Ron Pisaturo’s Blog

The Doomsday Argument, Self-Sampling Assumption, and Self-Indication Assumption are wrong, but induction is alive and well.

I have just completed a revised and expanded version (80 pages, double-spaced) of my paper, “Past Longevity as Evidence for the Future”; it is available online here. (Update, 7/31/2011: This work is now available as an eBook; see here.) The original version was published in Philosophy of Science in 2009. Here is a one-sentence summary of the new version:

The Doomsday Argument, Self-Sampling Assumption, and Self-Indication Assumption are wrong; Gott’s delta t argument underestimates longevity, providing lower bounds on probabilities of longevity, and is equivalent to Laplace’s Rule of Succession; but Non-Parametric Predictive Inference based on the work of Hill and Coolen is consistent with a plausible theory of induction.

The paper explains what all these specialized terms mean, and assumes no prior knowledge of the literature on this topic. But the paper is technical; it assumes knowledge of probability theory and basic calculus.

The new version corrects some minor errors in the original, and it makes my refutation of the Doomsday Argument—a controversial thesis claiming that the risk of extinction of the human race is much greater than had been thought previously—more elegant. In my judgment, my refutation is definitive. Nevertheless, the following statement I made about the original paper still holds for the revised version: “Far more important than what the paper argues against is what the paper argues for: an objective means for using knowledge of the past as evidence for the future.” In my judgment, the methodology that I defend in the paper forms the basis of a calculus of induction.

In the paper, I build on Ayn Rand’s identification of characteristics as ranges of measurement ([1966] 1990, 6–11). For example, the color red is a range of measurements of frequency of light. Now suppose that I have selected a number—call the number n—of pebbles randomly from a bunch of pebbles that I know were created by a similar process, and I have observed all n pebbles to be red in color. The probability that the frequency of visible light reflected by the next pebble will be the highest among all the pebbles sampled is 1/(n+1). Therefore, the probability that the next pebble examined will be red is greater than or equal to n/(n+1).

Survival too is a characteristic. Survival of a species can be thought to persist so long as a measurement of danger to the species remains below a certain threshold value. If the species has survived for a million years, then the measurement of danger has been below that threshold for each of those years. In the absence of any trends or cumulative dangers, and in the absence of any knowledge of the degree of risk except that the degree of risk is constant, the probability that the measurement of danger in the coming year will be the highest on record is 1/1,000,001. Therefore, the probability of extinction in the coming year is less than or equal to 1/1,000,001.

This general line of reasoning (though not applied specifically to the question of the longevity of the human race), which I arrived at from the lead from Ayn Rand, was developed earlier in the field of statistics in a chain of gradual advances beginning with Harold Jeffreys (1932), continuing with Bruce M. Hill (1968) and culminating with Frank P.A. Coolen (1998). (See my paper for more references.) Statisticians such as Frank Coolen have taken these ideas even further. One contribution of my paper is to provide some further philosophic defense of and guidelines for the overall approach.

Of course I make no claim that Ayn Rand would have endorsed my line of reasoning. Thinkers attempting to build on the work of Ayn Rand hold widely divergent ideas on induction.

Though presenting a correct theory or even a promising one is more important than refuting a false one, there also is value in refuting the Doomsday Argument. The argument, along with numerous offshoots and related arguments sometime referred to collectively as ‘anthropic’ arguments, has been the subject of intense discussion and debate among philosophers and scientists for nearly three decades. (See my paper for numerous references.) Wikipedia lists the Doomsday Argument as one of ten “Unsolved problems in statistics.”

Moreover, the Doomsday Argument has been used to further an environmentalist agenda. Consider, for example, the following excerpt—which does a good job of giving a non-technical summary of the Doomsday Argument—from an article in the popular magazine Discover in 2000, when the magazine was owned by Disney:

… 99 percent of all species that ever lived have gone extinct, including every one of our hominid ancestors. In 1983, British cosmologist Brandon Carter framed the “Doomsday argument,” a statistical way to judge when we might join them. If humans were to survive a long time and spread through the galaxy, then the total number of people who will ever live might number in the trillions. By pure odds, it’s unlikely that we would be among the very first hundredth of a percent of all those people. …

Human activity is severely disrupting almost all life on the planet, which surely doesn’t help matters. The current rate of extinctions is, by some estimates, 10,000 times the average in the fossil record. At present, we may worry about snail darters and red squirrels in abstract terms. But the next statistic on the list could be us.

My refutation of the Doomsday Argument can be summarized as follows. The Doomsday Argument conflates the ideas of total duration and future duration. That is, the Doomsday Argument’s Bayesian formalism is stated in terms of total duration, but all attempted real-life applications of the argument—with one exception, an application by Gott—actually plug in prior probabilities for future duration. Moreover, the Doomsday Argument’s ‘Self-Sampling Assumption’—which claims that one’s temporal birth rank among all N humans ever to be born is equally likely to have been any number from 1 to N—contradicts the prior probability density functions for past and future duration in all realistic scenarios including all realistic scenarios presented by defenders of the Doomsday Argument.

In my original paper, I write, “If the Doomsday Argument and the Self-Sampling Assumption are to be rejected, they must be rejected for the right reason, lest a hidden baby be thrown out with the bathwater—especially since that hidden baby might be the ability to assess the future from the past.” In my new version, I write also, “Not only are the Doomsday Argument and the Self-Sampling Assumption false, but they also obscure the real prior probability assessments that one might have about an uncertain past, and they obscure the real manner in which learning more about the past can indeed update one’s probability assessments regarding the future.”

References

Coolen, Frank P.A. (1998), “Low Structure Imprecise Predictive Inference For Bayes’ Problem”, Statistics & Probability Letters 36: 349-357.

Hill, Bruce M. (1968), “Posterior Distribution of Percentiles: Bayes’ Theorem for Sampling from a Population”, Journal of the American Statistical Association 63: 677-691.

Jeffreys, Harold (1932), “On the Theory of Errors and Least Squares”, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series A, 138: 48-55.

Rand, Ayn ([1966] 1990), “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology” [Part I], The Objectivist 5(7): 1-11. Reprinted in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, Expanded Second Edition. Edited by Harry Binswanger and Leonard Peikoff. New York: Meridian: 1-18.

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Apollo 11

Today, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of man’s landing on the Moon, I read Ayn Rand on “Apollo 11” (The Objectivist, September 1969). Here are some excerpts:

The meaning of the sight [the launch] lay in the fact that when those dark-red wings of fire flared open, one knew that one was not looking at a normal occurrence, but at a cataclysm which, if unleashed by nature, would have wiped man out of existence—and one knew also that this cataclysm was planned, unleashed and controlled by man, that this unimaginable power was ruled by his power and, obediently serving his purpose, was making way for a slender, rising craft. One knew that this spectacle was not the product of inanimate nature, like some aurora borealis, nor of chance, nor of luck, that it was unmistakably human—with “human,” for once, meaning grandeur—that a purpose and a long, sustained, disciplined effort had gone to achieve this series of moments, and that man was succeeding, succeeding, succeeding! For once, if only for seven minutes, the worst among those who saw it had to feel—not “How small is man by the side of the Grand Canyon!”—but “How great is man and how safe is nature when he conquers it!”

That we had seen a demonstration of man at his best, no one could doubt—this was the cause of the event’s attraction and of the stunned, numbed state in which it left us. And no one could doubt that we had seen an achievement of man in his capacity as a rational being—an achievement of reason, of logic, of mathematics, of total dedication to the absolutism of reality. [pp.5-6]
…
Those four days conveyed the sense that we were watching a magnificent work of art—a play dramatizing a single theme: the efficacy of man’s mind. One after another, the crucial, dangerous maneuvers of Apollo 11’s flight were carried out according to plan, with what appeared to be an effortless perfection. [p. 6]
…
As to my personal reaction to the entire mission of Apollo 11, I can express it best by paraphrasing a passage from Atlas Shrugged that kept coming back to my mind: “Why did I feel that joyous sense of confidence while watching the mission? In all of its giant course, two aspects pertaining to the inhuman were radiantly absent: the causeless and the purposeless. Every part of the mission was an embodied answer to ‘Why?’ and ‘What for?’—like the steps of a life-course chosen by the sort of mind I worship. The mission was a moral code enacted in space.” [pp. 7-8]

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My Refutation of the Doomsday Argument

It has been more than a month since my paper, “Past Longevity as Evidence for the Future,” appeared in Philosophy of Science. (Update, 6/29/2011: Read about my revised and expanded paper, now available online.) The most important parts of the paper present my own positive ideas on an objective means for using knowledge of the past as evidence for the future. However, part of the paper presents what is, in my judgment, a new and definitive refutation of the Doomsday Argument popularized by philosopher John Leslie. This Doomsday Argument has been debated for the past two decades in leading journals of philosophy and of science, and even discussed often in the mainstream media. It has been widely held that the controversy remains unresolved.

Therefore, when my paper was published in arguably the world’s leading journal for the philosophy of science—the other candidate for that designation is the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science—I thought that there would be a great deal of interest. However, to date, there has not been a single discussion of my paper, except by my colleague Glenn Marcus and me, anywhere on the Internet. Moreover, I have not received a single correspondence from anyone who has read the paper. In fact, as far as I know, the only people who have read the published version of the paper are Glenn and I.

I realize that it is summer, and philosophers and scientists have their own research to think about. But I am an impatient person about everything but my own slowness. Therefore, to help publicize my own work, I am here posting a brief description of my refutation of the Doomsday Argument.

There is also a second part of this post. Glenn finished re-reading the paper on Saturday, and he found an error on a side issue that is yet important, because the error is an incorrect criticism of another person’s work; therefore, I want to correct the error, and apologize for it, right away. I was incorrect in claiming that one of the derivations, by J. Richard Gott III, of Gott’s “delta t argument” commits the same basic error committed by the Doomsday Argument. Glenn pointed out to me that Gott’s derivation avoids that particular error.

Here then is the basic error in the Doomsday Argument.

(Warning: The rest of this post is a little technical.)

The Doomsday Argument relies on the equivalent of this equation, which is an attempted statement of Bayes’s theorem:

P(H_TS|D_pX)/P(H_TL|D_pX)
= [P(H_FS|X)/P(H_FL|X)] •[P(D_p|H_TSX)/P(D_p|H_TLX)],

where:

H_FS = the hypothesis that the future duration of the phenomenon will be short;

H_FL = the hypothesis that the future duration of the phenomenon will be long;

H_TS = the hypothesis that the total duration of the phenomenon will be short—i.e., that t_t, the phenomenon’s total longevity, = t_TS;

H_TL = the hypothesis that the total duration of the phenomenon will be long—i.e., that t_t the phenomenon’s total longevity, = t_TL, with t_TL > t_TS.

Clearly, this equation is an invalid application of Bayes’ theorem, as it conflates future duration and total duration.

Basically, that’s it! That’s the solution to a two-decade-old problem.

In my paper, I take numerical examples based on two possible corrections to this equation: considering only future durations, and considering only total durations. In both cases, I conclude that the Doomsday Argument’s claim, that there is a ‘Bayesian shift’ in favor of the shorter future duration, is fallacious. In fact, unless more information is specified, the solution to this equation is undetermined. Moreover, in many cases, the Doomsday Argument’s uniform-distribution assumption—that P(t_p/t_t | t_t) = U(0,1) where t_p = past duration and t_t = total duration—contradicts the prior information.

Now to Gott. In a famous paper in Nature in 1993, Gott presents his “delta t argument” for deriving a probability distribution for the total longevity of any phenomenon, based solely on the phenomenon’s past longevity. In a follow-up discussion in Nature in 1994, Gott presents a new derivation of his delta t formula. This new derivation is widely held to be equivalent to Leslie’s Doomsday Argument; see, for example, here and here. However, now that I have identified the conflation error in the Doomsday Argument, it is obvious that Gott’s derivation is different: Gott’s derivation avoids the conflation error! Unfortunately, this obvious fact did not become obvious to me until Glenn pointed it out to me on Saturday.

Though Gott’s derivation from the Jeffreys prior avoids the conflation error I mention above, I think that Gott’s derivation is still vulnerable to other criticisms that I mention in my paper. Nevertheless, I argue in my paper that Gott’s delta t formula, with some important constraints and modifications, has validity. Indeed, in my paper, I present an alternative derivation of Gott’s formula starting from the Jeffreys prior.

Here then is the wrong passage from my paper:

Since the Doomsday Argument is invalid, Gott’s use of the Doomsday Argument to derive his delta t argument from the Jeffreys prior is also invalid. There is, however, a valid way to derive the delta t argument from the Jeffreys prior.

Here is how I would correct that passage:

Interestingly, Gott avoids the Doomsday Argument’s conflation error in his Bayesian derivation of his delta t formula. Gott’s version of the Bayesian equation deals consistently with total durations, and no future durations. Gott is able to do so because he assumes the Jeffreys prior as the prior for total duration. Such an option is not available for the Doomsday Argument, which is intended to hold for any prior.

There is, moreover, a way to derive Gott’s delta t formula from the Jeffreys prior without having to invoke the uniform distribution assumption; this way has some other benefits as well.

My paper then presents my derivation: I use the Jeffreys prior as the prior distribution of λ in the exponential distributions for past and future longevities. I think that my derivation is more robust and precise than Gott’s for these reasons:

- My derivation makes explicit the assumption that there is the same, constant rate of risk, λ, per unit time, in both the past and the future—and that we have no knowledge of the value of λ. [Italicized phrase added on July 1.]. (Gott makes an assumption resembling this one in other derivations.) This assumption means that the same causal factors are present throughout the past and future, and the assumption specifies how knowledge of the past updates the probability distribution for the future.

- My derivation removes the need for Gott’s uniform-distribution assumption, that P(t_p/t_t | t_t) = U(0,1) where t_p = past duration and t_t = total duration. The uniform distribution of t_p/t_t is a consequence of the exponential distributions, with the same value of λ, for past and future durations.

- In my paper, I explain that the exponential distribution for past duration actually overestimates—or places an upper bound on the possibilities of—past duration. Therefore, Gott’s delta t formula is actually a worst-case bound—worst-case, assuming that we want a long future duration—on the final probability distribution for total longevity. My derivation, which makes explicit the exponential-distribution assumption for past duration as well as future duration, thereby makes clear that the result is only a bound. That Gott’s result is only a bound is consistent with a result by Frank Coolen (“Low Structure Imprecise Predictive Inference for Bayes’ Problem” and “On Probabilistic Safety Assessment in the Case of Zero Failures”), which I discuss at length in my paper.

I hope that my alternative derivation, along with my correction and apology, will somewhat atone for my incorrect criticism of Gott’s argument.

Update, 10/6/2009:

In Pisaturo (2009), I argued that the Doomsday Argument commits the error of conflating total duration and future duration. I subsequently realized that Dieks 2007 makes a similar identification, though he presents arguments somewhat different from mine, and I should have cited this work.

Also, I stated in my post above that Gott (1994) is able to avoid the Doomsday Argument’s error of conflating future duration and total duration because Gott uses the Jeffreys prior for total duration, not future duration. Such a prior is not available for the more general Doomsday Argument. Nevertheless, an argument can be made that the Jeffreys prior should indeed be used by Gott as the prior for future duration and not for total duration. (See Caves 2000, 151 for a related argument.) If that argument is correct, and I think it is, then two errors by Gott cancel each other out. –Deleted on November 7, 2009.

References

Caves, Carlton M. (2000), “Predicting Future Duration from Present Age: A Critical Assessment”, Contemporary Physics 41: 143–153.

Dieks, Dennis (2007), “Reasoning about the future: Doom and Beauty”, Synthese 156: 427–439.

Pisaturo, Ronald (2009), “Past Longevity as Evidence for the Future”, Philosophy of Science 76: 73–100.

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Obama Nominates Supreme Court Empathizer

The Epistemology Behind this Quintessential Travesty of Justice

Yesterday President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. That Obama would nominate such an individual could be inferred from this passage from Obama’s remarks on Justice Souter on May 1st:

Now, the process of selecting someone to replace Justice Souter is among my most serious responsibilities as President. So I will seek somebody with a sharp and independent mind and a record of excellence and integrity. I will seek someone who understands that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a case book. It is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people’s lives — whether they can make a living and care for their families; whether they feel safe in their homes and welcome in their own nation.

I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people’s hopes and struggles as an essential ingredient for arriving [at] just decisions and outcomes.

It is true that justice is not about abstract theory divorced from the facts of reality. Justice is about abstract theory based on the facts of reality. ‘Individual rights’ is part of an abstract theory based on the facts proving that man needs individual rights in order to survive, to “make a living,” as Obama puts it. Abstract theory on one side, and factual evidence on the other side, are not two pieces arrived at separately and then glued together—except perhaps in the law schools attended by the likes of Obama. Abstract theory must be induced from observation of the facts; it is an integration of the facts through a process of reason. Once armed with fact-based, abstract theory, a judge can apply the theory to new cases, to new facts.

But Obama seems to think that “abstract theory” is merely a set of arbitrary rules that you memorize in the ivory tower of law school, a set of rules like the rules of tic-tac-toe or checkers. With such a perverse notion of what ‘abstract theory’ is, no wonder people such as Obama feel that something more is needed. But instead of seeking to understand theory as a reasoned integration of facts, Obama attempts a balancing act between antagonistic elements: between memorized rules and ‘empathy’, between law-school dogma and personal whim.

(Update, 9:30 a.m. PDT: In Ayn Rand’s terms, we have here the false alternative of ‘intrinsicism’ vs. ‘subjectivism’, as opposed to the correct method of ‘objectivity’.)

Now let us see the result of Obama’s intellectually perverse balancing act. Here is a passage written by Obama’s nominee Sotomayor:

Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O’Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O’Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.

Many in the media have already made much of the last sentence quoted above, and with obvious good reason. (None that I have seen, however, have asked what is so particularly rich about the experiences of a Latina woman.) And one could write an essay on the absurdity of the statement that there can never be a universal definition of wise. (Or see Ayn Rand on definitions in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.) But note the first sentence. The phrase “inherent physiological [or cultural] differences” means ‘race’. The first sentence states, among other things, that race and gender affect one’s judgment. This is the central tenet of racism. This is the idea behind statements such as “Black people cannot know right from wrong; it’s in their genes.”

This passage by Sotomayor was not impromptu and is certainly not taken out of context. It is part of a prepared lecture, later published in an academic journal, that is much more of the same. It was delivered at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law and later published in the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal. By the way, ‘La Raza’ means ‘The Race’.

How, in this day and age, could the President of the United States nominate a quintessential racist to the Supreme Court? The short answer is that we are in this day and age. All forms of collectivism—socialism, fascism, Nazism, religious orthodoxy, racism—are on the ascendancy, because reason—the method that enables individuals to pursue and achieve their own happiness—is on the decline. Without reason to guide man’s actions, men are left to follow their emotions. They can follow their own emotions and be psychopaths; or they can follow the prevailing emotions of some group: the ‘people’, the home country, the religious order, the class, the labor union, the gender, the race.

That is why someone who makes ‘judgments’ based on ‘empathy’—on emotions—is primed to be a racist as well.

This is why a man who ran for President on an emotion—hope—is also a racist: a former member of the Congressional Black Caucus, a long-time friend and close associate of Black Liberation Theologist Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a close friend of Rashid Khalidi, and a supporter of affirmative action.

For an example of how Sotomayor’s unthinking ‘empathy’ for some led to callous injustice toward others, see this excellent commentary by Charles Krauthammer regarding Sotormayor’s role in Ricci v. DeStefano, the case of white firefighters denied promotion because they are white.

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My Paper Published in Philosophy of Science

My paper, “Past Longevity as Evidence for the Future,” appears in the new issue (Vol. 76, No. 1) of Philosophy of Science, a leading mainstream academic journal of philosophy. The abstract and acknowledgment—including my acknowledgment of the epistemology of Ayn Rand—are here, on the Web site of the University of Chicago Press.

(Update, 6/29/2011: Read about my revised and expanded paper, now available online.)

Part of my paper refutes what is known as the Doomsday Argument. But far more important than what the paper argues against is what the paper argues for: an objective means for using knowledge of the past as evidence for the future.

This paper represents a small but significant part of my work, begun in the early 1990s, toward the development of a full theory of knowledge; this larger work includes a theory of causality and induction, and draws heavily on my study of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. Completing this project would take many years even under the best conditions. Unfortunately, due to the need to make a living, neither my collaborator Glenn Marcus nor I have had much time to devote to this project the past several years. Since submitting my paper in May 2007, and apart from revisions I made after conditional acceptance in August 2008, I have done essentially no research. Glenn and I look forward to the day when we can give our enjoyable project in epistemology the time it requires.

As for my paper just published, I chose to write it and submit it for publication because it addresses a delimited topic of much current interest to many philosophers and scientists. The next such paper I might consider for publication in an academic journal is on my theory of propositions. My initial paper on propositions has already been written, but it would have to be revised in order to be acceptable to an academic journal; specifically, it would have to deal much more with the mainstream contemporary academic literature instead of dealing almost exclusively with the Aristotelian and Randian traditions. (In particular, I would have to explain in more detail how my theory solves the puzzles that plague other contemporary theories.) I have not decided whether I want to undertake that task, since my theory is a clean break and fresh start from the mainstream anyway.

Now that some of my work in epistemology will, for the first time, have more than a very small (though distinguished) readership, perhaps others will be able to build or improve upon my work in ways I had not envisioned. That prospect is, to my mind, the best reward of being published.

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Similarity and Difference

Much has been written, in the past few weeks, on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s report entitled “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.” Some bloggers, including me, held off on writing about this news immediately because the report is so irrational that it seemed like a spoof or hoax. I am writing about it now in order to make a point that I have not seen in the news.

Here is a statement from the Department of Homeland Security’s report:

Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely.

What kind of mentality lumps racists together with individuals who are “anti-government”? According to this mentality, an extreme racist such as Hitler and an extreme advocate of individual rights and limited government such as Thomas Jefferson both belong under the same category: “rightwing extremist.”

It should be basic common sense that socialists, communists, fascists, Nazis, monarchists, and religious fanatics (including Islamists, animistic environmentalists, and “I-am-my-brother’s keeper” Christians) all belong on the same side of the political spectrum—call that side the Left—and that capitalists, who advocate individual rights and limited government solely for the protection of those rights, belong on the other side. Ayn Rand made this identification many times back in the 1960s. See, for example, her lecture, “The Fascist New Frontier” (describing the Kennedy Administration) and her essay, “The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus” (based on a 1965 lecture and reprinted in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal). Ayn’s Rand’s long-time student and associate Leonard Peikoff wrote an entire book (The Ominous Parallels) on the subject. I reiterated a few of their identifications here and here. Yet what should be common sense is very uncommon.

Here is my summary of the argument:

In metaphysics, the Left claims the existence of something—the collective conscience, the whole of the human race, the planet, the whole of nature, God, god, the black race, the white race, the chosen people, some economic class—that is higher and/or more real than the individual. In epistemology, the Left claims that reason is impotent and any individual’s claim to knowledge is a fraud, that ‘truth’ is what you feel (from your Christian faith or Aryan blood or socialist heart), as long as you belong to a big enough group that feels the same way. Since no individual can claim knowledge, any individual’s success or failure is a matter of luck or abuse. In ethics, accordingly, the Left calls for sacrifice by the individual to the higher whole. In politics, accordingly, the Left calls for sacrifice of the individual to the higher whole.

What I will call the absolute extreme Right, the opposite of the Left, is epitomized by Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, which she once described “on one foot” as follows:

1. Metaphysics Objective Reality
2. Epistemology Reason
3. Ethics Self-interest
4. Politics Capitalism

The initial Leftist propagandists who lumped fascists and Nazis with capitalists could not have been honest; the facts, summarized above, are just too glaring to have missed. But what has enabled this fraud to continue for so long? As Ayn Rand has written often (see, for example, The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution) the post-Kantian epistemology underlying the Left—and, more broadly, underlying the professions of philosophy and education—has eroded many individuals’ ability to think conceptually. The Kant-dominated universities and public schools are perpetrating a self-fulfilling prophecy, turning individuals into the Leftist model of human beings incapable of independent, rational, efficacious thought.

Many professional philosophers have become bloggers. Here are names of some of their popular blogs:

Matters of Substance
Honest Toil
Logic Matters
Epistemic Value
Logic and Rational Interaction

And here are names of other such blogs:

It’s Only A Theory
Certain Doubts
Nothing of Consequence
Obscure and Confused Ideas
Possibly Philosophy
fragments of consciousness
Lemmings
There is Some Truth in That
Antimeta
Probably Possible
This is the Name of This Blog
Just ‘because’
Brain Pains
Go Grue!
Perhaps
Snow is White
So. There’s That.
The Splintered Mind
Theories n things

“It’s Only a Theory” is a group blog in the philosophy of science; its list of contributors consists of more than 40 of the leading professionals in the field.

Of course, many of these names must be intended as self-deprecating (and, in my judgment, self-demeaning) humor; but the humor is humorous because it contains a strong element of truth, as any college student in a philosophy class can confirm.

Many philosophers, I hope, do sincerely want to see the big problems of philosophy solved, and sincerely want to see non-philosophers use their theories in order to make advances in other fields; but many also seem to accept—with resignation—that what they have been doing has not been working. And skepticism and resignation in epistemology leads inexorably to Leftist politics. The intellectual Leftist concludes in effect, “I cannot figure out what’s true or what’s right. Neither can anyone else. But if we bring everyone together and talk it out in a group, maybe the Group will figure it out. At least, the Group will decide.”

“And the only man who is evil is the one who thinks he knows.”

One epistemological notion underlying Leftist politics is the doctrine of ‘nominalism’, which holds (in its extreme form) that all concepts are no more than arbitrary names or labels with arbitrary definitions; that the way we group things under names such as ‘table’ or ‘chair’ or ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or ‘Left’ or ‘Right’ is arbitrary because every thing is different from every other thing in every way, and so there is no objective basis for saying that two things are similar to each other. Capitalism, socialism, and fascism are all different from each other in every respect, so we can group capitalism with fascism and call them both ‘rightwing’ if we feel like it.

It is through notions such as nominalism (among too many other anti-conceptual notions), undercutting the objectivity of the most basic conceptual building blocks such as similarity and difference, that common sense has been replaced by an anti-conceptual mentality among ‘intellectuals’ and even among the general public. (After all, almost everyone is implicitly taught these notions in college if not sooner.) Now it will take nothing short of a genius such as Ayn Rand to restore that common sense.

Here is a small taste of one aspect of how Ayn Rand deals with similarity and difference. (For more, see Ayn Rand’s Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, Expanded Second Edition, especially the first two chapters and the first two sections of the Appendix.) Consider two sticks, one of which is 10 inches long and the other 11 inches long. If all you perceived were these two sticks, you would perceive them as different from each other. But now add to your perceptual field a third stick that is five feet long. Now you perceive the first two sticks as similar to each other and different from the third. And there is an objective basis for that perception. The measurable difference between the first two sticks (in length) is much less than the difference between each of them and the third.

While ‘difference’ entails a comparison of at least two things, similarity entails a comparison among at least three things. ‘Similarity’ is ‘less difference’, by some objective measure.

Thus, if you consider only fascism and socialism (or only Catholicism and Protestantism), you see two social systems that seem to differ in every respect. But now consider capitalism (or atheism) as well. If you measure the differences among all three systems along axes of essential characteristics (such as the degree of political freedom or of property rights), you will see that the differences between socialism and fascism are very small compared to the differences between capitalism and either of the other two systems. (What qualifies as an ‘essential’ characteristic is another epistemological issue; in this case, the essential characteristics would be the ones measured to be the most pivotal for the sustaining of human life.)

I found on the Internet an excellent essay that incorporates Ayn Rand’s theory of similarity in the very treatment of capitalism vs. socialism and fascism, but I could not find the author’s name.

Memo to philosophers: There is much more to Ayn Rand than her ethics and politics. If you want to get out of your post-Kantian rut, study her epistemology.

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