[Lecture One] Induction in Physics and Philosophy
by Dr. Leonard Peikoff
Total Time: 1 hour, 31 minutes
Course summary: This course features Dr. Peikoff’s presentation of his solution to the problem of induction. He discusses the axioms of induction and the role of measurement omission and relates them to the process of forming generalizations. By comparing these features to the process of concept formation, Peikoff indicates the parallels in logic that give rise to new insights about the relationship between induction and deduction. Special attention is given to the similarities between physics and philosophy. Read more »
In this lecture: This lecture introduces the role of generalization in human cognition. Dr. Peikoff provides the axioms of induction and indicates how they relate to measurement omission.
Study Guide
This material is designed to help you digest the lecture content. You can also download below a PDF study guide for the entire course.
| Why is generalization the essence of all human cognition? |
| What is the definition of a generalization? |
| Why are the philosophic axioms not inductive generalizations? |
| Why must philosophic principles be validated through induction? |
| Why is enumeration insufficient to account for an induction? |
| In what sense are generalizations hierarchical? Give a few examples. |
| How does one reduce a generalization? |
| What is a first-level generalization? |
Q&A Guide
Below is a list of questions from the audience taken from this lecture, along with (approximate) time stamps.
| 58:23 | Your examples of first-level generalizations were related to the activity of a human being against something in the real world. Do you think that is an essential aspect of first-level generalizations? |
| 58:59 | Can you discuss the role of volition in forming first-level generalizations? Are they automatic? |
| 59:51 | Could I make the analogy to something in politics? For example, “relative poverty” is not actually poverty. Could we analogize that to the field of knowledge with an example of “relative ignorance” not being actual ignorance, for example the nature of the way that water flows through a pipe… |
| 1:02:05 | What would be your answer to someone who says that physicists can’t even explain how water flows through a pipe? I say, “yes they can, in a very basic way.” |
| 1:05:55 | You discussed a lot about the contextual nature of generalizations, and it occurs to me that in Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, when you were discussing contextual knowledge, all the examples that you used were generalizations, such as the RH factor and gravity. I’m wondering if it’s actually true that it’s only for generalizations that this kind of contextual knowledge… |
| 1:08:58 | Many times we have some evidence to indicate that something is true, but not enough to be certain of it in any given context. What is the standard by which we judge that we have enough to be certain and that, within that context, we can say for sure that that generalization is true? |
| 1:10:27 | Early in the talk you described the other sciences as being essentially reducible to physics. Could you explain or clarify that a little bit? It sounds a bit overly reductionistic. |
| 1:12:50 | I have a question about how first-level generalizations are grasped… |
| 1:13:40 | Where a person makes a generalization, such as related to the cause of perceived heat from the sun, how does one know that they’re doing it correctly? |
| 1:16:28 | You’ve mentioned things that you will not be covering at this conference. Is that the material from last year’s course? |
| 1:17:02 | In Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology Ayn Rand noted that our concepts stand for innumerable implicit propositions about the referents of the concept… are there generalizations prior to first-level concepts? |
| 1:19:59 | A question regarding direct marketing. |
| 1:22:19 | In the Objectivism through Induction lectures you have what you were calling then an “induction of causality” and I wondered if you still hold that you can induce that. If not an induction, what explains how clarifying that discussion was? |
| 1:24:13 | When one is forming a first-level generalization, what more is going on than merely enumerating “I see this ball rolling”? |
| 1:24:27 | In the appendix of Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology Miss Rand explicitly talks about how a referent of a concept could be an aspect, such as a referent of the concept “red.” It seems open to interpretation what she means by a “unit” of a concept. For example, a unit of the concept “red” could either be the entity that has the red aspect in it, or just the red aspect… |
| 1:27:00 | A question regarding technological discoveries such as microscopes. |