Preface to Epistemological Foundations of the Free Society: Ayn Rand's Theory of Universals Applied to Science, Sigmund Freud's Psychology, and Ludwig von Mises's Economics (available July 1 in print and ebook forms at Amazon.com and others)

A sound theory of universals is fundamental to the defense of a free society.

 

    Plato said that universals, which he called forms, are located in another dimension of reality and only certain people can know them. Hence, his advocacy of a near-communistic society of philosopher-kings who would rule. Thomas Hobbes advocated a theory called nominalism, which says universals are conventional, arbitrary names, not sound or objective concepts that are true. This made him a relativist in ethics and advocate of a strong “public sword,” or monarchy, to keep the peace in society.

 

   Karl Marx did not have a theory of universals, though we might say it was implied in what Ludwig von Mises calls Marx’s polylogism, a theory of many logics that rejects the notion of only one fundamental logic based on Aristotle’s three laws. Thus, Marx claimed that the bourgeoisie have their logic, while the proletariat have theirs, which means the two classes cannot talk to or understand each other. Hence, his advocacy of the  dictatorship of the proletariat to establish that Garden of Eden called communism—or socialism—he considered both terms synonymous. Today’s postmodern Marxists say something similar: “You have your truth; I have my truth.” As consequence, what they advocate in political philosophy is a repressive society, with the so-called victim classes taking the place of the proletariat.

 

   Underlying any theory of political philosophy is a theory of human nature, also called philosophical psychology. A sound theory of universals is required to form and define the concepts that identify and define the essentials of human nature. Do human beings possess the capacity to reason, the word “capacity” meaning we do not reason automatically but must choose to exercise that capacity, which means we have an active consciousness with which we control our lives? Or are we determined by genes and environment with illusions of consciousness and free will? The illusion of consciousness is called materialism and the illusion of free will is called determinism. Both are advocated by Hobbes and Marx. If we do possess a volitional consciousness, however, the idea of a free society—capitalism—follows from basic concepts of rights, freedom, the moral validity of the pursuit of self-interest, and, in particular, a sound theory of universals that explains how objectivity and truth are possible.

    The significance of a correct theory of universals is that our knowledge, with the exception of proper names, is entirely in the form of universal concepts. If those concepts are not valid, they mean nothing when we move from epistemology to ethics and politics, and to all the special sciences, including psychology and economics. That is, we must be able to use and apply the theory of universals to validate science, especially our concept of human nature—to establish the foundations of psychology, to validate the concept of value to establish a theory of ethics, and to validate many other concepts to define the proper function of government. This last includes rights and freedom, along with such additional concepts as the nature and meaning of healthy and unhealthy motivation and behavior and the production of wealth in a social setting.

    A correct theory of universals means our minds are competent to know reality and thus can guide us in our choices and actions to grow, thrive, and prosper.

    Ayn Rand’s theory of concepts, which I will argue is a sound theory of universals, is her most important and significant contribution to philosophy, especially to epistemology. Only by making the theory widely known and understood can the free society be properly defended.

    The present work is not a defense of capitalism per se. Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises provide unanswerable moral and economic justifications.[1] The subject of this book is epistemology and its importance in identifying the nature of science, basic and applied, with emphasis on the human sciences of psychology and economics. Its theme is that the essence of science is observation, not exact measurement, and that science employs as its primary and fundamental method the mental process of conceptualization: generalization from observation of particulars to identify universals, then application of previously formed universals to understand new particular cases. The issue of universals, based on Ayn Rand’s theory of concepts, runs throughout, providing the fundamental epistemological foundation for proper defenses of reason in philosophy, individualism in psychology, and capitalism in economics.

    My audience, as a result, is laypersons and academics interested in the underlying epistemology of science, especially the human sciences that, when integrated with psychology and economics, provide the ultimate vindication of a free society and answer to such ill-founded theories as those of Plato, Hobbes, and Marx.

    In chapter 1, using Rand’s theory of universals, or concepts as she calls them, I introduce her notion of measurement omission as the essence of abstraction to address the proper meanings of, and distinctions between, basic and applied science, theory and history, and the cognitive processes of generalization and application. Positivism—logical positivism or logical empiricism, as it is also labeled—and experimentation are discussed, followed by a presentation of what is called the problem of universals.

    In chapter 2, I elaborate Rand’s theory of concepts as an improvement on Aristotle’s theory of form and matter by identifying concepts and essences as neither intrinsic, in the thing, as Aristotle taught, nor subjective as the nominalists assert. Rather, concepts and essences are epistemological, in our minds, created by us and are valid and epistemologically objective if they correctly identify the metaphysical referents on which they are based. I further discuss Rand’s important explanations of abstraction from abstractions and concepts of consciousness. In concluding the chapter, I elaborate Rand’s usage of the terms “metaphysical” and “epistemological,” ending with a presentation of what I consider her radical theory of logic as non-contradictory identification.

    In chapter 3, I discuss several related philosophical issues using Rand’s theory to refute the bane of science, positivism, and to provide valid empirically-based explanations of Immanuel Kant’s allegedly innate “a priori” concepts—space, time, and causality—as well as a non-religious, non-Kantian empirical defense of free will. I continue with a discussion of the distinction between general knowledge, which we all possess to some degree and with some accuracy, and personal knowledge, which is unique to our own experiences. Finally, I conclude with a brief discussion of the role and importance of emotion in both science and our personal lives.

    In chapters 4 and 5, respectively, I apply Rand’s theory to my understanding of psychology and economics as human sciences, with emphasis on the work of Sigmund Freud and Ludwig von Mises. Both Freud and Mises have been criticized as pseudo- or non-scientific for using “literary” (Freud) or “non-quantitative” (Mises) methods to establish their theories. To the contrary, I argue that the methods of both are models of conceptualization, which I contend is the fundamental method of science.

    I became aware of the importance of conceptualization in science when I reread Edith Packer’s Lectures on Psychology after they had been made available as a Kindle book, in 2013, by her husband George Reisman. I realized after reading the book that conceptualization was what Dr. Packer was doing as a psychotherapist, and then realized that Mises, Dr. Reisman, Aristotle, and, when reading him later, Freud, were doing the same thing in their work. Masses of quantitative data and laboratory experiments, I realized, were not the essence of science.

    In chapter 6, I conclude the work with a summary of its thesis, elaborating on what I call thinking in definitions and clarifying the meanings of scientific law and principle. Finally, statements about Kant’s legacy and, subsequently, Ayn Rand’s complete the book.

    The significance of focusing on Freud and Mises is that they both provide fundamental concepts and principles for the foundation of a free society, Freud for the individual to pursue a healthy, happy, and psychologically independent life and Mises for individuals to cooperate with each other to achieve peace and prosperity. Both are experts on human nature, explicitly so for Freud, implicitly for Mises, and both, despite the comments of their critics, consider themselves to be scientists. This work aims to provide Freud and Mises a needed epistemological foundation.

    The meaning of free society that I am using is Ayn Rand’s concept of laissez-faire capitalism as a social system, presupposing an ethics of rational self-interest. That is, capitalism is not just the private ownership of the means of production, as economists, Mises in particular, define it, but a system based on the primacy of individual rights, especially property rights, with all property privately owned, allowing social cooperation to be achieved by voluntarily trading value for value. Rights are freedoms of action—deriving from human nature as a rational being—to speak and write openly and to work with others to pursue property, careers, relationships, hobbies, education, and happiness without the interference of initiated physical coercion, that is, physical force, by the government or criminals. Self-defensive coercion is delegated to the government unless involved in an emergency situation.

    The importance of defining capitalism as a social system is that it broadens the concept beyond economics alone. This is significant because totalitarian states are called such because they seek to and often do—in the name of an ethics of self-sacrifice—control every aspect of the individuals’ lives, not just their economic lives.[2] Totalitarianism means total control. Capitalism means total freedom—from direct or indirect initiated physical force of any type, economic or political.

    A further point about the meaning of Rand’s concept of capitalism. It is not what we have today or had in the late nineteenth century, though Rand acknowledges the United States came close in those earlier years. Her concept is a goal, a moral and political ideal, to work toward to achieve at some point in the future. It is not Marx’s utopia or creation of a “new man,” as Marx said communism would give us. Capitalism requires hard work and self-responsibility with no one expected to provide handouts. The problems with the apparent capitalism that we had in earlier days, and have today, is that many big businesses and governments have colluded with each other to gain favors and wealth for themselves, ignoring everyone else. This is not capitalism, but corporatism or, more precisely, fascism.

    For this reason, one of the best ways to describe capitalism is that it is a system in which business and state are completely separated in the same way and for the same reasons as we now have the (nearly) complete separation of church and state. And by “business,” I mean any organization that operates to earn a profit by offering value to paying customers. I include schools, roads, and utilities, today’s publicly owned and mixed institutions. I also believe that there should be no so-called nonprofit organizations. All societal institutions, business, church, or otherwise, should be privately owned and operated and expected to earn an excess of revenues or donations over expenses. If there is to be taxation to support the considerably limited government, it should be a flat tax applied to everyone, including to those so-called nonprofits. As Ayn Rand indicates, there are other options in financing government in a free society, but the issue is far removed from today’s problems. For the most part, it should be postponed for debate until we come closer to a truly free society.

    I did not come up with the theme of this book until recently, but the idea behind it was implanted in me during the spring quarter of my freshman year, 1966, at the University of Denver. I took the course “Modern Philosophy,” taught by Leonard Peikoff. The course covered Thomas Hobbes, the Continental rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz), the British empiricists (Locke, Berkeley, Hume), and Immanuel Kant—in ten weeks.[3] The issue of universals and political philosophy arose immediately because Dr. Peikoff’s lectures began with Hobbes and the consequences of Hobbes’s nominalism. The issue continued throughout the course, at least indirectly, when we came to John Locke’s inability to find a “something I know not what,” Hume’s failure to find a necessary connection between cause and effect, and, of course, Kant’s failure to find reality.

    An important note here is that Ayn Rand’s theory of concepts did not begin to be published until July of that year, and Dr. Peikoff’s teaching style was to present the best case he could for a viewpoint he did not accept, even bending over backwards to make it sound like he supported it. He knew Ayn Rand’s theory at this time but did not present it in the course.[4] Lively Q&A’s went on throughout the term, but no solution to the problem of universals was found. I concluded, reluctantly, that those of us most interested in the topic were left on the floor, desperately trying to find Aristotle’s intrinsic essences. After that quarter, Dr. Peikoff returned to New York City where he had lived for many years.

    When Ayn Rand’s theory was published, I memorized key definitions to think about them, for example, when waiting for my next class.[5] In the ensuing years, my interest in epistemology and the problem of universals never waned. It was a treat to read the discussions of epistemology by Ludwig von Mises and, though not exactly a treat, my knowledge of epistemology helped me in graduate school to fend off the assaults of that god called positivism.

 

     My relationship to Ayn Rand’s philosophy, which she named Objectivism, is that I am a follower of her philosophy, but do not describe myself as an Objectivist. I call myself a student of Ayn Rand, in the same way I call myself a student of Sigmund Freud and Ludwig von Mises. In 1968, in the aftermath of Rand’s break with Nathaniel Branden, she emphasized that Objectivism was her philosophy and that followers should take care not to speak for her, but to continue working as independent intellectuals in their own fields applying her ideas as relevant.[6] This is how I have viewed my scholarly work for many decades. In the present book, I emphasize that I am presenting and applying her ideas as I understand them. Elaborations and applications are mine.[7]

    My thirty-six-year academic career was spent in the applied science of business marketing, teaching and writing about fundamental ideas—Ayn Rand’s, as well as those of psychologists and economists—applying them to the business disciplines and education.

     The many references used in this book indicate a wide variety of influences on my thinking and writing. I endorse some, reject others or attempt to refute them, and some are neutral, providing important information as background and history. Aside from Ayn Rand, Freud, and Mises, my most significant influences are psychologist Edith Packer and economist George Reisman. My primary and permanent influence is my wife, soulmate, and editor, philosopher Linda Reardan. Her conceptions both of post-Kantian, modern Aristotelianism and of emotions as data for reasoning have influenced this book. Our daughter, a mechanical engineer, has also been helpful when challenging me to explain to her, in simple terms, the thesis of the work.

     The formatting, as with all my books, follows The Chicago Manual of Style, though not completely. I still prefer superscript numbers in the footnote reference, for example, as opposed to Chicago’s recommendation to use full-sized numbers followed by a period. Clarity and consistency are the criteria of formatting, which I learned from Carol Fisher Saller, The Subversive Copy Editor.

 

     For references to the internet, I have shortened most of the uniform resource locators (URLs) to their domain names. When searching for my reference, I recommend using what is called the “site operator,” for example, site:freud.org.uk private meaning or site:mises.org economic calculation. This will almost always, at the top of the search, return the words that follow the domain name. Digital object identifiers (DOIs), unique locators usually of academic journal articles, have not been shortened. Citations to print publications have been shortened after the initial reference. All sources are listed in the bibliography in full, including uniform resource locators.

 

   A final note on “self-plagiarism,” a term I believe to be a ludicrous contradiction in terms that has gained some notoriety in the academic world. I emphatically do not endorse the notion that a writer can plagiarize him- or herself, especially when acknowledgment is made about the so-called recycling of one’s own work. For the record, I have been writing and posting monthly blogs for nineteen years and more than twenty of the posts, since 2021, were written as drafts for eventual use, after editing, in the present work. A few excerpts from the draft of this work have also been posted as blogs.[8]

   Notes    

 

   [1] I must add George Reisman and his magnum opus Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics. Reisman is a follower of Ayn Rand’s philosophy and former student of Mises.

 

    [2] The ethics, especially today, is usually a variant of Kant’s duty-over-inclination maxim, imposed at the point of a government gun (or Hobbes’s public sword). The individual’s life belongs to the state and must be sacrificed to it when and as requested. 

 

    [3] The quarter system at the time was ten weeks plus a week of finals, and classes were five days a week, fifty minutes each. I took Professor Peikoff’s introductory philosophy course during the previous winter quarter, along with 160 of my closest classmates. The modern philosophy class consisted of about thirty-five students.

 

    [4]    In the introduction to philosophy course, Dr. Peikoff had nearly everyone convinced he was a determinist. In the modern philosophy course, I knew that he knew Ayn Rand’s theory because he taught it in a graduate seminar during the fall quarter of 1965. I even had the audacity to walk into his office, before attending a single college class, to ask him if I could audit his graduate seminar. He said “no,” because it would not be fair to others. He did, however, give me the telephone number of the local representative of the Nathaniel Branden Institute that presented lecture courses on tape of Ayn Rand’s philosophy.

 

    [5]    Rand’s theory of concepts was initially published in eight monthly installments in The Objectivist magazine from July 1966 to February 1967. One of the (non-epistemological) definitions I memorized was her notion of capitalism as a social system. When I mentioned it to a classmate, the classmate was surprised, and I was surprised that he was surprised—because I had assumed that Rand’s definition was self-evident and that everyone must have known it! 

 

    [6] Ayn Rand, “A Statement of Policy,” The Objectivist 7, no. 6 (June 1968): 7–9. 

 

    [7]    In the present work, I have concentrated on avoiding any tinges of moralism, a trait that unfortunately is sometimes present in Rand’s writing and in the demeanor of some of her followers. See my discussion of the anti-conceptual mentality in Jerry Kirkpatrick, Independent Judgment and Introspection: Fundamental Requirements of the Free Society (Kirkpatrick Books, 2019), 108–110, and below, chap. 3, the section titled “Defensive Habits and Free Will,” pp. 67–69.

 

    [8] See jerrykirkpatrick.blogspot.com for the blogs. I have always considered my blog posts to be drafts of whatever I might later publish. See Richard Posner, The Little Book of Plagiarism (Pantheon, 2007), for his discussion of the legal and moral issues involved in plagiarism and “self-plagiarism.” The term “self-plagiarism” likely applies more correctly to students who turn in the same paper for two different classes. 

Positivism

The philosophy of positivism—also called logical positivism and logical empiricism—has for decades been the bane of science, especially the human sciences.
 
The concept “positivism” that I am using is broader than the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle in the1920s–1930s, which attempted, but failed, to find Immanuel Kant’s noumenal world through symbolic logic applied to sense data. Positivism (495–98), as it is still used today and derives from the work of August Comte, means the use of the so-called scientific methods of physics and chemistry to attempt to discover laws of human behavior and events.
 
All science, that is to say, must be quantitative, and if it is not quantitative, it is not science. The post-Kantian premises of positivists, in their attempt to defend science, are the following: the entire branch of philosophy called metaphysics is meaningless—that is, the concept cannot be “empirically verified”—and universals, facts, values, and, especially, truth are similarly unknowable and therefore meaningless. Awareness of reality is restricted to directly perceived concretes. At best, say the positivists, we can try to come up with “successive approximations” of statistical probabilities, but we will never reach “absolute” certainty or “eternal” truth, and, of course, all science must be “value-free.”
 
Thus, an endless parade of statistical studies to incrementally—and slowly—pretend to develop science, never achieving the status of universality because universals, well, as stated above, are metaphysically meaningless. This method, or epistemology, is gospel in the so-called social sciences today, which I prefer to call human sciences, the sciences of homo sapiens that emphasize and study the animal that possesses a volitional consciousness. The human sciences, in other words, study human nature as the being who exercises, or does not exercise, the capacity to reason.
 
The two fundamental special sciences of human nature are psychology and economics, that is, respectively, the science of the motivation and behavior of individual human beings, healthy or unhealthy, and the science of cooperating individuals in a social setting the aim of which is to generate and produce peace and prosperity.
 
Austrian economists do not agree with the positivist mantra, preferring the method of logical reasoning, the process of identifying correct concepts and integrating them into principles, then integrating principles into theories—leaving Newtonian-type algebraic equations to the physicists and chemists. Sigmund Freud essentially did the same thing in the development of psychoanalysis.
 
Austrian economist F. A. Hayek in his 1974 Nobel laureate address did not use the word “positivism,” but did say that scientism and the scientistic attitude of insisting on using the methods of physical science in the social sciences “quite arbitrarily limits the facts which are to be admitted as possible causes of the events which occur in the real world.” Scientism is a close synonym of positivism and is defined by Hayek as a pretense of knowledge.
 
Positivism over the years has been criticized, notably for its contradiction that metaphysics is meaningless—because that statement itself is a metaphysical assertion.
 
What positivism in particular lacks, among its many other faults, is a sound theory of universals and theory of abstraction from abstractions, which I have written about in previous posts (1, 2, 3).
 
According to Ayn Rand, universal concepts are formed by omitting the measurable differences of the concept’s referents—length, width, and height, for example, of several perceived, concrete objects we come to identify and label as “tables.” After identifying other similar but, in some respects, different perceived concretes—such as chairs and beds—we omit the measurements of size and focus on, but also omit, the different purposes of tables, chairs, and beds, retaining their use in a human household to form the concept “furniture,” which is an abstraction from abstractions.
 
When we move to broad abstractions in psychology and economics, such as depression and the business cycle, we require focused attention on the chain of abstractions from perceived concrete to broad abstraction—and back to the perceptual level. This mental effort—and it is mental effort—is precisely what is lacking in positivism because, as they say, the abstractions are “analytic,” arbitrary constructs, subjectively defined. Only “synthetic” perceived concretes can be true or false.
 
The mental effort in forming and correcting our abstractions from abstractions is precisely what led Ayn Rand (67–68) to say, rather pointedly:
 
Like a spoiled, disillusioned child, who had expected predigested capsules of automatic knowledge, a logical positivist stamps his foot at reality and cries that context, integration, mental effort and first-hand inquiry are too much to expect of him, that he rejects so demanding a method of cognition, and that he will manufacture his own “constructs” from now on.
 
Karl Popper (chap. 1) denied that he was a positivist though his premises are positivistic. He attempted to defend science by proposing the still widely accepted criterion of “falsifiability,” that is, the notion that a concept is valid only if it can be falsified.
 
Meaning precisely what? In the human sciences, the answer to this question is that concepts, or rather “constructs,” must be “operationalized” in order to test them using the experimental-statistical methods of the physical sciences. If that cannot be done, the concept cannot be falsified.
 
Operationalization means to make measurable. What is the measuring instrument to be used in the human sciences, where volition is the fundamental premise? Well, first of all, volition is not relevant because it cannot be “falsified” and, besides, real science does not acknowledge such “pseudoscience,” which, as Popper might say, is akin to astrology.
 
Therefore, following the Popperian method, such constructs as “attitude” from psychology and “utility” from economics must be measured by administering a “paper and pencil” instrument called a questionnaire to a sample of five hundred or more people. The collected data is then analyzed, perhaps using sophisticated multivariate statistics. Probability estimates and confidence intervals are calculated. Universals are never discussed or considered relevant or possible.
 
If a concept cannot be measured using this method, it cannot be falsified. It is therefore meaningless and invalid.
 
Popper states that science begins with highly informed guesses” (conjectures) and then attempts to falsify or refute them (chap. 3; my italics). Similarly, economist Milton Friedman (14) says that economic research, in the positivist-Popper tradition, begins with “wildly inaccurate” assumptions that we test and attempt to “empirically verify,” or rather “falsify.”*
 
The problem here is that the terms “guess” and “hypothesis” do not have the same referents. A hypothesis begins with significant evidence about what we are studying, but not enough to draw a definite conclusion. A guess has little or no evidence.
 
 “Empirical verifiability” of the positivists and Popper’s alternative of “falsification” are not essentially different. They both constrict science—all science, not just the human sciences—to perceived concretes and the experimental-positivistic-behavioristic methodology, essentially dismissing broad abstractions and logical reasoning.**
 
As Rand’s theory indicates, the essence of science is measurement omission, not measurement, and the proper method of doing science is conceptualization. The criterion of what is true or false, that is, the correct identification of reality, is Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction. Whatever violates the law in the name of science should be called pseudoscience.
 
Which seems to be an appropriate descriptive of positivism.
 
 
* Friedman, “The Methodology of Positive Economics.” Friedman, however, apparently regretted writing this essay.
 
** The experimental-positivistic-behavioristic terminology is psychologist Abraham Maslow’s disapproving description of positivist epistemology (xlvi).

The Place of Emotions in Science

Thoughts underly our emotions. As psychologist Edith Packer (140) says, paraphrased, “When we are feeling something, we are thinking something.”
 
The opposite also is true—when we are thinking something, we are feeling something, which means we have emotions running through our minds whether we are aware of them or not.
 
Consciousness, to borrow a word from William James, is a stream, not separate compartments that can be shut off at will, though the evaluations that stand behind emotions can be repressed.
 
Scientists clearly have emotions, not just in their eureka moments of a major discovery, but in their typical workdays. Emotions are what motivate us.
 
When we acknowledge the presence of emotions in science, and scientists, we acknowledge that evaluations are present.  Behind every emotion the evaluation, as Packer argues, has two aspects, one universal that applies to all instances of a particular emotion, such as joy or anger, and one personal that includes all the concrete details of the moment when we have experienced the emotion.
 
Joy, for example, at the universal level means “I have achieved an important value.” Thus, “eureka”—or “I have found it,” the translation of the Greek—is a form of joy. The scientist’s personal evaluation—“all of my years of research have been worth it”—in the eureka moment might be expressed in behavior as energetic shouting and jumping up and down such that he almost knocks a beaker off the table. This would be a personal evaluation and experience that likely would last a long time in the scientist’s subconscious memories.*
 
It is this inner conversation or voice, as Packer describes personal evaluations, that constitute a key part of the content of our personal knowledge. Which means that knowledge, general or personal, is not “value-free” as the logical positivists for decades have insisted it must be.
 
Every emotion exhibits not just an evaluation, but also an action tendency, or urge to act. The scientist who, when young, is given a chemistry set for a birthday may later get excited in high school chemistry class and begin to think about a career in chemistry. Meeting and talking to professional chemists—a chemical engineer and a research chemist, for example—may help the young person solidify his or her career goals.
 
Going to work every day in an office or lab, after all, is motivated by our emotions of pleasure or pain we associate with the work.
 
Emotion is the driver of everything we do. Writers of both fact and fiction say they follow their emotions to come up with subjects, themes, and even the phrasing of sentences.  Many write “by ear,” more so than by the current rules of grammar and syntax.**
 
Whatever we have liked or disliked in our past, influences our present. Emotions contribute knowledge to our thought processes.  Those past emotions often are the sources of connections we make in the present, sometimes called creative insight, as well as guidance to follow particular lines of thought and experimentation.***
 
Repressed persons are also motivated by past emotions, though usually negative ones that they seek to avoid. Some who are repressed may appear in the present to experience no emotions.
 
A severely repressed scientist, for example, may exhibit a highly muted reaction to the eureka moment, such as a sober, unexpressive face and words that say, “This is good.” But the emotions, which means evaluations and values, are there at some level. Such a person is often desperately trying to avoid the error and appearance of the fallacy of the appeal to emotion.
 
Where does this fallacy come in to play? It is actually a simple notion that says it makes no sense to say or write, “It is true because I feel it.” This does not mean that we should not be motivated to become a scientist because of our emotions from the past or that we should not get excited over a eureka moment. It is indeed unfortunate that the repressed scientist does not jump up and down.
 
The point of the fallacy is that whatever emotions we have in the process of identifying a fact of reality, we must follow Aristotle’s laws of logic, especially the law of non-contradiction. Ayn Rand defines logic as “the art of non-contradictory identification.” Thus, in our work, we bring up our emotions to see if any of them are influencing our perceptions of reality.
 
If I am feeling that a leprechaun is on my desk instead of a glass of water, I assure you I am committing the fallacy. Or, consider the young man fired and jilted on the same day (in Individual Judgment and Introspection, 66–67); he feels that he will never find another job or lover. This is all the fallacy refers to, a feeling (in here) that contradicts the facts (out there).
 
Thus, scientists, I am quite certain, when coming up with a solution to a problem can, without guilt, go wild and crazy to celebrate!
 
 
* Another example: the universal evaluation of anger says, “An injustice has been done to me.” The personal evaluation would be the specific experiences of the moment when feeling anger at another person or institution.
 
** I have told students who could not come up with a term paper topic to “go with what grabs you,” meaning what your emotions are telling you. See this short essay on writing by ear and Ayn Rand (Kindle, 88): When writing, as opposed to editing, “you go by your emotions.”
 
*** For example, when researching my book Montessori, Dewey, and Capitalism, I was pleasantly surprised to find a connection between Maria Montessori, John Dewey, and Ayn Rand. They obviously do not agree with each other, but they nevertheless exhibit some similarities. See Linda Reardan, Emotions and Rational Values, chap. 4, for the fundamental explanation of how emotions contribute to thought.

The Concept of “Getting At”

When my wife, philosopher Linda Reardan, and I read a new writer whose ideas do not quite fit our established notions, we ask ourselves “what is this person getting at?” The ideas are not ridiculous, to be dismissed out of hand, nor do they strike us as correct identifications of the facts of reality. “Getting at” means these writers are attempting, in their own way and depending on their historical context, to make what they believe to be correct identifications.
 
A major error, of those who have swallowed positivist premises, is to dismiss new (or different) ideas as not “verifiable” or not “falsifiable”—terms that are red herrings from post-Kantian philosophy and especially from Karl Popper’s philosophy of science. Another error, of many who follow Ayn Rand, is to dismiss such ideas because they do not agree with her philosophy, therefore they are not worthy of further consideration.
 
For the past several months (May 2023–February 2024) I have written posts about two scholars and what they were getting at: economist Ludwig von Mises and psychologist Sigmund Freud. Despite accepting some Kantian ideas, Mises produced outstanding works based on defending the epistemological foundation of economics against the positivist premise that all science must be quantitative. In addition, I address the issue of “subjective value” in economics (see also this post) as being essentially the same concept as what Ayn Rand calls socially objective value, which means, consistent with her theory of concepts, that value is not metaphysical, in the thing. Rather, it is psychological or epistemological (both words used by her).
 
Freud, who is far more Aristotelian than Kantian even though he lived in a neo-Kantian culture, focused on reality to help distressed patients discover un- (or sub-) conscious thoughts and experiences that made them unhappy in the present and then proceeded to help them achieve happier lives. He was not a “pan-sexualist,” as critics have said of him. As a result of his accomplishments, Freud must be considered the father of modern psychology.
 
Let us now go back to Aristotle and look at one issue he was “getting at,” though many Greek philosophers could be used here as examples of the “getting at” premise, including Plato. Indeed, Aristotle was developing further the discoveries of Socrates and Plato on universals, reason, and definitions when he came up with his theory of universals known as moderate realism.* Aristotle, in contrast to Plato, believed that the universal essence or form of a thing is intrinsic or embedded in the individual thing, and we abstract it using nous—reason—to arrive at rational knowledge.
 
Aristotle’s theory today is a layperson’s common-sense epistemology that says, “We just see tableness in the tables out there in reality.” But that is not correct, as critics of the theory for centuries have shown. Essences are not out there, in the thing. Ayn Rand, aware that the mental process is more complicated than Aristotle believed, improves his theory by demonstrating that abstraction is a mental process of omitting precise measurement of the many similar tables we have observed. That is what gives us the universal. The process, she goes on to discuss, is even more complicated, requiring volitional effort to form abstractions from abstractions (Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, chap. 1–3).
 
Aristotle was “getting at” the right thing, but did not quite get there.
 
Moving along chronologically, let us look at Christianity. St. Augustine, according to Professor E in the Appendix to Ayn Rand’s Epistemology (262–63), was the first in history to give us the concept of consciousness (though the Stoics anticipated it). The Greeks had identified several important processes of our minds, such as perception, imagination, emotion, and reason, but did not put them together into one concept. Augustine’s human consciousness was a reflection of the monotheistic Christian God, who, in effect, is the “giant consciousness in the sky” that causes events on earth and may or may not grant us our wishes through prayers (Independent Judgment and Introspection, 38–40). Augustine’s concept of consciousness nevertheless was a step forward.
 
Descartes, more than any of the previous religious thinkers, in a confused manner, brought the consciousness in the sky down to earth and put it in our bodies, making it personal to each one of us (likely influenced by Protestantism). He attempted to integrate mind and body as a naturalistic entity, but is remembered, though the dichotomy goes back to the Greeks, as the one who gave us mind-body dualism. Descartes’ fundamental error was to assert that consciousness is the first thing we know, not existence. This is his prior-certainty-of-consciousness premise that continues to plague philosophy today. Or, as Linda has observed, modern philosophers, ever since Descartes’ cogito (I think, therefore I am), have been stuck in their own minds trying to find a way out to reality.
 
When we get to Immanuel Kant, we do have to acknowledge that he is the first to solidify the notion that consciousness is not a mirror of nature, as critics of moderate realism say to disparage the doctrine, but has its own identity. Unfortunately, he concluded, or rationalized—philosopher Walter Kaufmann (116) describes him as a “virtuoso of rationalization”—that because consciousness has a nature we can never know true, noumenal reality, only a phenomenal world.
 
Positivism is a doctrine I resist granting anything to after getting it in spades in graduate school, but I must admit that its advocates were attempting, and still attempt to this day, to answer Kant’s conclusions and to defend science—at great expense. The expense of positivism was, and still is, to declare the following meaningless: metaphysics, universals, facts, values, and truth. The “truths” it says we can know are only those that are synthetic, that is, tied to perceptual concretes—they are not universal—and analytic “truths,” which are universal but arbitrary and say nothing about reality. The positivists’ misguided “contribution” is to require in the human sciences a distorted version of the method of the physical sciences. (See “The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy” in Rand’s Epistemology, 88–121.)
 
Pragmatism, instead of being a villainous philosophy, was a doctrine of empiricism, based on the acceptance of the biological nature of consciousness and the attempt to defend knowledge and science against the attacks of the German, British and American Idealists, this last including the work of Brand Blanshard. The so-called pragmatic theory of truth, namely that truth is what works, attributed to William James, may be poorly formulated, but it is an answer to the rationalism of idealism. It insists that we must stay tied to real activities of life to know what is true. Using this theory of truth, we can say, with qualifications, that capitalism is true because it works, whereas socialism is false because it does not work. My qualifications are that a theory of truth requires more than what the pragmatists offered.
 
John Dewey, whom I read extensively when writing Montessori, Dewey, and Capitalism, did not like the word “pragmatism,” preferring “instrumentalism,” in the sense that thought is the instrument of action, which means all thought and knowledge are for the sake of action, not ivory-towered speculation. I learned many things from my study of Dewey. One is to trust the original source of the author’s own words, not summaries. I read three summaries who disagreed with each other and did not sound like what I read in Dewey. After I had read many works of his, I read Dewey’s Metaphysics by Raymond Boisvert and agreed with him that Dewey not only has a metaphysics, but that it is Aristotelian and his theory of truth is a correspondence theory, though Dewey improves on Aristotle’s theory by rejecting any form of intrinsicism of essences or values.
 
For more on what I found Dewey to be “getting at,” read my post in Applying Principles, 295–99. No, Dewey does not have a theory of concepts or universals, nor is he an advocate of capitalism. I did not read his works on ethics. His metaphysics and epistemology, however, were “getting at” something. He is difficult to read, though he does sometimes use interesting business metaphors, such as, subject matter in education is the working capital of thought. His theory of education is not too different from that of Maria Montessori—and is not, I must emphasize, what many progressive educators say it is.
 
Let me conclude this post with reference to two previous posts about the Bible. The first concerns Jewish political commentator Dennis Prager’s The Ten Commandments, which, he points out, should be translated from the Hebrew as the Ten Statements. What is significant about this short book is that it is not deontological in the Kantian sense that they are ten duties. Indeed, Prager says that these ten statements have driven the development of civilization and “are the greatest list of instructions ever devised for creating a good society.” One other mistranslation, he points out, is that “do not kill” in 1610 King James English should really be “do not murder.”
 
My other post looks at Matthew 7:1–6 in the New Testament. The first verse is the “do not judge” statement that Ayn Rand has made pointedly negative comments about, though some of her followers misunderstand her interpretation of the advice. The rest of the Matthew verses relate the Golden Rule, an early statement of justice, and emphasize that we should use the same standard of value when judging others as ourselves. And that we should be careful when forming partnerships, personal or professional, lest we end up throwing our pearls to pigs who turn on us, trampling the pearls and attacking us.
 
Pretty good advice coming from the New Testament. Even the Bible was “getting at” many true things.
 
 
* In an earlier post, I referred incorrectly to Aristotle’s theory as naïve realism. The theory is occasionally denigrated as “naïve” and I seem to recall it in my undergraduate days being identified as such. But the more acceptable term today is “moderate,” or sometimes “metaphysical,” realism, meaning the essence is “out there” in the thing.

Mises and Epistemology (part three of a three-part series) (Go to part one)(part two)

The human sciences aim to explain the causes of human motivation and behavior, healthy and effective, as well as harmful, and to guide humans in their choices and action to achieve chosen goals. This includes all applied human sciences whose aims are to get things done and done well. Economics is not just a highly deductive science, but also highly applied in that its aim is to define the principles of cooperation under a division of labor that will secure peace and prosperity in a social setting.*
 
Let us now continue with a few additional epistemological issues in Mises’ writing.
 
 
4. The specific understanding. The two fundamental methods of cognition, according to Mises and the Kantian philosophers, are conception and understanding. Concepts, we have seen from part one of this series, according to Kant, are limited to the phenomenal world, which means we cannot know concretes. This poses a problem in particular for historians, since their work is to explain concrete human events of the past. The solution in German philosophy is the specific understanding (Human Action, 49-50). Mises writes:

It is the method which all historians and all other people always apply in commenting upon human events of the past and in forecasting future events….The scope of understanding is the mental grasp of phenomena which cannot be totally elucidated by logic, mathematics, praxeology, and the natural sciences.

The philosopher Bergson, according to Mises, called this cognitive power “intuition,” which sounds antithetical to reason and mystical. And it is, because for Kant concepts and reason, which he had to limit to make room for faith, cannot know true reality.
 
But a correct theory of concepts proves we can know reality. This cognitive power is not properly described as a “specific understanding,” but as the application of previously formed universal concepts, a deductive process. Since our concepts refer to all concretes of a particular type, we live our daily lives applying our previously learned knowledge to identify correctly the specifics we confront. Thus, Sherlock Holmes deduced that Watson just came back from Afghanistan, based on Watson’s tan and signs of having been wounded. And our medical doctor deduces that our cough and runny nose are instances—symptoms—of a cold.
 
Application (1, 2) is the mental process of identifying a this (concrete) as an instance of a that (concept). It is what historians do and what we all do every day.
 
 
5. Regularity in human action, but no constants. Mises (Human Action, 1) is correct to state that there is “a regularity in the sequence and interdependence of market phenomena,” but no “constant relations” (56), or standard unit that can be used to make quantitatively exact measurements of human behavior. Which means no algebraic equations can be identified or used as in physics and chemistry.
 
Human behavior is not deterministic because of free will, which Mises does not explicitly endorse, though he does say that human action is teleological, which is another instance of his Aristotelianism. But because of the observed regularity that is present in human nature, principles and laws of economics, such as the laws of marginal utility and supply and demand, can be formulated and used to interpret current and past economic events and to make predictions, albeit not mathematically precise predictions. This is Mises’ rejection of the positivist demands for a mathematical economics.** (See In Defense of Advertising, 127-30.)
 
Indeed, the inability to formulate mathematically precise propositions and equations is true of all human sciences, basic and applied, not to mention of all the branches of philosophy. Positivism has corrupted our understanding of science, the actual essence of which is conceptualization, which means measurement omission even in the formulation of the equations of physical science. (See In Defense of Advertising, 153-58; Independent Judgment and Introspection, 72-81.) Most measurements, especially statistics, produce historical data, not universal knowledge of cause-effect relationships.
 
 
6. Subjective value. I touched on this subject in a previous post based on what I call Ayn Rand’s general theory of value, but more needs to be said.
 
Mises (Human Action, 96) is mostly correct when he states, “Value is not intrinsic, it is not in things. It is within us; it is the way in which man reacts to the conditions of his environment.” Values, and all concepts are within us. Essences and values are not “out there” in the thing. They are not metaphysical. We, using the tools, or mental processes of our consciousness, create, construct, or form concepts, including the concept of what is valuable. But values are objective in the epistemological sense—if the identification of what is valuable contributes to the flourishing of human life.
 
Yes, there is a distinction between object and subject, meaning objects are “out there” and whatever goes on in our minds is subjective, but that is a different usage. Customer value judgments are subjective because their judgments come from inside their heads, but they may or may not be epistemologically objective (correctly identified as beneficial for or harmful to them).
 
Mises—and the positivists—talk about the necessity of all sciences being “value-free,” which means “shoulds” and “oughts” do not belong in science. This derives from Kant who faced a dilemma between ethical values that come from the nature of the mind (not the requirements of human life) and free will that comes from the noumenal world, but is unknowable. Positivists “resolved” the dilemma by explicitly making all values subjective.
 
Economics for the most part is a practical science, establishing principles of how to increase wealth for everyone. One can say that price controls are both immoral and impractical—immoral because of the harm to human life caused by injecting force into voluntary trading and the consequent shortages that result, thus introducing values into the discussion, and impractical because wealth for everyone is decreased, not increased. It is only increased, if in fact it is, for certain privileged groups.
 
Yes, there are those today who say that all issues are moral and political, proclaiming “consumers should or ought not to buy that product” or “that bridge should not be built in that location.” In a free society where individual rights, especially property rights, are respected, such shoulds and oughts would be minimal. Applied sciences assume that actions to be taken are moral and legal, then provide guidance to the achievement of particular goals. The actions are assumed to be moral and legal because the aim of applied science, all sciences actually, is to improve life.
 
Two final quotations from Mises about values: “By means of its subjectivism, the modern theory becomes objective science” (Epistemological Problems of Economics, 192). And: “it is in this subjectivism that the objectivity of our science lies” (Human Action, 21).
 
Mises is stating that the theory of marginal utility answered the water-diamond paradox of the classical economists who had assumed values are “out there” intrinsic to reality. If “subjective” is understood as explained above and can be viewed as epistemologically objective, then Mises is correct.
 
I prefer to call our values, market values in particular, “psychological,” which makes them epistemological, not metaphysical. Restating Mises’ second quotation, I would say, “it is in this recognition that values are psychological, not intrinsic or metaphysical, that the validation of economics lies.” (See In Defense of Advertising, 175-78.)***
 
 
In the first paragraph of the Preface to the Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, Mises writes, “This essay is not a contribution to philosophy. It is merely the exposition of certain ideas that attempts to deal with the theory of knowledge ought to take into full account.” Mises in dealing with these issues is taking steps toward a post-Kantian Aristotelian foundation of economics. Those who would advance economics further can build on his work.
 
The present three-part series has been my attempt to deal with some of the issues, based on Ayn Rand’s epistemology. It is also my encouragement to students of Ayn Rand to take the work of Mises as both profound and serious. There is much to be learned from him.
 
 
* All sciences, basic and applied, use induction and deduction throughout (cf. Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, in McKeon). The applied sciences—medicine, engineering, psychotherapy, and the business disciplines, among others—are predominantly deductive, drawing their basic principles from the more fundamental sciences.
 
** In technical terms, the physical sciences measure the world using interval and ratio scales, the former using equal intervals from one number to the next (1 to 2 is equal to 4 to 5) and the latter requiring equal intervals and a true zero point to produce valid ratios (for example, Kelvin temperature, but not Fahrenheit or Celsius, which are scaled at the interval level). In the human sciences, measurement is teleological using ordinal numbers and ordinal scales (A is better than or preferred to B and B to C). Relationships of means to ends are graded or ranked because we do not have a unit that serves as a standard of measure in the way interval and ratio scales do. The intensity of preference in the intervals of two people preferring A to B may or may not be equal; we do not know. See Stevens and cf. Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 32-34, 223-25.
 
*** Ayn Rand in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (16-17) distinguishes between market value, or price, as socially objective value, “the sum of the individual judgments of all the men involved in trade at a given time” and philosophically objective value, “as value estimated from the standpoint of the best possible to man.” Understanding this last means philosophically objective values are not much involved in economics, as no such value should or ought to be mandated by law, or priced a certain way.

Read part one, part two.

Science and Great Experiments: The Search for Universals

The 1981 book Great Scientific Experiments by Rom Harré presents in popular format and in only 200 pages the gist of twenty influential scientific experiments, from Aristotle to the twentieth century.

Interestingly, none of the experiments cited uses statistical samples of any size divided into experimental and control groups. All samples are small and one is a sample of one! How is this possible?

And if true, may we conclude that Sigmund Freud and Jane Goodall were great experimenters?

It is the logical positivism of modern science that tells us a sound theory of induction does not exist, because universals do not exist, only statistical probabilities. Therefore, anything close to causal must be found through at least two groups of large samples to control sources of “extraneous variation.” Hence, all we can find through our many studies are “successive approximations.” This what John Stuart Mill’s followers called the hypothetico-deductive method that drives nearly all research today and condemns Freud and Goodall to the realm of “pseudo-science.”

Let us back up and define our terms. Science is a systematic study of an aspect of reality that explains its domain descriptively and causally, and if applied (as technology) provides guidance for human choices and actions to achieve specific goals.

The product of any science is a body of knowledge—a collection of integrated, universal concepts and principles the aim of which is to enhance life.

The second term to look at is experimentation. The Latin root of the word experiment means to try. Paraphrasing the Oxford English Dictionary, to experiment means to test or try something to identify what has previously been unknown. This means experimentation is trial and error. It may involve experimental and control groups (and the manipulation of one variable to determine its effects on another), but it does not necessarily have to. It also may involve an elaborate apparatus or it may be entirely conceptual—in the head, sometimes called a thought experiment.

Science historian John P. McCaskey has traced the history of induction and the role of experimentation in it  (1, 2). Up to the last couple of hundred years, McCaskey found, induction and experimentation were based on the work, among others, of Francis Bacon who based his work on Aristotle’s formal cause. And Aristotle in turn developed his theory of induction from what during the Renaissance was called “Socratic induction.”

Socrates, when taunting his know-it-all Athenian conversationalists, was looking for universal essences that apply in all instances.

Universals, those exceptionless concepts and principles, not correlations or probabilities, are what constitute the essence and foundation of science.

Thus, conceptualization, or concept formation, is the fundamental method of science, because large samples are often not necessary to identify the universals. McCaskey, as do I, gives the nod to Ayn Rand for understanding the role of concept formation in science, specifically the inductive process of identifying essential distinguishing characteristics.

Examples from McCaskey: Robert Koch’s identification of the comma bacillus (Spirillum cholerae asiasticae) as the defining, universal characteristic and cause of cholera, not such competing but correlational hypotheses as season or foul water; Charles Wells’ conclusion, after many small experiments to test a wide variety of independent variables, that water condensation was the essence of dew; and Lord Kelvin’s reasoning to describe tides by their definition and causes, namely “motions of water on the earth, due to the attractions of the sun and of the moon” (quoted in McCaskey).*

Harré acknowledges in his book (p. 191) that one or a few cases, with careful experimentation, that is, trial and error, can yield “defining properties of all samples similar to them.” He calls the small samples “intensive design.” In contrast, he calls the larger (and statistical) versions “extensive.”

The intensive design and sample of one in Harré’s book (chap. 2) is the nine years of experimentation conducted by army doctor William Beaumont on Alexis St. Martin, whose stomach did not close completely after a musket wound. Access to St. Martin’s stomach contents, especially his gastric juices, enabled Beaumont to answer the question, are gastric juices chemical solvents or is the process of digestion some vital force and the juices just “inert water”?

Feeding different foods to his subject and observing his digestive processes and by removing gastric juices to test its effects in a glass jar were the experiments that Beaumont conducted to make the well-respected conclusion of chemical solvency, even of “the hardest bone” (quoted in Harré, p. 41).

The concept correctly identified by Beaumont was that gastric juices were indeed—and universally so—chemical solvents, not inert water.

In my book Independent Judgment and Introspection (pp. 78-79), I praise Sigmund Freud for his work in clarifying and defining psychological repression and Jane Goodall for her discoveries about chimpanzees. Both conducted great experiments, the former in psychology, the latter in biology. They both used the method of conceptualization and deserve to be recognized as great experimenters. Science, in other words, is not confined to the fields of physics and chemistry, or imitations of those fields, as too many positivists are prone to assume.

Freud spent over thirty years in talk therapy with many different patients before he finally formulated the essential meaning of repression as an unconscious (or subconscious) response to anxiety that mutes the experience of or blocks entirely thoughts, memories, or emotions from conscious awareness. He also had to distinguish repression from defense mechanism in general, which for many years he tended to equate.**

Jane Goodall’s work, beginning in 1960, was to observe the behavior of chimpanzees in the Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve (now Gombe National Park) in Tanzania. Over the course of many years, she discovered that chimps eat meat, make elementary tools to obtain food, can be violent and even cannibalistic, and have personalities. She gave the chimps names and interacted with them after they had gained her trust.

Goodall’s work required patient observation and, especially, application of analogous concepts from human psychology to the higher mammals, “patient observation” meaning testing and trying different ideas before drawing conclusions.

It is the logical positivists who dismissed Freud’s work as anecdotal at best, literature at worst. And it was the “men of hard science” at the beginning of Goodall’s career who dismissed her as an uncredentialed woman frivolously and anthropomorphically giving names to the nonrational, dumb animals. Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, however, called Jane Goodall’s work “one of the Western world’s great scientific achievements” (quoted in Goodall, p. xvii).

It is the logical positivists and many of those “men of hard science” who are not particularly scientific, or great experimenters!


* In the study of tides there may have been confusion over the difference between theoretical and applied science, or technology. Sea captains need to know the timing and heights of tides at a specific location, and statistics can help make these predictions. But this is applied science where the universals of theory are used to uncover correlations, tolerances, and averages to guide concrete, practical decision making.

** Repression is a defense mechanism, or defensive habit, as I prefer to call it, but it is not identical to it. Freud’s daughter, Anna, said it was in his 1926 book Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety when Freud identified the correct place of repression in psychology. The muting or barring of an emotion is accomplished by muting or barring the thought that stands behind it. Traumatic memories, I have suggested (fn 11, p. 146), are not repressed and should not be thought of as part of the definition. Subconscious is the more preferred modern term and is discussed in my appendix to Independent Judgment and Introspection.

On the Correct Roles of Induction and Deduction in Human Life: Two Sentences from Ayn Rand’s Theory of Concepts

Original thinkers often state their identifications succinctly.

Ayn Rand’s notion of measurement omission (Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, chap. 2) in the formation of concepts is one such identification. Here is another (p. 28):

The process of observing the facts of reality and of integrating them into concepts is, in essence, a process of induction. The process of subsuming new instances under a known concept is, in essence, a process of deduction.

These brief and to the point sentences state not just the two fundamental methods of cognition, but more importantly, the correct roles of induction and deduction in human life.

And by “human life,” I mean science as well as everyday life.

Induction is the process of generalization, of forming universal concepts based on our observation of particular objects or events. The definition of a single concept states a principle—all humans possess the capacity to reason, for example—and the combination of several or many concepts and principles builds our knowledge of reality and, in some cases, establishes the physical, biological, and human sciences.

Induction is conceptualization. From an early age, probably before we can assign words to them, we all practice the inductive formation of universal concepts.

This was my example in an earlier post of our daughter, before she could walk or talk, laughing heartily at her first sight of a bouncing ball (Applying Principles, pp. 322-24). She identified a universal, because her mind, to quote Aristotle (Posterior Analytics, 100a13), “is so constituted as to be capable of this process” (though the universal is not “in the thing,” as Aristotle assumed).

Rand’s identification describes in general terms the true nature of induction and makes the biological and human sciences as exact and valid as the physical sciences.*

Deduction is the process of identifying particular objects or events as instances of the general knowledge we have already acquired. The process, more accurately, is one of application.

Deduction is what Sherlock Holmes did and what medical doctors do, and what we all do in our everyday lives. We apply general knowledge to specific cases to guide us in making choices and taking actions.

Technology and the applied sciences are sciences of method and therefore are largely deductive, deriving their basic principles from the more fundamental sciences on which they rest, for example, engineering from physics and chemistry, medicine from biology, and economics from psychology with several business disciplines drawing their basic principles from both psychology and economics.

This identification of deduction as application dispenses with the detached-from-reality deduction for the sake of deduction that has dominated the academic world since the Middle Ages. Deduction as application demonstrates how much deduction we practice in our everyday lives.

We all induce and deduce—some of us better (more accurately) and at greater length (in intensive study) than others. What Ayn Rand’s identifications mean is that induction and deduction are not a monopoly of scientists, philosophers, or academics in general.

Where then does measurement fit in the sciences? Conceptualization is universalization, which means its essence is measurement omission, which means the essence of theoretical science is measurement omission. This means that measurement is an aid to theoretical science, not its essence.

Measurement is crucial in the applied physical sciences when, for example, we want to send astronauts to the moon and back. Measurement in the biological and human sciences, however, is not quantitatively exact in the sense of constructing advanced mathematical equations to predict the behavior of animals or humans.

In the human sciences it is that annoying thing called free will—annoying to many human scientists, most of whom are materialists and determinists—that prevents the human scientists’ “elegant” equations from making any practical sense, or from being replicated in subsequent studies.**

The biological and human sciences are exact and valid, if the conceptualizations made by the scientists working in those fields have correctly identified the aspect of reality they are studying. The identifications are not equations, but they are quantitative. For example, psychological depression can be severe or mild.

“Measurement omission” does not mean that conceptualization ignores measurements. One individual case is quantitatively distinct from the next one, as two balls can be two different sizes and can be made of different materials.

Precise measurement is what technology and applied science, especially in the physical sciences, must critically pay attention to. Measurement in the applied biological and human sciences does not have to be so precise—because it cannot be.

“Truth,” to quote another succinct identification of Ayn Rand (Objectivist Epistemology, p. 48), “is the product of the recognition (i.e., the identification) of the facts of reality.” Truth, for Rand, is not a correspondence theory, but one that identifies facts. It is a recognition or identification theory.

And what is our guide to truth? Logic, of course, as “the art of non-contradictory identification” (Objectivist Epistemology, p. 36), not the mathematical or symbolic stuff that is taught in universities today or the medieval rationalism that permeates the older logic textbooks.

Induction and deduction are what we all use every day in our practical lives.

Induction and deduction, respectively, are conceptualization and application. Measurement is an important component of the two, but it is not their essence.


* See John P. McCaskey, “Induction in the Socratic Tradition,” in Shifting the Paradigm: Alternative Perspectives on Induction, ed. Louis F. Groarke & Paolo C. Biondi (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), 161–192, on his efforts to revive Socratic induction, a tradition promoted and debated both before and after Francis Bacon, but eventually overtaken by the nineteenth-century positivistic, Millian hypothetico-deductive method, a form of rationalistic, propositional inference. Socratic induction—generalization from particular things or concretes to universal abstract ideas—is consistent with Ayn Rand’s epistemology as inductive concept formation through measurement omission.

** “Man is that which fits economic equations,” as Ayn Rand (Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, p. 7) so simply and aptly caricatured the very rationalistic, pseudo-deductive doctrine of pure and perfect competition in economics.

Independence and Certainty

In our age of post-Kantian skepticism and relativism, it follows, according to the skeptics and relativists, that anyone claiming epistemological or ethical certainty is either a deluded fundamentalist or a wannabe or actual dictator.

Inquisitors and jihadis are certain of their convictions and maim and kill those who do not agree with them. Hitler was certain and viciously imposed his will on his own citizens and the world and, of course, the Jewish people. The implication is that Inquisitors, jihadis, and Hitlers are selfish, independent personalities.

The argument often does not go this far, though it is implied, and some, including Holocaust scholars, have said as much.* After all, this train of thought continues, no one is omniscient, and because of our inherent fallibility, we must allow freedom of speech. This is what makes a society free.

Lack of omniscience means inability to be certain, which means we must invite and relish criticism to clarify our thoughts, and perhaps gradually get closer and closer to the truth, though absolute truth can never be attained.

This is what logical positivism and its offspring have taught us. Claims of certainty are dangerous. We have to talk things over and aim for consensus, sometimes through voting. This in essence is the epistemological justification of democracy.**

In other words, anyone who believes in absolutes believes in absolute authority. The independent personality is one who asserts facts as absolutely true, and that is what is dangerous.

So does this mean the boy in the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes should request a vote before speaking up, assuming the emperor is tolerant of critics(!)? In addition to the self-contradictions of skepticism and relativism, this question is a reductio ad absurdum.***

It does not follow from human fallibility that absolute certainty is authoritarian or that strong, independent personalities are actual or wannabe dictators. Nor is the argument from fallibility the fundamental defense of freedom of speech and the free society.

In a single sentence, the answer to the issue is a sound, objective theory of universals that allows the identification of sound, objective values, which in turn defines social relationships in terms of individual rights, that is, freedoms to take action without coercion, including the freedom to express oneself on one’s own property or on that of someone else with whom one has contracted to make that expression.

Freedom of speech presupposes property rights, and democracy, if it is not to be a form of dictatorship—democracy, remember, killed Socrates—presupposes and is restrained by all individual rights, which therefore means democracy in a free society is demoted to the relatively minor function of selecting our leaders, along with other non-rights-violating details.

Democracy is not the arbiter of truth (or “approximate” truth) or of ethical or legal behavior.

The sound theory of universals is Ayn Rand’s (1; Applying Principles, pp. 322-24). It is a theory based on the contextual nature of knowledge that allows certain truth to be asserted as absolute within a specified context. Because knowledge grows over time, adjustments to earlier absolute certainties may have to be made, as Newton’s theories were adjusted by Einstein’s.

Incidentally, something over the years must have been right, true, and certain about Newton’s and Einstein’s ideas, because in the use of both theories, spaceships have gone to the moon and back.

Truth and certainty—by peaceful, independent-minded, non-authoritarian scientists—do seem possible.

Yes, we are fallible and not omniscient, which means we must submit our expressions to evaluation and criticism and be prepared to defend them, but this is not a justification of freedom of speech.

In order to survive and flourish, humans must exercise their inborn, volitional capacity to reason. Because this exercise of reason is not activated by our genes or environment (Applying Principles, pp. 315-18), we must be left free to choose—that is, it is right or moral for us to be free from the coercion of others, especially the government—to allow each of us as individuals to generate and sustain action to achieve our chosen values. Trade is our means of social cooperation.

The source and justification of individual rights is our nature as rational beings. It is right and moral to be free of any initiation against us of the use of physical force.

Thus, whatever we say or write, either on our own property or on that of the others cooperating with us, is, at least sometimes, an assertion of truth and certainty. It is right and moral for us to make these assertions, first, because our freedom of expression is consonant with and required by our human nature and, second, because our speech, writing, and expressions derive from our rights to life, liberty and property.

Inquisitors, jihadis, and Hitlers of the world, in contrast, do also make assertions of truth and certainty, but they back up their assertions with a gun. Their expressions are not open to evaluation and criticism because they tolerate no disagreement.

They are the authoritarians, the dictators, who at root, as Stanton Samenow demonstrates, are criminal personalities. As liars and cheaters, they are not the least bit interested in perceiving and asserting facts as facts. They most certainly are not independent personalities; they are among the worst of the dependent.

Brandishing and using guns, as they do, is anathema to our rational nature. Their goals and accomplishments are to silence our reason. Their “truth” and “certainty” lead to wanton destruction of humankind and civilization.

Talking and voting does not make any individual more or less independent, and it is not the means of preventing another Holocaust. Lack of certainty may indicate insecurity or insufficient knowledge to make a decision with confidence.

To link certainty to dictatorship is the red herring of all red herrings, brought to us by post-Kantian agnosticism, both in epistemology and ethics.

It is time to restore certainty to its proper place in knowledge and values.


* Years ago, I heard a Holocaust scholar say that the Nazis were certain of their convictions; therefore, it is good that we not be.

** The argument is John Stuart Mill’s utilitarian defense of free speech, restated in Jonathan Rauch, Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought. Rauch in 1993 was responding to an early wave of censorship by political correctness.

*** Here are the self-contradictions: skeptics assert as an absolute certainty that certainty is impossible and the relativists claim absolutely that all claims are relative. Cratylus, the Greek skeptic who stopped talking, is another reductio.