"Thinking In Principles" by Leonard Peikoff

Good morning. I want to start, I assume I have now got the hardcore wealthy of the Objectivist audience, The rest having given up after a week. I want to start by giving you a written assignment, which is optional because I'll probably only be able to take up a few in class. This is for Thursday's class on writing versus thinking. Now, I asked in advance for writing problems, and the questions that I got, with one or two exceptions, had nothing to do with writing problems. They were just problems in philosophy. So what I'd like you to do is to write 150 word piece, that's approximately half a page. If you had a typewriter, or if you don't, please print it, don't handwrite it. 150 words, you can easily do by Thursday printing because I can't read the handwriting and make two copies, one for yourself and one for me. This should be a letter to the editor of a newspaper, one that you read and that you have some sense of on any relevant topic that pertains to in some way, philosophy, politics, ethics, religion. And all I want you to do in this letter is write it in such a way that its relevance is clear to the editor, why his paper should be interested in this, what it's got to do with him, unless it's self evident, such as an attack on Bush. No, because that's self evidently connected to the election. And then try to make one or two crucial points, but they must be self contained and self intelligible. There's no use telling him Bush is no good because he violates the principle of the hierarchy of cognition. And this is very hard to do. The shorter a letter, the harder it is to write because you have to condense more and more and still make it intelligible. Bring your context along, or write in such a brilliant way that you can count only on their context and nevertheless make your startling point. I'd like the tone of the letter to be strong but not venomous. Try to avoid being either wimpy and apologetic or coming on, you know, like you have the word of God and everyone else is swine. It's a very difficult task that I'm giving you precisely because it's so short. You have to take some crucial point or points and delimit them so you can only say X about them, that's all. And yet they still have to be clear. And it has to be apparent why you're making that point rather than some other point. And it's got to have some sort of structure and come to a conclusion. On the bottom of the page, since you'll only be writing on half a page. If you feel you have failed in various ways, name what the problem is. I couldn't make it simple enough. I didn't know how to express this point. I don't know what context is required for this. I couldn't think of how to start. Whatever is the problem that stops you. And then I'm going to just pick people at random and ask them to bring me up their copy. And I will read it aloud for the first time as you hear it. This is after I give a brief introductory lecture on the issues of writing and thinking. And then we will together try and see whether we can solve any writing problems in a way that will be of broader interest to everybody who does any writing. Now, of course, if everybody hands in completely perfect letters, you won't learn anything from this exercise except how good you are, and then you should go out and try and publish them. But I assume that there will be some problems that some people have just inducing from past experience. All right, that's the assignment. And as I say, it couldn't possibly take more than four or five people anyway. So if you just can't face it or can't do it, don't. I'm sure there'll be four or five will show up with it. But if you actively want personal attention, this is your one chance in the class to get. Now, we are going to go to the topic of thinking in principle, which I believe you're well motivated to learn. But what we want to know is what does it mean and how do you do it? Well, we have to start by asking, what is a principle? And I went through some years ago, the Oxford English Dictionary, on this. You know, they will give 8 or 10, 15, 20 definitions of each word. You have to pick out the ones that you think are essential. And sometimes it's 1, 8 and 12 are the three that will gear you into the word, and the others are little derivative uses that are unimportant or archaic or whatever. But I found three definitions that together made clear to me what a principle is. So you have to sort of take the Oxford English Dictionary, which has the best resource of anything on the English language, and follow along with what you get, summarizing as you go. Now, here's the first definition that I picked from there. Now, principle, remember, that's the word we're talking about. P, R, I, N, C, I, P, L, E. The first definition was origin, source, source of action, beginning, interestingly enough, fountainhead Original or initial state, first place. And obviously it comes from the Latin preian, which is first prince is the first son. You know, it was the front of an army. The part which started the fighting was called the principle. And here is a citation from 1432. The beginnings of that water called Tiber and of the water off Jordan, which have their principle at the foot of Mount Libanus. Now, their principle means the source where they come from. And here's another citation from 1674. Improving their ports and magazines has given principle to no inconsiderable navy has given principal means has been the origin. That's what started it. That was the first thing that led to these various consequences. So from this I get basically the idea. Principle means the beginning from which later things follow. The first thing in a series which leads to later things. Now, that's not yet principle as we use it, but that's an indispensable element of principle. And as you see, that goes all the way back to the 15th century and I'm sure earlier. Now, the definition that I got for second. You see, the trouble with the dictionary doesn't perform philosophic analysis. It doesn't tell you what the relation between the second and the first is. It just gives them to you, and you got to figure out how they relate to each other. Now, the second definition that I picked, I will read it to you exactly as they give it. A fundamental truth, law or mode of force. And then they give this fundamental truth or proposition on which many others depend, a primary truth comprehending or forming the basis of various subordinate truths, a general statement or tenet forming the ground of or held to be essential to a system of thought or belief, a fundamental assumption forming the basis of a chain of reasoning. Now, who could see a similarity between all of those and the original one, which was the beginning from which later follows, including the beginning of a mountain and the beginning of an army. Now, this is the same essential idea, only what did we do to it? We transferred it from the physical to the intellectual to the epistemological. Principle is still the beginning from which the later follows, but it's now the intellectual beginning from which a number of intellectual consequences follow. So instead of being just the source or origin of something, it becomes a truth on which all kinds of things depend. A fundamental truth, a basic truth, a primary truth. And the definition stresses over and over that a lot of other things depend on it, but many others depend. Various subordinate truths, a whole system of thought or belief, a chain of reasoning. So the idea is this Very fertile fundamental generalization or idea from which there's a lot of intellectual consequences. Now, there's a third one that you have to decide what are you going to do with this? And the rest are all just little picky lexicographical type things. But here's the third remedy that's a possible candidate to be incorporated. A general law or rule adopted or professed as a guide to action, a settled ground or basis of conduct or practice, a fundamental motive or reason of action. Now, this makes principle, in effect, essentially an ethical issue, a principle guiding you, telling you how to behave. Now, here your own philosophy is going to be relevant, whether you think that fundamental truths play a role in cognition, an essential role, and play the same essential role in ethics, or whether you think man acts from sources that have nothing to do with his thought, and that therefore this is a completely independent issue, the rule or guide to action. Now, we hold as objectivists that ethics is simply an application to life of certain other fundamental truths, and that therefore I would say this definition as a guide to action is merely an, excuse me, merely an application to the realm of action of the same concept of principle as applies in any field. You get principles that guide action, principles that guide cooking, principles that guide thinking. And there's no reason in the world to reserve the word principle for that which guides action, although it happens to be very important to use. You say he's an unprincipled man, you're focusing on his lack of principle in action. Nevertheless, intellectually this does not add anything, and I mention it simply, so you do not narrow principle to guide to action. Our best definition, putting it all together, is the idea of a basic or first cause, and then transferring it to the intellectual, the conceptual first cause, which has many derivatives. And that's how I think of principle, the conceptual first cause. Now, there's a lot of different ways you can word that, but it's like the source of the river, only it's in the intellectual domain. Or you can think of it as a fundamental generalization. It's always general because it can't be fundamental if it's just a concrete or a particular. It has to be something very broad that will enable us to get out of it a whole bunch of consequences. Now, the first thing to see, I hope those definitions don't lose your interest, but it's actually a good method to follow. If you're finding a word and you don't know where to start, go to an exhaustive dictionary, which is only one in English, the oed and pick out everything that seems to have a clue in the direction and then put them together yourself, deciding which is really crucial, and then work out your own definition based on that. They have done wonderful work in collecting every significant use of a word from like the middle ages of the present. And they've organized it as well as they can without benefit of philosophy. So it's a joy to try to figure out a definition. They don't give you exactly what you want, but they give you everything you could need to get what you want. Whereas if you go to any other dictionary, it's like they simply give you the conclusion without the citations and without the development of to explain why this is the definition. So I definitely would recommend, if you're interested in definitions, the Oxford Dictionary, if you can do it in the two volume thing with a magnifying glass and enough Dramamine to conquer the seasickness, that's okay. But I sprung for the whole big one because I think it's very valuable. Now let's make as our first point, that a principle therefore is not synonymous with any generalization. You can think of it as an integration of generalizations. It's much more abstract than the normal generalization. And if you formulate it properly, we'll illustrate all this very quickly. It represents the cause or explanation of all this derivative generalizations. It's the basis on which you can understand all the things that come from it. So we can look at it this way. A principle is to an ordinary generalization as a concept is to its concretes. A principle is to an ordinary generalization as a concept is to its concretes. It is the integrator that unites all those lesser generalizations into one unit, just the way the concept table does unite into one unit all the percepts of tables. Now, someone is going to want to ask, judging from past experience, how many derivative generalizations must a statement have to qualify as a principle? And of course, I can't give you a numerical answer. I can't say 12 or 38 or whichever it is contextual as it is in the theory of definition. When we say the essence is that which underlies a great many of the distinctive characteristics, I can't tell you how many. It has to be just enough to qualify as significant within a given context. And the fact of principle in one context can be seen to be merely a derivative of a deeper, wider principle in a deeper context. So in other words, we come again across the point that we mentioned under essences that we have to define via fundamentals but what's fundamental in one context is not necessarily so in another. A principle is the deepest level of integration possible within a given context. Now, let me give you an example of this point. Suppose I observe that censorship takes all intelligence out of the books that are published, and public ownership of the steel industry makes the steel worthless. And 15 other instances where coercion acts to stifle creativity. And I then say the principle here is force leads to destruction, or force is the antithesis of values, or force is the opposite of what the mind requires. Now that would be a principle. There are hundreds of applications and derivatives of it, and it unites all those. And if you can think in that principle, you see the reason for capitalism. And if all you can do is hold all those concretes, you'll think, all I need to do is change the sensors or, you know, have new people running the factories. I could still get away with it. But if you get to the point of force leads to destruction, you have come across a basic principle within the context of what subject politics. Now can you, can you jump to a much wider context of which force leads to destruction is merely a concrete. It is no longer functioning as a principle. Yes, force is anti mind. Well, even that is just a concrete. Force is anti mind is just a concrete. Of what principle in metaphysics? Well, that's a little too broad. Identity. I'm talking about a relation between doing something and getting a result, enacting a cause, namely force and getting an effect. Right? So if I was teaching metaphysics, the principle here would be cause and effect. And then the example, the derivative, would be force leads to destruction. Now that will show you that these things are all contextual. And therefore I'm telling you that you do not always go to the very widest principle right away. If you do, you're going to end up with only philosophic principles. Just in the same way that I could go all the way back to causality, I go all the way back to identity. I go all the way back to something in philosophy and leave the particular field that I'm in, which is not always desirable to do. Philosophic principles, to be sure, are crucial. But it is not enough to have in your mind only direct observations and then philosophic principles. You have to have these, what we can call intermediate level principles as your guide in exactly the same way as it's not enough to have broad abstractions or broad concepts like being and attribute and so on, and then just what you directly perceive. There's a whole vast range of middle level abstractions that are absolutely essential to thought. Therefore, for the purposes of this lecture, we are not interested in principles insofar as they take us all the way back to philosophy, or if we are, it's only peripheral to our main concern. We're interested in integration of generalizations within a given context of knowledge and relating to a specific field like politics, agriculture, whatever. It happens to be as against right away jumping to the whole universe because we'll lose exactly than the kind of knowledge we need to function in a specific field if you abstract away from everything. Now, I have found that the best way to make clear what a principle is not everything about principles, but at least what it is. Because the trickiest thing is to get a class to grasp what is a principle and what isn't. I will give you an example of things that some student or other in the course of history has suggested to me as being a principle, when in fact it is not a principle, not even in the restricted context he's talking about. And you volunteer for me what would be a principle of which that would be just an instance, or that would be just a derivative. Now you don't have to even be right. I'm not concerned here with what is the true principle. I just want you to get an idea of the level of approach that something requires to become a principle as against. Just an interesting generalization. Now, one class, forget about Manx cats or whatever, the ones that don't have tails, because that's not the point. One class suggested to me that all cats have tails as a principle. Now I'm here to say it is not. That is what you could call low level direct generalization from observation. That is certainly not a principle. All you could get out of all cats have tails is Socrates is a cat. Therefore Socrates has a tail. But that's. I mean, now it's much too concrete and it's not an integration except of cats to tails. It doesn't connect to any other things within the area of animal life or biology, and therefore that is definitely not a principle. But now what might be a principle? Now, I'm not going to argue biology here. That would correspond to this level of discourse and from which this would follow or be understandable. Are you going to give me something plausible that have tails? Use them for balance? Well, you're giving the function of the tail, so you're giving a little broader, but that is still much too narrow for what we want as an. I want now to give you an idea of a level of principle that would explain this and hundreds of other things about hundreds of other animals. So if you keep it just to tails, unless there is such a subject as tailology, you know, there's a whole series of principles all the way back that explain millions of things about tails. But I'm assuming something broader than that. Yes, genetics lead to physical. Okay, something on the order of the theory of evolution would be a principle. Something on the order of animals develop their structure according to genetic features or according to evolutionary requirements of survival. Now, that's a massive generalization. But on the basis of that, you are able to explain and predict, understand hundreds and thousands of observations from tails on up and down. Now, obviously, we're leaving open the question, how do you get to such generalization as the theory of evolution? You don't. Obviously don't get to it by saying all cats have tails, all dogs wag them while they're happy. Therefore it must be the theory of evolution. And in fact, philosophy can't even tell you how to get to the principle of evolution, because that's science. All I want you to do right now is to get the difference in level between the two ideas. Animals evolve thus and how versus all cats have tails. The second would qualify as a principle. Now, I'm not saying there might not be intermediate principles less exalted than that, but I want to strike you at the beginning with the importance of having a broad enough concept of principle, of the term principle. Principle is an honorific term. In other words, when you apply that to something, you are making a fuss about it. You're saying, this is something big and basic in my context. Now I'm going to give you another one from a completely different field that a student suggested, and you tell me what would be a principle. Now, this is not as exalted an area, but nevertheless, the distinction applies. Student one suggested to me in New York that the principle would be this. If you travel by subway, allow extra time because the trains are sometimes late. Now that's a generalization. All subway travelers should do so and so. But that is incredibly too concrete. As soon as you see the word trains and subway, and so you know, whatever level you're on, this is not a concrete. Because you could just as well say, if you're going by the irt, that's one of the subway lines in New York. If you're going by the IRT at rush hour to your dentist to have cavities filled, then leave 18 to 30 to 20 minutes, because there are often crashes, you know, at Grand Central. I mean, Would that be a principle? I mean, you'll verge there on saying, I'll take you by the hand and walk you to the train. This is almost entirely concrete. Now take this idea. If you travel by subway, allow extra time because the trains are sometimes late, and try to generalize as broadly as you can. Now, if you're going to go all the way and just say, well, what it really says is recognize the facts of reality, then you have retreated to philosophy. You're just giving. Be rational then, and that's okay. But we knew that already. But we want to know, can we get a principle in this case a guide to action that is much broader than the one about travel by subway, but is not so broad as, you know, stay in touch with reality. The bad. Okay, that's a good idea. One should plan ahead that you might want to just make it a little more explicit, plan ahead to allow for unforeseen contingencies. See, now that is broad enough to encompass the subway train. Plus, if it's rush hour, you need to get a cab, you better go out there early. Also, if it's bad weather and plus, not just your time, carry extra money if you go out shopping because you don't know what you might meet. And suppose you're a teacher, have some extra material ready in case the class is unexpectedly silent and you run out, et cetera, et cetera. There's 1,100 applications of this plan ahead for unforeseen contingencies. And you could integrate all of them and therefore use yourself, use it to predict and guide your own future if you have it on that level. But if you have it as this is the rule for the subways, this is the irt, this is the bmt, this is the ind, this is, you know, it's the co. Epistemology, you just cannot hold it. And so you just end up doing whatever you feel like. Now, I'll give you another example here, but this, I think, is perhaps laboring the point too much. We'll do it quickly. Somebody suggested as a principle, if you want to grow bananas in Arizona, you need irrigation ditches. Now, what would the real principle. You don't have to give me the content of it be. But in category of formulation. Yes. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed. Excellent. Except you're getting there. You're verging on pure philosophy there. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed. So let's try to get something a little lower on the scale. And I would say something like this. Agriculture involves definite conditions of temperature. Water soil, etc. In other words, the principle of scientific farming, as opposed to in Arizona, with this crop, if you don't put ditches in, they rot, you see, which is just your preliminary observation. And at a certain point you come to grasp that there's such a thing as scientific farming, that all crops depend on certain conditions because they're living organisms. And then you can state a broad principle that will govern your activities in all of these type of fields. And you will see. Then when you reach this broad principle, it will explain, why does there have to be irrigation here and heat added in this country, and so on and so on. Because they're living creatures, living organisms, in this case plants, they require certain conditions to flourish. And that explains all the empirical observations. Now, you should get used to, I say this more or less in conclusion of this first point, trying to formulate a principle whenever you think one is around, just as practice in thinking on the right level, not too broad and not too narrow. And the key to it is, whenever you say such and such is right in principle, or such and such is wrong in principle, that is an iou, the words in principle. And what you owe to be able to say that is the ability to state the principle. If you say this is wrong in principle, the logical retort of anybody, including your own mind, should be, which principle? What is the principle that this is violating? Now, for instance, you're sitting in a doctor's office, no, excuse me, you're sitting in a potential employer's office, and you decide to add some material, false material, to your resume in order to get the job, and somebody sitting next to you says, that's wrong in principle to doctor your resume, even if you get away with it, it's wrong in principle. Now, just on that simple example, it makes a big difference what you formulate as the principle. Because if you formulate the principle wrongly, inadequately, too narrowly, too widely, without the right conditions, you'll never be able to use it, apply it, integrate it, or prove it. Now, rather than kill time showing you this by the Socratic method, I'll just give you some wrong answers. Wrong in principle. To doctor your resume, to distort it well, is the principle. You should not cheat your employer. It's wrong. After all, he's giving you in good faith. So you shouldn't cheat your employer. Would that be the principle? Obviously not. Why not? It's much too narrow. And whatever reasons there are, not to cheat your employer would apply to your wife and your child and your doctor, etc. And so on. Well then let's jump in the other direction. Lying is wicked. And in doctoring your resume is a form of lying. Therefore that's it. Now that certainly would be a principle because it would cover countless cases in real life, I mean, thousands of different tricky examples, and it gives you one unequivocal answer. Wrong. Now what's wrong with that? Is a formulation of the principle. Well, that's always the best objection if it's not true. And the reason it's not true, of course, is that there are cases where it's perfectly proper to lie in self defense and other cases. So if you try to make it that, you'll end up like Kant. Well, how about if I give you this as the formulation of the principle. It's wrong to mislead someone when it's to your own selfish interest. That's the principle. You see that white lying is okay, but black lying is bad. So you have to decide, is that a valid point or not? Does selfishness the thing that makes lying bad? And as long as you do it unselfishly, it's okay. And that will bring you into the whole question of egoism and altruism and your obligations to others, etc. Obviously objectivists would not accept that formulation of the principle. And who would give me the best formulation given by Galt in his speech? One of the great things about Galt's speech and all of Ms. Rand's writing, which you will come to appreciate more when you are more aware of what's required to formulate a principle, is the level and precision on which you can formulate these things and cover all of these mistakes without saying them. Exclude every single one in a brief speech given in an emotional context to the world over the radio. It's a fantastic feat of precision. Yes. Never try to gain a value by faking reality. Exactly right. Never try to gain a value by faking reality. Since you know that, then I don't have to go into it. But if you remember, for instance, my chapter on honesty, my sequence on honesty in the book, that was exactly what I reduced the thing to, taking my lead from Ms. Rand. And then it was that that I tried to prove and illustrate and validate. Certainly not. I wouldn't talk about employers as an end in itself, perhaps just as a casual example. Nor would I make a flat sweeping generalization, nor would I contradict the base of ethics when I suddenly get to this one. But this is an excellent formulation because gaining values leaves open that you can lie to defend them. You see, from those who try to take them away, and specifically through faking reality, you see? So this formulation explains what is correct, what element is correct in those other three attempts, and what elements are wrong. And it doesn't mislead you onto a wild goose chase in your attempt to validate. So it's very important to grasp a principle and grasp it as broadly as necessary within the context, and as exactly as possible within the context. Now, I've already really answered this, but I just want to cover it, hit the nail on the head. What do principles add to our cognition? Now, remember objectivism, principles are an essential of cognition. They're an essential of action only in the sense that action follows from what you think. But they are primarily a cognitive device or mechanism. They're applicable in regard to any subject matter. And the question is, what is it that principles give us? If we were stripping away now just the ethical implications? I want to get more broadly into the epistemology. What, what does a principle bring with it that a series of ordinary generalizations or a whole broad philosophy by itself does not? Yes, sir. Integration with our other knowledge. Well, what other knowledge? Well, knowledge related to a particular situation. Well, in other words, I think you're saying this, then certainly the key is integration. What is integrated is all of the countless subgeneralizations that are put together in this principle, all of the direct observations, and even the higher level ones about cats or agriculture or subways, whatever it happens to be, or fraud. I mean, this field is wide open. What a principle does is put together all of those subgeneralizations into a unit. So it's the same issue as what a concept does to a person. And it's an essential element of a conceptual consciousness, as we'll see at the end. Although there's a way in which you can escape principles, in another sense you cannot, because a conceptual faculty does have to integrate, and it either does it knowingly and correctly, or unknowingly and mistakenly, but it can't get around it. And you can't get around some kind of generalizations, and you can't even get around integrating them. Because the crow epistemology, you couldn't function at all. So this is not an option in the basic sense. Of course, you have to do it correctly. And I would put it this way, concepts integrate into a. Excuse me, principles integrate into a unit and thus make retainable countless subsumed generalizations. In fact, if I broke that up into like three functions, I would stress first the word retainable. Principles make their countless instances retainable in all the examples that we mentioned, I think that's clear. Otherwise you just couldn't hold 50, 70, 100 different generalizations about wheat and subtype wheat 1 and wheat in the Arctic and wheat in the Antarctic. And you know, you just mind that, just give up. You could not begin simply because of lack of ability to condense into a unit that you can hold scientific agriculture if you didn't have principles. And the same is true. The same is true of principles of public speaking. You can read an entire book and it's all very helpful. But there's those kind of books which are all highly concrete. You know, open with a smile and a joke, but the joke shouldn't be something funny just happened on the way to the class because audiences are bored with that. And then after you open, tell them what you're going to tell them, but don't tell them in detail because they can't understand it yet. Just give it to them in a plan, but not in a complicated. By the time you get through 400 pages of that and say, now go out, give a speech, you've learned a great deal, but it's useless to you. You cannot retain it unless you bring it into your mind under principles. And usually, at least I find in my experience I can work with about 4, 5 principles at a time, and that's it. So as I'm reading one of those books, I'll say, well, this is motivation. He wants us to tell a joke and so on to motivate the audience, to get them interested, and then from there on I file as a principle. Motivation is an essential. Every time somebody says something that I think is helpful to speech making, I have to decide, is this motivational or not? And once you follow it that way, thereafter, when you want to motivate, it'll be fed back to you. Whereas if all you ask your subconscious is give me something decent, it hasn't got anything to give you. So you have to retain by breaking up into defined principles the mass of practical or observed data that you start with. Now, secondly, principles make your observations intelligible, understandable because you integrate them to one another, and so it's not a bunch of loose, concrete fit all cohere into one unit. And of course, thirdly, they enable you therefore to predict the future because they abstract away from time conditions in the same way that the concept table is applicable to all future tables. Anything you learn about tables, any subgeneralization that is finally integrated into a principle will be true of all, of everything within that category. Now I want to just pause for a moment on this issue that principles make your observations intelligible or understandable by integrating them to one another. Because I've been asked this question by intelligent students. Why does integrating generalizations make them intelligible or explain them? Couldn't you say, well, if you don't understand why wheat requires water or whatever it is, pineapples require heat, etc. On that level, why does putting them all together into one big generalization make it intelligible? Wouldn't you then just have somebody ask me a giant incomprehensibility substituting for a whole bunch of lower level incomprehensibilities? Now, this is actually the viewpoint of a school called logical positivism, in fact, just called Positivism because this was the idea originated by Auguste Comte, that the world is unintelligible, that everything you observe you can describe, but you have no clue as to why, and that all science is, is an economical description of the brute surd unintelligible facts of the world. So there is no such thing as understanding does only describe it. Now Objectivism, of course rejects that altogether, because in our view, understanding is integration. It is not a mystical light that goes off in your head. Principles integrate concretes, concrete generalizations, in other words, bring them into relation to one another and thereby they become mutually illuminating. Now you can see this even on the level of simple concept formation. When you see one table just by itself for the first time, you cannot distinguish anything about it. You don't know what it's like or unlike the first time, we are starting at the level of a child. But if you see several tables in relation to chairs or beds, then a pattern becomes clear to you, a certain kind of shape which you see repeated over and over in variations, you can detect it. And now that little square of your perceptual world is orderly. And then you find out from somebody they were built so we could hold various objects, and you see why they're built that way. And now you are in business. Next time you see a table, you understand it. Why? Well, what is more do you know than you knew about any one of them? You now can bring it into relation to all of them. And within your context you have an area that makes sense, as against that isolated daughter, this crawling spider, whichever where you just can't do anything with it. Now the same applies to generalizations. If you see all what's needed for peaches in New Mexico and carrots in Arizona, et cetera, you're just collecting data. But when you See all those concretes together, when you integrate into the living organism needs such and such conditions, then you understand. So it's the exact same pattern. Understanding is nothing more than integration. Now, it follows from this that the very basic facts of the universe, whatever they are, you cannot say, I want to understand them. They simply are the given. Now, I don't care at this point what the basic facts are. For instance, whether matter is atomic, is an irreducible fact, or you know, what Ayn Rand and I, in a humorous way, used to call the ultimate ingredients of the world, which were even tinier than subatomic particles. We used to call it little stuff. And little stuff is whatever the stuff is that makes up everything. So even if we did that as a joke, but in order to free our thinking from the specific content of physics, you see, the idea was, whatever the laws governing little stuff are, obviously we haven't reached these. Those laws themselves cannot be explained by the basis of anything prior or more fundamental. That's the way this stuff operates. In an analogous way, can you explain to me why is A A? Well, you can't say, because A is B and B is A. Therefore A is A, A is A. That's it. That is just the way reality is. And the same would have to be true of the ultimate laws of physics. All explanation, or all understanding, consists in starting with observed data and taking it back one step at a time, reducing it back to the ultimate laws, to the metaphysical primaries. And each step back, therefore, is a step in the direction of greater understanding. Why? Because in each step, you are tying what you learned to more and more ranges of data. You are integrating more and more and more as you go from principle to deeper principle, you see, and therefore each step helps to clarify all of its ingredients, the weight. Each table helps to clarify other tables. So it's in that sense that principles take you are the way of understanding. And understanding consists of ultimately integrating on such a scale that when you say matter or little stuff or whatever it is, and the few whatever laws there are that govern it, everything else in the universe is seen to follow from that. You don't ask for infinite regress. That's when you say existence exists. If you understand that point, you won't have the problem that all science can do is describe, but it can't explain. It explains everything that there is to explain. But explanation is tying everything together via principles until you finally reach the irreducible facts, you see, and therefore, this is the epistemological role of principle, the cognitive role is as Our only means, once we have concepts, of using them to understand the data of reality. So principles are not primarily a requirement of action that happens to be an important role. But all knowledge is crucial because of the action it enables us to take. They are first and foremost principles, a requirement of cognition. I don't think I have to keep repeating this over and over again. Yeah, I've got this down about six times, but I think that's too much. Now, what we want to do. I've given you a general introduction to what are principles and why are they necessary? What do they accomplish? We want to learn to think in principle. That is, I'm not going to teach you here the principles of any particular subject. You know, I'm trying to just get you on the idea of how to approach whatever you approach, whatever you read in the newspapers, or whatever other people say, or whatever comes up in your own mind, how to get it into the form of principles that you can thereby judge. One of the best ways to do that is to take something that strikes you as unusual, either unusually good or unusually bad, and try to put in the form of a principle what it is that this thing represents. If it's unusually good, you'll learn something that will greatly expand your ability because you'll have connected it to a whole bunch of other things. You'll have had a massive integration. And similarly, if you learn something bad, you will find it extremely illuminating of all sorts of other things, because being a principle, you'll be making vast integrations. Now, I'm going to give you an example, actually two at the same point. But first I'll give you the one that I got out of the newspaper. The New York Times is invaluable, in my opinion, not only for the news, but also for sophisticated versions of every fallacy that you can expect. And this was right at the time that Orson Welles died. So that's what, six, seven years ago? So they gave an appreciation of him by Vincent Canby, who is their leading movie critic. And I simply have to read this because it leapt out of the page at me. I'm just giving you a couple paragraphs out of his whole thing. But you try to figure out what is the principle. He doesn't say it, of course, because if he did, he couldn't do what he's doing, or else he would have to be a philosopher, and then he would write in such a way that they wouldn't hire him. Now, I'll read you just excerpts from this. It's a tribute to Orson Welles. Welles employed deep focus photography by which actors in the background are as clearly seen as those close to the camera. High contrast, black and white film stock and long takes. And he has several other things like that. Now then, he leads up to his big point. I'll read you a whole paragraph. Now, in the Magnificent Ambersons, Welles seemed to have found a way of combining the possibilities of cinema with the more formal demands of the theater to create something entirely new. Among other things, he allowed his movie audiences, like those in the so called living theater, to choose one what they would look at in almost any scene. Now then, here comes the sentence of all sentences. He didn't coerce audiences with close ups in this fashion. He liberated the screen. Now, I'll read that again, just the last part. There was up to the audience to choose what they would look at and therefore, quote, he didn't coerce audiences with close ups in this fashion. He liberated the screen. Now, do you have any reaction to that? Other than my reaction? I mean, you can just pick up my reaction. But to me, my hair stood on end with the statement that he liberated us, he didn't coerce us with close ups. By what do you see in that? There is a principle, very definitely, a very evil principle that has thousands of applications and derivatives beyond the movies. Now, if you took this course before and you tell me the ultimate answer right at the beginning, I'll kill you. So I want an answer on the level of the arts or the movies, not an answer on the level of the deep philosophy. First of all, I'm afraid of you because you're going to give the right answer. Yes. Artists should not place their value judgments within their work. Okay, you could put it as a first step that way, that if you place your values, your emphasis, your concerns into the work that is coercive, you're forcing the reader or the viewer to see things your way, rather than to give him the freedom to do what he chooses. And therefore, if we have everybody without a close up, he can look left, he can look right, he can look back, he can look at the character's knee, he can look up at his eye. He's free. Whereas if you give a big close up of his face, he might have this passion to see the character's knees and he just can't do it. So you're coercing him. Now you said, very, very good. You shouldn't inject your values into your art. Now you jump right away to art as a whole. Normally a person would say, would get to that by certain steps he would say, well, the method of filming should not impose the director's perspective. And then they'd say the director should keep his ideas to himself. And now, what is the next step that they would encounter? Suppose they spoke to the playwright. What would they say to the playwright if they took Canby's line? Yeah, same thing. The playwright. Yeah. You say, what business do you have giving Howard Rourke said, a novel so many pages, and you give Katie, you know, the. To his niece, so few pages. Gus Webb doesn't get equal voice or equal hearing at all. And on top of that, by what right do you give Rourke this startling hair and you make Gus Webb going bald, you know, et cetera, et cetera. That's not the way I want. Why should you coerce me with your vision of the characters and your interests and your concerns? Now, now let's begin to try to project what would be then a totally uncoercive work of art, where you're completely free. Like, suppose I take. I say, okay, I'm going to cut out my values. I'm going to write naturalism, just things as they are. For instance, like Sinclair Lewis, who was a good writer, I enjoyed reading him, but he was a naturalist. He presented, as he thought, slice of life. And let's say he presented Arrowsmith, if you've ever read that, a novel about a nice doctor, more or less admirable, his various adventures. Now, that's naturalism. Lewis would say, I'm not putting my values into this. I'm just showing this guy and his interactions with people, and this is just the way people speak, and so on. Now, could anybody accuse him of being coercive, of being just as coercive as the close up in the movies? Yes, sure. He's saying, focus on the scientist or focus on a meat packing plant. He's not saying, just look out at a big cloud. Absolutely. He's picking the subjects. You have to focus on the amount of time you have to focus on them. Who gets the attention? Who gets the emphasis? What things about Aerosmith, he's going to tell us. He tells us a lot more about his medical education, for instance, than about his experiences with his grandmother, of which there's only one line. I suppose I want to hear more about the grandmother. As a matter of fact, she seemed to be a nicer character from the first sentence, but that didn't happen to be the book he was writing. Now, in other words, some form, whether you want it or not, of flaunting and, quote, coercing your audience is unavoidable in any work of art. It's impossible not to coerce if you are. Am I coercing you at this moment? Absolutely. I mean, this is as bad as a close up. I have sentences from one philosophy which I'm stringing before you in a definite order with a tone of voice to hammer home one point. You're completely trapped. I mean, it's just as good as if I held a gun to your head and say, that's it, because you have no choice. I mean, you could walk out of the room if you can bring yourself to do it, but you can't escape coercion. Now what is the deeper problem then? The deeper thing that can be objects to. Because if you said to him, well, what you really mean is the artist shouldn't inject his viewpoint. And you then said to him, well, but everything, every aspect of every work has to reflect his viewpoint. It's that aspect and not something else. So Canby would have to say, because he doesn't ask these questions, or he wouldn't be a movie critic. But he would have to say, well, what I really object to is not close ups or even something as narrow as a director's perspective or an artist's value judgment. The thing I really object to is when you give me something. What? Something specific. Anything specific. Anything that's this thing rather than that thing. You are coercing me. You're forcing me to look at this thing rather than that thing. So what is the ultimate agent of coercion? The law of identity. Yeah, what he's really saying in that sentence. The principle is identity is contrary to freedom. Identity is a coercive force. Now in other words, the fact that a work of art is something impedes my desire for it to be whatever I want it to be. The only solution is gotta be non objective art. Art where it can be anything you want it to be. You know, some modern mobile or smears, etc. But even that is not really any good because it's still this smear versus that one. And one of them is green and one of them is muddy, purple, etc. And still something. Although they try to get around that by saying it's something physically, but spiritually it's completely indeterminate. It can be whatever you want. But the idea here is specificity, concreteness, existing is coercive. Now you think, well, that's Vincent Canby, he's just a movie critic.