"volition" as one of the "roots" of the concept "proof"

Dean Wrote:

This is in regard to Chapter 2, "Volition as Axiomatic", of Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (OPAR), by Leonard Peikoff, which was discussed last night (1/1/2006) at the Plano OPAR meeting. I wanted to go over my reasoning regarding the statement by Peikoff that:

"The concept of "volition" is one of the roots of the concept of "validation" (and of its subdivisions, such as "proof")."


What Peikoff means by saying that volition is one of the "roots" of the concept of validation has to do with the Objectivist recognition that knowledge is hierarchical. (The hierarchical nature of knowledge is discussed in OPAR, in Chapter 4.) In chapter 4, Peikoff uses the example of the concept "organism", which is a "higher-level concept", with underlying , "lower-level concepts" serving as its "roots". Some of these "lower level concepts would include "plant" and "animal". These two concepts, in turn, have "lower-level" concepts serving as their "roots". For instance, the concept "animal" includes the lower-level concepts of "dog", "cat", "fish", "bird", and "man". Concepts like "dog", "cat", and "man", would be regarded as "perceptual-level" or "first-level" concepts. "First level concepts" are concepts formed directly from perceptual data, without the need of prior conceptualization.

So, basically, what Peikoff means when he says that "volition" is one of the roots of "validation" or "proof" is that volition is a "higher-level concept", that is hierarchically dependent on the underlying concept of "volition". “Volition” is, in fact, a “First-level concept”, since it is directly perceivable, through introspection.

The fact that concepts are hierarchical like this means that an important part of the Objectivist logic is the need to “reduce” your abstract, “higher-level concepts” back to “first level”, perceptual concepts. Basically to learn a new, high-level concept, Objectivism says you must trace the logical chain of that high-level concept all the way back to first-level concepts. In the case of learning a concept like “organism”, this means you would take that concept, and look to what are the underlying concepts that make it up. So, you would see that, for instance, the concept “organism” includes underlying concepts like “animal”, “plant” and “fungus”. Then you would see that the concept “animal” includes underlying concepts like “dog”, “fish”, and “man”. You would also see that the concept “plant” includes underlying concepts like “tree”, “flower”, and “grass”. (You’d go through the same process with the concept “fungus”, but I’ll leave that to the biologists.) When you’ve reached concepts like “tree”, “flower”, “dog”, “man”, and “grass”, the “reduction” is complete. You have reached “first-level”, “perceptual”, concepts. At that point you have demonstrated to your mind that the abstract, “higher-level” concept “organism” has a relation to the sensory-perceptual world that you observe with your own eyes and ears. (I like to think that this is what is meant by the expression: “That makes sense”. In other words, at least what I mean when I say that something “makes sense” is that I have reduced a higher-level concept back to the perceptual level….I don’t know if this is the origin of the expression, but it’s what I mean when I say it.) With regard to invalid concepts like “god”, you can see that they are invalid by noting that you cannot “reduce” this concept back to anything that you can see or hear, to the perceptual level.

The same “reduction” can be done with the concept of “proof”. However, going straight from the concept of “proof” to the concept of “volition” is a pretty large leap. It would be like going directly from the concept “organism” to the concept “tree” in your mind, with nothing in-between to tie the two together. So, I will outline my own attempt to “reduce” the concept of “proof”.

First, I think it helps to discuss some of the ways that we use the concept “proof”. This actually helps to establish “context”, which is another important part of the Objectivist methodology of learning new concepts. (See Chapter 4 of OPAR regarding “context”.) But, “context” and “hierarchy” are actually interrelated, so you can’t really have one without the other, I think. Three uses of the concept “proof” came to my mind when I started thinking about this. First is the old “Socrates syllogism”: “All men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal.” Second was what happens at a criminal trial: The State must “prove beyond a reasonable doubt” that the accused is guilty. The third example I thought of is a little bit more silly, but I think it is still a valid use of the concept. Sometimes, in movies and literature, the female protagonist will ask the male protagonist to prove his love to her by undertaking some task, usually one that involves a great struggle by the male protagonist. For instance, in the movie, “A Knights Tale”, which came out a couple of years ago, the female protagonist asks the hero to deliberately loose a jousting tournament to prove how much he loves her. Whether it is right for a woman to ask a man to do this, just to show that he loves her, is a separate issue. The point is, the female protagonist wanted the hero to manifest in some perceivable way that his feelings for her were sincere, and that she wasn’t just a sexual conquest to him. Similarly, with respect to a criminal trial, when we say that the State must “prove beyond a reasonable doubt” that the accused is guilty, what we mean is that the State must present enough facts to show to people who did not witness the event, namely the jurors and the judge, that the defendant did in fact commit the crime. In other words, the prosecution must, in some way, convince the judge and jury that although they didn’t see the defendant commit the crime, the facts that they present to them will lead to only one logical conclusion: that the defendant did commit the crime. So, a criminal prosecution is an attempt to demonstrate something, namely a crime, that isn’t observable directly in perceptual reality, in a way that makes it as good as if the judge and jury had been there to observe it directly. Once again, we are trying to relate the unobservable (or the unobserved) back to what we do observe in perceptual reality.

Now let me go back to the first example of the common use of the concept “proof”: the “Socrates syllogism”. You are attempting do demonstrate that “Socrates is mortal”. To do this, you take knowledge that you already have. First you already know, hopefully through induction, performed at an earlier time, that “All men are mortal”. Second, you can see that “Socrates is a man”. However, you cannot directly perceive that “Socrates is mortal.” To directly observe Socrates’ mortality, you would have to actually observe him be born, grow old, and then die. You have other things you’d like to do with your life, so you’d like to be able to conclude that Socrates is mortal without waiting 80+ years to find out. So, you use prior observations and knowledge about other men, and then use logical deduction to conclude that Socrates is mortal. Like the other two examples of “proof”, I think that you are trying to relate, in your mind, the unobserved, or what is not perceivable, to what is perceivable and observable.

So, based on what I’ve said so far, relating the unobserved to the observed seems to be an essential, “lower-level concept” of the “higher level concept” of proof. Furthermore, all three examples point out something else important. In all three instances, you are engaging in this process of “proof” in order to change or conform your actions to your conclusions. In the case of the criminal trial, the jurors and judge, representing “the people”, are deciding whether they need to change their appraisal of the accused defendant. They must decide if they want to change their belief that he should be free to live and interact with others in society, which is the “presumption” given to all men who haven’t been shown to have violated individual rights. If they change their minds regarding the accused, then it will become necessary to restrict the defendant’s freedom in some way in order to ensure that he doesn’t violate other’s rights again. (This usually means the defendant will be sent to jail.) In the case of the “Socrates Syllogism”, your conclusion that “Socrates is mortal” means that you must treat Socrates in a certain way. You cannot feed him poison and expect him to continue living. Furthermore, you can expect Socrates to need things like a will for when he dies, which means, in the case of a lawyer like myself, that he is a potential customer and that I should advertise to Socrates the fact that I could write him a will, in exchange for money. With regard to the case of the female protagonist in literature, who demands that the hero “prove his love” to her, it means that if the hero fails the test, she should spurn his advances towards her, because he doesn’t love her, and merely regards her as a sexual conquest. But, if the hero does “prove his love” to her satisfaction, then she should,…well…you know the rest.

So, I think that there are at least two underlying concepts that seem essential to understanding the “higher-level concept” of “proof”. First is the need to relate the unobserved, or the unobservable, to the observable by means of certain methods of thinking (logic). Second, is the fact that we can choose to conform our thought and action to our proofs. The fact that we can make these choices, i.e., that we have volition, is therefore one of the epistemological “roots” of the concepts of “validation” and “proof”.