My Premise-Checking Habit

What is the difference between a philosopher and a scientist? When the philosopher comes to a contradiction, she checks her premises. The scientist does not wait for a contradiction.

Maybe. My own premise-checking habit predates my career choice. When I first realized that some grownups believed, and told me, things that were false, I decided that I would rather doubt a hundred truths than believe one falsehood. Later, on encountering the derivation of Archimedes' Principle, I was so taken with the realization that the facts of reality not only could be observed, but could be understood by reason, that I decided to make this my future job. It helped me to know that as a scientist, I would never need to pretend that I knew, when I doubted.

Later, when I began to read the work of Ayn Rand, I was struck by the similarity between her approach to knowledge and that of the scientists I had met. The scientists knew that certain assumptions had to be made for scientific investigation of nature to be possible; Ayn Rand pointed out that these "assumptions" were really axioms that could not be contradicted without self-exclusion, which made them certain. I already knew that in science the results of replicated measurements comparing an observed value with an external standard were "practically certain;" from Ayn Rand I learned the principles that make them contextually certain. Laws that exactly describe some set of contextually certain measurements are also contextually certain, in the context of the precision and range of the measurements that such laws describe. Logically necessary deductions from already certain premises are contextually certain in the intersection of the contexts of their premises. As long as one tracks context in one's deductions and derivations, one can be certain about what one knows with contextual certainty; and one can know in what contexts that which one knows is certain. Everything outside those contexts is rightly open to doubt, regardless of how many people think it true or wish it were true.

Later, as a student of cognitive psychology, I learned about confirmation bias: the universal human tendency to notice and think about evidence that confirms one's prior beliefs and hypotheses, and to ignore and evade evidence to the contrary. I trained myself, as rigorously as I could, in the habit of going against my own confirmation bias; of looking for experiments and observations that would produce, if such evidence existed, evidence against the hypotheses that I myself advanced and wanted to be true. And, like many in the human sciences, I worked on methods for guarding the process of science against confirmation bias and other biases common to all men, including scientists such as myself.

One of my PhD mentors was Ray Hyman. Ray studied physical scientists who had become interested in "psychical" (later called "paranormal") phenomena. Physical scientists, like Objectivists, pride themselves on thinking conceptually, yet grounding even their most abstract ideas in observable and measurable fact. Yet physical scientists, ignorant of their own confirmation bias, were always the first to be fooled by "evidence" that invariably disappeared under the lens of bias-proof methods worked out by cognitive psychologists. More recently, those of us who look at the work of physical scientists through the lens of cognitive psychology were treated to "climategate:" the ultimate spectacle of physical scientists intoxicated with confirmation bias, and keeping their data secret lest their hypotheses be debunked, as alleged "paranormal phenomena" have been, if subjected to the methods of bias-proof analysis that have become standard in the human sciences.

In Objectivist circles, it is customary to give to ideas held by fellow Objectivists the benefit of the doubt. Surely, the reasoning goes, one's fellow Objectivists have sound epistemology, and therefore are less likely to be mistaken than non-Objectivists. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that Ayn Rand knew what we now know about confirmation bias. My guess is that she didn't, because she would have advised Objectivists to guard against it, if only she had known. And so some Objectivists, as I recently found out, regard my own attitude - that I would rather doubt a hundred truths than believe one falsehood - as a flaw of character. As one put it in a letter, 'it indicates a juvenile "iconoclastic" mentality rather than a strive (maybe "a striving?") for knowledge.'

The iconoclasts were early Christian fanatics who defaced artwork, lest statues and paintings receive admiration that the iconoclasts reserved for God. How one gets from an observation of habitual premise-checking to a diagnosis of "iconoclasm" I don't know. What I do know, is that no idea should be exempt from doubt because of who holds it. Even if that person is an Objectivist. Even if it is an idea held by many Objectivists. If this be "iconoclasm," make the most of it.