Reduction of “the Initiation of Physical Force is Evil”

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The aim of this essay is to reduce the principle that “the initiation of physical force is evil.”

Induction of Objectivity (Ayn Rand)

[Previous post in the series: "Reduction of Objectivity (Ayn Rand)"]

The reduction of Rand’s idea of “objectivity” complete, we can now work through how she induced her redefinition of objectivity as involving both facts about the world and facts about human consciousness.

The induction will take two series of steps:

The first, basic series:

1. Assuming Aristotle’s knowledge, discover that knowledge has an order.
2. Discover that knowledge involves integration.
3. Find out that measurement is the essential means of moving beyond percepts.
4. Discover that consciousness has identity.

The second series:

1. From Aristotle’s discoveries and the above four, reach Ayn Rand’s theory of concept-formation.
2. Integrate her theory of concepts with Aristotle’s view of objectivity, and note the amendments that this involves, which include a reformulation of what it means to “follow logic,” and what it means to “be objective.” Two elements of knowledge that Aristotle only implicitly recognized, that knowledge is formed in a context and it exists in a hierarchy, will be explicitly included in logic, as it was in Rand’s view. This is the way that we’ll know how to adhere to reality by following a certain method, because we’ll be explicating that very method further than it was explained before by Aristotle.

Current Plans for My "Inductive Quest"

So here's a preview of what will be appearing on the blog in the next few months (and years)!

Induction of Objectivity (Ayn Rand) -- I'll present how Ayn Rand used her knowledge of concept-formation to reformulate Aristotle's theory of logic and conception of "objectivity."

Part 3 of John Herschel's theory of Baconian Induction -- I finish my series on the famous astronomer/philosopher of science, recounting his views on inductions of causal laws, the role of hypotheses, and analogical reasoning.

The rest of the lecture course, "Objectivism Through Induction" -- I only have three lectures left to cover, so I'm really excited about nearing the end, which leads to...

Inducing all of the principles of Objectivism -- one of my "Big Projects": I plan on working through all of the principles of Objectivism, and putting them together so that the result will be what the philosophy actually is--not words or books, but a system of inductive principles, axioms, theorems, and deductive conclusions. I'm guessing that this will take quite a few years, and "Objectivism Through Induction" is just the starting point.

William Whewell's "History of the Inductive Sciences" -- a three volume work describing how various sciences rose up from their beginnings, a work from which Whewell built his theory of induction. My second "Big Project," as I plan to work through and understand the inductions he will present in this work. I can't wait!

Whewell's "The Elements of Morality, Including Polity" and "Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences" -- These two present Whewell's inductive moral-political theory, as well as his theory of induction, "Discoverer's Induction."

John Stuart Mill's theory of induction -- presented in his work "A System of Logic," this is the theory that gave induction a bad name in science, and ended the view that the true scientific method was some form of induction. I don't think anyone should endorse this view, but it is important in the history of induction.

Induction of Mathematics -- at some point, I want to work on inducing the branches of mathematics, with a view toward understanding why we have the fields of mathematics that we do have. What problems were these fields created to solve? "Big Project" #3.

Induction of Economics -- "Big Project" #4 is working through four schools of economics: the Classical, Marxist, English Historical, and Austrian schools.

Karl Popper and the Logical Positivists -- their negative view of induction permeated 20th century philosophy of science, and thus post-modern science was further disconnected from the inductive past of modern science.

Reduction of Objectivity (Ayn Rand)

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Now that we’ve reduced and induced Aristotle’s idea of “objectivity,” we can start the reduction of Rand’s concept of “objectivity,” which is an important advancement over his idea.

Let’s start with Ayn Rand’s definition, though presented in Leonard Peikoff’s words: “volitional adherence to reality by following certain rules of method, a method based on facts and appropriate to man’s form of cognition.”

The “rules of method” is Aristotelian logic, but there are important epistemological discoveries within Rand’s version of objectivity that we need to focus on. Aristotle wouldn’t have focused on man’s form of cognition as something worth analyzing in order to understand how we reach knowledge.

Whereas, for Ayn Rand, it wasn’t enough that our method is based on facts; our consciousness offers something in the acquisition of knowledge, concepts are partly human, and as a consequence, objectivity has to take this element into account. So, to reduce the idea of “a method based on facts and based on human consciousness,” we need to understand Rand’s theory of concept-formation, specifically why it is that concepts require both reality and human consciousness.

There’s some kind of element involved in forming concepts, and recognizing this element will allow us to learn something that is inherent in all concepts, to then form Rand’s theory of concept-formation, and after that we can amend Aristotle’s view of objectivity.

The next step down is: how did Rand reach her theory of concept-formation? What observations did she need to reach it?

There four elements of consciousness that we need to know before reaching her theory of concept-formation:

1. We need to know beforehand that consciousness has a specific identity, the principle that identity is the means to knowing reality, not the impediment.
2. The identity of concepts includes the fact that it does something with measurements, and this is the means by which concepts can surpass and rise above percepts.
3. An understanding of cognitive integration is necessary before we notice that aspect of the identity of concepts; we need some general awareness that integration plays a crucial role in gaining knowledge.
4. Of course, before we can put things into a sum, integrate them, we must be able to take things apart, go through a certain sequence, a series of steps. This leads to our earliest understanding that knowledge inherently has a certain kind of sequence—concept-formation involves a process of forming one concept, and then forming another based on the earlier one, etc. To understand integration, we need to reach the idea that there’s an order to knowledge.

And this is where we’ve reached the end of the reduction, since below “an order to knowledge” are specific items of knowledge that we later relate as being in a certain sequence or pattern, and these are available to introspection.

[Next post in the series: "Induction of Objectivity (Ayn Rand)"]

Advances in Baconian Induction: John Herschel (Part 2 of 3)

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This essay will focus on the aspects of John Herschel’s Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy that discuss his ideas on causation and induction. Before presenting his rules of philosophizing, which amounts to his theory of how induction works, John Herschel discusses the characteristics of cause-and-effect.

Induction of Objectivity (Aristotle)

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Objectivity now being reduced, we can work through the steps Aristotle had to in order to induce his principle of objectivity. It’s essentially five steps:

1. Grasp the distinction of percepts and concepts.
2. Understand that concepts are capable of error, whereas percepts are not.
3. Learn that the functioning of concepts is under our control, whereas percepts are not.
4. Discover that we can somehow use percepts as a means to measure concepts.
5. We’ll then know that a method is necessary, and that it is possible because we know what it would consist of, by reducing the fallible part to the infallible part.

Reduction of Objectivity (Aristotle)

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The aim of this essay is to reduce the idea of objectivity so that we can inductively reach Aristotle’s understanding of the concept. It’s important because we need his understanding of the concept to really understand Ayn Rand’s discoveries. After inducing this, we can induce the full, Objectivist understanding of objectivity from Aristotle’s development.

The definition of objectivity Aristotle would have given: “volitional adherence to reality by the method of logic.”

Dictionary definition: “Not affected by personal feelings; based on facts.” Based on facts, and not based on feelings—this is the main thing people understand about objectivity.

It isn’t enough to set aside your feelings in a cognitive context without some other means of understanding facts, and “based on facts” can’t simply be about percepts, because all conceptual knowledge would be barred from the approach of objectivity. So the dictionary definition informs us that we need a method or rules of thinking that ties thinking to facts, instead of feelings.

The first step down from this idea of objectivity is: “The method of adhering to reality to gain knowledge,” and we learn what the method is later. How would we grasp the idea that we even need a method?

It isn’t as simple as: from observation and induction we know that man is capable of error, he’s fallible; from this, we can deduce that you can’t be certain of your conclusions and that therefore, we can deduce that we need a method of gaining knowledge to guide us: this is a rationalistic argument.

It is necessary to grasp that we’re capable of error if we hope to even reach the concept of objectivity, but “objectivity” and “error” are vastly far apart from each other, cognitively speaking. The understanding of the fact of error came very easily, going way back into prehistory: people would bring home the wrong animal to eat, bring the wrong things needed to start a fire, etc. The striking fact, which the rationalist would overlook, is the idea that people are fallible didn’t suggest to anyone before the Greeks that we were in need of a method for checking our thinking and conclusions. In effect, the rationalist is taking as common sense what was actually a monumental discovery by the Greeks, by specifically Aristotle. The pre-Greeks had a means to deal with errors, but it wasn’t objectivity, but intrinscicism: authority, their faith in authority. The Pharaoh knows, or God knows, or whatever. It’s an invalid leap to go from “people are capable of error” to “we need a method of checking our thinking.”

So, to grasp why we would need a method at all, we need to know something about the mind, specifically what its operations are, what is possible of the mind, where it goes wrong, and how. If we don’t know how it goes wrong, or where, or what it could be doing that is different from what it’s doing, then we have no means to improve the mind. The first thing we need to know is that there are some areas or operations of the mind in which it is safe, or infallible. We have to know that first, before we can start looking for a method, as that knowledge gives us a clue as to what we can do when we’re using a fallible process.

Once we know that some part of our mind is error-free, we can figure out later that we can guide our minds reliably by using the safe data to check our fallible data, which is the essential process of objectivity. Later, we determine that the way to check this is to reduce all conceptual products to sensory observation. This idea of infallible data is important, because without it, we could never devise a method of guiding ourselves to the truth, and we could not count on it as underlying our conclusions, including our conclusion as to how we can improve our mental processes. There are then important distinctions which exist within our individual consciousness, which we have to discover before we could construct a method for correcting our errors, or even preventing them.

How could someone discover that there’s a process that can go wrong as opposed to a process that is safe?

Well, we know that we have free will, that we have control over something in our consciousness, because it would be impossible to wonder about how to guide our thinking, or find ways to improve our conclusions, if the whole operation of the mind is out of our control.

The idea we’re getting to is that Aristotle had to make a crucial discovery: there’s a part of the mind that can go wrong, and that’s the part that we’re in control of, where our free will reigns, and that there’s a part of the mind that is safe, where we don’t need control. As a result, we can decide to check the part that can go wrong using the other, error-free part. That’s what we have to know before we can search for a method of guiding our thinking.

What obvious major discovery about consciousness had to be made before we can determine that one part is fallible while one isn’t, and that one part is controlled by our mind, while the other is not. What’s the basic distinction of consciousness that had to be discovered before we could discover other distinctions and thus grasp the need of a method? The distinction between percepts and concepts. Not those exact words: for instance, Plato and Aristotle called the distinction “the realm of sense” and “the realm of ideas.” Ideas or Forms or Universals or Essences: how we word it is irrelevant. The point is that without this distinction, we would have no footing in prescribing guidance.

So, we couldn’t reach the method of logic until we knew that the method was necessary and possible, and to know these we would need to know three things:

1. We need to know what kinds of error are possible. That means that we would have to discover what kind of mental content is fallible vs. infallible. This is necessary, because it gives us a clue as to what we’re trying to correct (the fallible part), and that we’re trying to accomplish this by somehow measuring the fallible part against the infallible part.
2. We have control over the fallible part—free will reigns over the fallible area. There’s no point in prescribing a method if we have no control over the relevant part of the mind.
3. What is the relationship between these two areas? How could we relate, measure or reduce the fallible to the infallible?

Once we know those three, we’ll know that a method is both necessary and possible. The final issue, between percepts and concepts, is directly observable, one by extrospection, the other by introspection.

[Next post in the series: "Induction of Objectivity (Aristotle)"]

Advances in Baconian Induction: John Herschel (Part 1 of 3)

Introduction

John Frederick William Herschel (1792-1871) was an important 19th Century scientist, arguably the most important. (I currently put William Whewell and Herschel on nearly the same footing, with Whewell having a slight edge.) He studied and made applications to the fields of astronomy, mathematics, chemistry, botany, and electricity. He was also one of the first modern "philosophers of science," and an advocate of the use of inductive reasoning in scientific investigations, particularly a version of Francis Bacon's method of induction, informed by the discoveries of science since the early 17th Century (Bacon died in 1626). To promote and encourage the activities of the "men of science," Herschel published the work A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1830), a treatise on the scientific method, detailing the elements of science, scientific subjects that had been and were being studied, and the procedures that a good man of science should utilize. (This book would be influential for many later scientists, notably Charles Darwin.) Most importantly, Herschel proposed in this work an enhancement of Francis Bacon's philosophy of induction, discussing both the nature of inductive reasoning and the value that should be placed upon it in science. Indeed, the very progression of science from the state of pre-science speculations and collections of facts is a progression of inductions, Herschel would remind us.

This three part essay will detail the elements and rules of Herschel's view of induction, starting with his empiricist view of experience being the source of all knowledge, working our way through his rules for inductive reasoning and ways for verifying inductions made, and the role of analogy, hypothesis, and the complimentary relation of induction and deduction in science. As a result, it isn't a complete discussion of all the important points about science made by Herschel in his Preliminary Discourse, such as the role of precise measurement in describing laws of nature, and I would suggest that the reader takes some time to read the book itself.

Induction of Justice

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After breaking down the idea of “justice” and understanding what is required to reach the idea of it, it’s time to induce the idea that justice is important.

The induction will take four steps:

(1) Things have consequences: because they have consequences, things can be good or bad for us, and that’s why it’s important to judge them.

(2) People have consequences too, and we’ll have to judge them.

(3) Once we judge them, a certain kind of action is crucial, which brings in rewards and punishments.

(4) Something about man or the situation brings about the idea of deserved behavior.

Reduction of Justice

[Previous post in the series: "Induction of Egoism"]

The goal is to use the method of reduction to learn what things we need to know in order to induce the idea that “justice is important, it is something that we should have.” We’re not inducing the virtue of justice, as that presupposes that we already know a large amount of proper actions, and that we already have a criterion of “virtue” to compare justice with.

Bacon's Theory of Induction as Presented in the Novum Organum Part 1 of 2

Objectivists tend to be very favorable to the views of philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626), particularly his often used quotes that "knowledge is power," and "nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed." My purpose here is to give us all yet another reason why we should appreciate and study Bacon: his theory of induction. Bacon's ultimate aim in life was to show us all the relation between knowledge and human power, between reason and human survival, and between scientific thought and the wealth of nations. The most important part of this project was his articulation of a new theory of inductive thinking—of forming generalizations from the particulars of experience—which he propounded in his 1620 work the Novum Organum, or "New Instrument." After we examine the contents of this monumental book, the reader may come to see why he's been widely regarded as a father of modern science.

Bacon's Theory of Induction as Presented in the Novum Organum, Part 2 of 2

Book II

Human Power and Human Knowledge

On a given body to generate and superinduce a new nature or new natures, is the work and aim of Human Power. Of a given nature to discover the form, or true specific difference, or nature-engendering nature, or source of emanation (for these are the terms which come nearest to a description of the thing), is the work and aim of Human Knowledge. (Bacon, Novum Organum, Book II, Aphorism 1)