivism in some form or another, and I reached it between the ages of 12 and 14, around the time that I became an atheist in all but name, and became more interested in science and critical thinking. In our modern civilization, there are many alleged approaches to knowledge: faith, revelation, intuition, instinct, ESP, and more. Once you know some of the rudiments of the faculty of reason, such as that it uses the senses, evidence, ideas, and some of its operations, like thinking with logic and reaching definite conclusions by integrating it with what you already know, you can begin to contrast that with the above-mentioned processes. Faith: the sheer belief that something is true or real. Many religious groups profess that faith is their means to knowledge, but they have no explanation for why the other groups have different, even contradictory, faiths. (Historically, each faith has simply claimed that the other faiths have misinterpreted, or altered the “true faith.”) They also can’t coherently explain how it is that just by having “faith” in their God (or other deity or dimension), just by taking Him at His Word, they receive some gift of knowledge. The mechanism by which faith bestows knowledge has remained inexplicable for centuries, and rational people have defined faith accordingly as believing in something without (or in contradiction to) evidence. No evidence; no need to investigate facts; no context; no need for concepts; and no method to correct or check your conclusions. Just have faith, and knowledge is yours. Revelation: the communication of knowledge to a person by a supernatural agent. The means by which a deity or its servant (like an angel) discloses information to a person has been explained just as well as faith has been—which is to say, not very well at all. Revealed knowledge is somehow higher and better than reasoned knowledge, but how this can be has never been pointed out. Knowledge gained by reason takes mental effort, study, bringing things to your context of knowledge; revelation is dropping effort, merely meditating, dropping your context, and supposedly letting the deity’s words reach your spirit. Just open your soul, and knowledge will be disclosed to you effortlessly. Intuition: the capacity to immediately know something without observation or reason. This is a well-known term in our age, and it normally means one of two things. It either means our rapid-fast subconscious decisions and conclusions, due to our prior knowledge and the automatization of that knowledge, or some indefinable process that allows us to instantly know something that we shouldn’t, in fact, know. Like faith and revelation, no one can explain how they reached their intuitions about anything, not even when the intuitions of other people disagree—there’s no standard on which one could decide the legitimacy of one intuition over the other. Rational knowledge is knowledge gained step by step, taking a certain length of time, and definite cognitive steps, not a sudden flash of insight. (Though such an insight could be the legitimate result of subconscious processing of knowledge one already has.) In reality, there’s no such “intuitive” faculty, and no means to explain or justify the “just knowing” quality of anyone’s intuitions. This is another case where knowledge is mysteriously granted, but the process or mechanism that allows for this can’t be explained. Extra-sensory Perception: “Perception that involves awareness of information about something (such as a person or event) not gained through the senses and not deducible from previous experience.” [http://www.yourghoststories.com/glossary.php] ESP comes in three main forms: telepathy, knowing someone else’s thoughts without sensory communication; clairvoyance, knowing an object or event without the use of the senses; and precognition, the ability to know another’s thoughts or about events before they have occurred. As you could imagine, no one can really explain these processes or how they can qualify as knowledge. What happens when an alleged person with ESP fails in predicting an event, or in explaining the thinking of another person whom he hasn’t interacted with, or is revealed to have been committing fraud or trickery? It’s swept under the rug, and is explained away by the person’s psychic abilities being “inhibited” by something. As we know, reason forms its concepts and knowledge from the evidence of the senses, and proposes causes of future events based on what the person knows about the past and present. ESP asserts some unnatural, mystical faculty that bypasses, and is superior to, rational knowledge, and basically claims that all knowledge is essentially in your head already, without effort; find a way to raise your ESP level, and you can unlock the secrets of the universe and of men’s minds. Instinct: “An inborn pattern of behavior that is characteristic of a species and is often a response to specific environmental stimuli.” [http://www.answers.com/topic/instinct#ixzz1LdyB5Wo6] Instincts are supposed to be automatic, unlearned types of knowledge and action that all members of a species perform due to some signal given by the living thing’s environment. By itself, calling something an “instinct” explains nothing, and doesn’t progress your knowledge in how a given pattern of behavior happens, or why. Advocates of instinct theory believe that people have all kinds of innate knowledge, stored in the brain and nervous system; as Nathaniel Branden mentioned in an article about instincts (while he was still an Objectivist), however, alleged instinctual behavior are usually (1) not universal to the species but depend on particular beliefs or attitudes, (2) simple reflexes, and/or (3) a product of learned behavior. Essentially, instincts are no different from faith, revelation, and the rest: an inexplicable, effortless means of knowledge that bypasses the path to knowledge through reason. What are all these claims about faith and revelation and ESP, when really analyzed? From introspecting, and asking people about issues like these for years, I came to an inductive conclusion that Objectivism adopts as well, and that many secular people endorse: mystical, non-rational processes of gaining knowledge amount to: feelings. I used to ask people about why they believed in God, and they told me that they have “faith,” that they feel that He exists. Why do they have faith? No real answer: they just feel it. Why do they believe that some knowledge they have is revealed to them? Because they feel that it is. Why does someone believe in ESP? Because one day they felt like something bad was going to happen, a bad premonition, and it happened, so they were convinced that they had predictive, psychic powers. A well-known group who easily understood this induction was the Nazis. Hitler once said, “[t]rust your instincts, your feelings, or whatever you like to call them,” and the Nazis were allowed to publicly advocate any nonrational source of knowledge, whether it be intuition, faith, revelation, trances, magic, or even astrology. What wasn’t permitted to them was reasoning, thinking, Aristotelian logic. They could only uphold their feelings, or more precisely, only the feelings of Hitler, the Führer. As Hermann Goering (who was, at his peak, second-in-command only to Hitler) makes the point, “I tell you, if the Führer wishes it then two times two are five.” The “truth” is then whatever Hitler’s “Aryan instincts” or “Aryan logic” or feelings told him was the truth, and the Nazis dutifully obeyed. (For more about this, consult Leonard Peikoff’s Ominous Parallels.) Analyze the supporters of non-rational, non-sensory processes to knowledge, and you’ll discover that their allegiances to various doctrines are backed by nothing but their hopes, dreams, wishes, and fears—what they feel is right or wrong, good or bad. Emotions are Products of Ideas This is a somewhat difficult induction to reach, because it involves analyzing feelings and emotions, and most people simply live and act by their emotions, taking them uncritically as the given. Where would we begin? I think that the best place to start is comparing and contrasting emotions with sensations, since our everyday lives consist mostly of experiencing one or the other. As far as comparing them, the easiest thing to notice about sensations and emotions is that they’re both bodily reactions to something. Someone hits you with a rock, and you feel the sensation of pain, because your body, brain, and nervous system are reacting to the physical stimulus. After being hit, you initially experience the emotion of bewilderment: you tense up, raise an eyebrow, look rapidly around your environment trying to figure out what just happened. When you determine that someone hit you with that rock lying nearby, your emotion turns to anger, and your eyes grow menacing and stare in the attacker’s direction, you clench your fits, and grind your teeth. Let’s presuppose that we know enough science to understand sensations and their causes. What then caused the emotions in the above-mentioned case? You were bewildered at first because you didn’t know what happened you: you knew that you were hit with something, but what it was, how it reached you, and why it hit you are things that you’re confused about and don’t know yet. When you see a person and a rock nearby, you infer that he threw a rock, thus answering all your perplexities, and now you think that what he wronged you in some way. In both emotions, you saw or experienced something, reached definite conclusions in regard to what you perceived or experienced, and evaluated your conclusions and the result of all of this was the emotion being expressed. Sensations occur through purely physical means, but emotions do not. Something else is involved in emotions, but what is it? Consider a basketball game: why do the fans of the home team show enthusiasm and cheerfulness for their team, but contempt and aversion towards the opposing team? Why do you feel happy in the presence of your friends, but sad or angry in the presence of those you detest? Why would a woman feel elation at the man of her dreams asking her to marry him, but utter revulsion at even the thought of some man asking her whom she hated with a passion? What is missing here are the intellectual causes of emotions and feelings. 1. Let’s say that your home team wins a football game, and you’re happy, ecstatic even. Why would you be happy? Because the team is one of your values, or perhaps you have a favorite player or set of players whom you value, or perhaps you value the coach. You want them to succeed, to go on and win the championship, to keep building a better and better team for the future, etc. 2. You don’t feel the same way around your friends as you do when you’re around your enemies, people whom you hate. With your friends, you feel relieved, comfortable, and a sense of excitement; with your enemies, you feel apprehensive, tense, not like yourself. Why this is that your friends respect you as a person, and have or share the same values that you do in some respects, so you feel like your values can be achieved with them, whether now or in the future. But your enemies oppose or are indifferent to your values, and are antagonistic towards you as a person, so you feel that they will prevent you from accomplishing your values, or will outright destroy them, like the bully who takes your money for lunch (the value). 3. Why experience elation at the ideal man asking you to marry him, and the deepest revulsion and disgust at the most anti-ideal man doing the same thing? By feeling happy about the ideal man, you’re responding to your highest values, what you think is right and great about the whole situation. The exact opposite is happening in the case of the man you passionately hate. He’s the opposite of you, and can’t even respond to you because you both are in two different worlds, value-wise, and so his proposal is ludicrous and you think of it as a sick joke. It isn’t just whether they are attractive, or what physical things they do, or even your own physical body, but what you think about them, and your evaluation of your thinking. What inductions can we gleam from examples like this? One of them is an induction we covered in the essays on “the initiation of physical force” and “the objectivity of values”: values are generated in part by the thinking we’ve done, the ideas we have, and the conclusions we’ve reached. Value-judgments are conclusions reached by a process of reason, by thinking, inference. Another induction, one that is necessary to complete the induction “emotions are products of ideas,” is the principle that (in Rand’s words) “[e]motions are the automatic results of man’s value judgments integrated by his subconscious.” That last induction is perhaps the most difficult of all to understand (as far as the principles I’m covering in this essay), because most people learn a lot about their own emotions, and the concepts for emotions (“happy,” “sad,” “relieved,” etc.), before they ever learn about the “subconscious,” not to mention the connection between the subconscious and the emotional faculty. Nevertheless, in order to know this, a person would have to seriously analyze their own thoughts and emotions, and note the connection, the causal chain. First, the person has to recognize things, form some ideas about those things, and then internalize that thinking, which means to have it processed by their subconscious. As time goes on, the person has to evaluate these things in one way or another; he needs value judgments (e.g. food is good), and he needs these to be internalized, as well. Once the subconscious has stored and organized these ideas and value-judgments, when a concrete arises that you already have ideas and values pertaining to, you’ll instantly respond in an emotional way to that concrete, and whether the emotion expressed is positive or not depends on your previous thinking and your standard for evaluation, on what you think furthers or detracts from your values. Emotions are products of your ideas because they are the result of your subconscious processing of your previously conscious thoughts and value-judgments. If you had no values, you would be completely indifferent to everything, and the same would result if you had no ideas about anything, or if your subconscious had no information within it. Reason is the Only Means of Gaining Knowledge The first induction was that reason is a means of gaining knowledge, that the process involves combining perceptions into conceptions through the process of abstraction, and reaching conceptual conclusions by the method of logic. The second induction was that non-rational processes to knowledge are really just the assertions of the person’s feelings. The third induction clarified that feelings or emotions actually originate from one’s ideas, one’s concepts and conclusions; they are a reaction or response to one’s prior thinking and value-judgments. The next step is to put everything together. Reason is a faculty of awareness. The process by which it is aware of reality is the organization of perceptual observations. Reason works with the senses, and puts the perceptual information together to form concepts. And reason works by choice: reason is the faculty that can direct itself, check its own conclusions, and maintain its connection to reality using the method of logic. There is no faculty that corresponds to the processes of intuition, instinct, ESP, revelations, or faith. They all seemingly transcend or supersede reason, but there are no known elements to these processes: no senses, no concepts, no ideas, no process of reaching conclusions, no independent means to check if they lead to true conclusions or not. Since there’s no identifiable process to refer to for these candidates of gaining knowledge, we concluded that they are simply the feelings and emotions of the advocates of intuition, ESP, etc. The point we’ve reached is that the only real candidates for the generation of knowledge are either reason or emotion. The question then becomes, “can emotions be a means of gaining knowledge?” Given that reason is certainly a means of gaining knowledge, is it possible that emotions can supplement reason or even substitute for it? Unlike reason, emotions are not a faculty of awareness, but of reaction or response to one’s perceptions (or imaginations). Emotions have no power of volition or choice; they has no independent means to access reality, unlike reason; an emotion has no process for guiding its course, and no ability to keep track of its relationship to reality. By themselves, emotions only tell you that something makes you feel something. Even this isn’t knowledge without a process of reason, specifically introspection: a painstaking process of using one’s concepts to identify each and every emotion you have, to figure out what brought the feeling up or aroused it, and whether or not it’s an appropriate response to the facts of a situation. Emotions have no play in the course of logic, or establishing the evidence for a conclusion. A man may hate someone, but that is no logical proof that he has done any wrongdoing, and it would be inappropriate to cite his emotions as knowledge of wrongful acts. The emotion simply means that the man reached a certain idea in the past, and now it’s in his subconscious: it’s an open issue whether that idea is rationally proved or not, and the only way to know is to use one’s reasoning, not one’s emotions. All of these considerations lead to a formal, deductive principle, which Rand states as: “emotions are not tools of cognition.” What this means is that emotions are not a means of gaining knowledge, and that following emotions is not the means to knowledge. It can neither supplement reason nor substitute for its role in the acquisition of knowledge. That deduction leads to one final, deductive conclusion: reason is man’s only means of gaining knowledge. All other purported processes for gaining knowledge reduce to the person’s emotional responses, and emotions are inexplicable without the process of reason—this means that you need reason to acquire knowledge even about emotions. Knowledge is gained by one’s tools of cognition, and one’s tools of cognition are: one’s concepts. If reason is the only means of gaining knowledge, then we can now modify the definition I initially gave. Knowledge is “the identification of a fact of reality, reached by perceptual observation, or a process of reason based on perceptual observation.” The “process of reason” could be abstraction in the case of forming concepts, or it could be the processes of induction and deduction for forming conclusions. Meta-blog, automatic cross-post

The aim of this essay is to induce the Objectivist principle that arbitrary claims are neither true nor false, but are in a third class: non-cognitive. Ayn Rand said in regard to arbitrary assertions that, “it is as if nothing had been said, because nothing of cognitive value or validity has been said.” The outline of this essay consists of three inductions and two clarifications: (1) The arbitrary has no connection to evidence or anyone’s cognitive context. (2) The arbitrary is detached from thought and even the possibility of thought. (3) Arbitrary claims are neither true nor false. (4) How do we respond to arbitrary claims? And, (5) What do we do in the face of an arbitrary claim that has evidence in its favor? The Arbitrary is Disconnected from All Evidence and Cognitive Context How do we reach the idea of the arbitrary in the first place? People make many claims on a daily basis. What we need to keep in mind is an idea that anyone in our modern times would know: some ideas can be proved; they have a basis in fact. This is the context we need to understand certain things about arbitrary claims, this idea that some ideas are validated, proved, have a basis. Here’s some examples of contrasting “ideas with a basis” from arbitrary claims. 1. “You are reading an essay right now.” The basis for believing this is perception. 2. “There’s a gremlin in the room.” When no one sees it, and asks what is the basis for the claim, the asserter says, “I simply believe it; he’s unknowable with your limited senses, and can’t be interacted with your meager abilities, but I can perceive and deal with this gremlin. Prove that he isn’t there.” The asserter claims whatever he wants, and when a basis is asked for, he essentially replies, “because I say so.” (1) “That man’s violent behavior is caused by abnormally high testosterone levels.” The basis? The results of medical diagnostics and tests, proof that the man’s genetically predisposed to high testosterone levels, the fact that the man had no reasons for becoming angry and violent, and reports by others that he is generally peaceful, and the scientific connection between high testosterone and aggressiveness in men. (2) “This man’s violence is due to him being possessed by a vile demon.” What’s the basis? Well, there are reports in the Bible about demonic possession, it’s a field of study that people are currently researching, and there have been other reports of demonic possessions and exorcisms in the city that this man resides in. 1) “I’m compatible with my wife.” What’s the basis? The person says, “Our careers are in the same field, we have many of the same hobbies, and we’re attracted to each other. I love her, and she loves me.” 2) “I’m compatible with my husband.” The basis? “Well, we have compatible zodiac signs, and the descriptions of people who are born under those signs match us perfectly.” So, from examples like this, how do we reach a definition of the arbitrary? We have examples that have something to say, and statements that don’t really have anything to say. In other words: when does a series or progression of words become a basis for something else, and when isn’t this the case? The inductive question is: what is not present in every instance of the arbitrary that allows us to say that they have “no basis”? There are no observations in the assertion of the arbitrary. There’s no logical argument, because arguments for the arbitrary are fallacious in one way or another, whether circular reasoning (“I say so, because I say so”), a non sequitur, based on no reasoning whatsoever, etc. No integration with past knowledge or a person’s cognitive context. We have a word that ties all of these observations together. And it is “evidence,” specifically “probative evidence.” Probative evidence means: “an item of knowledge tending to establish or prove an idea.” When we say that a claim has “no basis,” we mean: no evidence. No perceptual evidence, because there’s no observations. No conceptual evidence, because there are no logical processes of deduction or induction used. (We’re indebted to Aristotle for first remarking that these are the two means of reasoning.) The conclusion about this that we have to reach is that there’s no relationship between the claim and any cognitive evidence, whether you consider what observations and facts are in its favor, what past knowledge the person may possess that is relevant, or what argument the person can adduce to support his claim. (This isn’t a linguistic issue: it doesn’t matter what the asserter of the arbitrary claims, but the evidence for what he says, and whether it is available or not. The arbitrary is something that is detached from any rational, available evidence.) Saying that a claim is arbitrary is to mean that it transcends the current context and available evidence, dismissing them as irrelevant. It also transcends future evidence, evidence that a person would have to search for and that isn’t immediately in one’s face (like a police detective). If the claim was related to our context, our knowledge and definitions for terms, then we could check the evidence and come to a logical decision about whether it is true or false, but that is not what the arbitrary does. To understand this point about the arbitrary and evidence more clearly, we can integrate into the discussion what we’ve learned about objectivity from Aristotle and Ayn Rand. We found out that Aristotle taught the method of using observations and logic, and that these were necessary to reach the idea of a “proved statement,” which we needed to reach our idea of a baseless statement. We learned from Ayn Rand the importance of context and integration of all of our knowledge. So we have a wealth of complicated information pertaining to gaining valid knowledge that we can now apply to the arbitrary. The result is that we learn that the arbitrary goes against everything we know about gaining knowledge. No observation; no logic; no evidence; no context; no integration. It isn’t any form of cognition, but is anti-cognition. Arbitrary claims being anti-cognition is a deductive conclusion from what we know about the arbitrary and the nature of knowledge-acquisition. The Arbitrary is Detached from All Thought and the Possibility of Thought What is another thing that all arbitrary claims have in common? Is there anything that we can do cognitively with instances of the arbitrary? Can we reason one way or another about them? Can we prove or disprove them? Assign some degree of probability to its truth or falsehood? Can we even hypothesize any of them? When you examine the cases, you’ll realize that it is impossible to perform any form of cognition in regard to the arbitrary. Will you try to disprove Astrology? Or demonic possession? What about the alleged Zionist conspiracy that intends to install a Jewish New World Order? If you make the attempt, its advocates will say, “well, I’m not the only one who believes this; a large percentage of the world believes this, there have been many reports, etc.” You literally cannot refute something that has as one of its characteristics that it can’t be considered in relation to anything that you know. This means that you can’t prove the claim (like those of Astrology), either—it has no relation to the facts. You can’t reason about it—it has no relation to evidence, no observations or premises. (People may say things, but there’s no evidence backing it.) You can’t even hypothesize the arbitrary, because even hypotheses have at least some basis in evidence, some facts, but the arbitrary, by its nature, has nothing in its favor whatsoever. It is literally impossible to think about such claims. A rational mind stops in its tracks when it comes to processing the arbitrary, because it can’t be done. The mind becomes functionally paralyzed if it attempts to process it; since the mind can’t move anywhere cognitively with the arbitrary, the mind will just sit there until it changes its attention to a reality-oriented subject. The Arbitrary is Neither True Nor False The first induction was that the arbitrary is detached from any evidence or cognitive context. The second induction was that all arbitrary claims are detached from thought and the very possibility of thought, that thought is impossible in regard to the arbitrary. The next step is to combine the two: If you only reach the second induction, then you won’t be able to reach the necessary conclusion about the arbitrary being anti-cognition. It’s improper to dismiss something just because you can’t think of it; it may be a highly abstract theory in a field of science that you haven’t studied at all, or a very complicated technique for fighting a war and you might be a novice as a military strategist. There are things that can be thought about, that aren’t arbitrary, but will nonetheless paralyze the mind of someone who isn’t familiar with the subject, like explaining advanced mathematics to a kindergartener. The advocate of the arbitrary could say the same thing: “you didn’t take classes in exorcism, or follow the literature on Zionism, or take Astrology classes, so that’s why you can’t think of these things.” It’s when you connect this second induction with the first, that the arbitrary is inherently detached from evidence means that it is impossible to think about an arbitrary subject because it has no relation to human cognition, that no one can think about it, that you realize how important your mental paralysis is in this case. With these two insights together, you’ll arrive at a very important epistemological fact, and a formal, deductive conclusion: A claim that is inherently detached from thought cannot have a relationship to reality. If it transcends the domain of cognition and our ability to think about it, we cannot legitimately claim that it has a basis in reality or that it opposes reality: we have no idea what relationship it has to reality. We can’t connect the arbitrary to any facts, whether in correspondence to reality or in contradiction to it. The same point applies to “possibility”: no one can figure out whether the arbitrary subject is possible in reality or impossible, because there is inherently no basis in evidence for any statements about it in relationship to reality; it is beyond human processing. Here is where the concepts of “true” and “false” come in. Everyone in the civilized world learns these concepts very early—true means that something accords or corresponds with the facts, and the false is something that contradicts or goes against the facts. When we say that a statement “corresponds,” we merely mean that we recognize its relation to reality, not that the statement itself does anything. The methodology in this designation of “true” and “false” is that you establish or point out some positive relationship between your claim and reality, and then call that “true,” and the opposite happens in regard to the “false.” Both truth and falsehood have some sort of relationship to the reality, but the arbitrary does not. This is the reason why the arbitrary is neither “true” nor “false.” As far as human cognition goes, it is like a parrot making a memorized noise, or someone suffering a mild stroke or someone who’s high as a kite. Noise has no cognitive status, it isn’t “true” or “false.” In a sense, then, when someone says that your claim is false, it is a complement because they mean that it contradicts reality at one point: they don’t mean that your claim is a complete break from reality and is totally disconnected from it. By the same token, if someone says that your claim is arbitrary, then it’s a much greater insult if that isn’t the case. What Should I do about Arbitrary Claims? We’ve reached the idea that arbitrary can’t be processed by a human mind, so what should we do when confronted by an arbitrary claim that we know to be such? We should not talk about it, and dismiss it without any thought. When it comes to arbitrary claims, like the belief in the afterlife, reincarnation, Gods, etc., you shouldn’t give in to despair and think: “I can’t unravel this claim, there’s too much complexity or information.” That could be legitimate in a difficult court case, or assessing competing scientific theories, where the evidence can become very complicated, but not with the arbitrary. In the case of the arbitrary, you have to decide and make a definite stand: since there’s no evidence either way, the claim is unthinkable, inadmissible, and can’t be discussed. Though you cast out the arbitrary in your mind, a negative aspect of the arbitrary influences your decisions when it comes to actions. You act, in regard to the arbitrary, as if nothing had come up, as if it wasn’t there. If someone simply asserts with no evidence that your food was poisoned, or that your house is going to collapse, and you’ve taken all the normal precautions and don’t observe anything out of the ordinary yourself, you don’t analyze that person’s claim: you eat the food, or enter your house, etc. If there’s no available evidence, then “there is no poison,” or “my house won’t collapse” must be the conclusion you reach. In a sense, it’s reality that makes that conclusion necessary for you to reach, because there could conceivably be billions of things that aren’t in your food presently, or billions of things that aren’t wrong with your house’s construction at the moment, so you can’t spend your days checking out every conceivable thing that could be put into your food, or that could destroy your house. You only check for poison when there’s evidence for poison or check for your house being on the verge of collapse when there’s evidence of that: if there isn’t, then you ignore the person’s claim totally. How to Handle “Arbitrary Claims with Possible Evidence” Now, here’s a “hard case”: (This example is based on Dr. Peikoff’s example in the “Objectivism Through Induction” course, in which someone asserts that “Harry Binswanger gave a 3-hour seminar in his New York apartment on Hegel’s logic for his bachelor party, and it started at 4:00am EST with 50 Objectivists present to hear it.”) Someone, let’s call him “Tim,” says that your friend has been lying about his anti-Astrology beliefs for years—he advocates Astrology and takes classes on Astrology every Thursday afternoon at 5:00pm with 20 other students at a well-known Astrologer’s private residence. You ask: “What’s your basis for that?” Tim says: “Because I say so. That’s my view.” That statement from Tim is completely, absolutely arbitrary, but there seems to be abundant evidence available, enough to be probably decisive one way or another, if you take the time and effort to find it. You could ask your friend, his girlfriend, or ask all of the students and the Astrology teacher; you could track your friend on Thursday and see if he goes to the Astrologer’s house some time before 5:00pm, or check your friend’s house for any Astrology books or other signs of interest in Astrology. The question that must be asked is: what can we do about this? Can we pronounce it true? No, we haven’t checked it out, yet. Can we say that it is false? No, we haven’t assessed it, or tried to refute it. There seems to be abundant evidence available, so if it is false, we should have the means to refute it. Well, the question now becomes: should we expend the time and energy to find the evidence to decide one way or another? What’s the reasonable action in this case? All he said to back it up was “I say so,” but there appears to be plenty of evidence to decide one way or another. What should a rational person do? Should we examine an arbitrary claim if it is actually possible to do so? Dr. Peikoff said that his answer to this question changed. Historically, he always answered “no, we shouldn’t examine such a claim.” Peikoff argued that the person making an arbitrary statement is holding a direct contradiction. By saying that “maybe X happened,” he’s hypothesizing the existence of something without any evidence, that’s there is evidence for the existence of X, but with no evidence in support of that judgment. Since there’s no justification for the claim, it is non-cognitive, and therefore there’s no justification at all for checking out the claim. It’s irrational and immoral to check it out, but it is possible. But since then, his answer has changed in an important way. Since I thought it would be helpful to the readers of this essay, I’ll present my own version of his new, “Objectivism Through Induction”-inspired answer. The answer I would give to that question is: How did we even get into this kind of dilemma at all? We’ve already induced that the arbitrary is devoid of evidence and produces mental paralysis. Given that, how can there be an arbitrary claim that can be checked out by reference to perceptual and conceptual evidence? We’re in this predicament because we’re confronting a solid contradiction. There is no such thing as an arbitrary claim that has possible evidence. There is no way to check out if your friend believes in Astrology or attends Astrology classes; that claim of Tim’s can never be verified or refuted, except if you give up reason. The trap is set by slipping a contradiction into your mind by setting up a concrete, particular fact in your mind without reference to any principles. The scheme is set up so that you effectively must become concrete-bound, which leaves the asserter of the arbitrary, like Tim, free to be completely unprincipled, because the unsuspecting rational person will be so busy studying the concretes. Here is a description of the “concrete-bound mentality”: “This is the man, who, as far as possible to a conceptual being, establishes no connections among his mental contents. To him, every issue is simply a new concrete, unrelated to what came before, to abstract principles, or to any context…” [Leonard Peikoff, “Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand,” p. 127.] Let’s keep in mind something that we learned in the induction of egoism: when we discussed altruism, I warned not to let an opponent limit, circumscribe or constrain his theory. You shouldn’t let him say: “a dime for the poor, the rich dutifully give for the sake of the world’s poor, etc.” If your goal is to assess altruism as a way of life and as an inductively reached universal principle of ethics, and afterwards apply it to a wide range, then you should take altruism in the same manner as we did with egoism. Bob the altruist says: “Mr. Alms will be at your front door shortly. He just needs 10% of your silverware: hand that over to him as your duty, but don’t give him your bed, chairs, fans, etc. you have some rights and protections, too. A little sacrifice is good, but complete sacrifice is absurd: we would all die. So there are times when some selfishness is good.” If an altruist said all of that, it’ll be the greatest subversion that he’ll be capable of achieving. If you agree with him, then he’ll sabotage your mind by completing the banishment of principles. The only issue then becomes concrete-bound: “who gets the silverware?” But what if you were to respond to him at an abstract, principled level: how can you reconcile these opposing ethical approaches? Bob’s answer simply brushes your view off: “This isn’t a matter of theory, it is ethics, the field of practical decision-making. Don’t you feel that the silverware is enough for Mr. Alms? I’ve already discussed this with everyone else in the community, and they feel that it is enough—what do you feel? (The principled person sees that his answer reduces to ethics being a matter of obeying the intuitions or feelings of others.) The frosting on the altruist’s cake happens when Bob is able to convince you of this: “Mr. Alms will be grateful for your alms-giving, so you will get his good will and support out of performing this duty. See? There’s no real contradiction between the views of selfishness and sacrifice. You can have both, and by sacrificing just a little bit, you can become more selfish.” Now, to apply this kind of example to our own case of the arbitrary statement with “evidence”: The advocate of the arbitrary says: “Mr. Conspiracy will visit you. Just accept the first arbitrary claim that he makes. After all, you’re a reasonable man—some arbitrary claims make life interesting and open possibilities that we wouldn’t have thought of otherwise. Too much, of course, is ridiculous, as we’d never get anywhere. Sometimes, we need real evidence, too.” No attempt is made to reconcile or make compatible in any way these two completely opposite principles of epistemology. One arbitrary claim, he tells us, and then reason all the way from then on. You’ll become confounded if you don’t answer, “I refuse to say anything about this, I’m leaving this discussion.” Let’s suppose that you do try to prove that your friend doesn’t believe in Astrology and doesn’t attend classes on it: 23 affidavits, from your friend, his girlfriend, the Astrology professor, and his students, all together prove that he doesn’t attend classes on, or believe in, Astrology. “Aha,” Tim gleefully exclaims, “Roderick was wrong! I suppose that the arbitrary isn’t so “arbitrary,” in the end. Perhaps the arbitrary can be rationally proved, as well!” I then lose my cool and say, “Your fact-gathering and 23 affidavits don’t prove anything! If they were supposed to prove that arbitrary claim about your friend, then I might as well say that your 23 affidavits are a part of a cunning conspiracy by a group of liars—prove that it isn’t. This is what I mean when I say that it’s impossible to refute the arbitrary. You can’t do anything cognitively with the arbitrary.” Tim, the advocate of the arbitrary, would then remark: “There’s no need to be such an extremist about this: everything cannot be arbitrary. So let us all decide this issue communally (intuitively): 23 affidavits sounds like pretty convincing evidence to me. If we allow Roderick’s objection, then we’ll be overwhelmed with the arbitrary. It will be far too much, just like if Mr. Alms were to ask for your bed, too; we need to draw the line somewhere.” Now, Tim’s acting like he’s the defender and spokesman for balance, moderation, and level-headedness. Tim finally says: “who here feels with me that, leaving aside all technicalities, 23 affidavits proves something? Do we have a court system with valid affidavits, or are we going to live in some fantasy world like Roderick here? Then the debate turns into: just accept the first arbitrary statement, or the 20th, or only once a week, or only in our constitutional laws, or only in Astronomy. So, here’s the layout of the whole racket: If the arbitrary were fully advocated as a principle, the advocate of such a view would look ridiculous, and that viewpoint destroys all cognition. By the same logic, if a person advocated altruism as a principle, the person would look medieval and sociopathic, and the viewpoint destroys our capacity to survive. So what certain people do is they covertly slip in irrational principles only now and then, as a guise; they don’t want to be perceived as extremists, so they only ask that people follow their principles a little bit. They conceal their principle and make it appear to be its opposite, and then go on to proclaim that they are the real defenders and champions of reason, proof, selfishness, human decency, justice, etc. What, then, causes the belief that you can prove an arbitrary claim? The failure to think in principles. The failure to insist upon inductive generalizations when confronting an issue. The willingness to discuss or allow anything into your thoughts that is disconnected from any principles that you know. The cause is the unprincipled acceptance of some other person’s irrationality, even if for a few moments, and even if it was hypothetically, just to entertain his argument. The conclusion of this case is: there is no case at all in which you can objectively process an arbitrary claim, not if you uphold reason as a principle and as an absolute. Meta-blog, automatic cross-post

The point of this essay is to induce and reduce the principle that “values are objective,” and we’re going to use Ayn Rand’s own life to reach this, since it was her identifications that led to the objective theory of values in the first place. Here are two deductive (but not rationalistic) approaches to demonstrating that values are objective: (1) Value requires a valuer […] [Moral evaluation] is possible only if man chooses to pursue a certain goal, which then serves as his standard of value. The good, accordingly, is not good in itself. Objects and actions are good to man and for the sake of reaching a specific goal. But if values are not intrinsic attributes, neither are they arbitrary decrees. The realm of facts is what creates the need to choose a certain goal. This need arises because man lives in reality, because […] the requirements of his survival, which he does not know or obey automatically, are set by reality (including his own nature). [Man’s evaluations] do not have their source in anyone’s baseless feelings; they are discovered by a process of rational cognition [...] Moral value does not pertain to reality alone or to consciousness alone. […] The good, accordingly, is neither intrinsic nor subjective, but objective. […] [T]he good is an aspect of reality in relation to man. That is: the good designates facts—the requirements of survival—as identified conceptually, and then evaluated by human consciousness in accordance with a rational standard of value (life).” [Peikoff, “Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand,” p. 241-43.] (2) The intrinsic theory holds that the good resides in some sort of reality, independent of man’s consciousness; the subjectivist theory holds that the good resides in man’s consciousness, independent of reality. The objective theory holds that the good is neither an attribute of “things in themselves” nor of man’s emotional states, but an evaluation of the facts of reality by man’s consciousness according to a rational standard of value. (Rational, in this context, means: derived from the facts of reality and validated by a process of reason.) The objective theory holds that the good is an aspect of reality in relation to man—and that it must be discovered, not invented, by man. Fundamental to an objective theory of values is the question: Of value to whom and for what? An objective theory does not permit context-dropping or “concept-stealing”; it does not permit the separation of “value” from “purpose,” of the good from beneficiaries, and of man’s actions from reason. What we want to answer is: how did Ayn Rand reach the theory of objective values from her own experiences in reality? We should quickly realize that it wasn’t as if Rand had given no thoughts as to what values are before reaching her theories of concepts and of objectivity. If that were the case, not only would she have not lived very long, but she wouldn’t have had any values to apply her theory to. What must have happened is that she had reached an understanding about value’s status, source and validity well before forming her theory of concept-formation or of objectivity, and these later theories allowed her to reach her final theory of values and other identifications (like the connections between objective values, capitalism, and force). Rand had many explicit values, and she formed an idea of values at an early age. The fictional hero Cyrus Paltons from Maurice Champagne’s The Mysterious Valley, the works of Victor Hugo, skyscrapers she saw, American movies, and tiddlywink music. She also had intense disvalues: the small talk of the Russians of her youth, communism and its effects on her life, folksy, average protagonists, etc. Having intense values is the precondition to any further advancement in regard to values. If you don’t become passionate about your values at an early age, then the ability and motivation to understand their role in your life will never arise, or it will be very difficult to appreciate. So, what inductions did Rand have to make about values from considering her own values? By reducing the concepts “values” and “objectivity,” we can reach two inductions: The role of choice in values, and the role of reason and reality in values. Human Values Involve Choice and Reason Something that Rand knew as a kid was that her values were not automatic, and not self-evident. Many people did not have her values, and many did not agree with them. What Rand gleamed from this is that values are, in some way, personal to the person valuing; they require the decision of or input from the person. Values aren’t thrust upon people by reality or their particular situations. Some view or decision or input from the person who values is needed. Another idea that Rand learned was that her values were not on the same level as that of others. She came to disagree with the prevalent idea that values are arbitrary, mere opinions, and that no one’s values are better than anyone else’s. She could give reasons for why she valued things, whereas she would note that other people who disagreed with her couldn’t provide any reasons for their values. Later on, she would induce that all ideas have to be reached by reason, and that this has a relation to the role of values. In some sense, Rand grasped that values involve her choice and the functioning of her reason. She learned that values have some relationship to the facts and don’t pertain to just your wishes, that you have to understand these facts with your mind in order for your choices to be rational. On the one hand, she learned that values involved her knowledge and her thoughts, whereas on the other hand, those who disagreed with her would preach blind obedience to holy commandments or to some authority. She knew in an introspective way that if she didn’t understand the reasons for something, then she would openly oppose the view that it was a value to her because some authority said so. She knew that her values had to be reasonable, and that is why she would choose them. So when arbitrary commands were issued to her as duties, like “don’t read so much, be more social, stop being so intellectual and intense,” she would despise them and disobey them. Her view of reason and values, combined with the non-value of other people’s commandments towards her resulted in a generalization that she knew very well from her own experiences, that “nothing is valuable until or unless it passes the test of my own reason.” From an early age, Rand knew that both choice and reason-recognizing-facts are involved in values properly. “God Said: ‘Take What You Want and Pay for It.’” With the knowledge that values involve both human choice and reason grasping facts, she could successfully deal with opposing views in philosophy that she would encounter in high school and in college. The “Duty” school of the Kantians and Christians: they are very similar to the people in her neighborhood who would tell her to do something simply because she “has” to, that it’s her “duty” as a girl or a child, etc. The school of subjectivists-skeptics whose view was that nothing is certain, so anything goes or is equal to anything else: she believed that some values were better than others; some values are based on reason and facts, and some were not. Values for her were not an issue of “do whatever you want,” and not an issue of uncritical obedience to someone’s edicts or commands. Eventually, the question arose, “how do I reconcile these two, values involving choice, and values involving reality?” The history of philosophy basically split on this question, taking one side or the other. If values are based on choices, then values are subjective, it’s essentially up to you to decide them, and reality has no say in the matter. If values are based on reality, then it’s like the law of gravity, and you have no choice in the matter, you just have to obediently accept the values that reality hands down, and that’s the intrinsic school. She learned something about both choice and reality that allowed her to combine the two while not getting trapped in one side or the other. What she learned that allowed her to advance in this issue was a form of causality, represented by her favorite Spanish proverb: “God said: Take what you want and pay for it.” In her interpretation, this means that you choose a goal, an object that you want (the role of choice here), and reality sets the course to reach the goal, and the consequences of the achievement that result. Reality sets the cause-and-effect, the means required and the consequence, and one’s choice sets the ultimate purpose for acting. At this stage of her thinking, a choice was rational when you knew your reasons for doing it, when you knew the means required to reach your goal, and when you knew and accepted the consequences that would result. (Later on, she would connect this thinking with Aristotle’s doctrine of final causation: In order to make the choices required to achieve his goals, a man needs the constant, automatized awareness of the principle which the anti-concept “duty” has all but obliterated in his mind: the principle of causality—specifically, of Aristotelian final causation (which, in fact, applies only to a conscious being), i.e., the process by which an end determines the means, i.e., the process of choosing a goal and taking the actions necessary to achieve it. (http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/final_causation.html )) In some sense, she knew that this didn’t completely answer the status of value, because it left open the question, “What is the status of the basic goal or decision or choice?” Could the Spanish proverb mean: “Choose whatever you want as the goal of your life, and then follow reality in reaching it?” If it did mean that, it would be a complete surrender to subjectivism. Joseph Stalin could say, “I pick destroying millions of people,” and his regime carried that out in reality, he took whatever steps were necessary to accomplish it. He also accepted the consequences: if socialist revolutionaries, conspirators, freedom fighters, etc. tried to kill him, he ordered thousands of his guards to protect him while living in his country house, and had food tasters at every meal to ensure that he didn’t die of some hidden poison in his food or drinks. So if the test of the proverb was, “consistency with the goal you choose, no matter what it is,” then Stalin would have passed it. And that’s why the proverb alone can’t be the basis for values in reality: it gives far too much emphasis on the “choice” component of values as a primary, and not on the fact that reason or reality should be guiding your choice, even in the case of a basic choice. “Life” Makes “Value” Possible and Necessary If we reduce “values are objective,” we’ll reach something that points back at that question I posited, about the status of the basic choice or goal. “Values are a means to an end.” This is something established by the reality of cause-and-effect, and by simply introspecting on one’s values. Rand probably reached this induction by thinking about what goals she wanted to accomplish by reading Victor Hugo’s works, or watching American movies, or listening to Tiddlywink music, as they were means to an end of hers in one way or another. The problem, which she didn’t solve until her 40’s, was “what is the ultimate goal that will serve as a standard of value?” and further, “how do we relate it to reality?” Discovering the ultimate goal would allow us to tie all values to reality, and if it turns out that it is an issue that we have a choice about, then everything can be integrated together because it will be choice and reality together with values in some way. From there on out, she would be on a course to find an ultimate goal and standard of value that we have a choice to adopt or not, but was required by reality in that it still had to be discovered. The results of her search can be read in Galt’s speech and in “The Objectivist Ethics.” Through a series of identifications, she realized that living things have needs, and they have goals that require actions on their part to satisfy these needs—living things are goal-directed, and face an alternative of life or death, existence or non-existence. Inanimate objects don’t require anything to remain the way they are (they only need to be left alone), and nothing matters to them, even if they are reduced to ashes (or subatomic particles)—they have no needs, and so they merely react with no negative or positive consequences for them. At some point, she connected this train of thought to her earlier identification that “values are that which one acts to gain and/or keep.” Combining these points, she discovered that values are what living things act to gain and/or keep, ultimately to remain alive (through fulfilling whatever subordinate end the value exists for). Life, she reasoned, is a series of actions generated by the living thing itself, designed to sustain the thing’s existence, and the means of sustaining itself is successfully satisfying its needs through value-achievement. (Historically, she says that she didn’t fully understand how “value” depends on “life” until after “The Fountainhead,” so she likely reached her mature, philosophical argument for her ethical views while writing notes for “Atlas Shrugged.” For instance, she said that while writing “The Fountainhead,” she didn’t realize that even weeds have values. See “100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand,” p. 335) These identifications allowed her to change her understanding of the concepts of “life” and “value,” such that one would depend on the other. She notes that our automatic pleasure-pain mechanism indicates what is the right or wrong action in a given context, and that the standard being used is the conscious organism’s own life; she also states that our emotional mechanism has two basic emotions, joy and suffering, and that these operate under a standard of value that is chosen by us, determined by how we choose to live. Both pleasure and joy indicate that a value is being achieved, and both are indications that the organism in question is furthering his life (and the opposite for pain and suffering). From observations and reasoning such as these (and many more in addition), she came to the pivotal conclusions that both the reality and very concept of “value” is made possible and necessary by the reality and concept of “life.” “Life” (that is, the existence of living things and the concept of “life”) makes “value” possible because values require the accomplishment of a goal in the face of an alternative, such that the action’s success or failure makes a difference to the thing that acts; inanimate objects have nothing at stake, and matter merely changes its form, never ceasing to exist—when living things exist, so do values. “Life” makes “value” necessary because living things do face an alternative of life or death, and can lose their lives if they fail to achieve their values—it is impossible for a life to continue without accomplishing the values that its nature requires. In one grand-scale integration, she came to three important conclusions about life which would allow her to solve her problem about what the “standard of value” could be: she determined that life is the ultimate end or goal, life is an end-in-itself, and life is the ultimate value. Life isn’t a means to anything else except continued living, continued existence, so fulfilling life only results in more life that requires action to sustain, and this is why it’s an “end-in-itself,” not a means to any other end. It’s the ultimate end or goal, because all of the other goals are means to the end of keeping the living thing within the realm of reality, to keep it alive, just like one sleeps, eats, or drinks to remain alive. And it is the ultimate value because it is for the sake of life that actions are taken to achieve other values. With all of these inductions clear to her, she reached her seminal induction: “life is the standard of value.” Life is the Standard of Value A standard is an abstract reference point or principle that we use to measure or gauge things in order to guide us in carrying out a specific purpose. By taking “life” as the standard of value, we can observe the effects of our purported values on life, whether positive or negative, and thus determine whether it is a genuine value or not. This is the way in which Rand held that life, the ultimate value and end-in-itself, could set the standard by which all lesser goals could be evaluated. Whatever furthered the life of an organism is the good, and whatever threatened its life is the evil. Once she reached the principle that “life is the standard,” she began the process of analyzing all of her accepted values, showing that they were all reducible to “life is the standard.” Reason, virtue, production, sex, happiness, art, self-esteem, purpose, morality, individual rights, etc., are all examined under this new principle of hers, and the principle became central to the philosophy of Objectivism as a result. Not only could she tie all of her values to reality with this overarching principle (in addition to the specific reasons she had before for holding those things as values), but she could also integrate this principle with her view that human values involve choice, too: “life being the standard” was something that a person had to choose. If a person didn’t choose life, then Rand was now in the position to show the person that the whole issue of what is good or bad for them became philosophically unintelligible without choosing life. A proper value, Rand now believed, means a goal that was chosen in accordance with reality by comparison to an ultimate goal and standard of value, which is life based on reality. Values are Objective She was ready to advance another stage higher than even all of these previous integrations once she fully developed her theory of concept-formation and her reformulation of objectivity. Once her knowledge of objectivity grew, she only needed to integrate the process of forming concepts with the process of forming values. Both concepts and human values involve the awareness of something in reality in addition to something contributed by human consciousness—in the case of concepts, the contribution is measurement-omission; in the case of values, it is the choice to live. Rand could then say that values are objective because they are formed by a definite method, but not by some authority claiming that something in reality is an intrinsic value, and not by subjective, arbitrary feelings. This method involves two factors, just like in the case of concepts: existence and consciousness. Values are objective because the good is an aspect of reality in relation to human beings, just as our concepts are, and this means that logic can be used to evaluate what we claim to be our values using the standard of life. Rand reached the theory of objective values in 1965-66, soon after realizing the significance of her expansion of the concept of objectivity, and so she reached this idea at around the age of 60, and it was a theory that she pretty much worked her whole life to formulate. Meta-blog, automatic cross-post

The goal of this essay is to very nearly reach the Objectivist principle that sex is metaphysical, which is the essential part of Ayn Rand’s theory of sex. Keep in mind that by “metaphysical,” I mean “that which pertains to reality, to the nature of things, to existence,” so I’m reaching the idea that sex has some important relationship with us and the reality around us. At the outset, I’ll note that we’re dealing with sex as philosophy is concerned with it, as a normative issue that philosophy can offer guidance on, as opposed to the technical, complicated facts about sex studied in the fields of anatomy, biology, physiology, medical care, etc. In this case, we’re presupposing basic issues like free will and ones we’ve already covered, like egoism. We’re also presupposing that we have some knowledge about rational people having sex, and will deal with non-rational people later on after understanding why rational people do it. Just like with the induction of egoism, we can’t inter-mingle good and bad examples of sex at the outset and try to distinguish those two. It’s true for irrational people too that “sex is metaphysical,” but it would be very difficult to understand how it applies to irrational people until you’ve first learned of how it applies to rational people. Here’s a bad, rationalistic argument for sex being metaphysical: Sex involves emotions; emotions involve value-judgments; value-judgments have a source ultimately on your view of the universe, your metaphysical view. Therefore, sex is metaphysical. The premises are true, but this chain of premises doesn’t just belong to sex, but to any value. You could put whatever you’d like for “value” in this case, and there would be nothing there that distinguishes sex from any given value in the way the argument is presented. So, to reach this principle, we’re going to use both the method of induction and reduction at the same time, rather than in separate essays. We’re going to work inductively from observations, raise concerns when we get stuck, progress even higher, and then at some point ascend to metaphysics, after which we will reduce the overarching principle to the point where we initially ascended, completing both the reduction and induction at once. Sex is an Intense, Pleasurable Experience This is a widely known induction, and everyone who knows anything about sex knows that it is a pleasure, an enjoyable thing. But not just an enjoyable or pleasurable thing: it’s an intense, violent, forceful pleasure—at its best, the pleasure of it becomes all that you can focus on. To reach this induction, we could experience a range of pleasures in connection with their value, and the higher the pleasure, the higher the value, which means relying again on what Mill called “concomitant variation.” Here’s an example list: 1. Finding a new set of batteries for your dead T.V. remote control. 2. Finding a decent meal. 3. Ordering a great, delicious meal. 4. Talking to a helpful stranger. 5. Talking to a kind, good friend. 6. You notice what is wrong with a philosophy. 7. You create a philosophy that changes people’s lives for the better. 8. You have sex with your partner. This list isn’t in any necessary order, and it may vary for different people, but sex is clearly on the top of the list. It’s the jackpot or goldmine of pleasurable intensity. Sex is an End-In-Itself This is another easy induction about sex, though not everyone agrees with it. Of course, people know that sex can be a means to reproduction and a family life, and we know from scientific study that that’s the biological goal of sex. But it’s also well-known that sex can be an activity done for its own sake, just for the enjoyment inherent in having sex. There’s a whole sex-toy industry designed specifically to enhance the pleasure of sex, and a condom or contraceptive industry designed to prevent us from accidentally making the woman involved pregnant. And the people who understand this best may be the religious groups who are against sex when it isn’t being done for the sake of procreation, but merely for pleasure. So, we know that sex is an intense pleasure, and that it’s an end-in-itself, not necessarily a means to any other end (like becoming pregnant, exercising, or passing the time). What’s the nature of sexual pleasure? What is the importance of sexual pleasure, its underlying value? This is one of the questions we’re going to advance to by working through these inductions. Sex is a Certain Kind of Generalized Experience What’s the nature of sexual pleasure? To answer that, we’ll need to contrast sex with other pleasures, and even the varieties of pain. We especially need that contrast with other pleasures. Here, we have an opportunity to use the genus method: Pleasurable experiences have causes. We could also use the genus, “Experiences (positive or negative) have causes,” though this could take a lot longer to cover. The first division of the first genus is: specialized, delimited pleasures which are a means to an end, as opposed to generalized pleasures that we experience as end-in-themselves. A division within “specialized pleasure”: Physical pleasure and psychological pleasure, sensations and emotions. Most things that we gain pleasure from are a mixture of both the physical and psychological elements—eating a candy bar is a mostly physical pleasure, but playing a game with a friend is a mostly psychological pleasure. Specialized pleasures are related to some specific thing, but that thing can have a psychological meaning. The second division, within “generalized pleasure” is: Physical pleasures and psychological pleasures, like before. But are there any physical pleasures or dominantly physical pleasures that are generalized? There are not any that I could think of, only specialized pleasures. What about dominantly psychological? A really good example would be art. Art certainly has a physical, sensory component to it, but the esthetic pleasure and enjoyment of art comes from its psychological component. How about sex? It’s an end-in-itself, but is it either a specialized or a generalized pleasure? Is it dominantly psychological or physical? Entirely one or the other? Let’s form a hypothesis: Sex is only physical. What evidence exists for this kind of claim? The case of animals is one kind of evidence, as they observably don’t use sex as a way to experience joy, or at least in the way that we do. And it’s clear that physical sensation is an essential part of sex, not a tangential point. Without parts of bodies brushing against each other, there’s no sexual ecstasy. Just from this, one could conclude that sex has no psychological meaning, and that it’s just about nerve endings, and exciting them until the sex reaches a climax. Well, what’s wrong with this hypothesis? It’s right to the extent that there’s a major physical aspect to sex, and that can’t be ignored. But there are psychological factors involved that change the pleasure for human beings, even if the physical sensations are the same and even if these factors wouldn’t interest other animals by contrast. The kind of partner matters quite a bit in human sex: fat or in-shape or malnourished, ugly or handsome/pretty, stupid or intelligent, passive or aggressive, etc. So does the setting or background: the time of day, the mood of the place, whether other people are nearby or within earshot, music preference, or if the sex follows a creative or romantic action, or after an argument or fighting (which is widely known as “angry sex”). All of these factors change the nature of the pleasure involved, and they aren’t tangential, either. The conclusion we’ve reached from the above is that sex is a combination of both the mind and the body. It’s both the strongest physical sensation, and the most exalted emotional, psychological response. It’s a pleasured aimed at the whole person, body and mind, and is neither dominantly one element nor the other. Both elements are essential. Sex is a generalized pleasure, an intense pleasure that is directed towards the whole person as an end-in-himself, body and mind. What we have to ask now is: “What value does sex embody? What is the object of awareness in sex—what are you focusing on?” Sex is a Self-Celebration, a Positive Self-Focus on You and Your View of Reality To answer the above question, we need three contrasts. 1. Work: like sex, work is a major value. Objectivism holds that it’s the greatest, specialized value. Contrasting sexual pleasure with the pleasure from creative work will further explain why it belongs to the “generalized pleasure” category, as against the “specialized pleasure” category. 2. Art: Determining how sex relates to art can help us determine what values are being focused on in these two cases. 3. The opposite of sex: Its antonym, its equivalent if we had created a category of “painful experiences” alongside of pleasurable ones. The most intense, generalized painful experience. 1. Creative work: Let’s take Ayn Rand as an example. She was a professional writer of high-caliber, with a great intellect, and she immensely enjoyed her job. Would she have felt the same pleasure of mind and body in writing, as anyone else does while making love? She loved doing her job, but writing is still work. She enjoyed her work, but the process of creating them was strenuous mental activity for hours practically every day until the assignment was accomplished—in the case of her novels, it would take years of such actions to complete just one. And whatever enjoyment she got out of the writing was a tangential issue: the focus was on the work. She might have felt that the world is a great place where she can accomplish things, and that she’s great and capable of such things, but in the context of work, that would be a side-issue. The contrast between your experience of sex with the experience of someone performing at work has to strike your attention as different, even if the expert’s job required full use of their mind and body, like a sports player, a chef, or a policeman. Both the sex and the performance of a given job may require both the mind and body, but sex isn’t about remembering dozens of different factors related to the job, and it isn’t about focusing externally on creating an achievement, like a new non-fiction book, a new cake, or a crime bust. Sex is about experiencing a moment of ecstasy as an end in itself, whereas one’s work is a means towards other ends. In work, your focus is yourself insofar as you’re a specialized performer of some task, whereas in sex, the focus is yourself as a total. In work, the enjoyment and appreciation of yourself is a side-issue, but the focus on yourself in sex is the essential, primary concern. Sex is about you as a total person in the complete world; an expert acts in a specifically defined field of the world. This is one of our first indications that sex is metaphysical: you don’t have sex as a specialized actor (like an expert), but as a total person, and you’re related in some way to the total world, as opposed to a delimited, specialized aspect of it, like in one’s career. 2. Art: Like sex, it’s an end-in-itself. Rand refers to it as “man’s metaphysical mirror,” and claims in her theory of art that works of art involve the artists’ metaphysical value judgments (what he finds important about reality), and we’re trying to show that sex is metaphysical. There are more similarities between art and sex: both have crucial, fundamental values that are essential to the experience, and the response in both art and sex is incredibly personal, not social. Even still, there’s a difference in the pleasure of producing art and sex. Your body and mind may be involved in art, but they’re not the focal point of your attention—such a focus on yourself would distract you from creating the art, or contemplating a completed work. There’s a significant difference in where the focus is directed when you’re painting an artwork, contemplating one, admiring a sculpture, watching a movie, all in contrast to having sex. When contemplating an artwork, your focus is external, just like with work. The difference is that you’re not trying to improve on what was given to you or what you started with, you’re not achieving anything; rather, you’re entering an artist’s recreation of the world, whether you love it or not. Either way, you’re merely reacting to a work that is outside of yourself that taking hold of your attention. If you’re reading Orwell's “1984,” you’re in its fictional world while you read, and that’s all there is to you. If someone were to ask you, “what are you right now?” you would reply, “I’m the person reading this book, observing its events, etc.” Your response does mean something about yourself, but you’re not the focus of art. In sex, you’re the focus, it’s all about self-awareness. You’re the fundamental object of the experience. We could ask here: what’s the role of a partner, if sex is self-focused? A rational person chooses a partner because she represents the sum of his fundamental values: otherwise, love wouldn’t be his emotional response to her. The woman has to be a mirror of him essentially, what Aristotle called an “alter ego,” another self, and she must see that same point about him, and feel the same way about him. To use an Objectivist term for this phenomena, a rational person and his partner need each other to be “psychologically visible” of the other, they both have a need to be seen for who and what they are on the inside, and a proper couple fulfills this need for one another. When a couple is psychologically visible, what they see and respond to is their own essential self, as reflected back by their partner—one person displays important, fundamental values of character that both parties share, while the other takes it in, understands it, and appreciates it. For a rational person, if the partner is indifferent or ignorant of his essence, or esteems something as essential other than what he believes to be essential, then the sex becomes irrelevant to them. There’s an excellent example of this principle displayed by Gail Wynand and a young love of his in The Fountainhead: Sitting at her feet, his face raised to her, he allowed his soul to be heard. “My darling, anything you wish, anything I am, anything I can ever be...That's what I want to offer you - not the things I'll get for you, but the thing in me that will make me able to get them. That thing - a man can't renounce it - but I want to renounce it so that it will be yours - so that it will be in your service - only for you." The girl smiled and asked: "Do you think I'm prettier than Maggie Kelly?" He got up. He said nothing and walked out of the house. He never saw that girl again. The reason why Wynand’s sexual attraction to the girl stopped is because she didn’t see him psychologically, she didn’t respond to him as a total person, in the way that he saw himself. Meaningful sex for a rational person means that the mutual focus on each other becomes a way to underscore, highlight, and make real a completely self-directed awareness, the focus of each on himself or herself. Sex then is a totally egoistical, selfish experience, and the role of the partner is to make it even more so, and that’s why a rational person needs a partner. (Imagine the ridiculousness of someone claiming that they have sex with you only for your sake, that they derive no pleasure or selfish enjoyment from it whatsoever, that it’s simply selfless charity.) The experience of sex is: I want her. I want her because she’s another me, and I want her to consume the value that is me. It’s an emphasis on self-focus, and the fact of partners doesn’t contradict that point; rather, partners actually enhance the point that sex is a self-focus. Sex is about the total you, body and mind, experiencing a violent pleasure through both elements as an end-in-itself, and it involves a positive self-awareness of your essential self; not you in some specialized field, but the total you and the world as such. This kind of focus on yourself and the world has to involve your greatest values, because it leads to the most intense pleasure. (Recall the “pleasure list” I made earlier.) 3. The third contrast is the opposite of sex. A generalized, negative focus on yourself, both mind and body. It’s known as a panic attack, and it’s known to be one of the most painful and frightening experiences of human life. It’s a special kind of anxiety, and the person’s dread and fear is intensified for hours beyond that of typical anxiety victims, and the person’s skill or experience or even strength of character doesn’t stop the onset of a panic attack. Physically, panic attack victims experience trembling, heart palpitations, chest pains, nausea, dizziness, difficulty moving, hot (or cold) flashes, shortness of breath, and “derealization,” the perception that typically familiar things are unreal to the person. Psychologically, they experience a sense that they’re losing control of themselves, going crazy, experiencing a heart attack, or even sense that they’re dying, and it can take days to recover from, if not longer. Regardless of your positive traits, a panic attack makes you feel, “I can’t deal with reality, I’m going crazy, I’m going to die, etc.” Whereas during sex, notwithstanding your mistakes, weaknesses of character or what’s going on outside, you feel, “I’m great, and can deal with the world.” Sex is the experience of self-affirmation, of self-esteem. If you know enough about egoism to remember that you are your highest value, then sex turns into the positive experience of this value. Sex then represents, “by my deepest essential self, I’m great,” whereas a panic attack represents, “by my deepest, essential self, I’m unfit to live, crazy, doomed.” A panic attack, like sex, is generalized, not specific to a certain field. So in sex, what you’re saying to yourself is, “I am great, great in essence (and as a result, I’m potentially great at anything I attempt to do).” With a panic attack (and anxiety more broadly), the self-condemnation is universal: “I am no good, doomed no matter what I try.” To determine what other value sex embodies, we’ll need to briefly analyze an induction presented in Atlas Shrugged about sex. In one scene, Rearden is attending some abysmal political meeting, and it’s so morally disgusting to him, that it causes him to lose all desire for Dagny, for whom he had had an unstoppable passion for up until this event. What he feels, in effect, is “yes, I want to celebrate what I am with her, but not now, not in this world that I find disgusting.” The induction to be drawn from this is that a person’s sexual desire can be affected by the world he thinks he’s living in. It’s a generalized perspective, not limited to a particular place or mood you’re in—it’s about your fundamental view of reality. Is reality the kind of place where you can function (even if you’re great), or is it a sewer filled with injustice, where you have no chance to succeed, no matter how great you are? In Objectivism, this view of self-affirmation that we contrasted with panic attacks, and the view of reality as a place where you can succeed (though not necessarily will) are known as “self-esteem” and the “benevolent universe premise,” and they both are necessary for sex. It’s important to note here that these two things have to be put together, and the person has to be convinced of the two ideas, and experience: “I am great, and the world is great; I can succeed and reach my values because of what I’ve made of myself, and because of the way that the world is.” Here, I could tie in another point that could be reached from egoism. Egoism’s view is that you are the proper beneficiary of your values, and what that means is that you’re the proper consumer of the values that you produce through your choice and actions. We could introduce one last genus or category. Genus method: Every value has a production element and a consumption element. We could realize how to reach this principle from observing how values come to be, and what happens to them after they are achieved: food is grown (produced), and then is eaten (consumed), a scientific theory is created (produced), and then new technology and benefits to humanity result (consumed), etc. Making your character great by your own standards is a major value being produced, and its consumption takes on a special form of pleasure, and is celebrated in order to objectify and make real the value of your own person. The consumption pleasure is love, self-love and/or love of another, pride and/or admiration for the character of another, and the union of these two kinds of love takes the form of romantic love. The value of romantic love is consumed by feeling the pleasure of his own person, and the pleasure of having his view of existence confirmed. The type of celebration for these kind of values being achieved is sex. So, from these considerations, we could answer the questions we posed earlier: “What value does sex embody? What is the object of awareness in sex—what are you focusing on?” From what we’ve been inducing above, we could answer that: sex embodies the value of you, you as such and in essence, your body and mind and character. Sex is a self-focus on you, it’s a self-celebration of you and of your view of existence, of your self-esteem and of the benevolent universe premise that you hold. Sex is Metaphysical Let’s now leap up to the metaphysical point we were trying to induce: “sex is metaphysical,” and reduce it to where we left off. “Metaphysical” means pertaining to reality as such, as a whole, not to specific physical laws. To induce that sex is metaphysical, we have to understand how sex relates to reality as a whole. Self-esteem is your overarching belief that you can cope and effectively deal with reality. The benevolent universe premise holds that the universe is auspicious to rational values and human action. These are two metaphysical elements in regard to sex. “I can achieve my values in reality.” “Reality is the kind of place where success is possible.” “I can deal with existence (self-esteem), and existence as a totality can be dealt with (benevolent-universe).” This is why sex is metaphysical: it relates your self-esteem to your benevolent universe, your view of yourself to your view of reality, and vice versa. “Sex is Metaphysical” Reduction It’s a celebration of your own efficacy of reality. The role of self-esteem and the benevolent universe. You needed to reach the conclusion that it’s a celebration of your efficacy in reality. How would you reach that? You have to grasp that it’s a positive, generalized self-focus, as against a negative generalized self-focus. To reach the point that it’s a positive self-focus, you need to first reach the point that it’s a generalized self-focus: on yourself as a total entity, as opposed to just work in a special field. To reach that, you need to grasp that it concerns your two elements, your mind and body, physical and psychological components. To reach that, we notice that something is different about sex as opposed to other elements of human beings; it’s not just say, a chair and your appreciation of it. One thing we grasp directly is the violence of sex, and the other is that it’s not a means to an end. You notice that it’s not always for any practical end (not even to save a relationship), and that raises the question: what leads to this violence of sex, why is it special? I said that we're going to "very nearly reach" the Objectivist principle that "sex is metaphysical. That's because the complete induction of this principle requires two other metaphysical views of Objectivism: (1) there's only one world, this reality, and (2) a single, integrated being is composed of both mind and body together. These are the necessary preconditions for reaching this principle, and were presupposed in making these inductions. It should be easier to see why religions like Christianity, which disagree with both of these metaphysical views, would have a radically different view of sex and its relation to people and the world around you. Objection: Sex in the Life of an Irrational Man If sex is a kind of celebration, why do men who have nothing to celebrate still have sex, instead of being celibate and not bothering with the endeavor? Is Rand wrong here? Rand’s view is that self-esteem is universal: everyone needs it, like a philosophy. All conceptual beings need it, even irrational men, and when they don’t properly achieve their self-esteem, they simply fake it. The pseudo-self-esteem temporarily halts the damage done by the person’s anxiety, and thus he momentarily frees himself from his self-condemnation and his condemnation of his view of reality. The irrational person’s view of reality becomes a distorted sort of the benevolent universe: “I, as a total, am not thathorrible, and the universe won’t crush me, inevitably.” He uses sex not as a celebration, but as a reassurance he desperately needs due to his failure to create a genuine self-esteem. Meta-blog, automatic cross-post

@m082844 I decided to basically start over learning the philosophy of Objectivism, and recently, I started using the method of induction to work through its principles at a more easily understandable level. I've used Dr. Peikoff's "Objectivism Through Induction" as my guide, and it's been an unprecedented success thus far. Here's two of my essays on justice: Reduction of Justice http://inductivequest.blogspot.com/2010/11/reduction-of-justice.html Induction of Justice http://inductivequest.blogspot.com/2010/11/induction-of-justice.html I hope that these help! Roderick Fitts

Having gone through the reduction, it’s time to induce the Objectivist principle that “the initiation of physical force is evil.” The induction will consist of three steps: 1. Directly observing physical force negating desires. 2. Once the source of desires is grasped, observe force negating specific conclusions. 3. Observe force negating the mind as such by halting the processes of thought and integration, paralyzing the mind. Force Opposes Your Desires (Values) The first examples of force we might confront are the broken promises of our parents, or physical force exerted by bullies or other kids at school. Whatever the precise nature of the force being used, the induction we want to reach is that force, whether direct or indirect (like a broken promise from a parent), makes you do that which you don’t want to do. In proportion to the use of force against me, I can’t possess or do or acquire or maintain what I want, what I desire, what I value. How does someone figure out that this is wrong? You would need to know that something else is good, which would set the context for determining what is wrong. Specifically, you would need to recognize in some basic form that egoism is right—you would have needed to induce the principle that “X, Y, and Z are my values, mine to choose and mine to enjoy/benefit from.” It’s good for me to choose the values that I want and to enjoy them for my sake. Once that is induced, you could later realize that “it’s wrong for someone to treat my values or me as a means of someone or something else.” After reaching the framework of a preliminary induction of egoism, you’d reach this induction along the way, that force is opposed to your selfish values, your desires. Peikoff speculates that Rand knew this by the age of six, because it isn’t too difficult to understand. “Force vs. desires” is pretty clear for most people. But the problem, like that in inducing “egoism” is that they hardly ever get past a preliminary stage like this one. Instead, they conflate and combine a set of unrelated topics and it turns into, “what I want vs. that.” “That” means a host of things blended together, things like “initiation of force,” “the laws of reality,” and things that are the property or business of other people. So many people think that what opposes their values are the cases of a bully (force), the laws of thermodynamics (reality, like someone upset about not being able to smoke near a gas station or in a highly oxygenated area), and the cases of the innocent who refuse to give you what you want, but the object of your desire is properly theirs to give or not. If this were a legitimate concept or idea, then we would have reached the limit of this induction, because we would eventually have “I can do anything, whenever I want, no matter what, and to the extent that I can’t, I’m under 'force.'” That would mean that life itself involves force, and thus that the concept is useless, and this topic becomes no longer worthy of discussion. We’ve all met people like this, who dismiss the issue of force in the way that Objectivists understand it. Here’s an excellent example from a forum: [Original poster] […]Power is often thought of, in the political sense, as having control over other humans. Freedom is often thought of, in the political sense, as a state of being in which one is not controlled by other humans. [One respondent says] Nobody is entirely free from the control or influence of others for any length of time. For brief periods, possibly- is this not why people rock climb or ride fast morbikes (sic, the commenter means “motorbikes”)? Ultimately the only permanent way to reject the control or influence of others is suicide, even if you are rich and powerful. But that's a zero sum game of a sort, too. […] [The original poster replies] […] I suppose I can also agree that no absolute political freedom exists, yet if we are all seeking political freedom, then it seems self-evident that we should seek to obtain as much as we can, other things being equal. [“Discussion of Power and Freedom,” posts # 1, 3, and 6 http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=173010 ] “There’s no such thing as absolute freedom”; “No one can really do whatever they want”; “Society limits our freedoms and rights,” etc. Such people are incapable of splitting up these different sources of that which prevents their ability to act on their desires. (Ayn Rand had a few words to say on this point. I’ll quote a few, and then move on: Freedom, in a political context, means freedom from government coercion. It does not mean freedom from the landlord, or freedom from the employer, or freedom from the laws of nature which do not provide men with automatic prosperity. It means freedom from the coercive power of the state—and nothing else. (From “Conservatism: An Obituary”) Foggy metaphors, sloppy images, unfocused poetry, and equivocations—such as “A hungry man is not free”—do not alter the fact that only political power is the power of physical coercion. (“America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business”) Do not be misled . . . by an old collectivist trick which goes like this: there is no absolute freedom anyway, since you are not free to murder; society limits your freedom when it does not permit you to kill; therefore, society holds the right to limit your freedom in any manner it sees fit; therefore, drop the delusion of freedom—freedom is whatever society decides it is. It is not society, nor any social right, that forbids you to kill—but the inalienable individual right of another man to live. This is not a “compromise” between two rights—but a line of division that preserves both rights untouched. The division is not derived from an edict of society—but from your own inalienable individual right. The definition of this limit is not set arbitrarily by society—but is implicit in the definition of your own right. Within the sphere of your own rights, your freedom is absolute. (“Textbook of Americanism”) http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/freedom.html ) By contrast, we’ll break up this heterogeneous understanding into three different, independent factors, each with their own examples: 1. Reality as such is not a producer of force: it’s the setting and context of all volitional action. Force is a special type of reality, which only pertains to people; not even animals are forcers: if a bird or a cat attacks you, then it’s like the laws governing combustion in that our topic revolves around morality, which only appertains to people. 2. A negating of your desires by others, in and of itself, is not force. People live their own lives and have their own possessions, so if they don’t want to give you something that you want then that isn’t force. This is where it’s important to remember that egoism is a principle which applies to all people, a principle reached by induction. It’s good for other people to pursue their own values and happiness too, and just because their desires or yours may be illegitimate or clash, doesn’t mean that they’re initiating force against you. There’s a difference between their refusing to comply with your desires when it’s their prerogative to make a decision about it, which isn’t force (even if they’re “in the wrong”), and those people using force to negate your desire, like physical violence. The difference comes down to: “we detest you (whether rightly or wrongly), so we won’t let you have X,” as against, “we hate you, so we’re going to dump you in the river with cement shoes”; this latter case is force. 3. This is a point that a child has to figure out. Parents of children are a special case, because they can initiate physical force against their children—this is an exception to the principle that “the initiation of physical force is evil,” because philosophy pertains to adults. As opposed to adults, there are separate rules for the transition from birth in which the child is building up his rational faculty, and the parents have a moral responsibility to raise the child, including the times when it’s necessary to punish the child against his will. Giving a kid “time-out,” for instance, isn’t voluntary for the child, and it isn’t retaliatory force necessarily: he might be cranky or reckless, etc. Children have to reach this point before they can understand the issue of “force” due to their being under their parent’s jurisdiction, such that they have to realize that a parent forcing them to do something is different from other kids or strangers forcing them to do something. And even within this framework, they have to make the distinction between firm, strict parents and criminal parents. Eventually, they’ll come to distinguish between parental privileges as opposed to some bully pushing them around without any right. Independently grasping these three will provide the means for you to move above simply “force vs. my desire,” with its confused meaning that anything that frustrates your desires is force. Reaching these distinctions will allow you to come to Ayn Rand’s view of “the initiation of physical force against the innocent.” This view is made within the context or framework of human behavior, contrasting “justified force by adults (i.e. retaliatory force),” and “unjustified force (i.e. initiatory force) by criminals, government officials, etc.” As a sort of preliminary induction, we can say from the above that the initiation of physical force is evil because it negates and destroys a victim’s selfish values and their fulfillment, any victim’s values. Force Negates and Discards Specific Conclusions of Your Mind To understand this point, we’d have to realize that the desires we have and the values we choose have their source in conclusions we’ve previously reached. Having taken notice of force, and making the connection, one could further generalize and claim that force not only negates the desire or value in question, but also the thinking that one had to engage in to value or desire it. It’s a big step cognitively, and can only be reached by induction. Another induction we’d reach as an extension of the prior one is that all values above the automatic level of consciousness are products of the ideas that we hold. We don’t necessarily have to reach a full knowledge of this principle to know it’s relation to force, because some people have a better or poorer understanding of the relationship between thought to values. We’d have to at least know that values originate from something, whether it’s the effects of different objects, the alternatives available to us whenever we choose, or knowledge about the means needed to achieve a certain value. The guiding principle to keep in mind is that we had to raise certain questions or concerns, make a firm decision about it and choose a value or goal, and an agent of force confronts you and says, “I don’t care what you want, give it to me!” The forcer isn’t merely against what you want, but specifically he’s against whatever you had to think in order to want it. Even here, you don’t need a theoretical grasp of the relation between thought and emotion, as this level of understanding can be reached based on common-sense observation, simply perceptual data without extrapolating to the broader principle that “all emotions and desires come from thinking.” The best examples here can be taken from introspection. The more casual you’ve decided that someone is a value to you, the less apparent it will be that your thoughts and conclusions were connected with the thing becoming valuable to you. Extreme cases would be people blindly following impulses or what some “value authority” (e.g. a fashion magazine columnist, “the Jones’,” a movie critic) tells them to desire—these kind of people probably won’t be able to determine why they chose the way they did. A person like Ayn Rand would easily understand that force opposes her conclusions; someone who normally doesn’t pay attention to what it is that conclusions impact or influence wouldn’t reach this idea until a long time later, and might need someone to point it out for him. Here’s an example. Picking a mattress: you consider its thread count (the higher the count, the smoother the mattress feels), its color, cost, composite material, and other features. A rival mattress manufacturer says, “take our mattress instead, or else!” The rival is not simply making you go against your values in this case, but also the totality of conclusions you already reached regarding it, and as a result, you’ll be furious or upset with him. Effectively, the manufacturer has invaded your mind, saying in respect to this value of yours, “these considerations and concerns of yours are expendable and pointless, toss them aside.” Contrast that with: You amble along absent-mindedly, pick out the first mattress you see, and that same rival pulls you along to his mattress and says, “here, take this one, and hurry up because we have a lot of customers.” You shrug, and simply buy it. That kind of person won’t have any reason for what he does, and he won’t be upset or angry whenever his reasons are being negated by someone else, because his “reasons” simply don’t exist. He would have an incredibly challenging time reaching the induction that thoughts, conclusions, and knowledge lead to desires, values and emotions. So from these kinds of examples, we can induce that “force negates your conclusions and knowledge,” the force makes your knowledge and thought useless in relation to it. This is the meaning behind Rand’s statement in Atlas Shrugged that, “to force him to act against his own judgment, is like forcing him to act against his own sight.” We’d have to connect that with the point that force is opposed to eyesight as such. Say that you wanted to walk home, but a forcer says, “discard your eyes, what you see is beside the point, you’ll walk wherever I want you to walk.” If you see the point clearly, that what you see allows you to walk to a destination, then you can later reach the point that force attacks the eyes as such. (Or any sense organ. Take taste for instance, “I don’t care how bad it tastes, eat it or you’ll regret it!”) But if you just thought, “I want to walk there,” then you won’t connect it to the point that force is an attack on your eyes as such, and you won’t reach the ultimate conclusion we’re approaching. Certainly, force eliminates the incentive or motivation to think, but the Objectivist point here is that force negates your action and thought, and your motivation is beside-the-point because force simply bypasses it. Ayn Rand put the point this way in Atlas Shrugged, “When you force a man to act against his own choice and judgment, it's his thinking that you want him to suspend.” Force Assaults the Faculty of Thought as Such, Stopping and Paralyzing Thoughts about Everything For this final induction, we have to induce a relation between physical force and mental paralysis, and this can be done by actually observing the paralysis and bring in the knowledge we have about the mind, using it to analyze and explain the paralysis. Some preliminary things need to be said about paralysis. It is not unique to force: all bad ideas (and even true ones in an unfortunate context, like the news of a dying friend) lead to paralysis of some sort—force simply bypasses the victim’s choice and leads to paralysis directly. Fundamentally, force leads to mental paralysis, not inexorably physical paralysis, although that can be a consequence. A false theory of ethics will paralyze you if you try to be consistent. If you’re a utilitarian, and you act to serve the greatest good for the greatest number, tossing aside all of your previous values, how would you know how to function? That theory purportedly has a “utilitarian calculus” designed to allow you to know what to do, but how do you know that using it will actually serve the goal you’re working for? Should you be a “rule utilitarian” like John S. Mill, or an “act utilitarian” like Bentham? You might try to alleviate your problems by listening to and accepting what others instruct you to do, but how does the “calculus” allow you to make a decision as to who to listen to? Should it be the person with the loudest voice, or the voice that expresses the most erudite sentences, or just whoever tells you to do whatever? Will you become pragmatic and just try a version of utilitarianism to see how it works? Or will you just break down dejectedly and do nothing? It doesn’t matter pointing out that the utilitarian has free will, because he’s put blocks in his own mind that work against his ability to operate properly. Free will doesn’t make someone omnipotent—the mind has certain requirements for properly functioning, and when you fill it with material which is in opposition to its ability to carry out action, then it’s pointless to say: “well, why don’t you just use free will?” A second example: the arbitrary cannot be proved or refuted—you just become stuck. Like Jesus Christ’s alleged supernatural ability to walk on water. There’s no way to prove it, and there’s nothing to think about regarding it. The mind just simply ceases to function in regard to that issue. These were two cases where the paralysis is the victim’s fault, because he accepted the immobilizing agent of his own choice, and he can terminate the paralysis by abolishing that item of his mind. Such is not the case with physical force. Force used against you is carried out by someone else, so the consequent paralysis is not your fault, but that’s also the lethal aspect of force: you can’t just get rid of the paralyzing agent like the other cases above. It’s the one and only way that another person can shut off your reason and mind, halting you mentally, which is not caused by your own mistakes, conclusions, or your despair. Here we could draw a genus of paralysis: Paralysis is against life. Life involves action, and the cessation or prevention of action is against life. 1. Paralysis of the body—polio, spinal injury, etc. 2. Paralysis of the mind Self-caused paralysis vs. externally caused paralysis Examples of self-caused paralysis: false moral codes, extreme depression, impossible goal that has to be achieved somehow, accepting the arbitrary, etc. Examples of externally caused paralysis: leaving aside some mind-crippling disease or virus, there’s only physical force. (This isn’t the basic distinction of this induction, because things like polio and arbitrary ideas aren’t the first things that are distinguished from force when one induces. The basic one is “force vs. persuasion”: Human interactions have consequences on the mind. This branches off into: interactions in which respect is given for the autonomy of the person (the method of persuasion), versus the interactions which negate or destroy the autonomy of the person (the method of force). But this isn’t helpful for noticing the specific evil of force, because it prevents us to paying attention to that fact that force paralyzes your mind, with no chance for you to remove the paralyzing agent just by rethinking something alone.) To reach this induction, you would have to observe the paralysis that force produces in its victims. To properly observe this, it would do us well to use a method of induction first introduced by Francis Bacon, and then later incorporated into the “induction” theories of the famous astronomer John Herschel and Utilitarian/logician John S. Mill: what Mill termed the method of “concomitant variations.” In this method, one element increases or expands, and when it does, another element increases as well, and they are related as cause to its effect: the more gas you blow into a balloon, for instance, the bigger the balloon swells, with all over relevant factors being equal. In the case of force and thought, however, this relationship in inversed: as the amount of force increases, the amount of thinking the victim does decreases. If force is restricted to a certain subject (like the mattress example), then the amount of thinking you do will be paralyzed only in that area. But soon it becomes the same general pattern as a bully initially taking your lunch money and then moving on to your coat, watch etc., and finally bullying you whenever he gets a chance, constantly using force against you. At first, you only experience force in this one area, but eventually, you observe that the force, and the resulting mental paralysis, keeps expanding and becoming worse. If the forcer isn’t stopped completely, then the force grows, and the amount of paralysis grows along with it, and if the force becomes total, such as in relentless torture, then so does the mental paralysis. It’s a matter of degrees. The point isn’t that every act of force totally negates and paralyzes the person’s ability to think. The issue is that a given act of force on an innocent man will inexorably lead to, if left unopposed, total, unmitigated paralysis for all the victims involved eventually (which could take a long time, even generations) and this all works gradually. You can’t shut off the mind without using total force, and restricting the force only restricts the paralysis on the victim’s mind, but this restriction is only operative for a definite amount of time, until staying on this course finally leads the victim to total force and total paralysis. A relationship example: A woman is feeling unhappy with staying at home, and comes to the conclusion that she needs a new job. She thinks about herself and previous jobs she’s had, and concludes that she’d make a good secretary for a business, or a public relations representative. When she tells her boyfriend about what she wants to do, he reacts violently and hits her several times, because he wants her to stay at home and sees her as somehow rebelling against him. As is, this is now a problem outside of the woman’s mind’s ability to deal with. The boyfriend’s use of force isn’t an ordinary new fact of reality, that could still be integrated with everything else, and that could lead her to some non-contradictory plan to get around it and thereby achieve her goal. His fists are no different from guns in this respect, because they simply negate whatever she’s thought about and decided. In this early stage of wife-beating, she’s still capable of an enormous range of thought—she could think about how to morally reform him, how to obey him and avoid being hurt any further, how to leave him and find someone else, how to charge him with assault and battery, or even how to take the law into her own hands. But to the extent that she thinks about the options she initially started with, namely to apply to be either a business secretary or a PR representative, she’ll simply be paralyzed. She’s still motivated to act, but she’s been stripped of the means required to actually think about her initial job concerns. She needs to observe the facts, including facts about herself, use logic, connect mental items, but in this job issue her boyfriend’s telling her, “don’t do that, because my (brutally-enforced) wants must have priority over your mind’s connection with the facts.” This is the standard case of force-induced paralysis: On one side, there’s, “I must think about this item because that’s the reality,” and on the other, “I can’t think about this, because the gun will go off, the fists will fly, etc.” And when you’re confronted with “I must” versus “I can’t,” you give up the “I must,” because there’s nothing you can do about the “I can’t.” The mind is an organ of cognition, it integrates and connects things and that is its function. Force interferes with this, making it necessary for the mind to ignore crucial knowledge, work hard not to connect mental items, accept revelations (like those of a gun-wielder) in the process of thinking, etc. In regard to things like this, it doesn’t matter if the person has free will or not, because these sorts of things cannot be done to the mind with impunity. It’s important to recognize how force makes thinking about some issue literally impossible, because you’re no longer a sovereign thinker on the issue that the force is negating, and to think about it will simply mean that you’re evading your knowledge about the force. Consider if the girlfriend ingeniously thinks of a third way, to work while at home, thus satisfying her need for purpose while seemingly complying with her boyfriend’s orders. Even so, she still, metaphorically, had to surgically remove and discard her earlier mental contents about the secretary and PR rep. positions. Some time passes, and the boyfriend finally decides that he doesn’t want her working at home, and beats on her some more, and eventually, he decides that he doesn’t want her to have a job at all, even if that’s how she can become happy, all the while still beating on her. Now, without addressing her abusive boyfriend in one way or another, she cannot think of how to work to become happy, because her ability to act on her decisions on this has been beaten out of her, literally. So, the issue isn’t the lack of motivation or of free will, but epistemological impossibility. The logical conclusion is his sadistically controlling all of her decisions, hitting her for any perceived wrong, work-related or not, and then eventually hurting her for no reason at all, with her fearfully submitting until he goes too far one day and kills her. What starts off as circumscribed force and the resulting paralysis in a circumscribed area or issue, becomes a progressive development leading to the total use of force and the total paralysis and suppression of thought. This is what Ayn Rand meant in Atlas Shrugged, when the hero John Galt says, “Whoever, to whatever purpose or extent, initiates the use of force, is a killer acting on the premise of death in a manner wider than murder: the premise of destroying man's capacity to live.” From the inductions we’ve been covering until now, we’ve seen the role of reason in human life: we know that we need mental integration, thought, abstraction, concepts, objectivity, production, etc. Reason is our means of survival, but force bypasses it and opposes it. It negates and paralyzes our reason and makes us act in contradiction to what we know and value and desire. Rand elaborates on the effect of force on reason, while also describing the metaphysical position it puts its victim in: Reality demands of man that he act for his own rational interest; your gun demands of him that he act against it. Reality threatens man with death if he does not act on his rational judgment; you threaten him with death if he does. ( http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/physical_force.html) Force puts the victim in a position where he has to disintegrate and evade his own knowledge, defy the facts about himself and reality, and follow the orders of the forcer to avoid either himself or his values becoming damaged or destroyed. Peikoff put the point this way in Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand, “When reality is decreed, at gunpoint, to be out of bounds, a rational mind has no way to proceed.” (p. 312) Now, we’ve reached the conclusion. The “initiation of physical force” is evil because it goes against the victim’s desires, the specific conclusions of his reason, and it negates and paralyzes the mind, suppressing the faculty of reason and leaving him helpless to deal with reality. Meta-blog, automatic cross-post

The aim of this essay is to reduce the principle that “the initiation of physical force is evil.” (This issue has important connections to individual rights, but for now we’ll focus on the moral aspect of physical force, not what a government should do about it, and not what people should do about it (namely, retaliate against it and banish it from their relationships with others).) “Force,” in this context, means the initiation of physical force, not “gravitational” force or persuasive force. The guiding concrete should be: “do as I say, or I’ll bash your skull in.” It’s a human violation of your choice or desire through physical, not psychological means. Persuasion can be subtle, or lead to debatable issues, but physical force is not debatable, and it’s available to the senses, like a punch or kidnapping someone. The dictionary definition: “strength or power exerted upon an object.” For “coerce,” we have: “to compel by physical strength or intimidation, without regard for individual desire or volition.” There’s one example of an indirect form of force that we’ll allow in this reduction and induction, and that’s fraud: you deceive a person by making him do something for you but refuse to give him what you agreed to give him as compensation, in effect doing the same thing that could normally only be accomplished through physical force. It would be a rationalist way of thinking to say: “There are only two paths for dealing with people: reason or force, persuasion or coercion. Reason is good, therefore force must be bad, evil.” What about evil people who do neither? Evil people who use neither reason nor force to settle disputes or handle problems? An example would be someone using malicious lies and rumors to ruin another person’s reputation: that wouldn’t be force, but isn’t using reason either; rather, it's an irrational, emotionalist sort of manipulation of other people. Or the Critique of Pure Reason, which isn’t force, but isn’t reason either: rather, it plays on people’s poor understanding of their own philosophical concepts, and tricks them into conclusions that they had never intended to reach. Rand states on many occasions that there are two basic ways, two ways in essence, to deal with people, implying that there are other, derivative ways (like through an emotional tantrum), precisely to include cases like the above. If someone were to progress in this rationalist way, they would reach the point that reason and force are antagonists, and then they would become stuck in issues like this: Let’s say that a person won’t listen to reason, and someone forces him “in the name of reason”? Like the (long since repealed) 18th Amendment, which prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcohol: there were temperance societies and Progressive advocates who argued that alcohol destroys families and leads to various immoral behaviors, and industrial factory owners supported prohibition because it gave them more efficient, sober workers to perform jobs for them. If the people were reasonable, these people believed, then they would just give up alcohol on their own, but they won’t, so we need the government to force them to do the rational thing. So here, we seem to have force being the means to the victory of reason, to reason and morality prevailing over ignorance, indifference, and immorality. (Prohibition, back in those times, was known as “The Noble Experiment.”) It’s harder to see how force and reason can be opposites, with cases like this. Or, how about this rationalist argument: “Well, we still have free will while under force. If we have free will, then we can choose what to do with our mind, including thinking, right? Therefore, we still must be able to think under force, and therefore Rand has to be wrong when she says that force destroys reason and thought.” These are two rationalist arguments, with opposite conclusions. As opposed to rationalists, let’s discuss what concretes or examples we’ll need to understand what force is. This topic is one of the easiest of the principles induced thus far, because force is perceivable. Unlike the other principles, where there are potentially countless kinds of justice or reason being used as a tool of survival, there are really only three kinds of the initiation of physical force: 1. The first is crime: robbery, assault, rape, murder, kidnapping, etc., or the threat of any of these. 2. Government: it has a monopoly on force in a given area, and its history of warped political priorities (like communism's abolishment of property and enslavement of its people) has made it the most plentiful source of examples for the topic of “force.” 3. Non-prosecutable crime: these cases have no proof of contract and/or no way to show damages. These are often judgment calls that parents have the right to make with minors, but that entities like the government do not have the right to make. An example would a parent promising to get her kid a toy after he finished cleaning his room, and reneges on the promise after he finishes—this wastes the kid’s time and effort, going against his choice and his motivation through physical means (by not taking the physical actions necessary to give the kid a toy.) The conclusion we want to reach in order to see how the initiation of physical force is evil is the principle that "force is anti-mind," it destroys the cognitive processes of reason as such, and this is the ultimate Objectivist reason for the initiation of physical force being evil. In order to reach that, you’d have to know that force attacks particular conclusions that you hold, conclusions that you worked hard mentally to reach and grasp. Once you knew this, then you could later understand how force does something more expansive to the cognitive faculty as such. Force isn’t just against the body, you learn, but impacts the mind, wreaks havoc upon it, and from that you could reach the next level and claim that force is against the whole mind. The next step is to figure out something about your conclusions, namely, what are they, and how do you reach them. If you just told someone, “force attacks your conclusions,” most people wouldn’t understand that, because force doesn’t directly assault a conclusion or idea that you have. Rather, force attacks conclusions indirectly by clashing with people’s desires, force makes you do something that you don’t want to do. This is our direct evidence of force from reality, and the end of the reduction. Meta-blog, automatic cross-post

[Previous post in the series: "Induction of Objectivity (Ayn Rand)"] The aim of this essay is to reduce the principle that “the initiation of physical force is evil.” Continue...[url={url}]Link to Original[/url]