Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000
Inducing my problem with induction
Thomas M. Miovas, Jr.
>from Darryl Rothering
>
>I am working my way through Leonard Peikoff's fascinating
>Objectivism Through Induction, for the first time, and
>wonder if anyone can cast some light on the errors I seem
>to be making.
[clip]
>I seem to get it partly right, which is encouraging.
>But I also go astray. For example, with Egoism, Peikoff's
>structure is to reduce in the following way: [structure
omitted].
I think your first error is to focus on Dr. Peikoff's
*structure* instead of learning the *method*. The purpose of
reduction is to keep one's concepts tied to reality. If you are
going to be memorizing his structure, you are going to be too
concerned with "getting it right" according to whether or not
your "structure" matches his. The method of reduction is to move
from wider concepts that integrate more concrete concepts, then
move from those more concrete concepts to the concepts they
integrate, and so on, until you get to the perceptually
self-evident.
<HB: Reduction follows hierarchy, not wideness....>
This is the way to keep your concepts tied to
reality. If structure, rather than the facts and how they are
integrated, is your primary concern, you won't be able to
validate your concepts.
The most helpful line of thinking for me, regarding method and
induction, is to continue asking myself: What are the facts and
what is my mind doing with them? Am I integrating the facts
according to similarities into wider and wider concepts or am I
using concepts in such a way that they are never connected to
the facts? When I am reducing, I ask: What facts (or prior
concepts) does this concept depend on?
<snip>
>In reduction, we are attempting to trace the hierarchy
>down to more fundamental principles, upon which they
>depend. But it seems to be easy to be led astray by
>links to fundamental principles which skip over the
>intermediate hierarchical principle needed.
This is an incorrect identification of the purpose of reduction,
and explains why you jumped to causality. Reduction does *not*
take one from higher principles to more fundamental principles
-- it takes one from abstractions to the concretes they are
formed from, including the abstractions that are the root of
abstractions from abstractions, and eventually winds up at the
perceptually given facts. Reducing the hierarchy does not mean
you will wind up at "existence exists" for instance, the most
fundamental principle of Objectivism. It means you will wind up
at something specific you can point to; reducing "existence"
means pointing your finger around at everything -- that's
reducing the concept.
Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2000 00:25:02 -0400 (EDT)
Inducing my problem with induction
Thomas M. Miovas, Jr.
Darryl Rothering wrote:
>
>Another comment [Tom Miovas] made that was helpful was:
>How do you know the principles are correct, that they
>correspond to reality -- to the facts? Well, you have
>to get the facts in there somehow. That somehow is the
>method of reduction. Reduction goes from the concept
>to the facts; moving up and down the hierarchy moves
>from principle to principle.
I would like to point out that the comment above was taken from
a much longer post I originally sent to HBL that Harry rejected
that I then cut down which Harry posted in reply to Darryl. I
had sent the full post to Darryl, which had more context in it
specifically related to the OTI course, so that the above
comment isn't as rationalistic as it comes across by itself
(Darryl thought it had been posted to HBL, but it hadn't been).
And I certainly don't want to imply by the above comment that
OPAR was rationalistic in moving from principle to principle.
One should be careful when replying to an e-mail list to make
sure one is replying to what is posted to that list, otherwise a
great deal of confusion can result ;)
Reduction is certainly not the only way to work facts into one's
concepts -- primarily the facts should be worked in as one is
building any type of knowledge hierarchy, and I certainly think
Dr. Peikoff did this in OPAR. Reduction can be thought of as a
way of double checking one's knowledge and concepts by working
back down to the perceptual level using different examples; but
it can not stand alone or deal with pseudo-concepts that have no
basis in fact.
>So, if I am understanding this distinction correctly,
>the hierarchy in OPAR is just one of how the
>principles inter-relate. But the hierarchy in OTI is
>one from concretes to abstractions. I think I see it
>now. The OPAR hierarchy is a logically mandatory
>learning order, and the OTI hierarchy is from
>simple facts to more abstract condensations.
>
><HB: I sure would not endorse that.>
OPAR, while not as inductive as OTI, does not simply relate
Objectivist principles to Objectivist principles (which would be
rationalistic). It builds upon observations and distinctions,
covering all of Objectivism. OTI guides one from the primary
Objectivist concepts to how to much more thoroughly ground these
in observable fact.
If reduction is a double check on one's knowledge hierarchy, I
think it can be said that OTI is a double check on OPAR; for
those who would refer to a book (whether it be OPAR or one of
Miss Rand's works) with the tendency of saying such and such
idea is true because it is written, rather than showing it is
true because the idea corresponds to existence.
In case anyone was wondering, I wasn't able to respond earlier
due to family visiting.
