>>>"Popper claims the search for principles of induction entails a circular argument." Actually, no he doesn't. He states in LOSD that the search for principles of induction entails an *infinite regress.* Not quite the same as circular reasoning.
@@natang1 Of course I can point to the difference because a circular argument is different from an infinite regress argument. But you know something? I would never deny you the intellectual pleasure of going online and looking it up yourself. Won't take long.
@@natang1 On principle, he can't. In his mind, a circular argument is an infinite loop while an infinite regress is an infinite line. imaginary loop versus imaginary line. This is the "intellectual" depth you're dealing with here.
What about Peikoff's theory of induction? And Harriman's applications of it? How can you understand Popper w/o their ideas? Popper has a "rational" rheory of tradition, so "reason" is valid.
This is what happens whenever people who are doing Arts and Humanities for their entire life, like Popper try to speculate on mathematics. Induction is based, first of all, on the rule or a principle. It is not used to proove that there is a similarity between things or whatever. On the contrary, it is used to prove that this very rule or principle holds true throughout the entire sample. Popper was not a mathematician, thus, he could not understand this. He actually had no idea that one should think in this way.
I have always been an inductive reasoner. This fact allowed me to outproduce my fellow foreign-intelligence analysts. I tried to mentor other people in it, but many seem to resist this kind of thinking.
Induction is impossible so that can't be true. What you *actually* did is create a theory first for how to generalise any given set of observations. The reason is: generalising the same observations can be done in many different ways, that's why you need to have a theory first (that picks the "way" of generalising, out of many possible alternatives to do the same)
@@jonathanbauer2988 yes. there is no single way to deduce a true generalisation from a set of observations. We do it by guessing a theory first for how to specifically generalise the given observations. You objectivists think that is inducing from data, because it "feels" like that. But that is not what is going on
@@bartvanderhaegen6073 "Induction is impossible" Note that bart here has gone from SOME attempts at induction and drawn a conclusion about ALL attempts at induction. Of course that is the DEFINITION of induction. Worse, its an induction he considers VALID. LOL! It's always amusing when someone tries to REJECT induction by USING it. 🤣
So far, I don't understand Mazza's argument. At ~16:50 he lists the premises to what he claims is Popper's conclusion regarding the circularity of arguments for Induction. Mazza's presentation is a bit messy because Premise 1 is a hypothetical (If X, then Y), while the others are indicative propositions (All X is Y). They don't mix very well. Mazza presents the following syllogism as representing Popper's argument: (A) Any generalization is arrived at thru induction; [major premise] (A) Any inductive-principle is a generalization; [minor premise] (A) ergo, Any inductive-principle is arrived at thru induction. This First Figure syllogism in BARBARA (A, A, A) is valid in a purely formal, deductive sense. But I don't believe Popper actually could've written that in "Logic of Scientific Discovery" or anywhere else because the Major Premise is untrue, thus making the conclusion untrue, and Popper would've realized that immediately. Popper could not have made, or suggested, a universal statement like "All generalizations are arrived at through induction" because the axioms of logic and mathematics are generalizations but they weren't arrived at through induction. That the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter is always a constant, i.e., the transcendental number "pi", was not arrived at by observing lots of actual circles, taking lots of actual measurements of circumferences and diameters, calculating lots of ratios of C/D, and then averaging the results for convenience. "Pi" was arrived at strictly through acts of intellect.
Popper and mazza talk about scientific theories on reality, Math is an abstract useful but not in the set of things talked about, Pi for example isnt a real physical object, Popper and this lecture are talking discussing aquasition of knowledge about physical reality itself. Hens popper argument, as any generalised knowledge of physical reality is based on anactdotal experience, while rand/the lecturer try to defend the use of anecdotes as a source of truth.
In agreement with @IceQub3. Mathematical generalizations are beside the point, because everyone from the Vienna Circle and onwards has learned to strictly separate the "abstract sciences" (math) from the natural sciences. These are completely different domains, with completely different standards for knowledge. In my own opinion, mathematical statements are statements about *fictional* objects. I think it would be very weird to hold *fictions* to the same epistemic standards as statements about *reality.*
@@СергейМакеев-ж2н >>>These are completely different domains, Popper never claimed they weren't. Your point? >>>with completely different standards for knowledge. Hence Mazza's sloppiness in attributing to Popper the statement "ALL generalizations" instead of "SOME generalizations." I've already posted the URL to Popper's book.
@@СергейМакеев-ж2н "mathematical statements are statements about fictional objects" No. They are about *real* objects with their measurements omitted. BIG difference!
So, you are saying the the "hypothesis" has to be more than just a guess. It has to come from an understanding of the underlying principles or premises?
If it wasn't, it would be just stringing words or sounds together to form an arbitrary proposition. Even the statement, "The moon is made of cheese," takes into account ones knowledge of the characteristics of cheese.
Hypothesis can be anything. It can come from anywhere and still corespond to reality. Totally random hypothesis can be true. If you make enough hypothesis statistically one of them will be true. It doesn’t matter how you ended up to the hypothesis if it corresponds to reality.
@@w4ris it can't come from just anywhere it's based on limited knowledge and then further investigated. If you spout arbitrary nonsense all day and then happen to be correct about something it doesn't qualify as knowledge. It's just stringing sounds together.
I think this is a bit of a chicken vs. egg problem. I can think of (almost?) no hypothesis which is not based at least to some extent on prior observation. To do a random sample of birds means having some rudimentary idea (theory?) of what constitutes a bird, i.e. not a two-ton pachyderm. Such prior "theorising" can be fairly rudimentary. I think it is also evolutionary: humans are for evolutionary reasons a pattern-recognising animal. Humans who could distinguish between the sound of a gazelle and the sound of a lion on the savanna were on average more successful in passing on their genes.
I've not found a better defender of knowledge than Aristotle. His works are still the superior defense (OPAR is mostly his works repackaged). From The Analytics, Posterior and Prior, my paraphrase; Induction is art, deduction is science. Art comes first. The traditional arrangement of the Organon has these works out of order. Aristotle invented deduction. He had to in order to train and teach others how to deny the sophists. No one understood or explained induction and deduction better than him and that is still true today. If interested in learning from the Master [Still Today] of Them That Know, the only translations I recommend are The Oxford Revised Edition edited by Jonathan Barnes. Barnes's 1976 translation of Posterior Analytics renders the 1925 Geoffrey Mure translation obsolete. Barnes's translation is the best thing to happen to understanding, and defending, of knowledge since Aristotle.
Rand solved the problem of concepts. Aristotle seems to have implicitly used Rands theory in his science, acc/to James Lennox in Aristotle Philosophy Of Biology. He mentioned "the more and the less" but didnt develop it. Its an approach to Rand's measurement-omission.
I assume what you're getting at here is that it's not falsifiable, so not testable in Popper's scheme and yet we all accept it as true. We could imagine a man living for 300 years but they could still die in year 301. But practically if we did encounter a 300-year old man we would think there's something wrong with "all men are mortal," as we have an expectation that men won't live much beyond 100 based on current technology. And if we encountered a man who was indestructible we would deem that to be a refutation, even if we don't know that in 1000 years, something will kill him after all.
Foregone conclusion. More significantly, I've been waiting for an Objectivist to debate a Popperian openly on some public forum. It'll never happen. To debate an opponent personally, according to Objectivism, is to "sanction" their position. So it's best not to engage at all with those who disagree on fundamentals.
@@cas343 There is no objectivist position to Karl popper. Objectivist = person adopting central thesis from Rands philosophy. Afaik, Rand never commented Popper directly.
@@economicfreedom8591 Within objectivism there is great rift about Popper. Some think there is conflict between Popper and Rand and want to discredit Popper. Some see them as complementary and argue there is no major conflict in their epistemologies apart from terminology difference. Just google it and you see tons of writings for and against Popper by objectivists.
@@w4ris >>>Rand never commented Popper directly. Rand didn't know that much about science, and when she did comment, it was often incorrect. In her monograph on epistemology and discussion on concepts as a kind of "unit measurement," she states by way of example that the Angstrom is a "unit of color." Not so. An Angstrom is a unit of wavelength. Wavelength **correlates** with our subjective mental experience of something we call "color", but it's not a "unit" of that perceptual experience. Rand committed a "category mistake" there. Elsewhere, she mentions Helmholze's work "On The Sensations of Tone" in trying to explain the phenomenon of "dissonance vs. consonance" in music, involving the interference of soundwaves that cause rhythmic "beats" in the ear. The "beats," in turn, supposedly create the feeling of "unrest" in a dissonant chord. It's a mathematically tidy theory but it doesn't explain why "beats" produced in one register (e.g., the low bass end of a piano) are perceived very differently from "beats" in another register (e.g., the high treble end of a piano). Nor does it explain why chords deemed "dissonant" in the past are interpreted today as consonant. Clearly, there are other factors occurring than the interference of soundwaves. Those other factors, however, are likely to be subjective, based on things like "personal taste," which itself is based on things like "experience in listening to lots of different kinds of music." Rand herself had very limited listening experience, which is why she favored Rachmaninoff, light opera, and Scott Joplin ragtime, to Beethoven (whom she dismissed anyway as having a "malevolent sense of life").
k: "I never saw [Popper] once rejecting induction" Popper: "My own view is that the various difficulties of inductive logic here sketched are insurmountable. So also, I fear, are those inherent in the doctrine, so widely current today, that inductive inference, although not 'strictly valid', can attain some degree of 'reliability' or of 'probability'." (KP, LoSD)
Mazza has an ARI interview with Aaron Smith on why other philosophers can't get Ayn Rand's philosophy right. Yet here he is in this video NOT getting Karl Popper right - there are no direct citations from Popper's works, and Mazza's summaries and paraphrases are often incorrect. Years ago in his lectures on Objectivism, Peikoff told the live audience that he would occasionally reference other philosophies only in order to "brush away a few flies." Not exactly an example of scholarly integrity that invites other philosophers to engage with Objectivism after studying closely. It's more like, "We're right; you're wrong!" The main reason academic philosophers of various schools of thought don't engage with Mazza, Binswanger, Peikoff, and Rand herself, is that they find it to be a combination of truisms (elements of older philosophies with which they already agree, so there's no pressing need to re-argue them) + arbitrary assertions that support a-prior biases ("ideological priors'), which are not scrutinized closely by Rand's acolytes, such as Objectivism's assumptions that the material universe necessarily existed before the appearance of non-material consciousness (in other words, basically just garden-variety, 19th-century-style, naive materialism), or that the concept of "number", which most professional mathematicians and physicists concede does NOT have a fully-accepted definition (nor does it need to have one) necessarily refers to the "measurement of the quantity of something" with the putative "units of measurement" abstracted away. Objectivism then takes an arbitrary assertion about "number" and expands it into a theory of concepts in its epistemology. The idea that the concept "chair" is some sort of measurement of a quantity known as "chair," with the "unit of such measurement" being dropped, is simply incoherent, and has been both studied and criticized even long ago by people such as academic philosopher William F. O'Neill who wrote "With Charity Toward None: An Analysis of the Philosophy of Ayn Rand" (1972). To my knowledge, neither Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, nor any member of Rand's NYC inner circle commented on the book; and the few hardcore, serious "Students of Objectivism" back in the day who read the book merely dismissed it with the excuse that the author simply "misunderstood Objectivism, so there's no need to reply." And ARI actually believes that other philosophers "simply can't get Ayn Rand right." Hmmm. Might be a case of "denial" combined with "Pot, Kettle, Black."
“Popper’s Alternative to Induction: Falsification” This is mistaken. Conjecture and refutation, or evolution of ideas is Popper’s alternative. Falsification is just one particular example of conjecture and refutation that applies very well to science.
idk if I really care about induction. My epistomology has no need of that particular principle. It's couched in different terms. You could think of it as a small scale and big scale interdependancy of ideas. A network or pyrimid or strutural approach to epistomology. At the small scale ideas have to avoid fallacy and at the large scale they must interconnect with all other relevant ideas. Predictive power being the gold standard for certainty of their validity. They are not just repeatable, but that they can be used to predict elements of knowledge that have hitherto been unexplored.
@eviltiki13 I synthesize from the existing set, then validate. The synthesis doesn't do the validation. Validation is a reflective exercise, sometimes including experiment.
@@alexanderx33 How do you know without using induction that at the small scale all ideas have to avoid fallacy? How do you know without using induction at the large scale that all ideas must interconnect with all relevant ideas? How do you know without using induction that predictive power is always the gold standard?
@@YashArya01 Quoting Popper literally doesn't make it harder, and it would be more authentic than just an interpretation of what some person thinks he said.
@@YashArya01 >>> it's harder than you'd think to present such ideas in an hour. I guess that's why Mazza chose to misrepresent Popper by attributing statements to him that he never made. That definitely saved some time.
I don’t see how Popper could be wrong when he said you can’t prove theory to be true, you can only prove it false. For me this is no brainer. To prove theory true would require all knowledge about reality. To prove theory false doesn’t have the same requirement.
> To prove theory true would require all knowledge about reality. Objectivist truth is contextual. Relative to Fact A, B is true. Scientists call this parameter, ie, scientists systematically identify the properties of the object of study and the methods used to study it. See any article in a science journal. You need to study Objectivism to judge it because your context of knowledge about it is zero. But, thenn again, youre a no brainer.
@@TeaParty1776 You can’t say something is true even contextually. For every empirical observation you can create infinite explanations. How do you judge which is true? You have no choise but to falsify.
@@w4ris > For every empirical observation you can create infinite explanations. Agreed, Popper is a mystic. >How do you judge which is true? Perception-based Mills Methods.
@@w4ris For every empirical observation you can create infinite explanations. Agreed,, within the unfocused mind of mystics and subjectivists. But not within the mind focused on the causal universe w/Mills Methods. Popper is a Kantian nihilist.
Rand was the last Aristotelian whose principal flaw was her rejection of Hume. She derives an ought (very naughtily) from an is (of human rationality). She made a new categorical imperative while condemning Kant's to the netherworld.
>>>She derives an ought (very naughtily) from an is (of human rationality) Concur. And since one cannot derive an "ought" proposition from an "is" proposition in deductive logic, then it has to be done thru induction . . . which, per se, is an invalid way of arriving at universal propositions.
'"flaw" You misspelled 'virtue', as in 'her virtue was her rejection of Hume'. "she derives and ought...from an is." Indeed she does. And you present NO rational argument against HOW she derived ought from is, leaving her arguments standing *untouched*. Way to go!
@@economicfreedom8591 Man was inducing long before philosophers conceptualized it. it. Its a need of mans life. All rocks are not edible. All sabre-toothed tigers are dangerous. All denials of induction are false.
I'm guessing it's because of the "arbitrariness is explicitly allowed" part. Any dogmatic ideology sometimes feels the need to be able to say, "Our conclusions are *the objectively correct* conclusions, and everyone who disagrees is *irrational!"* Whereas Falsificationism technically allows for two scientists to come to diametrically opposite conclusions *and both be justified,* because they had different sets of conjectures, did different experiments, or possibly did the same experiments in a different order.
What’s Popper’s method of forming concepts and inducing generalizations? That is, according to Popper, how do you start from the evidence of the senses and learn things like all men across all time and space are mortal? As far as I know, he believes that’s impossible (which is self-contradictory) and his view is in conflict with Objectivism and the facts.
"this poor guy seems out of his depth" On the basis of what facts do you make this accusation? What ideas are you claiming are wrong or inadequate here? Or are you here just to throw EMPTY aspersions?
Where do hypothesis come from? It does not matter so much. Hypotheses are a dime a dozen. People make hypotheses all the time. What makes them worthwhile is that someone takes the trouble to devise experiments to prove or disprove them. Science is the method by which hypothesis are proven - for the time being - or disproven. If no one takes the trouble, then it is just talk in a cafe, to be forgotten the next day.
>>>Floundering around trying to defend a lost cause! And yet there are far more theists in the world than there are Objectivists. That fact seems to suggest that materialist philosophies like Objectivism are the "lost cause," and not religion.
>>>Theory is logically primary! Concur. Or at the very least, hypothesis is primary. A philosopher cannot instruct a scientific researcher to "open the window and just 'observe'." If the researcher asks, "Er, uh, observe WHAT, exactly?" the philosopher cannot reply by saying, "I dunno! Just 'observe'! You know, make 'observations'!" The researcher must first have some idea of WHAT kinds of phenomena merit observation. That idea is a hypothesis, even if it's inchoate and unclear, it will act as a guide for WHAT to observe.
Spontaneously~ you see things you try to find commonality between them, then you pose a theory to explain what you see. It's natural way of human function.
@@lloydgush Yes really, but they didn't come out of thin air either. They were motivated by existing problems. Ditto the very strange (much more so than relativity) quantum mechanics (which Einstein also had an early hand in, even though he subsequently hated it or, more accurately, considered it incomplete).
The purpose of all knowledge, wisdom, and understanding is actionable certainty, never absolute certainty, but logic is as close to absolute certainty as we can get because no exceptions to it have ever been found.
@@bleigh3369 Science is a) rigor, b) a method of being rigorous, c) rigorously obtained results, d) the culture that grows around them. Epistemology is "how we know what we know", which includes logic, science, statistics, intuition...
Do you know why Popper came up with that? Because of the experience of how science advances. A theory is held to be true, but those who propose it know that at any time new knowledge will come up and either refine it or disprove it, and they are Ok with that. Because what we know is just a small set of what is out there. The history of science is littered with discarded theories that were once held to be true. There is no certainty in science. The only certainty is that most theories are only to be held for a certain amount of time and no more. If Ayn Rand could not comprehend that, it was because she was no scientist.
This is based on the idea of certainty as a changeless absolute, which is the format of religious dogmas. Objectivism regards certainty as contextually absolute (contextual to the present state of evidence). When you say you’re certain of something, on this view, there is an implicit proviso to the effect of: “Within the context of the total available evidence…”
Wrong you do not understand the definition of knowledge. As Peikoff pointed out all knowledge is contextual. One of the problems with Popper is his standard is "perfect knowledge". A person building a house can properly assume that the Earth is flat.
How do you reconcile this with Newton and Einstein? Newton's theory of gravity is true and will always be true, no? Einstein adds to Newton for relativistic speeds. Context matters.
@@genewalters Well, Newton's theory got modified by Einstein, and said that it did not apply to certain cases. But that's just one theory among many. And discarded theories are to be expected. Remember phlogiston?
@@genewalters It is not widely known that Einstein and the Copenhagen gang were all trying to square their physics with Kant and Hegel's metaphysics, which is just warmed over Plato, with the disastrous result we see in modern physics. We are now supposed to determine the truth of physical model's based on their mathematical beauty
You are cheapening Ayn Rands 'great contribution to knowledge and culture by stubbornly sticking to her outmoded belief in induction! She made a mistake! This unnecessary worship of a great women is childish and harmful to her great contribution!
@DaleBolender-ms7jl Bro the scientists are saying men can have periods and our studies have a 10% replication rate: We're bringing induction back if it kills us.
There is not a single contribution by Rand that does not ultimately rely on induction and that evidence of the senses which you consider secondary (that you actually came out and said that was delightful). If she had believed that induction was invalid she would have gotten precisely nowhere.
Great and helpful lecture, Mike!
>>>"Popper claims the search for principles of induction entails a circular argument."
Actually, no he doesn't. He states in LOSD that the search for principles of induction entails an *infinite regress.* Not quite the same as circular reasoning.
Sounds the same to me. Can you point to the difference?
@@natang1
Of course I can point to the difference because a circular argument is different from an infinite regress argument. But you know something? I would never deny you the intellectual pleasure of going online and looking it up yourself. Won't take long.
In order to stop the infinite regress, you need to assume induction is true, hence it's a circular argument
@@natang1 On principle, he can't. In his mind, a circular argument is an infinite loop while an infinite regress is an infinite line.
imaginary loop versus imaginary line.
This is the "intellectual" depth you're dealing with here.
Is Popper’s claim that it leads to an infinite regress informed by his view that perception cannot ground proofs?
What about Peikoff's theory of induction? And Harriman's applications of it? How can you understand Popper w/o their ideas? Popper has a "rational" rheory of tradition, so "reason" is valid.
This is what happens whenever people who are doing Arts and Humanities for their entire life, like Popper try to speculate on mathematics. Induction is based, first of all, on the rule or a principle. It is not used to proove that there is a similarity between things or whatever. On the contrary, it is used to prove that this very rule or principle holds true throughout the entire sample. Popper was not a mathematician, thus, he could not understand this. He actually had no idea that one should think in this way.
I have always been an inductive reasoner. This fact allowed me to outproduce my fellow foreign-intelligence analysts. I tried to mentor other people in it, but many seem to resist this kind of thinking.
Induction is impossible so that can't be true. What you *actually* did is create a theory first for how to generalise any given set of observations. The reason is: generalising the same observations can be done in many different ways, that's why you need to have a theory first (that picks the "way" of generalising, out of many possible alternatives to do the same)
@@bartvanderhaegen6073 I was there and that is not what happened. Due to circumstances, creating an a priori theory was not possible.
@@bartvanderhaegen6073 induction is impossible lmao what a joke!
@@jonathanbauer2988 yes. there is no single way to deduce a true generalisation from a set of observations. We do it by guessing a theory first for how to specifically generalise the given observations. You objectivists think that is inducing from data, because it "feels" like that. But that is not what is going on
@@bartvanderhaegen6073 "Induction is impossible"
Note that bart here has gone from SOME attempts at induction and drawn a conclusion about ALL attempts at induction. Of course that is the DEFINITION of induction. Worse, its an induction he considers VALID.
LOL!
It's always amusing when someone tries to REJECT induction by USING it. 🤣
What is scientific method?
So far, I don't understand Mazza's argument.
At ~16:50 he lists the premises to what he claims is Popper's conclusion regarding the circularity of arguments for Induction. Mazza's presentation is a bit messy because Premise 1 is a hypothetical (If X, then Y), while the others are indicative propositions (All X is Y). They don't mix very well.
Mazza presents the following syllogism as representing Popper's argument:
(A) Any generalization is arrived at thru induction; [major premise]
(A) Any inductive-principle is a generalization; [minor premise]
(A) ergo, Any inductive-principle is arrived at thru induction.
This First Figure syllogism in BARBARA (A, A, A) is valid in a purely formal, deductive sense. But I don't believe Popper actually could've written that in "Logic of Scientific Discovery" or anywhere else because the Major Premise is untrue, thus making the conclusion untrue, and Popper would've realized that immediately.
Popper could not have made, or suggested, a universal statement like "All generalizations are arrived at through induction" because the axioms of logic and mathematics are generalizations but they weren't arrived at through induction. That the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter is always a constant, i.e., the transcendental number "pi", was not arrived at by observing lots of actual circles, taking lots of actual measurements of circumferences and diameters, calculating lots of ratios of C/D, and then averaging the results for convenience. "Pi" was arrived at strictly through acts of intellect.
Popper and mazza talk about scientific theories on reality,
Math is an abstract useful but not in the set of things talked about,
Pi for example isnt a real physical object,
Popper and this lecture are talking discussing aquasition of knowledge about physical reality itself.
Hens popper argument, as any generalised knowledge of physical reality is based on anactdotal experience, while rand/the lecturer try to defend the use of anecdotes as a source of truth.
In agreement with @IceQub3. Mathematical generalizations are beside the point, because everyone from the Vienna Circle and onwards has learned to strictly separate the "abstract sciences" (math) from the natural sciences. These are completely different domains, with completely different standards for knowledge.
In my own opinion, mathematical statements are statements about *fictional* objects. I think it would be very weird to hold *fictions* to the same epistemic standards as statements about *reality.*
@@СергейМакеев-ж2н and even math has axioms that must be assumed
@@СергейМакеев-ж2н >>>These are completely different domains,
Popper never claimed they weren't. Your point?
>>>with completely different standards for knowledge.
Hence Mazza's sloppiness in attributing to Popper the statement "ALL generalizations" instead of "SOME generalizations." I've already posted the URL to Popper's book.
@@СергейМакеев-ж2н "mathematical statements are statements about fictional objects"
No. They are about *real* objects with their measurements omitted. BIG difference!
Popper takes human limits seriously. Rand doesn't.
So, you are saying the the "hypothesis" has to be more than just a guess. It has to come from an understanding of the underlying principles or premises?
If it wasn't, it would be just stringing words or sounds together to form an arbitrary proposition. Even the statement, "The moon is made of cheese," takes into account ones knowledge of the characteristics of cheese.
Hypothesis can be anything. It can come from anywhere and still corespond to reality. Totally random hypothesis can be true. If you make enough hypothesis statistically one of them will be true. It doesn’t matter how you ended up to the hypothesis if it corresponds to reality.
@@w4ris you have to know how it corresponds to reality or it's not knowledge.
@@johngleue I don’t follow you. By definition hypothesis is not knowledge and doesn’t have to be.
@@w4ris it can't come from just anywhere it's based on limited knowledge and then further investigated. If you spout arbitrary nonsense all day and then happen to be correct about something it doesn't qualify as knowledge. It's just stringing sounds together.
In duction is largely what is in the observable world.
@abramgaller2037 Those are particulars and induction is the process of naming the universal
Induction OF observables?
@@WolvesOfApollo Induction forms the universal. Names are somewhat arbitrary.
54:41 @inductica makes a presence.
I think this is a bit of a chicken vs. egg problem. I can think of (almost?) no hypothesis which is not based at least to some extent on prior observation. To do a random sample of birds means having some rudimentary idea (theory?) of what constitutes a bird, i.e. not a two-ton pachyderm. Such prior "theorising" can be fairly rudimentary. I think it is also evolutionary: humans are for evolutionary reasons a pattern-recognising animal. Humans who could distinguish between the sound of a gazelle and the sound of a lion on the savanna were on average more successful in passing on their genes.
Patterrns and perceptual associations need conceptualizing for mans life.
I've not found a better defender of knowledge than Aristotle. His works are still the superior defense (OPAR is mostly his works repackaged). From The Analytics, Posterior and Prior, my paraphrase; Induction is art, deduction is science. Art comes first. The traditional arrangement of the Organon has these works out of order.
Aristotle invented deduction. He had to in order to train and teach others how to deny the sophists. No one understood or explained induction and deduction better than him and that is still true today. If interested in learning from the Master [Still Today] of Them That Know, the only translations I recommend are The Oxford Revised Edition edited by Jonathan Barnes. Barnes's 1976 translation of Posterior Analytics renders the 1925 Geoffrey Mure translation obsolete. Barnes's translation is the best thing to happen to understanding, and defending, of knowledge since Aristotle.
> Aristotle invented deduction.
Aristotle discovered induction. Its a power of the mind that existed from the time when man evolved.
I meant deduction. And Socrates discovered deduction implicitly. Aristotle
conceptualied it.
Rand solved the problem of concepts. Aristotle seems to have implicitly used Rands theory in his science, acc/to James Lennox in Aristotle Philosophy Of Biology. He mentioned "the more and the less" but didnt develop it. Its an approach to Rand's measurement-omission.
All men are mortal. How can we test that proposition following Popper?
You can’t. Why?
You can’t. Why do you ask?
I assume what you're getting at here is that it's not falsifiable, so not testable in Popper's scheme and yet we all accept it as true. We could imagine a man living for 300 years but they could still die in year 301. But practically if we did encounter a 300-year old man we would think there's something wrong with "all men are mortal," as we have an expectation that men won't live much beyond 100 based on current technology. And if we encountered a man who was indestructible we would deem that to be a refutation, even if we don't know that in 1000 years, something will kill him after all.
Hey, ARI, don't you think you should mention the name of the presenter of the talk in the title and/or the description?
Title of talk: "Karl Popper's Rejection of Induction | Mike Mazza"
@@bleigh3369Looks like they changed it. 👍
Karl Popper was correct!
Been wanting to hear an Objectivist position on Karl Popper. I get the feeling I know what it will be however lol...
Foregone conclusion.
More significantly, I've been waiting for an Objectivist to debate a Popperian openly on some public forum. It'll never happen. To debate an opponent personally, according to Objectivism, is to "sanction" their position. So it's best not to engage at all with those who disagree on fundamentals.
@@cas343 There is no objectivist position to Karl popper. Objectivist = person adopting central thesis from Rands philosophy. Afaik, Rand never commented Popper directly.
@@economicfreedom8591 Within objectivism there is great rift about Popper. Some think there is conflict between Popper and Rand and want to discredit Popper. Some see them as complementary and argue there is no major conflict in their epistemologies apart from terminology difference. Just google it and you see tons of writings for and against Popper by objectivists.
@@w4ris >>>Rand never commented Popper directly.
Rand didn't know that much about science, and when she did comment, it was often incorrect. In her monograph on epistemology and discussion on concepts as a kind of "unit measurement," she states by way of example that the Angstrom is a "unit of color." Not so. An Angstrom is a unit of wavelength. Wavelength **correlates** with our subjective mental experience of something we call "color", but it's not a "unit" of that perceptual experience. Rand committed a "category mistake" there. Elsewhere, she mentions Helmholze's work "On The Sensations of Tone" in trying to explain the phenomenon of "dissonance vs. consonance" in music, involving the interference of soundwaves that cause rhythmic "beats" in the ear. The "beats," in turn, supposedly create the feeling of "unrest" in a dissonant chord. It's a mathematically tidy theory but it doesn't explain why "beats" produced in one register (e.g., the low bass end of a piano) are perceived very differently from "beats" in another register (e.g., the high treble end of a piano). Nor does it explain why chords deemed "dissonant" in the past are interpreted today as consonant. Clearly, there are other factors occurring than the interference of soundwaves. Those other factors, however, are likely to be subjective, based on things like "personal taste," which itself is based on things like "experience in listening to lots of different kinds of music." Rand herself had very limited listening experience, which is why she favored Rachmaninoff, light opera, and Scott Joplin ragtime, to Beethoven (whom she dismissed anyway as having a "malevolent sense of life").
@@economicfreedom8591 debating with someone is not sanctioning their position, I don't think you understand that concept.
Having read Popper I never saw him once rejecting induction.
k: "I never saw [Popper] once rejecting induction"
Popper: "My own view is that the various difficulties of inductive logic here sketched are insurmountable. So also, I fear, are those inherent in the doctrine, so widely current today, that inductive inference, although not 'strictly valid', can attain some degree of 'reliability' or of 'probability'." (KP, LoSD)
@@bleigh3369 Note Poppers inductive denial of induction. Life requires induction. Man has no instincts.
Popper ,following Kant, is good at sleight-of-hand.
Mazza has an ARI interview with Aaron Smith on why other philosophers can't get Ayn Rand's philosophy right. Yet here he is in this video NOT getting Karl Popper right - there are no direct citations from Popper's works, and Mazza's summaries and paraphrases are often incorrect.
Years ago in his lectures on Objectivism, Peikoff told the live audience that he would occasionally reference other philosophies only in order to "brush away a few flies." Not exactly an example of scholarly integrity that invites other philosophers to engage with Objectivism after studying closely. It's more like, "We're right; you're wrong!"
The main reason academic philosophers of various schools of thought don't engage with Mazza, Binswanger, Peikoff, and Rand herself, is that they find it to be a combination of truisms (elements of older philosophies with which they already agree, so there's no pressing need to re-argue them) + arbitrary assertions that support a-prior biases ("ideological priors'), which are not scrutinized closely by Rand's acolytes, such as Objectivism's assumptions that the material universe necessarily existed before the appearance of non-material consciousness (in other words, basically just garden-variety, 19th-century-style, naive materialism), or that the concept of "number", which most professional mathematicians and physicists concede does NOT have a fully-accepted definition (nor does it need to have one) necessarily refers to the "measurement of the quantity of something" with the putative "units of measurement" abstracted away. Objectivism then takes an arbitrary assertion about "number" and expands it into a theory of concepts in its epistemology. The idea that the concept "chair" is some sort of measurement of a quantity known as "chair," with the "unit of such measurement" being dropped, is simply incoherent, and has been both studied and criticized even long ago by people such as academic philosopher William F. O'Neill who wrote "With Charity Toward None: An Analysis of the Philosophy of Ayn Rand" (1972). To my knowledge, neither Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, nor any member of Rand's NYC inner circle commented on the book; and the few hardcore, serious "Students of Objectivism" back in the day who read the book merely dismissed it with the excuse that the author simply "misunderstood Objectivism, so there's no need to reply."
And ARI actually believes that other philosophers "simply can't get Ayn Rand right." Hmmm. Might be a case of "denial" combined with "Pot, Kettle, Black."
As it happens, both Popper and Objectivists say that their philosophies are widely misunderstood.
“Popper’s Alternative to Induction: Falsification” This is mistaken. Conjecture and refutation, or evolution of ideas is Popper’s alternative. Falsification is just one particular example of conjecture and refutation that applies very well to science.
idk if I really care about induction. My epistomology has no need of that particular principle. It's couched in different terms. You could think of it as a small scale and big scale interdependancy of ideas. A network or pyrimid or strutural approach to epistomology. At the small scale ideas have to avoid fallacy and at the large scale they must interconnect with all other relevant ideas. Predictive power being the gold standard for certainty of their validity. They are not just repeatable, but that they can be used to predict elements of knowledge that have hitherto been unexplored.
What if you need to come up with a new idea?
@eviltiki13 I synthesize from the existing set, then validate. The synthesis doesn't do the validation. Validation is a reflective exercise, sometimes including experiment.
All knowledge comes from experience, so it all starts with induction
@@alexanderx33 How do you know without using induction that at the small scale all ideas have to avoid fallacy? How do you know without using induction at the large scale that all ideas must interconnect with all relevant ideas? How do you know without using induction that predictive power is always the gold standard?
@@Travis_Varga Stolen Concepts are such a BlTCH, ain't they? ;)
Scientists do not look for concepts, they attempt to formulate explanatory theories!
Ayn Rand was not a scientist , she was a literary person!
Tell me how a principle of science, say the conservation of energy is arrived at through induction? you will not be able to do so!
Gravity?
Not a single actual quote from Popper ...
@@bartvanderhaegen6073 it's harder than you'd think to present such ideas in an hour. Try it. Maybe you're better at it than most people.
@@YashArya01 Quoting Popper literally doesn't make it harder, and it would be more authentic than just an interpretation of what some person thinks he said.
@@bartvanderhaegen6073 you make a video.
@@YashArya01 interesting "argument"
@@YashArya01 >>> it's harder than you'd think to present such ideas in an hour.
I guess that's why Mazza chose to misrepresent Popper by attributing statements to him that he never made. That definitely saved some time.
I don’t see how Popper could be wrong when he said you can’t prove theory to be true, you can only prove it false. For me this is no brainer. To prove theory true would require all knowledge about reality. To prove theory false doesn’t have the same requirement.
You are using a conception of proof that is a fantasy of omniscience. Epistemological concepts must relate to the human context or they are pointless.
> To prove theory true would require all knowledge about reality.
Objectivist truth is contextual. Relative to Fact A, B is true. Scientists call this parameter, ie, scientists systematically identify the properties of the object of study and the methods used to study it. See any article in a science journal. You need to study Objectivism to judge it because your context of knowledge about it is zero. But, thenn again, youre a no brainer.
@@TeaParty1776 You can’t say something is true even contextually.
For every empirical observation you can create infinite explanations. How do you judge which is true? You have no choise but to falsify.
@@w4ris > For every empirical observation you can create infinite explanations.
Agreed, Popper is a mystic.
>How do you judge which is true?
Perception-based Mills Methods.
@@w4ris For every empirical observation you can create infinite explanations.
Agreed,, within the unfocused mind of mystics and subjectivists. But not within the mind focused on the causal universe w/Mills Methods. Popper is a Kantian nihilist.
Rand was the last Aristotelian whose principal flaw was her rejection of Hume.
She derives an ought (very naughtily) from an is (of human rationality). She made a new categorical imperative while condemning Kant's to the netherworld.
>>>She derives an ought (very naughtily) from an is (of human rationality)
Concur. And since one cannot derive an "ought" proposition from an "is" proposition in deductive logic, then it has to be done thru induction . . . which, per se, is an invalid way of arriving at universal propositions.
'"flaw"
You misspelled 'virtue', as in 'her virtue was her rejection of Hume'.
"she derives and ought...from an is."
Indeed she does. And you present NO rational argument against HOW she derived ought from is, leaving her arguments standing *untouched*. Way to go!
@@bleigh3369 >NO rational argument
Humeans experience streams of consciousness of the unfocused mind.
@@economicfreedom8591 > invalid way of arriving at universal propositions.
This is an invalid induction.
@@economicfreedom8591 Man was inducing long before philosophers conceptualized it. it. Its a need of mans life. All rocks are not edible. All sabre-toothed tigers are dangerous. All denials of induction are false.
This lecture is silly beyond words!
Are you a bot made to comment like crazy? 😂
Hall Thomas Perez Sharon Hall Larry
Idk why there is so strong need to discredit Popper? I don’t see any major conflict between Objectivism and Poppers epistemology.
In what way is Popper compatible with induction? How does Objectivism stand without induction?
I'm guessing it's because of the "arbitrariness is explicitly allowed" part. Any dogmatic ideology sometimes feels the need to be able to say, "Our conclusions are *the objectively correct* conclusions, and everyone who disagrees is *irrational!"*
Whereas Falsificationism technically allows for two scientists to come to diametrically opposite conclusions *and both be justified,* because they had different sets of conjectures, did different experiments, or possibly did the same experiments in a different order.
What’s Popper’s method of forming concepts and inducing generalizations? That is, according to Popper, how do you start from the evidence of the senses and learn things like all men across all time and space are mortal? As far as I know, he believes that’s impossible (which is self-contradictory) and his view is in conflict with Objectivism and the facts.
@@Travis_Varga I would suggest you actually read Popper before you critique.
@@w4risyou don’t know?
David Home showed induction is empty!
Interesting topic, but this poor guy seems out of his depth.
"this poor guy seems out of his depth"
On the basis of what facts do you make this accusation? What ideas are you claiming are wrong or inadequate here?
Or are you here just to throw EMPTY aspersions?
Where do hypothesis come from? It does not matter so much. Hypotheses are a dime a dozen. People make hypotheses all the time. What makes them worthwhile is that someone takes the trouble to devise experiments to prove or disprove them. Science is the method by which hypothesis are proven - for the time being - or disproven. If no one takes the trouble, then it is just talk in a cafe, to be forgotten the next day.
This reminds me of apologists for religion! Floundering around trying to defend a lost cause!
>>>Floundering around trying to defend a lost cause!
And yet there are far more theists in the world than there are Objectivists. That fact seems to suggest that materialist philosophies like Objectivism are the "lost cause," and not religion.
Observation is not primary! Theory is logically primary! Poppers' explanations are crystal clear!
>>>Theory is logically primary!
Concur. Or at the very least, hypothesis is primary. A philosopher cannot instruct a scientific researcher to "open the window and just 'observe'." If the researcher asks, "Er, uh, observe WHAT, exactly?" the philosopher cannot reply by saying, "I dunno! Just 'observe'! You know, make 'observations'!" The researcher must first have some idea of WHAT kinds of phenomena merit observation. That idea is a hypothesis, even if it's inchoate and unclear, it will act as a guide for WHAT to observe.
How can you get a theory without first observing?
@@tennoio1392 Yes. 2*2=4
@@tennoio1392
How do you decide what to observe without first having a theory guiding you?
Spontaneously~ you see things you try to find commonality between them, then you pose a theory to explain what you see. It's natural way of human function.
Einsteins' various contributions were not attained by some process of generalization. they were completely new!
Not really.
@@lloydgush Yes really, but they didn't come out of thin air either. They were motivated by existing problems. Ditto the very strange (much more so than relativity) quantum mechanics (which Einstein also had an early hand in, even though he subsequently hated it or, more accurately, considered it incomplete).
@@kevinmcfarlane2752 yep, he hated what made him what he was (essencially).
Technically his nobel was on quantum physics, lol!
E=Mc//2 is as genera;ization of centuries of astronomy and physics.
Science is rigor. Logic is a sub-set of science which is rigorously discovered relationships that always replicate.
Knowledge is always and only justified belief to accept a particular fact or take a particular action.
The justification for any belief can only come in one of two forms; empirical probability or logical necessity, both of which rest on replication.
The purpose of all knowledge, wisdom, and understanding is actionable certainty, never absolute certainty, but logic is as close to absolute certainty as we can get because no exceptions to it have ever been found.
"Science is rigor. Logic is a sub-set of science"
This is backwards. Logic is epistemology. Science is the application of epistemology.
@@bleigh3369 Science is a) rigor, b) a method of being rigorous, c) rigorously obtained results, d) the culture that grows around them.
Epistemology is "how we know what we know", which includes logic, science, statistics, intuition...
Do you know why Popper came up with that? Because of the experience of how science advances. A theory is held to be true, but those who propose it know that at any time new knowledge will come up and either refine it or disprove it, and they are Ok with that. Because what we know is just a small set of what is out there. The history of science is littered with discarded theories that were once held to be true.
There is no certainty in science. The only certainty is that most theories are only to be held for a certain amount of time and no more.
If Ayn Rand could not comprehend that, it was because she was no scientist.
This is based on the idea of certainty as a changeless absolute, which is the format of religious dogmas. Objectivism regards certainty as contextually absolute (contextual to the present state of evidence). When you say you’re certain of something, on this view, there is an implicit proviso to the effect of: “Within the context of the total available evidence…”
Wrong you do not understand the definition of knowledge. As Peikoff pointed out all knowledge is contextual. One of the problems with Popper is his standard is "perfect knowledge". A person building a house can properly assume that the Earth is flat.
How do you reconcile this with Newton and Einstein? Newton's theory of gravity is true and will always be true, no? Einstein adds to Newton for relativistic speeds. Context matters.
@@genewalters Well, Newton's theory got modified by Einstein, and said that it did not apply to certain cases. But that's just one theory among many. And discarded theories are to be expected. Remember phlogiston?
@@genewalters It is not widely known that Einstein and the Copenhagen gang were all trying to square their physics with Kant and Hegel's metaphysics, which is just warmed over Plato, with the disastrous result we see in modern physics.
We are now supposed to determine the truth of physical model's based on their mathematical beauty
You are cheapening Ayn Rands 'great contribution to knowledge and culture by stubbornly sticking to her outmoded belief in induction! She made a mistake! This unnecessary worship of a great women is childish and harmful to her great contribution!
@DaleBolender-ms7jl Bro the scientists are saying men can have periods and our studies have a 10% replication rate: We're bringing induction back if it kills us.
I am very interested: how exactly do you mean? Could you refer me to some argument that shows this mistake of hers?
There is not a single contribution by Rand that does not ultimately rely on induction and that evidence of the senses which you consider secondary (that you actually came out and said that was delightful). If she had believed that induction was invalid she would have gotten precisely nowhere.
@@erlingaamodt1964 >>>Could you refer me to some argument that shows this mistake of hers?
You could try reading Popper.
no you just dont understand the concept of contextual certainty