Answering Dustin Segers’ Presuppositionalism: The Problem
of Induction
The following article was the fourth of six installments of a response to questions posed by Christian apologist Dustin Segers to non-Christians, which I posted on my blog in April-May 2012. Apparently presuming that his questions were stumpers for non-Christians, I realized that many non-Christians fall for the presuppositionalists’ interrogative traps since they, like Christians themselves, often have woefully deficient levels of understanding when it comes to, among other things, epistemological issues like induction. So I decided to take up the task of addressing Segers’ questions myself. Segers’ questions, which can be found here, are as follows:
1. Truth - I asked, "What is truth in your wworldview? What's your definition of 'truth'?"
2. Logic - I asked, "If you believe that only matter exists, (a)
how do you account for the immaterial, universal, propositional, immaterial
laws of logic given your philosophical materialism apart from an appeal to God
and (b) how to you make sense out of our obligation to be rational?"
3. Science - "How do you answer the problem of induction from a
secular perspective?"
4. Morality - "How do you account for objective morality without
God?"
I presented my answers to these questions in a series of six installments on my blog, Incinerating Presuppositionalism. They can be accessed here:
1. Answering
Dustin Segers’ Presuppositionalism,
Part I: Intro and the Nature of Truth – posted April 7, 2012
2. Answering
Dustin Segers’ Presuppositionalism,
Part II: The Nature of Logic – posted April 8, 2012
3a. Answering
Dustin Segers’ Presuppositionalism,
Part IIIa: The Uniformity of Nature – posted
April 12, 2012
3b. Answering
Dustin Segers’ Presuppositionalism,
Part IIIb: The Problem of Induction – posted
April 15, 2012
4a. Answering
Dustin Segers’ Presuppositionalism,
Part IVa: Objective Morality – posted May 12,
2012
4b. Answering
Dustin Segers’ Presuppositionalism,
Part IVb: Collectivism, Evil and Slavery – posted
May 19, 2012
In response to Segers’ question 3 regarding science, I decided to devote two separate installments addressing distinct but related matters. The first of these installments, Part IIIa, which also presented here, deals with the issue of the uniformity of nature specifically, since this is an area of inquiry on which discussions with presuppositionalists typically focus.
The second of these two installments addressing Segers’ question on science, Part IIIb, which also appears below, takes a closer look at induction as an epistemological process, specifically in light of the theory of concepts which Ayn Rand developed and presented in her book Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.
* * *
In my
previous blog entry, I provided the first part of my answer to this
question. In that previous entry, I addressed an area of concern which
typically accompanies the presuppositionalist’s
questions about induction, namely the uniformity of nature. I explained that,
on the objective view, the uniformity we observe in nature is inherent
in nature and obtains independently of conscious activity, while on the subjective
view, any uniformity which we observe in nature is
thought to be the product of some act of consciousness. Given the stark
antithesis of these two contrasting positions, I recommend that rational
individuals who encounter presuppositionalists
raising the issue of the uniformity of nature as a debating point, ask the
apologists to state explicitly whether or not they think the uniformity we
observe in nature is a product of conscious activity, or if it is inherent in
nature and obtains independent of any conscious activity. Watch for any
reluctance to answer this question; watch for consistency with the apologists’
professed worldview in any answer that is given.
Now let’s turn our attention to induction and see if Objectivism, the
Philosophy of Reason, can shed even further light in answering the presuppositionalist.
The Scottish philosopher David Hume is well known for raising the problem of
induction and developing it as a full-fledged philosophical issue. Though Hume
himself did not identify the process we now understand as induction with the
word ‘induction’, he did describe it in his exploration of the issue. In An
Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume writes:
It may, therefore, be a subject worthy of
curiosity, to enquire what is the nature of that evidence
which assures us of any real existence and matter of fact, beyond the present
testimony of our senses, or the records of our memory.
In essence, Hume is here wondering how the human
mind expands its consciousness beyond that which one immediately perceives or
remembers. Though he didn’t realize it, Hume was wondering how the human mind
forms concepts. For it is the conceptual level of consciousness
which expands man’s consciousness beyond what he can immediately perceive and
remember; concepts extend his awareness beyond what he personally experiences.
Perception gives us immediate, present-tense conscious access to what exists,
while memory retains what we have perceived. But what gives us awareness of
“the future”? Indeed, to *what* does the concept ‘future’ refer? What does “the
future” denote? Also, what gives us awareness of things in the past that we
have not personally experienced and thereby retained in our own memories? What
gives us awareness of things that exist elsewhere, beyond the range of our
perception, beyond the range of our own personal experiences?
The rational answer to this, as we shall see, is: concepts give us this
awareness.
To set the tone of this exploration, let us ask:
If conceptual awareness does not give us
the ability to project the future, what does?
Let this be one of the defining questions for the
philosophical concern which has come to be known as “the problem of induction,”
particularly as presuppositionalists employ it in
their apologetic.
It would be interesting to know how presuppositionalists
answer this question. Or, can they?
Of course, Christians can be expected ultimately to say that “faith” gives a
person such awareness, specifically their faith in “God.” And yet, in stating
this, they would be implying that the answer which I have proposed (namely concepts)
is insufficient to the task, while simultaneously making use of concepts!
Presumably the concept ‘faith’ has meaning, does it not? If the Christian
assumes that the terms he uses have meaning, then he’s on the turf of concepts
whether he knows it or not, for meaning is a property of concepts (as I show here).
Can it be that Christians (and Christian apologists in particular) have a hard
time grasping these fundamental truths because the worldview which they’ve
adopted provides them with no understanding of concepts in the first place? I
submit that this is indeed the case. Where, for instance, will the Christian
turn to for an understanding of concepts and the process by which they are
formed? Certainly not the Old and New Testaments!
Curiously, David Hume seems to have had a similar problem: his skeptical view
of induction can be traced in part to his faulty understanding of concepts.
(Another area where Hume’s worldview sabotaged his understanding of induction
and led him to his skeptical view of it, is in his
erroneous view of causality. I have already given this matter a treatment here:
Humean Causality and Presuppositionalism.)
In framing his problem with drawing generalizations from samples available only
to perception and memory, Hume took his own worldview’s faulty epistemology for
granted, and came to the only conclusion he could, given his reliance on those
faulty premises. Hume’s epistemology makes many crucial mistakes, and several
of them work together to compel his skeptical conclusion regarding induction.
Briefly, Hume’s key mistakes include (but are not limited to):
1. the premise
that man’s cognition begins with sensation (in fact, it begins with perception);
2. the premise
that the mind assembles perceptions from sensations volitionally (in
fact, perceptions are assembled from sensations automatically, not
as a result of a consciously directed process of selection);
3. the premise
that concepts can only be arbitrary constructs (in fact, concepts can
and should formed objectively, by a process of abstraction from relevant
inputs and completed by definition);
4. the premise
that causality is essentially a relationship between events (in fact,
causality is a relation between an entity and its own actions;
again, see here);
5. the premise
(owing to mistake no. 4 above) that the connection between cause and effect
cannot be observed – that, for Hume, “all events seem loose entirely loose and
separate. One event follows another; but we never can observe any tie between
them. They seem conjoined, but never connected (An Enquiry Concerning Human
Understanding), which implies that any particular effect just happens
to follow from some prior effect completely by chance (in fact, since
causality is the identity of an action, and we can perceive entities in action,
we can and do perceive causality all the time);
6. the premise
that causality is not a necessary relationship (in fact, the
relationship between an entity and its actions is a relationship of direct dependence,
and therefore it is a necessary relationship);
7. the premise that induction requires repetition
(in fact, one can induce general truths from a single instance without the need
to repeat an action – e.g., consider touching a hot stove with your hand – you
don’t need to do this over and over again to recognize that touching it will
result in pain);
8. the premise that the only means
available to us in determining whether or not a causal connection is necessary
is ultimately by imagining (as Hume himself puts it: “This connexion, therefore, which we feel in the mind,
this customary transition of the imagination from one object to its usual
attendant, is the sentiment or impression from which we form the idea of power
or necessary connexion” - Of the Idea of Necessary Connexion) (in fact, imagination is not a means of
discovering the facts of reality, but on the contrary a process of rearranging
in the psychological confines of one’s own mind what he has observed in
reality)
So already we have a fundamental point to make in
response to the presuppositionalist:
Since Hume’s metaphysics and epistemology
contain some very significant errors, his conclusions are not trustworthy.
So why does the presuppositionalist
treat Hume as an authority before whom we should bow? Blank out.
We should also point out by way of reply to the presuppositionalist,
that Objectivism avoids the errors of Hume’s worldview (by not making them in
the first place) and provides the epistemological basis necessary for a sound
theory of induction.
It is noteworthy that presuppositionalists
who cite Hume in raising the problem of induction, typically do not question
the premises of Hume’s argument. For instance, they do not question Hume’s
event-based conception of causality (as I have shown here),
and they seem quite unaware of the fact that Hume’s epistemology suffers from a
faulty view of concepts (which presuppositionalists
themselves demonstrate whenever they invoke Hume as an authority on induction
to begin with).
In order to get the presuppositionalist to make his
position unequivocally clear, we should ask them if they think Hume’s argument
against inductive reliability is a sound argument. If they say that
Hume’s argument is sound, then they admit to endorsing a long series of
highly faulty premises (such as the ones I’ve listed above); if they say that
Hume’s argument is not sound, then what’s the problem? Of course, Segers provides no indication that he is prepared to engage
the issue in this manner. Presuppositionalists are
more concerned about how Hume’s skeptical conclusion can be used as an
apologetic device than they are about the quality of his argument and its
presuppositions!
I would also point out that presuppositionalists have
uncritically adopted a rather naïve conception of induction. This is evident in
most cases when they raise the problem to begin with. Typically they conceive
of induction as means of knowing, with or without certainty, about the future
based on the past, as if induction’s principle value is in its ability to give
man the gift of prophecy. Presuppositionalists will
often ask, “How do you know that the future will be like the past?”
For example, in his paper Secular Responses to the
Problem of Induction, presuppositional theorist
James Anderson, likely drawing from secular sources himself
(he surely did not get this from the book of Isaiah) states the problem of
induction thusly:
Hume’s conclusion was that, regrettably,
we have no good reason to think that such inductive inferences are justified.
The problem of induction, then, is the problem of answering Hume by giving good
reasons for thinking that the ‘inductive principle’ (i.e., the principle that
future unobserved instances will resemble past observed instances) is true.
Notice that Anderson defines “the ‘inductive
principle’” as “the principle that future unobserved instances will
resemble past observed instances.” (Notice also that when Anderson
proceeds to examine various secular treatments of the problem of induction, he
does not consider anything in the Objectivist corpus on induction, even
though there have been several available long before Anderson wrote his paper,
including David Kelley’s Universals and Induction (1988); Peikoff’s series Objectivism by Induction (1998),
and even Ayn Rand’s own Introduction to
Objectivist Epistemology (1990), which outlines her theory of concepts (pp.
5-87), indicates – albeit briefly – her theory’s implications for induction (p.
28), and includes an extended section from her philosophical workshops
dedicated to a discussion of induction (pp. 295-304).)
Presuppositional apologist Brian Knapp goes even
further than this, stating that
induction is primarily thought of in the
relation of past events to future events. (“Induction and the Unbeliever,” The
Portable Presuppositionalist, p. 122n.5, emphasis
added).
While induction does in fact lend itself elegantly
to making forecasts about outcomes given known circumstances, this is not
induction’s primary form, its most common application
or its only purpose. But presuppositionalists
continually seem to think it’s each of these, even though certain things they
say about induction suggest otherwise.
For instance, when introducing the topic of his paper, James
Anderson writes:
The basic problem can be summarised as follows. Suppose that we observe a large
number of objects with characteristic A, noting
that all of them also possess characteristic B. It is natural for us to
conclude that, in all probability, all objects with A also
possess B — including those objects with A that have yet to be
observed (or cannot be observed). The question posed by Hume is: What rational
justification is there for making this inference? More generally, what reason
do we have to believe that our conclusions about observed instances may be
extended (even with probability) to include unobserved instances?
Here we have a description of induction that is not
in terms of future vs. past instances. As it is described in this passage here,
which does not contain either the word ‘past’ or the word ‘future’, induction
is conceived of as a process of generalizing about an entire class of
things (“all objects with [characteristic] A”), however many that
might happen to be, from the members of that class which we actually observe.
Similarly, in his debate with Edward
Tabash, Greg Bahnsen
gives the following indication of his own understanding of induction:
The method of generalizing from observed
cases to all cases of the same kind is called induction. The basic guiding
principle here is that future cases will be like past cases - that similar things will behave similarly.
While it is at least roughly true that “the method
of generalizing from observed cases to all cases of the same kind is called
induction,” the “basic guiding principle” behind this operation is not,
contrary to Bahnsen, “that future cases will be like
past cases” (indeed, future cases may be different from past cases) or “that
similar things will behave similarly.” Rather, the basic guiding principle
behind induction is even more fundamental than these concerns, and is involved
in the very action of forming concepts in the first place. This is where we
turn to Ayn Rand’s theory of concepts, for it is the
only thing that can rescue us from the grasping clutches of Hume’s skepticism.
Rand’s insight that “[t]he process of observing the facts of reality and
integrating them into concepts is, in essence, a process of induction” (Introduction
to Objectivist Epistemology, p. 28) is spot on and crucially relevant to
any serious discussion of the problem of induction. Comparisons between objects
which can be immediately observed in the present hold primacy over comparisons
over a period of time (e.g., from past to present) in forming any concept, for
they are not only immediate, but also in a position to be most accurate (until
of course we have a standardized means of measurement). So to the extent that
similarity is an issue in induction (and certainly it is, given commensurability),
any similarity between past and future instances is not primary, nor is it the
basis for induction (since “future instances” are not observed in the
first place, and thus not available for purposes of comparison). But there’s
much more to say about temporal relations as they factor into induction, and
we’ll get to that in good time!
As we saw above, Rand holds that the process of concept-formation is in itself
inductive in nature. If this is true, then induction as such is in fact more
(indeed, much more) fundamental than estimating future outcomes on the basis of
known past precedents.
So why suppose that
concept-formation is essentially an inductive process?
The reason for this is because concept-formation is a cognitive process of
generating open-ended integrations based on a small quantity of (ultimately
perceptual) input. By ‘open-ended integrations’ we mean mental classifications
of objects whose quantity of included units is not limited to any specific
number. They are “universal” in the sense that they include all of the
members of that class, however many that may be (we will never know), with the
potential to continue adding more ad infinitum. The concept ‘man’, for
instance, includes all men who are living now, who have lived, and who will
ever live.
Why this is the case is due to the nature of the action of forming concepts and
the nature of the product of that action. Rand defines ‘concept’ as “a
mental integration of two or more units possessing the same distinguishing
characteristic(s), with their particular measurements omitted (Introduction
to Objectivist Epistemology, p. 13; italics original). The action which the
mind performs in forming concepts, begins with
immediate awareness (by means of perception) of two or more objects which are
isolated (selected) from among everything else in that awareness and integrated
by a process of abstraction. The basic selection criterion initiating this
process is the presence of some similarity between the two or more objects so
isolated which is available in the subject’s awareness. A child may be at a
playground and perceive sand, playground equipment, trees, grass, sunshine,
clouds in the sky, houses in the distance, and two other human individuals in
his presence. The similarity between these two individuals as against the
differences between them and everything else in his awareness is perceptually
self-evident, and thus this similarity provides an objective basis for
integrating them into a single mental unit.
The process of integrating these isolated individuals into a single mental unit
involves an operation which Rand called measurement-omission. The
individuals which the child actually perceives are generally similar – they are
both self-propelling objects standing upright and walking on two legs,
possessing a torso attached to which are two arms and a head with eyes, mouth
and nose on top, wearing clothing and walking in shoes, and making verbal
sounds back and forth from their mouths. They are both human beings. But aside
from these general similarities, they are different from each other, as can be
seen directly by the different characteristics which stand out as they are
compared side by side. For instance: one is taller than the other; one’s hair
is longer than the other; one seems to have more right angles in its shape, the
other having a more curvy shape; one’s voice is low-pitched, the other’s is
high-pitched; etc. Each has its own characteristics, and those characteristics
are specific – i.e., they have specific measurements. Measurement-omission
is a process by which these characteristics are integrated along with the
general similarities the child observes between both individuals, but without
assigning any particular measurement to them.
Rand stresses that
the term “measurements omitted” does not
mean, in this context, that measurements are regarded as non-existent; it means
that measurements exist, but are not specified. That measurements must
exist is an essential part of the process. The principle is: the relevan measurements must exist in some quantity,
but may exist in any quantity. (Introduction to Objectivist
Epistemology, p. 12)
The result of this process of measurement-omission
allows the child to continue integrating additional members into the object
class so formed. When he sees the two individuals he observed at the playground
joined by another individual possessing generally similar features, he has
already formed a concept into which he can subsume this new individual as a new
member to the class it denotes. There is no quantitative limit to how many he
can continue subsuming into the concept’s range of reference, and he will
continue to expand this concept for the rest of his life as he integrates new
members into it. The concept is thus available, once a perceptual symbol has
been applied to it for the sake of retention and distinction from other
concepts so formed, to be used as a single cognitive unit denoting an
open-ended class of individuals. He has essentially formed a universal class by
observing only a few actual concretes. That is induction, and it couldn’t have
been done without the process of measurement-omission.
So it should be clear now that there’s a lot more to induction than simply
“accounting for” the uniformity of nature. On the one hand, there are the
metaphysical constants which underlie and are in fact preconditions to our
conscious experience. On the other, there is the cognitive activity which the
human mind performs in partitioning that experience into classes which can be
applied throughout experience. Saying, in the words of presuppositionalist
Brian Knapp, that there is
a God who has created the universe in which
we live… and who sovereignly maintains it as we find
it to be… This God is personal and involved… [and] has
a plan for his creation…, not the least part of which is revealing himself to
it… [whose] revelation involves creating and
sustaining the universe in such a way that his creatures are able to learn
about it and function within it… [which] ultimately
points back to God and demonstrates his nature… It is this purposeful
demonstration of God that is ultimately the solution to the Problem of
Induction (“Induction and the Unbeliever,” The Portable Presuppositionalist,
p. 132)
simply does not address the problem at all. It only
tells us that the universe is not inherently uniform (which can only
mean that it is ultimately chaotic), subject to supernatural whim, and leaves
the cognitive process by which man does in fact generalize from his finite
experience completely out of the picture. How is that suitable as an answer to
the problem of induction?
Now let’s look at induction as it is applied in estimating future outcomes.
First, in response to the question, “How do you know that the future will be like
the past?” I would retort: I have not claimed that the future will be like the
past. In the past, I was 25 years old. I do not expect to be 25 years again in
the future. In the past, I was able to fit size 28 jeans; I have no presumption
that will be the case in the future. Back in the 1980s, I had to use a
typewriter to produce typed text; now I use a computer and a printer. I don’t
think I’ll ever have to use a typewriter again for this. In the past, a gallon
of gas cost US$0.25. Now I understand it is US$5.00 in some places, and may
very well go higher. I certainly don’t expect to see gas at twenty-five cents
again in the future! Many things do in fact change, and given my recognition of
this fact, I acknowledge that many things in the future will not be like the
past.
But of course in response to this the presuppositionalist
will reply by clarifying his question. He may point out that, just as in the
past I was some age, I will in the future also be some age; that
while I may never fit size 28 jeans again, I will still wear some kind of
clothing in the future (provided it fits!); that just as in the past I had to
use some kind of device in order to produce typewritten text, I will in
the future likewise use some device to do this, however different it may
be from the typewriter I used in my college days, etc. And I would readily
agree. Indeed, he might even ask something along the lines of: “How do you know
that touching a hot stove with your bare hands will result in pain in the
future as it did in the past?” And indeed, I certain do know that this would be
the case.
A general point to keep in mind when we’re speaking about the future, is the
fact that we are still (at least presumably) still speaking about existence,
at least in terms of what is yet to come. Keeping this point in mind is the aim
behind the questions I presented earlier, namely:
To *what* does the concept ‘future’ refer?
What does “the future” denote?
In my view, the concept ‘future’ essentially
refers to the continuation of existence from the present. This is consistent
with the Objectivist principle of the primacy of existence and also its
conception of time, which holds that existence is a
precondition for time. Given this, the facts that obtain in the present are
fundamentally relevant to any cognitive project of estimating future outcomes.
The point this is driving at is the fact that the concepts which Objectivism
designates as axiomatic (namely the concepts ‘existence’, ‘identity’ and
‘consciousness’) denote the metaphysical constants involved in any act of
cognition, including making predictions about the future. The concept ‘future’
presupposes the concept ‘existence’ since “future,” as in the present and in
the past, things will exist and act, and action will still be the action of some thing which exists. Similarly the concept ‘future’
presupposes the concept ‘identity’ since, just as it presupposes the concept
‘existence’, it could only be meaningful if it is understood that the objects
involved in future projections had their own natures, that they were distinct
from one another, and that their actions also had identity (as anyone who uses
verbs to denote actions implicitly agrees). Moreover, the concept ‘future’
presupposes the concept of ‘consciousness’, for consciousness is necessarily
involved in considering what may or will happen in the future, in using facts
to generate fact-based imaginative scenarios about what could happen if certain
conditions are in place (e.g., I can rationally imagine that on some evening in
June of next year, when my wife is cooking dinner, if I put my hand to the hot
stove, it’s going to hurt!).
In regard to the cognitive undercurrent made possible by the axiomatic concepts
and its role in estimating the future, Rand points out that:
It isn’t only that what you call existence
today you will also call existence tomorrow, but also that in all future
processes of cognition the axiomatic concepts are directing that process. (Introdction to Objectivist Epistemology, p.
257)
So asking about how one knows what will happen in
the future right here on earth is not akin to asking how one knows what
is happening on some planet orbiting a distant star. The objective conception
of induction does not leave us so profoundly disadvantaged as the presuppositionalist would like to mislead us into
believing.
Rand makes another relevant point which is key to the
relationship between conceptual integration and inductive generalization. She
writes:
When you form a concept, it is independent
of time. (Ibid., p. 256)
Consider again the concept ‘man’. Since it was
formed by integrating all the characteristics of individual men while omitting
the specific measurements in which those characteristics exist, we see that
omitting measurements is the key to generalizing on the basis of specific
concretes which we actually perceive. But hair color, height, weight, facial
hair (or lack thereof), shape of physique (or lack thereof!), shoe size, waist
size, etc., are not the only characteristics whose specific measurements are
omitted in this process. Another form of characteristic is included without
specific measurement, namely time. That’s right, when we form a concept,
time is an omitted measurement.
Recall that the concept ‘man’ includes all men who live, who have lived,
and who will live. Right here we see the result of omitting the measurement of
time from a concept. It is a concept’s independence of time which allows us to
include all men without regard for when they live. This means that we
can use the same concept in speaking about the future as well as about the
present and the past. It means that the meaning of the constant is stable,
regardless of when - the particular time – it is understood to
refer. Because of this, when we speak about men in the future, we mean
generally the same thing we mean about men in the present and men in the past.
Why? Because time is an omitted measurement.
So one of the chief inductive implications of forming a concept is, in a word, time-transcendence.
Conceptual meaning is not time-bound, which means: a concept’s general meaning
maintains cognitive integrity regardless of when the units it subsumes in any
particular usage are thought to exist.
But wait! There’s more!
Time is not the only dimensional measurement which is omitted in forming a concept.
We also omit measurements tying a concept’s units to a particular place.
That’s right, place too is an omitted measurement. Just as the concept
‘man’ includes every man who presently lives, who has lived, and who will live
(since time is an omitted measurement), the same concept includes every man
regardless of where he lives or happens to be at any specific moment
(since place is an omitted measurement). Just as the concept ‘man’ includes the
man watching TV in his living room now, the man who was riding a horse 1400
years ago, and the man who will be climbing Mt. Everest 30 years from now, the
concept ‘man’ includes the man working in his yard across the street, the man
plowing his field in central Vietnam, the man setting a drill bit on an oil rig
in the North Sea, and the man piloting an orbiter above the earth. Since both
time and place are measurements which the formation of the concept ‘man’ omits
as part of the abstraction process, the meaning of the concept ‘man’ is not
bound to any particular time or place. Indeed, with concepts, we’ve come a long
way from the immediate-boundedness of perceptual
awareness!
So now a very bright picture should be starting to emerge with regard to the
problem of induction. Induction begins with the formation of our first concepts
of things we perceive in the world around us. This is because we form concepts
by a process which omits the specific measurements of the things we actually do
perceive. The omission of these measurements not only allows us to continue subsuming
additional members into the range of a concept’s scope of reference, but also
allows us to bank on the stability of our knowledge once those measurements do
become specific. Since time and place are omitted measurements, and the
abstraction process integrates individual concretes (or their attributes) into
open-ended classes of generally similar units, concepts so formed expand man’s
awareness far beyond the level of immediate perceptual input and allow him to
make inferences about concretes he may never perceive, regardless of when and
where they exist or may exist.
If the apologist, then, wants to ask us how we can know, for instance, that
human beings will be biological organisms in the future, we can reply that we
know this thanks to the abstraction process: since the concept ‘future’ denotes
a continuation from the present and the concept ‘man’ omits measurements of
time, its meaning as it is currently understood is valid regardless of when the
units it subsumes are thought to exist, even estimating future projections.
There’s certainly no question-begging going on here, as the presuppositionalist
will likely charge (again, as a matter of habit), since omitting measurements
is not a process of proof, nor is it an instance of circular reasoning. When
the presuppositionalist asks, “How do you know?” I
can safely say, “I know because I’ve analyzed it.”
Now it should be borne in mind that, since definition is “the final step in
concept-formation” (Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism:
The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, p. 96), definitions
play a limiting role in what can and cannot be subsumed as units in our
concepts. While this speaks more to the deductive implications of
concept-formation (“The process of subsuming new instances under a known
concept is, in essence, a process of deduction” – Ayn
Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, p. 28), it is relevant
to justifying knowledge claims about the future. Several points about
definitions need to be kept in mind:
A definition is a statement that identifies
the nature of the units subsumed under a concept... The purpose of a definition
is to distinguish a concept from all other concepts and thus to keep its units
differentiated from all other existents… A definition is not a description; it implies,
but does not mention all the characteristics of a concept’s units. If a
definition were to list all the characteristics, it would defeat its own
purpose: it would provide an indiscriminate, undifferentiated and, in effect,
pre-conceptual conglomeration of characteristics which would not serve to
distinguish the units from all other existents, nor the concept from all other
concepts. A definition must identify the nature of the units, i.e., the essential
characteristics without which the units would not be the kind of existents they
are. But it is important to remember that a definition implies all the
characteristics of the units, since it identifies their essential, not
their exhaustive, characteristics; since it designates existents,
not their isolated aspects; and since it is a consolidation of, not a
substitute for, a wider knowledge of the existents involved. (Ibid., pp. 40,
42)
What does this mean? It means we cannot apply a
concept without regard to its meaning, nor can we subsume into a concept’s
scope of reference units which are not consistent with the essential nature of
those denoted by a concept. And we do not pull definitions out of thin air. On
the contrary, they are dictated by facts relevant to the nature of the units
they subsume.
The definition of ‘man’, for instance, is the rational animal. If the
apologist wanted to ask, then, how we could know that men of the future will
not be mechanical robots, we can reply that whatever robots may exist in the
future, we would be wrong to subsume them under the concept ‘man’ since one of
the essential characteristics of the units properly denoted by this concept is animality. Robots are mechanical, and animals are
biological. So we can know this, not by simply analyzing the concept’s meaning
as the analytic philosophers would claim, but by reference to the facts which
inform the meaning of the concept in the first place.
But what if the apologist asked how we could know whether or not men will
breathe water in the future. How could we know this? The definition of the
concept ‘man’, he may note, does not specify that its units must be
air-breathing and not water-breathing. And he would be right: the definition of
‘man’ does not specify this. But as we just saw, on the objective theory of
concepts, the definition of ‘man’ wouldn’t have to specify this; it implies
this characteristic of the units it subsumes – namely that the general
implications of man’s animality is that he is an
air-breathing organism. Again, if we were to find organisms which otherwise
bore similarities to man, but breathed water instead of air, we would have to
create a new concept for them, to differentiate the units subsumed under the
concept ‘man’ from those which are different from men in a significant manner
(i.e., in a manner bearing on his essential characteristics, namely the type of
animality which is common to men).
But as we go down this path with the presuppositionalist,
who enjoys indulging in fantasizing alternatives to reality with the specific
interest of undermining man’s certainty, it is important to point out the
general nature of knowledge: knowledge is not acquired and validated by
shooting down imaginative speculations, but by identifying and integrating the
facts we discover in reality. We can spend all day imagining scenarios to
populate a hypothetical future fantasyland, but since those fantasies thrive on
disregarding facts that we already do know, they have no value other than idle
entertainment, and should be treated as such.
But something else should be clear now: contrary to the common assumption that
induction is unable to deliver conclusions with certainty, many inductive
generalizations are incontestably certain. While analytic philosophers will say
that such truths are “analytic” in nature, since they seem to be more or less
directly related to the definitions of our concepts, Objectivism points out
that definitions are not primaries which just exist causelessly and
independent of the realm of fact. Rather, (good) definitions are formed by an
objective process, in keeping with the process of concept-formation and the
nature of a concept’s essential characteristic(s), which means: according to
the facts.
Since induction is essentially a process of conceptualizing the world around
us, then, to deny the validity of induction is to deny the validity of
conceptual knowledge. Thus when skeptics use concepts to deny induction, they
commit the fallacy of the stolen concept: they are using concepts to deny the
validity of conceptual knowledge. You won’t get very far in understanding the
nature of knowledge by making such gross errors.
So in a nutshell, the answer to Hume’s problem of induction is basically
two-fold:
First, correct Hume’s fatal errors (most
notably the ones listed above), and
Second, understand how conceptual
integration (given the analysis of concepts provided by the objective theory of
concepts) is essentially the process of forming general classes based on very
limited input by means of measurement-omission.
Since induction is a cognitive process, any justification
for inductive reasoning that may be required of us must take this fact into
account. The answer to the problem of induction is not going to be found by
pointing to a realm contradicting the one we live in, nor will it be found in
using concepts to deny the conceptual level of consciousness. The answer can
only be found if we first discover what induction is, and understand it as a
conceptual process. Since time and place are omitted measurements in concepts
of entities and attributes, applying concepts outside of the present and beyond
the range of our perceptual awareness is not problematic. Indeed, that’s their
very usefulness. In a word, then, the answer to the problem of induction as
we’ve seen presuppositionalists inform it, is to
point out time is an omitted measurement, which means: the integrity of our
conceptualizations is maintained regardless of the specific temporal parameters
of their application, whether past, present or future.
When Nide Corniell (aka
“Hezekiah Ahaz,” “Robert,” “Trinity,” “r_c321,” etc.)
asks in a
14 April comment on his blog,
What allows you to extract past
experiences and make predictions about the present/future?
the answer to questions like this should now be
clear. The answer is: Generally, concept-formation allows us to do this;
specifically, measurement-omission gives us this ability. The resources we need
for this process are all right here in reality, beginning with perception of
objects (our most fundamental mode of awareness), retention of perceptions in
memory, and the volitional activity of conceptual consciousness. There’s no
justification for ignoring these elements in the overall process just as there
is no justification for pointing to something which we can only imagine in
order to fill the vacuum of our ignorance of these elements.
So not only do Hume’s faulty premises need to be exposed and corrected, we also
need Objectivist epistemology to provide an objective “account for”
induction. It should be clear that presuppositionalists
are not prepared to question Hume’s premises, nor is their religious worldview
able to equip them to demystify induction given its lack of a theory of
concepts (indeed, the objective theory of concepts).
So the presuppositionalist’s “How
do you account for the uniformity of nature?”/”How do you answer the
problem of induction?” approach to apologetics is a dead end. Apologists should
take care not to raise these questions in the presence of Objectivists. They
just might have their hats handed to them.
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