[Long post ahead…]
Most of what I know about the arbitrary comes from Leonard Peikoff’s OPAR. However, although I think his presentation is clear, I’ve noticed that my understanding of the concept seems to differ somewhat from that of some of the other people on this board, so I want to state what I think he means. So this post is my interpretation of OPAR, or perhaps it would be more apt to say I’m writing an elaboration on OPAR to establish how I’m interpreting it, and I’d like to think my interpretation is pretty straightforward, but we’ll see.
First I want to establish a difference between a fact and a claim.
A fact (which can also be called a piece of evidence) is something out there in reality, and it is true by definition. A fact can never be false, and a fact can never be arbitrary.
Some facts are available to direct perception, but others aren’t. Some facts have to be discovered by inference, such as the existence of neutrinos. Other facts are man-made, such as two people being married.
A claim, on the other hand (which can also be called a proposition, an assertion, a statement, a sentence, or a group of sentences) is something that somebody says (or writes). It might be true, or it might be false, or it might be arbitrary.
If I say “There is a 4K monitor in front of me right now,” then that is a claim. The existence of the 4K monitor itself, however, is a fact (unless I am mistaken or lying, in which case the claim would be false and the fact would be different from what I claimed. But we would never say that the fact is false.)
When Peikoff identifies the arbitrary in OPAR, everything he says amounts to the idea that the status of “arbitrary” can only be given to a claim, and not a fact:
Quote
An arbitrary claim is one for which there is no evidence, either perceptual or conceptual. It is a brazen assertion , based neither on direct observation nor on any attempted logical inference therefrom… The answer to all such statements , according to Objectivism, is: an arbitrary claim is automatically invalidated. The rational response to such a claim is to dismiss it, without discussion, consideration, or argument. [bold added]
This is why I claim that a fact can never be arbitrary.
But a claim can be.
Whenever people are arguing in a forum, all they can do is make claims. Strictly speaking, the facts are not on the forum (except for facts about what somebody previously wrote on the forum). Facts are “out there” in reality. So anything I can write on this forum, or even link to, is actually a claim. And because it’s a claim, it could be true, false, or arbitrary, and it’s up to you to figure out which. So how does one begin to do that?
There are facts that are immediately available to you, possibly even in front of your own eyes, and in that case it’s pretty easy.
There are also facts that are not immediately available. For example, consider the claim that neutrinos exist. Do they? I have to admit that I have not personally verified that they do. I haven’t done the experiments and I don’t have the proper equipment to do them. Would it then be fair to claim, then, that maybe scientists made up neutrinos in order to get more grant money?
In this case I think the claim that neutrinos exist is more credible than the claim that scientists made them up, mostly because when you ask people why they claim that neutrinos exist, you get led to lab results and to mathematical relationships between them. (And when you ask why the mathematical relationships exist, you get led back to more lab results.) In particular, when you measure radioactive decay, and you do the math about what goes in versus what comes out, you end up with something “missing” in what comes out. This was the theoretical basis for the idea of the neutrino – that the neutrino was what was missing. It was also mathematically predicted that neutrinos interact with matter, albeit rarely, and then experiments were done and the interaction was actually observed. In principle, at least, I could make the same observations myself. It would be expensive and difficult for me to run such experiments, but the fact that the claimants are appealing, ultimately, to direct perception and to reasoning from that, is what gives this claim credibility.
The idea that “neutrinos are a lie made up by scientists,” on the other hand, actually clashes with all that evidence (just like the Christian claim that evolution is a big scientific fraud and that the truth is creationism and Noah’s Ark and the like). Each time you claim that one of the scientists’ conclusions is wrong, you also have to claim that something is wrong with the evidence or the reasoning that led them to that conclusion. So the idea that scientists made up neutrinos (or evolution) is just not tenable.
Here I’ve actually pointed out that the claim that “scientists made up neutrinos” is false. (I can’t say I’ve really proved it’s false, but I’ve described what such a proof would look like.) But that doesn’t demonstrate anything about the arbitrary.
So how do you establish that something is arbitrary?
Yes, it’s necessary to establish that something is arbitrary, as opposed to simply claiming that it is arbitrary. A claim about a claim is a claim. So if you claim that “Claim X is arbitrary,” that claim can itself be true or false – or arbitrary! In particular, if you don’t have a means of establishing that a claim is arbitrary, then the claim that “Claim X is arbitrary” has no relationship to reality and is therefore itself arbitrary. So there has to be a way to establish arbitrariness.
To prove that a claim is arbitrary, you need to prove that it has no relationship to reality. The arbitrary is neither true nor false. That’s its definition!
Peikoff mentions a context, as well:
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Now let us note that some arbitrary claims (though by no means all) can be transferred to a cognitive context and converted thereby into true or false statements, which demonstrably correpond to or contradict established fact. It is not mere words that determine epistemological status, but their relation to evidence… Even when it is possible, however, this kind of integration is never obligatory. To bring unwarranted claims into relation to human knowledge is not a requirement of cognition.
To prove that a claim is arbitrary, a context is necessary, because all knowledge is contextual. A context is also necessary to prove that a claim is true or false. In a particular context, however, a claim will be one of these three things.
If we could go back in time and talk to Aristotle, the statement that “neutrinos exist” would be arbitrary to him. He’d technically be entitled to dismiss it. He wouldn’t have the context of scientific research to show why neutrinos might or might not exist. He also wouldn’t have an immediate need to know whether they exist or not (and if he did need to know, that need, and the reasoning that led to that need, would establish a context). However, if a time traveler could walk up to him and tell him that such things as neutrinos exist (I don’t know why the subject would even come up, but bear with me here), he might ask, “Why do you say that?” – and it would be possible for the time traveler to answer (although the answer might require a book or two). In that case, the time traveler would be establishing the context that allows the claim to be shown to be true.
(This establishment of context is also necessary when you’re a kid going to school and your teachers teach you that neutrinos exist – the teachers have to establish the context, in order to keep the statement from being arbitrary. Often they fail or refuse to do this… and then claim, sometimes implicitly, that students should simply believe what they’re told…)
So I propose that if somebody makes a statement that appears to be arbitrary, it’s entirely rational to invite them to establish a context for it. This doesn’t contradict the onus of proof principle, either – it’s an instance of it, it’s telling the person making a statement that he must also establish the context for it. If such a context can be established, it becomes possible to debate whether the statement is true or false: it is no longer arbitrary.
If someone refuses to establish such a context (and it has not already been established) then they’re advocating the arbitrary as such, and that’s invalid reasoning according to OPAR.
It’s also possible that someone simply fails to establish a context; in that case, they are not “advocating the arbitrary” per se, but you would still be entitled to consider that particular statement as arbitrary, and dismiss it from consideration, until a context is established.
In a few cases, it’s possible, and sometimes easy, to prove that a claim would be arbitrary in any context – an example would be the skeptical claim that reason or evidence is itself invalid. How can you have evidence for a claim that evidence is invalid? Such a context cannot exist. Another example is circular reasoning, where a claim is only valid according to itself. Whole religions work that way.
Another example occurs when someone works to maintain a falsehood, for example, the idea that scientists made up neutrinos. This would have to be a person who does not reject the arbitrary in principle, and who expects his audience not to reject it either. If an idea is proved false, the arguer may try to “promote” the idea to arbitrary status in order to “protect” it from evidence, and argue that it may nevertheless still be “true.” However, the very protection from evidence, the fact that no evidence could ever prove the “promoted” statement false, is what marks the statement as arbitrary, and therefore dismissable. (Peikoff presents several examples of claims that are “promoted” to arbitrary, such as the skeptical “problem of error” where the skeptic flips the onus of proof and demands that someone with a true claim prove that non-detectable errors don’t exist.)
Once a context has been established, and a claim is shown not to be arbitrary, then the claim cannot be dismissed on the basis of “arbitrariness” anymore; it has to be dismissed on some factual basis (e.g., irrelevancy) or else dealt with. Making it “arbitrary” again would require deliberately setting aside the facts that establish the context – and that’s evasion! (I suppose there might be a case where someone could prove that the wrong context was being used…)
On the broader Internet, there are various claims from news media and bloggers and such. Assessing whether those claims are true, false, or arbitrary, is a little harder, because with broadcast media you usually can’t ask them anything. You can, however, look at whatever context they’ve already established.
I do have rules of thumb. For one thing, somebody who points to evidence for their claim is more credible than somebody who just asserts a conclusion without evidence. This is true even though “pointing to evidence” means making more claims. People who say “see for yourself” run the risk that others will see for themselves, and the fact that they are willing to take that risk says something good. People can also point to evidence in the form of videos or documents.
For another, claims that are consistent over time are more likely to be correct, whereas, over time, a lie becomes more and more likely to be discovered as such.
A third important thing is that people can be credible in some matters but not others. Unfortunately the “conservative” news media is full of credible, documented claims of tyranny followed by the claim that “this is all in fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, so Jesus is coming back!” Since the claims of tyranny are documented, they can be believed, but it is still possible and reasonable to dismiss the Biblical prophecy stuff. If someone says “Water boils at 100 C, therefore, God exists!” then we as atheists are not obligated to deny that water boils at 100 C.