[Lecture Eight] Objectivism Through Induction
by Dr. Leonard Peikoff
Total Time: 1 hour, 32 minutes
Course summary: In this course, Dr. Peikoff demonstrates how to grasp philosophic ideas and principles in the same way that they were discovered—through induction from the facts of reality. Working through a process of generalizing from observed facts, Peikoff shows how a student can come to grasp and validate key ideas in Objectivist philosophy. Key concepts covered in the course include the idea of objectivity in both knowledge and values, egoism, reason as man’s means of survival, and the metaphysical status of sex. Read more »
In this lecture: This lecture examines the idea that force is evil in a moral context, even aside from a political context. It investigates specifically the issue of the initiation of physical force. Dr. Peikoff focuses special attention on understanding how force works to negate the mind and to answer common objections to this idea that are rooted in rationalism or misconceptions about the mind.
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.
| How can a rationalist approach produce both the position that force necessarily invalidates the mind and the position that thinking is still possible even under force? |
| Why is it necessary to show that force negates specific conclusions of the mind before you conclude that it is anti-mind in principle? |
| Explain how the first stage of inducing that force is evil can easily become the misidentification that all frustrated desires are examples of force. |
| How does one go from recognizing that force frustrates achieving selfish values to understanding that it negates one’s ideas? |
| Provide a unique example of an everyday choice you might make that could illustrate how force could negate the specific knowledge behind that choice. |
| What steps are required to proceed from force as against specific conclusions to force as a negation of the faculty of reasoning as such? |
| How would a false theory of concept formation, say, that it happens by revelation, would lead to mental paralysis? |
| Why does every act of force not negate the mind and make thinking impossible? |
| How does circumscribing force not work in isolation? |
| What is the difference between thinking about something while experiencing force versus thinking about what someone who is forcing you either wants you to or wants you not to? |
Q&A Guide
Below is a list of questions from the audience taken from this lecture, along with (approximate) time stamps.
| 1:28:25 | I see why an implicit pleasure-pain standard for your list of initial values would work, so how do you choose this list, by what standard? Aren’t you assuming that life is the standard implicitly, by taking all these proper values? |
| 1:31:15 | When Kant says we are cut off from true reality, what stolen concepts is he counting on? |