Your thoughts on Hume's case against induction?

[Fred Weiss]

Well I wasn't meaning that people should/could assign exact numerical values to how certain they were about something, I was just trying to get across that your certainty about something would be measured relative to your certainty about everything else (as in 'more' certain or 'less' certain) rather than as a binary relation where you either had certainty or you didnt. Numbers help to make this point, but I'm not saying people should actually think in terms of them.

Except that you can't relate it to anything if you are also uncertain about what you are relating it to, what your standard of measure is, and whether that relating is valid.

If you say that you are more certain of X than Y, I assume that means that you have more evidence for X than Y. Well, are you certain of that evidence? You're not? So on what basis are you more certain?

The general point is that the notion of more or less certainty presupposes the validity of evidence. However, if you question the validity of evidence - if it, too, is subject to doubt - then you have nothing.

I am still of the opinion that "degrees of certainty" is a valid idea, though I acknowledge that it may not be in strict accord with the Objectivist view of it. However, if there are degrees of certainty it still presupposes conclusiveness, i.e. certainty, simple, i.e. that about which there is no basis for rational doubt.

You know, one can always doubt but that doesn't mean there is any rational basis for it. And, that we don't know everything, or even in principle that we could know (literally) everything, doesn't mean we can't know something, in fact a great deal. Or, in other words, omniscience is not a prerequisite for knowledge. Or, the fact that we are fallible, that we might be in error, doesn't mean that we in fact are in error with regard to any specific bit of knowledge - and doesn't mean that we can't *know*, i.e be certain that we are not in error.

Is there any rational basis for questioning whether the earth orbits the sun or that a cow can't jump over the moon?

Fred Weiss

[DPW]

I agree with you here. Certainty is essential precisely because we are infalliable - its a way of describing degrees of belief.

This is the problem with your entire approach. "Degrees of belief" is an epistemological non-starter. The question is: what do we know and what don't we know?

For facts such as "There is a computer in front of me right now," we either know it or we don't. For some complex items of knowledge, however, there is a period where we don't yet know whether an idea is true or false. We have some evidence but not conclusive evidence. It would be wrong to say, "I believe it a little bit." Instead you say, "It's possible this is true," or "It's probably true," depending on how much evidence you have.

"Belief" is a worthless concept in this context. It adds nothing except confusion, because properly speaking, knowledge isn't a species of belief, but of awareness. "Belief" refers primarily (not solely, but primarily) to ideas taken on faith, which is exactly what you advocate. You simply want to say that some ideas require less faith than others, which you describe by 'degrees of certainty.'

I say you can't justify such a way of talking.

If we were infallible then we would just say that we were either 0% or 100% about everything in the wolrd (depending on whether it was false or true respectively) - in a way certainty would become synonymous with knowledge.

No, if we were infallible the concept wouldn't arise. This is the problem with taking concepts as given, rather than formed. You don't know where they stand in the conceptual hierarchy.

As this is not the case, certainty is useful for describing how confident we are about something - in other words, how much faith we have in our predictions.

If you want to indulge in faith, that's fine by me. But then we're talking about two different things, because I'm concerned with knowledge , not faith.

No. I explicitly said that it would be irrational to doubt something of which you are 99% certain. The fact that something isnt 100% certain does not mean that it is open to doubt. I do not have doubts that I will make it home safely whenever I leave my house, although obviously I cannot claim 100% certainty on this fact.

Ignoring for a moment the false view that certainty can be anything except 100%, let me ask you this: can you doubt things that are 98% certain? What if they are only 96%? 92%? What's the cut off point?

Actually, I'm only kidding. I know your answer. As you explained to Fred, we don't really assign values to our beliefs. We just kinda feel that something is really really certain, or that it is only a little certain; and then we just kinda feel that we shouldn't doubt things that are really really certain, but we should doubt things that are only a little certain. I say you're just trying to dress up faith and emotionalism in the veneer of reason.

[aynfan]

I am absolutely certain that 2 + 2 = 4. There are no 'new conditions' that are going to ever invalidate this knowledge, nor is there anything that I could possibly discover about the universe that is going to stop 2 + 2 equalling 4.

Nimble here is an amusing aside for you. 2qts of water mixed with 2 qts of ethyl alcohol yield 3.86 qts of liquid, at 15.56 degrees C.

[DPW]

Nimble here is an amusing aside for you.  2qts of water mixed with 2 qts of ethyl alcohol yield 3.86 qts of liquid, at 15.56 degrees C.

Nice. That's just the example I was trying to recall, but could not. Thanks!

[Capitalism Forever]

Betsy's Law for Inductive Certainty - "If you know, or can discover, enough about an entity to reduce your inductive conclusion about it to a statement of identity, you can be certain."

Could you give an example of applying this law?

[nimble]

Nimble here is an amusing aside for you.  2qts of water mixed with 2 qts of ethyl alcohol yield 3.86 qts of liquid, at 15.56 degrees C.

have you taken a math class (not to sound condescending) the principle behind addition is that you must add like terms in order for the principles to work. 2+2=4 isnt the same as 2a+2b.

[danielshrugged]

have you taken a math class (not to sound condescending) the principle behind addition is that you must add like terms in order for the principles to work. 2+2=4 isnt the same as 2a+2b.

That operation obviously isn't meant to be performed simply as addition, but it's still a statement of identity.

[Fred Weiss]

....and like certainty, you wouldnt need '100% love' in order to claim that you loved someone. If you only loved a person 93% or so it would still be perfectly rational to claim that there was love.

By way of example, this makes my point. In order to know that you are <insert whatever degree you want here> in love with someone, you have to *know* what love is. If you are not sure what love is or what constitutes evidence of it, you can't measure it or compare the different degrees of it.

Or consider, if you want to say that you are more in love with Jane than Mary, wouldn't you have to be *certain* that you are experiencing certain emotions more intensely toward Jane than Mary. If you can't do that then you are just confused as between them and there is no basis for a comparison.

The same thing applies to the degree or scaling of anything - including "probability" generally. This is why some such notion as "it's all probable" is a stolen concept. Unless you are certain of something, you wouldn't be able to judge the degrees of knowledge which lead you toward it and you...err...certainly wouldn't know when you are close to it, but didn't quite have it yet. If you are close to it, but don't yet have it, what is missing? And when you have what is missing, what do you have then? If you can't ever have what is missing, and therefore never be certain of anything, then you can't have *any* knowledge, not a shred of it. You'll always just have some, but never all - in an infinite regress leading to...zero.

I'd like to acknowledge that it was something Don Watkins said on this subject in a different discussion setting - particularly in regard to the infinite regress problem - which helped me to grasp this point.

Dave Odden has for some time had a good grasp of how scepticism ultimately devolves into nihilism.

And I'm still pondering Steven Speicher's argument with me that certainty is a "singularity" not subject to degrees.

Fred Weiss

[Fred Weiss]

...I explicitly said that it would be irrational to doubt something of which you are 99% certain. The fact that something isnt 100% certain does not mean that it is open to doubt. I do not have doubts that I will make it home safely whenever I leave my house, although obviously I cannot claim 100% certainty on this fact.

I disagree with this. If you are 99% certain of something, then there is room for doubt, small as it may be, and it is something you should factor into your thinking.

And your example proves the point. The reason why you drive carefully, even though you know that you have gotten home safely 99 times out of the last 100 (or even 999 out of the last 1000), is that the other time raised your insurance premiums by 30% and nearly got you killed. Driving, or handling any dangerous instrument, has the potential to do you serious damage even as a result of one small momentary lapse in focus - not to mention how you must keep one eye also on others around you.

While there is a great deal you can be certain of in driving - and you'd better be (such as knowing where the brake pedal is or how to signal left or right) - being certain that you will never have an accident is a very dangerous assumption to be on. In fact, that's a certainty.

Fred Weiss

[DavidOdden]

And I'm still pondering Steven Speicher's argument with me that certainty is a "singularity" not subject to degrees. 

As far as I know, I also hold the "singularity" POV, so while Stephen's the definitive authority on his understanding of the situation, I'm the definitive authority on my understanding of the situation. So I butt in. Also, Spearmint hasn't responded to my subtle and less than subtle requests for clarification about what he thinks certainty is, which bears on this question.

To provide the background (and 'cuz as I read over this part a number of times, I can't put it better myself at least when talking to an Objectist), I will quote extensively from OPAR ch. 5, just to provide the basic reference point.

p. 174-5 'So far, I have considered only two mental states, knowledge and ignorance, and two corresponding verdicts to define an idea's status: "validated" or "unknown. Inherent in the mind's need of logic, however, is a third, intermediate status, which applies for a while to certain complex higher-level conclusions. In these cases, the validation of an idea is gradual; one accumulates evidence step by step, moving from ignorance to knowledge through a continuum of transitional states. The main divisions of this continuum (including its terminus) are identified by three concepts: "possible," "probable," and "certain".

(p 178) 'Like possibilities, probabilities are asserted within a context and may be weakened or strengthened as it changes. If favorable evidence continues to be discovered, at some point the cognitive climax will be reached. The conclusion ceases to be a hypothesis and becomes knowledge. Such a conclusion is certain.'

(p. 179) 'A conclusion is "certain" when the evidence in its favor is conclusive; i.e., when it has been logically validated. At this stage, one has gone beyond "substantial" evidence. Rather, the total of the available evidence points in a single direction, and this evidence fulfills the standard of proof. In such a context, there is nothing to suggest even the possibility of another interpretation. There are, therefore, no longer any grounds for doubt'.

Peikoff is speaking of the relationship between a conclusion and evidence (knowledge) supporting the conclusion. The evidential continuum is indeed a continuum, and it encompasses utter ignorance on the low end to certainty on the high end. But certainty is not the same as the evidentiary continuum -- you can't be in any degree "certain" that an arbitrary claim is true. And you dang well shouldn't claim that a merely "possible" claim is to some extent "certain".

The singularity / sharpness of certainty comes from this: you are certain when "there is nothing to suggest even the possibility of another interpretation". The defining characteristic of certainty is "lack of reason to disbelieve" (emphasize reason with obvious grounding in observation ergo knowledge). If a reason to disbelieve a conclusion exists, the conclusion is not certain, it is merely "probable" (adjectival expressions like "very highly" could be added -- as you know, I'm not so interested in probable).

[Betsy]

Could you give an example of applying this law?

Here's an example I used in a short paper on Inductive Certainty:

Let's take the proposition "All men are mortal."  Another way of

saying this is that there is something about being a man which causes

all men to eventually die.

We know that all men have certain biological characteristics in common

with all other men (and all higher animals):  we are composed of

cells which can die or malfunction, our bodies consist of complex

interrelated systems with some vital, irreplaceable components and

moving parts which wear out with time and use, etc., etc.

Once we know enough about what we are, we know how what we are

causes  our mortality.  Since causality is the law of identity

applied to actions, we have established a relationship of identity

between humanity and mortality.  The characteristics which make an

entity human are the same  characteristics which make him mortal.

Another example I have used is the Theory of Evolution which shows that if an organism is able to survive, then it is able to survive.

[Fred Weiss]

As far as I know, I also hold the "singularity" POV, so while Stephen's the definitive authority on his understanding of the situation, I'm the definitive authority on my understanding of the situation. So I butt in.

Since I was gracious enough to acknowledge my indebtedness to a number of people in regard to various aspects of this matter, including you, you could at least have the decency to reciprocate - in this instance that you undoubtedly learned how to be a butt-insky from me, especially since...err... more often than not I was doing it to you.

<snip Mr. Buttinsky's appeal to authority - albeit a fairly respectable one>

The evidential continuum is indeed a continuum, and it encompasses utter ignorance on the low end to certainty on the high end. But certainty is not the same as the evidentiary continuum -- you can't be in any degree "certain" that an arbitrary claim is true. And you dang well shouldn't claim that a merely "possible" claim is to some extent "certain".

Now in this case the authority being yourself, I certainly want to accord it the utmost deference. But with all due respect to your authority on the subject, could you dang well ever legitimately say that you are more - or less - certain of something, in which case that would suggest a continuum of certainty - allowing I would assume some small degree of doubt in some instances on up to no doubt whatever in others? Could you also ever say, on the awareness of more evidence, that you are even more certain now about something than you were before?

Fred Weiss

[DPW]

Fred, since you were gracious enough to acknowledge your indebtedness to a number of people in regard to various aspects of this matter, including me, I shall have the decency to reciprocate - in this instance that I undoubtedly learned how to be a butt-insky from you.

That said, you said:

But with all due respect to your authority on the subject, could you dang well ever legitimately say that you are more - or less - certain of something, in which case that would suggest a continuum of certainty - allowing I would assume some small degree of doubt in some instances on up to no doubt whatever in others? Could you also ever say, on the awareness of more evidence, that you are even more certain now about something than you were before?

Let's put it another way: Could you say, on the awareness of more evidence, that you are even less doubtful of a certain idea than you were before? Well, no, because you didn't doubt the idea. It was certain meaning any doubt would have been arbitrary.

In my view, the concepts "doubt" and "certainty" are action concepts: one says, "Seek more evidence." The other says, "Move on to other ideas, this one is proved."

Consider one of the questions we frequently encounter from people like Gordon Sollars: "What good is your certainty if it admits of the possibility of error?" The answer is, as an action concept. It tells you when you can take a given idea as knowledge, when you no longer have to seek out more evidence, when you can concern yourself with expanding your context of knowledge, when you can safely act on an idea.

Now, we're not pragmatists - the reason "certainty" is a useful action concept is because it is tied to evidence, i.e., it tells us the relationship of an idea to the standard of evidence, but that doesn't change the fact that the value of certainty follows from its directive: move on!

That said, I see no sense in which some ideas could be more certain than others. A less certain idea, if that is to mean anything, would be one we were more hesitant to trust and to act on, i.e., it would have to be an idea we doubted.

Oh, and also what Dave Odden said.

[Fred Weiss]

That said, I see no sense in which some ideas could be more certain than others.  A less certain idea, if that is to mean anything, would be one we were more hesitant to trust and to act on, i.e., it would have to be an idea we doubted.

But I think that is exactly right, that there are certain ideas which, while we may consider ourselves certain of them (the evidence is strong and there is no contrary evidence), we don't quite yet fully trust them in all areas. Or in other words, the evidence may be strong, but it is not yet overwhelming. To use my "slam-dunk" definition of certainty, the evidence is not yet "massive and overwhelming, repeatedly confirmed and re-confirmed (with of course no contrary evidence)."

So, to give a mundane example, I'm absolutely certain that cars start when you turn the key in the ignition...but I'm only pretty certain that mine will if I try it later today. To give a more serious example (assuming Bob Kolker was right), Newton would have been justified in considering his theory certain, but, given the magnitude of his discovery to science, it really required a considerable amount of confirmation, some of which didn't happen until some time after his death. If I recall correctly, AR comments on just this point in ITOE.

(I should mention that some of the people referenced in my exchange with Don, e.g. Gordon Sollars, Bob Kolker, are adversaries we have debated on this and other issues for many years on another forum.)

Fred Weiss

[DPW]

So, to give a mundane example, I'm absolutely certain that cars start when you turn the key in the ignition...but I'm only pretty certain that mine will if I try it later today.

Let's start here: do cars start when you turn the ignition? Yes, under certain circumstances: the battery is working, there is gas in the car, etc. The question you have to ask when you consider whether your car will start today is, do those conditions obtain? I don't think you can be certain that they do unless you check them, but once you do, you can be certain that your car will start (usually, of course, we check the easy way...by trying to start the car!).

But what if it doesn't? What if a new factor that you couldn't have known about causes the car not to start? Well, that's what context covers. Your conclusion was not, "My car will start no matter what new factors enter into the equation," but, "Given all the factors of which I am aware, this car will start - if it doesn't, I will seek to discover what new factors are relevant to cars starting."

The relevant point was that in the cases where you could be certain, your certainty was the same. But before you checked your car, all you had was a high level of probability. In no case do I see a justification for saying that some instances of certainty are more certain than others.

As for the Newton example: that's a good one, and one worth dealing with, but I am much too ignorant of the relevant science to comment.

[F*ckCommunism]

I'm showing my greenness here but

Hume is saying, in effect, that just because the sun comes up everyday, we can not say with certainy that it will rise tomorrow; that anomolies can and do arise in the physical universal over which we have no control and no foreknowledge. 

Sure, and that's exactly what is covered by context. When I say, "I am certain the sun will rise tomorrow, in my present context of knowledge," what I am saying is, given all the conditions so far discovered, the sun must "rise" tomorrow

how does contextual differ from subjective?

[DPW]

how does contextual differ from subjective?

The same way apples differ from nipples - they're completely different things.

Unlike subjectivism, Objectivism demands correspondence to reality, but it also recognizes that that correspondence must take place within a context.

P.S. Please attribute your quotes and attribute them properly. I wrote the second paragraph you quoted but not the first.

[Socionomer]

When one is 100% percent certain of something then one should be willing to be 100% wrong ( a parachutist who is 100% certain he packed his chute properly).

[Betsy]

But I think that is exactly right, that there are certain ideas which, while we may consider ourselves certain of them (the evidence is strong and there is no contrary evidence), we don't quite yet fully trust them in all areas. Or in other words, the evidence may be strong, but it is not yet overwhelming. To use my "slam-dunk" definition of certainty, the evidence is not yet "massive and overwhelming, repeatedly confirmed and re-confirmed (with of course no contrary evidence)."

Using Betsy's Law for Inductive Certainty -- "If you know, or can discover, enough about an entity to reduce your inductive conclusion about it to a statement of identity, you can be certain" -- what you are saying is that there is a lot of evidence that something causes what you see, but you have not yet discovered what reduces it to an identity.

Howard Roark knew, for a long time, that something was very different in the way he approached life compared to most people. When he identified second-handedness, it was the cause that reduced all his observations to an identity. It (secondhandedness) was what it (every instance of that behavior) was. He had "slam-dunked" it.

[Betsy]

how does contextual differ from subjective?

The context is REAL.

[Capitalism Forever]

Another example I have used is the Theory of Evolution which shows that if an organism is able to survive, then it is able to survive.

Aha, I think I get it! Thanks for the examples.

Does your law work the other way around as well? That is, is it true that you cannot be certain of your inductive conclusion unless you have reduced it to an identity?

[DPW]

Aha, I think I get it! Thanks for the examples.

Does your law work the other way around as well? That is, is it true that you cannot be certain of your inductive conclusion unless you have reduced to an identity?

I can't speak for Betsy of course, but the answer, in my view, is no, you cannot be certain unless you reduce an inductive conclusion to an identity. Otherwise, what you have is a correlation, which - even if it is a 100% correlation - is not necessarily a causal connection.

[Fred Weiss]

I can't speak for Betsy of course, but the answer, in my view, is no, you cannot be certain unless you reduce an inductive conclusion to an identity.  Otherwise, what you have is a correlation, which - even if it is a 100% correlation - is not necessarily a causal connection.

I'm not sure what you (or Betsy) mean by "reducing it to an identity". Are you saying that you can't be certain that if you push a glass off a table that it won't crash to the floor unless you understand the physics of it?

Also none of you really responded yet to my contention that it is perfectly valid to refer to your view of something that you are more - or less - certain of it than something else. And, that you could say of something, "I'm even more certain of it now than I was before". This would suggest that certainty is not necessarily a "singularity" and could allow for a continuum.

Stephen once tried to explain to me why this view of mine causes some problems but I wasn't clear what his point was and I remain unconvinced.

Incidentally, I don't think Peikoff is definitive on this subject, though he appears to favor your view of it more than mine. The point is though that I don't think his view of it necessarily precludes mine.

I have a trick question for you. Which do you think is more certain - that smoking causes cancer or that a cow can't jump over the moon?

Fred Weiss

P.S.: One of the anti-Objectivist academics on hpo - I think it may have been Churl Beck - contended that "furniture" (and some other concepts) don't have any apparent CCD's (Conceptual Common Denominators) throwing AR's entire theory of concepts into question. Don, do I understand it that you think you have an answer to this challenge on your web page? I thought I saw what appeared to be a comment of yours which addresses this question. Am I correct?

[DavidOdden]

Also none of you really responded yet to my contention that it is perfectly valid to refer to your view of something that you are more - or less - certain of it than something else. And, that you could say of something, "I'm even more certain of it now than I was before".

When you use the word "certain" as a synonym for "confident", you're right that you can say "I'm (more) certain" or "I'm not so certain". In that case, you're reporting a feeling, and relating it to a point on the continuum of evidence. Where does "certainty" begin for you? I presume (but am not certain) that it's before Peikoff's "no reason to doubt" point. You said earlier "we may consider ourselves certain of them (the evidence is strong and there is no contrary evidence), we don't quite yet fully trust them in all areas". This says that there can be some doubts (specifically: reasons to disbelieve), which given Peikoff's identification is prior to certainty. In your view, what identifies certainty, and distinguishes it from similar concepts like "probability"? Is there a difference between certainty and confidence?

Don's point about "action concepts" is on the money: we need to distinguish the states of consciousness where there is a reason to not say "This is a fact", vs. those states where we do not have a reason to be skeptical (given the importance of identifying facts). If "certainty" isn't the correct term for making that distinction, I don't know what is. Of course you can be in the singular state of certainty -- no reason to doubt -- and still have varying amounts of evidence for the conclusion. I think the difference here is in whether you consider "certain" to be about conclusions or people.

P.S.: One of the anti-Objectivist academics on hpo - I think it may have been Churl Beck - contended that "furniture" (and some other concepts) don't have any apparent CCD's (Conceptual Common Denominators) throwing AR's entire theory of concepts into question.

His complaint in the Attack on Objectivist Epistemology thread was totally off the wall, and nothing more than a complaint about phrasing in her definition of furniture.

BTW I am frankly puzzled at the nature of my indecency and ingraciousness which you referred to -- it certainly was not my intent to snub you. I've learned much from reading your posts, and let me take this opportunity on this forum to acknowledge your contributions to my understanding of Objectivism. They are numerous enough that I can't list them (plus, I don't keep lists).

[Betsy]

Does your law work the other way around as well? That is, is it true that you cannot be certain of your inductive conclusion unless you have reduced it to an identity?

Correct. You might have a lot of evidence that integrates well with what you already know, but until you have reduced your conclusion to an identity, you don't really know why it is so and why it has to be so.

Until you establish the cause that reduces your explanation to an identity, you may have a high degree of probability and, perhaps, some good leads and hypotheses as to what the actual cause might be, but you don't yet have certainty.