San Diego Objectivist Study Group

In reaction to the recent spates of student protests across the country concerning proposed raises in fees and tuitions at public universities, Dr. Onkar Ghate has a short piece in Business Week explaining why public universities should be privatized to lower the states’s budgets. He gives two arguments: one moral, one economic. Here is the first:

[… C]onsider the source of warring special interests.

War is inevitable the moment we accept the idea that there’s a right to a university education, a business that cannot go bankrupt, or a comfortable old age. Such “rights” require others to foot the bill, with the government intervening to make sure those unlucky others pay up. Governments become the dispensers of the unearned: They erect public universities and subsidize students, bailout businesses, and establish Medicare and Social Security. Thereafter, everyone woos legislatures to win favors while minimizing his bills.

To put an end to this sordid spectacle, we must discard the idea that anyone has a right to something at another’s expense. What would this dramatic change mean for higher education? Subsidies would end, and all universities would be private. Students would pay their own way or rely on private scholarships and loans.

Secondly, Dr. Ghate touches on the economic argument for privatization, arguing that private competition will bring innovation and reduce costs. This is also valid, but I think the above moral argument is undeniably more fundamental.

A prior discussion generated a new question: When can something be said to be arbitrary?

Arbitrariness is a relationship between the person who has to make a judgment and that which is stated or presented by someone else. More broadly, it is a relationship between the receiver and the message.

Before this relationship can be elaborated, it is necessary to understand specifically what may be at one end of this relationship: the statement.

A “statement” is a sentence being used for communication. For contrast, a “thought” (also known in logic as a “proposition”) is a unit of reasoning in one’s mind and is expressible as a sentence. For the purpose of this discussion, “communication” is any physical process of mind-to-mind exchange of thoughts.

No thought is meaningless, but some statements are—to others, especially if they are in another language. No thought can be misconstrued, but some statements can be—again, by others. You have a thought, but I have only your (communicated) statement.

Both thought and statement rely on the linguistic vehicle: the sentence. A “sentence” is a grammatically constructed series of words capable of conveying an intended meaning, in this case, a unit of reasoning. In using words in an understood language, there is the risk the structure may still be meaningless: 1) the series of words is not grammatical; 2) certain individual “words” themselves may lack meaning; 3) the words in compound usage don’t convey valid concepts; 4) the whole grammatical structure fails to refer to intended objects. Until the linguistic vehicle has meaningful content, it is not a sentence usable in thought and speech.

Before a meaningful statement go on into the mind of the receiver to be thought of and judged as either true or false, it must pass through the evidentiary threshold. Because knowledge is contextual, any true thought in the mind must be connected logically to a context of other true propositions and concepts, grounding the thought all the way to perceptual data. This context constitutes the full evidence for concluding the proposition to be true. A proposition divorced of its context is not knowledge.

That said, a statement delivered without the means to acquire the evidence to support it, is arbitrary and should be dismissed from one’s consideration.

Why must this be the case? Consciousness is always a consciousness of something. A higher-level awareness, such as a judgment, requires no less and must have an object. Thus, every objective judgment must either be self-evident or inferential toward the evidence. A judgment without its links—its context—to the evidence, is like a perceptual awareness without the object, which is a contradiction in terms. Therefore, a valid thought in my mind is one having been justified from my having the evidence.

A statement (i.e., a reported proposition), in relation to my judgment of it, is arbitrary if [1] the opiner provides no evidence (or cannot provide any) when asked, and [2] I can find no plausible means to obtain it otherwise.

If, in a specialized domain, I accept the statement as true on the opiner’s say so, on his credibility, he must have passed two conditions: [1] he knows the truth, and [2] he is objective in telling it. (Credibility applies only in specialized domains.)

But if, in a generalized domain or if otherwise, I accept it without asking for evidence, then my emotion has taken the place of evidence for its acceptance, an acceptance on faith, and its epistemological status is not knowledge but dogma.

Statuses of Statements in relation to Receiver

Arbitraries (sender’s or opiner’s fault):
— “Polly want a cracker.”
— “A man can swim leisurely in the sun’s hydrogen plasma.”
— “X has dice in his hand.” — if he is handless or unwilling to open his hand

Not arbitraries (sender’s or opiner’s credit):
— “X has dice in his hand.” — if he is willing to supply evidence

Statuses of Thoughts in relation to Believer

Dogmata (receiver’s or believer’s fault):
— “X has dice in his hand.” — though X is willing, I don’t ask
— “X has dice in his hand.” — regardless of any evidence, I believe

Knowledge (receiver’s or believer’s credit):
— “X has dice in his hand.” — if I have gotten positive evidence