Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Ayn Rand & Epistemology 31

Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy 4: Objectivist theory of meaning. After providing a brief summary of Rand's theory of concepts, Peikoff introduces the Objectivist theory of meaning:

Since a word is a symbol for a concept, it has no meaning apart from the content of the concept it symbolizes. And since a concept is an integration of units, it has no content or meaning apart from its units. The meaning of a concept consists of the units — the existents — which it integrates, including all the characteristics of these units.
Observe that concepts mean existents, not arbitrarily selected portions of existents....

Metaphysically, an entity is: all of the things which it is. Each of its characteristics has the same metaphysical status: each constitutes a part of the entity's identity.

Epistemologically, all the characteristics of the entities subsumed under a concept are discovered by the same basic method: by observation of these entities. The initial similarities, on the basis of which certain concretes were isolated and conceptually integrated, were grasped by a process of observation; all subsequently discovered characteristics of these concretes are discovered by the same method (no matter how complex the inductive processes involved may become).

The fact that certain characteristics are, at a given time, unknown to man, does not indicate that these characteristics are excluded from the entity — or from the concept. A is A; existents are what they are, independent of the state of human knowledge; and a concept means the existents which it integrates. Thus, a concept subsumes and includes all the characteristics of its referents, known and not-yet-known. [IOTE, 98-99]

Rand's strange doctrine that "a concept means the existents which it integrates" leads her to adopt a quasi-Platonist view of concepts. Concepts are not seen as psychological processes occurring within an actual human brain, but as ideal forms which real concepts can approach, if never quite match. Peikoff complains about the Platonic "essence-accident" dichotomy, which he suggests is at the root of the ASD. But there is a dichotomy in Rand that is far more perplexing and gratuitous: the dichotomy between concepts as immaculate representations subsuming all the characteristics of a referent, and the actual concepts human beings hold within their minds. Apologists for Rand will undoubtedly cry foul over my description of the Objectivist theory. But I have merely drawn out what is clearly implied by the theory itself. "A concept subsumes and includes all the characteristics of its referents, known and not-yet-known," declares Peikoff (undoubtedly speaking for Rand). How can a concept existing in a human mind include not-yet-known information? The only way this theory makes any sense is to assume that a concept is a kind of ideal construct, which our minds are trying to approach. Actual concepts (i.e., concepts existing in human minds) must fall short of that ideal construct, because human beings, as even Rand admits, are fallible. On this view of concepts, the aim of knowledge would be to approach that ideal concept as much as is humanly possible.

I suspect no Objectivist would ever put Rand's theory of meaning in quite these terms. They might instead insist on the phrase "known and not-yet-known." A concept, they might argue, is merely what is potentially known; it does not assume infallibility. This take on the theory, however, merely introduces even more troublesome implications. Not-yet-known is every bit as impossible a standard as all the characteristics of a referent. For how does one know whether one knows all the characteristics, or that one has attained the limits of the potentially knowable? That is a receding horizon, impossible ever to reach. On either interpretation, a dichotomy is created between Rand's ideal concept and the concepts that exist in human minds.

While Rand's view of concepts verges toward a non-naturalistic Platonism in one direction, in another it embraces a strange kind of quasi-posivitism. Concepts, Rand declares, mean the existents which they integrate. This suggests that concepts must mean only things that exist, never something that might not exist, like centaurs or laissez-faire capitalism. This doctrine seems little more than exaggeration and gross caricature of the very worst sort of positivism. It is odd to find so curious and hideous a growth emerging from what is supposed to be a stringently anti-positivist philosophy.

Rand could have avoided both the quasi-Platonism and the quasi-positivism in her theory of meaning if she had merely accepted the obvious fact that concepts are idealized descriptions which can be used to describe both fact or fiction, both truth and lies. Rand recognized that words are symbols; she failed to realize, however, that concepts, percepts, and, for that matter, all mental datum are symbols as well. Knowledge is merely symbols mediated by conjecture. Knowledge doesn't just name or identify things; on the contrary, it makes assertions about what it names and identifies. Only when concepts are combined into propositions can they become conjectures about reality which can be tested, either scientifically or in the practice of everyday life, and either falsified or corroborated.

Rand's theory of meaning, if it were ever consistently applied, would make the attainment of knowledge very difficult, if not impossible. For it would disparage many of the essential tools of trial and error, such as hypothesis and counter-factuals, because they depend on "invalid" concepts (i.e., concepts that aren't integrated from observed existents). Luckily for Rand and her Objectivist followers, her theory of meaning was never meant to be applied in real life. It's mere window dressing, a rationalization devised to beat down epistemological theories Rand and her disciples disagreed with. If taken serious and applied consistently, Rand's theory collapses into palpable absurdities.

151 comments:

Dragonfly said...

The Objectivist theory of concepts is hopelessly muddled. To normal people a "concept" means something in the human mind that refers to something "out there", but that is definitely not the same thing as the real thing out there. With that definition concepts can change in time with our increasing knowledge about the world. So the concept "atom" is in 2000 not the same concept as in 1900 and a concept like "phlogiston" no longer refers to some real stuff, which it at one time did. A given concept represents our knowledge about its referents.

In the Objectivist view however a concept never changes ("A concept subsumes and includes all the characteristics of its referents, known and not-yet-known"). In that view a concept is independent of our knowledge, it is in fact identical with that what it is supposed to refer to.

This is the trick that Peikoff uses to "disprove" the analytic-synthetic dichotomy: he changes the common definition of "concept" into an Objectivist version (supposedly the "real" meaning), which he uses for trying to prove that you can make analytic statements about real things that don't follow from the definition. The snag is of course that we are not omniscient, which implies that we never can be certain about such statements ("the not-yet known"), so these can't be analytic.

I can't help wondering whether there aren't Objectivists who can see through Peikoff's simplistic trick and fallacious reasoning. Perhaps they do exist, but they don't like to rock the boat?

Echo Chamber Escapee said...

@Greg: Rand's theory of meaning, if it were ever consistently applied, would make the attainment of knowledge very difficult, if not impossible. For it would disparage many of the essential tools of trial and error, such as hypothesis and counter-factuals, because they depend on "invalid" concepts (i.e., concepts that aren't integrated from observed existents). Luckily for Rand and her Objectivist followers, her theory of meaning was never meant to be applied in real life. It's mere window dressing, a rationalization devised to beat down epistemological theories Rand and her disciples disagreed with.

Exactly!

Case in point: in the previous comment thread, I posed a hypothetical question to a self-identified Objectivist about a man who could not afford lifesaving medical treatment. It was intended to make a point about certain logical problems inherent in Rand's ethics. The only answer I got was a barrage of alleged reasons why it would never really happen, or why it could only happen to a sleazebucket ... as if that somehow answered the question I was asking. Or, more to the point here, why it would not happpen in a Randian laissez-faire society where medical care would be sooo much cheaper.

Apparently no one is supposed to notice that a Randian laissez-faire society is at least as hypothetical and probably even more counterfactual than a broke guy with cancer. The Objectivist's hypothetical or counter-facutal is always to be accepted at face value, while the critic's must be attacked or just dismissed out of hand.

ungtss said...

"How can a concept existing in a human mind include not-yet-known information?"

By defining the concept that way, which we all do. my 3 year old and i refer to the same referent when we say "dog." but i know a lot more about dogs than she does. and a veterinarian knows more than i am.

but when we use the concept "dog," we're not limiting our concept to the facts we know about dogs. we're referring to a "thing," and in referring to the thing, not our knowledge of the thing, we refer to _everything_ about the thing, including what we don't know about it.

ungtss said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
ungtss said...

"I posed a hypothetical question to a self-identified Objectivist about a man who could not afford lifesaving medical treatment. It was intended to make a point about certain logical problems inherent in Rand's ethics. The only answer I got was a barrage of alleged reasons why it would never really happen, or why it could only happen to a sleazebucket"

you missed what that self-identified objectivist was saying. he was pointing out that the validity of a moral code cannot be tested with reference to contradictions that only appear in imaginary scenarios, and do not -- cannot -- appear in real-world scenarios.

a morality is not defective simply because it can't do things it never needs to do. in calling it defective for not being able to do things it never needs to do, you're asking too much of it.

Daniel Barnes said...

The Objectivist theory of knowledge is dysfunctional for the same reason many other epistemologies are, in that it confuses two distinct things:

1) The world.
2) Our knowledge of the world.

Objectivists are hypersensitive to this obvious distinction, as Rand built up so much rhetorical steam over the evil of supposedly "severing" knowledge from reality, blah-de-blah, so they try to fudge the distinction with vague claims about concepts about being "grounded", blah-de-blah. But despite all the fudging they are in practice as stuck with it as everyone else is, so have some inventive verbal fudges to paper over it. One such fudge is the "subsuming" of later "concepts" into earlier "concepts" to try to justify some unbroken connection (in effect, this is the doctrine of the non-falsifiability of previous theories, or what could be called the doctrine of immaculate concepts...;-))

Daniel Barnes said...

I should add that just because our knowledge is not identical with the world, does not mean it is "severed", useless or misleading of necessity. A map is not the territory; but that doesn't make it evil.

Echo Chamber Escapee said...

@ungtss: you missed what that self-identified objectivist was saying. he was pointing out that the validity of a moral code cannot be tested with reference to contradictions that only appear in imaginary scenarios, and do not -- cannot -- appear in real-world scenarios.

Interesting phrasing there: "... contradictions that appear only in imaginary scenarios." To me, it sounds like you're saying that you recognize that there is a contradiction lurking in the assertion that it's in the hypothetical sick, broke guy's own self-interest to shut up and die rather than keep himself alive at the expense of someone else. You just don't think this lurking hypothetical contradiction has any significance because you don't believe the hypothetical can ever occur in reality.

Did I get your point this time?

ungtss said...

Exactly. And that's why it's not a legitimate criticism of the morality.

Ken said...

I am having trouble reconciling this formulation - a concept is the integration of those existents to which it refers - with Rand's atheism. Wouldn't that mean the existence of the concept of God shows that God exists?

Perhaps I am misunderstanding the meaning of "existents".

ungtss said...

"I am having trouble reconciling this formulation - a concept is the integration of those existents to which it refers - with Rand's atheism. Wouldn't that mean the existence of the concept of God shows that God exists?"

she'd conceptualize god as the existent "particular idea in the minds of people that refers to no actual being" rather than as the existent "omnipotent being with such and such characteristics."

different existents.

Rey said...

@Ken: My guess is that "God" is regarded as an "anti-concept," a verbal formulation that sounds like a concept but actually "is designed to replace and obliterate some legitimate concept."

gregnyquist said...

we're referring to a "thing," and in referring to the thing, not our knowledge of the thing, we refer to _everything [about the thing]

Even if this were true, it would not be relevant to the issue at hand. The post is about meaning, not reference. Meaning is a psychological phenomenon. It involves intention and idealization. It's implausible to suggest, and unnecessary to assert, that when people think about dogs or talk about dogs, they are meaning "everything" about the dog. And it's absurd to suggest that they mean only those qualities that exist. They may mean many things, some true, some false; but they can only mean what they actually conceive. They cannot mean some platonisized conception including "everything."

Knowledge is symbolic; it's never exhaustive or fully adequate. It doesn't have to be. Rand, with her "unit-economy," should have understood this; but her mania for "validating" knowledge, combined with her Aristotlean bent, misled her into a kind of crude literalism. Knowledge is eminently practical; we only know what we need to know, or what we have an interest (i.e, a motivation) in knowning. We don't need to know (and couldn't if we wanted to) "everything" about any substance or thing.

While it may be true that when a person refers to something, they refer to the whole thing, their conception of that thing cannot possibly include everything about it. It's an entirely gratuitous presumption to assume that, merely because people refer to the whole thing, that their concept of the thing includes everything about it. Concepts are human constructions existing in human minds. It is because all thought is a human construction and prone to error and inadequacy that those interested in the truth must be willing to continually expose their assertions about matters of fact to empirical/pragmatic tests.

ungtss said...

It's implausible to suggest, and unnecessary to assert, that when people think about dogs or talk about dogs, they are meaning "everything" about the dog."

I think we're talking past each other, in a fascinating way, and i'm grateful for the opportunity to learn here.

the issue here might be best expressed algebraically. to say i'm including "unknowns" in my meaning is much like saying i'm including not only knowns in my equation, but also an unknown variable.

Thus "Dog = 1 + 2 + X," where 1 and 2 are facts i know about dogs (known terms), but X accounts for the many things i don't know about dogs (and unknown term).

When I add this unknown variable, i don't "mean" the _content_ of the variable -- i've explicitly acknowledged that i don't know what the variable is.

all i've done is account for the _existence_ of a variable. i've accounted for the fact that my knowledge is _incomplete_, and therefore any comprehensive meaning regarding the object must account for the fact that there exist more things to know about the object than i personally know of.

in other words, i don't "mean" the particular unknowns. i "mean" that there are unknowns. i mean that my knowledge of the object is incomplete, and that the object has more characteristics than those of which i am aware.

Thus, there is no "Break" in meaning when i learn more about the object and fill in the variable. My "meaning" is the same. I've simply determined the value of the variable i had accounted for, prior to knowing what the value of the variable was.

Dragonfly said...

ungtss: "i mean that my knowledge of the object is incomplete, and that the object has more characteristics than those of which i am aware."

And that's exactly the point: if your knowledge is incomplete, you cannot make an analytic statement about that subject that is not implied in its definition, as Peikoff claims.

For example, if we define a dog as a mammal with certain characteristics, this definition implies that a dog is an animal, as a mammal in its turn is defined as a certain kind of animal. The statement "a dog is an animal" would then be an analytic statement, it doesn't tell us anything that isn't already contained in the definition. There is a logical chain of definitions that trivially leads to the conclusion that a dog is an animal.

But some specific characteristic of dogs that is not automatically implied by its definition as a mammal does not logically follow from this definition and can therefore not be expressed in an analytic statement. The only way to do that would be to add this characteristic to the definition of a dog.

The fact that the concept "dog" refers to an animal with all kinds of specific characteristics doesn't make statements about those characteristics analytic, they have to be discovered empirically and they can be falsified. To make such statements analytic, you'll have to add them all to the definition of a dog.

However, that such statements then become analytic, means that although they are logically true (they follow trivially from the definition), they don't necessarily correspond to reality. For that we should have to be omniscient, for only then we could be certain that those statements cannot be falsified empirically.

So you can always make a statement about the dog analytic, but the price is that you no longer can be certain that it corresponds to reality. No matter how you try to shift the goal posts, there always remains a sharp distinction between analytic and synthetic statements, contrary to what Peikoff claims.

ungtss said...

i'm afraid i'm confused, because the topic here was whether a definition can include unknown facts about the referent. we were not discussing whether such statements would to be analytic or synthetic. since that's not what we were discussing, how is that "the point?"

"But some specific characteristic of dogs that is not automatically implied by its definition as a mammal does not logically follow from this definition and can therefore not be expressed in an analytic statement. The only way to do that would be to add this characteristic to the definition of a dog."

But the root of their rejection of the analytic-synthetic dichotomy was precisely that the word does not refer to the characteristics of a referent, but to the referent itself. And because our understanding of the characteristics of a referent are always more narrow than the entity itself, no analytic definition can ever fully encapsulate every characteristic of the entity.

instead, definition proceeds in terms of essentials, and doesn't waste time trying to create a comprehensive definition.

Anonymous said...

"You just don't think this lurking hypothetical contradiction has any significance because you don't believe the hypothetical can ever occur in reality."

"Exactly. And that's why it's not a legitimate criticism of the morality."

Wouldn't that make Objectivism itself "not legitimate", or Atlas Shrugged not a valid criticism of anything?

Laissez faire economics are held up as Objectivism's example of a truly moral market system, and everything else fails by comparison to be moral. But laissez faire never existed, and is unlikely to ever exist. By the above argument, that would seem to make any Objectivist criticism of the mixed system the US has now to be invalid. A moral critique would then have to focus on what is possible and workable in the world as it is.

Dragonfly said...

ungtss: i'm afraid i'm confused, because the topic here was whether a definition can include unknown facts about the referent. we were not discussing whether such statements would to be analytic or synthetic. since that's not what we were discussing, how is that "the point?"

Because that is the core of Peikoff's argument against the AS dichotomy, which is after all the subject of these articles. Peikoff claims that statements about characteristics not contained in the definition can be analytic, because the subject does have those characteristics.

But that is just what we never can be certain about, as we're not omniscient, therefore those statements cannot be analytic. The question is not whether it's useful to include all known properties in the definition - in most cases it's certainly not practical -, but whether there is a distinction between analytic and synthetic statements, and Peikoff's attempt to obliterate that distinction has failed. And that is what the subject "analytic synthetic dichotomy" is all about.

Lloyd Flack said...

If the concept of an entity includes everything about a entity or process then what about when futher knowlrdge leads you to decide that either a concept should be split into two different ones covering different cases. What about when futher knowledge leads you to see two different concepts as examples of the same thing? Concpts exist in our heads. They are tools that our minds use to handle reality. And sometimes we want to use different tools to deal with the same thing. Is the United states a country, a nation or a state? Thes are not the same thing. One is aterritory, one a community and one an institution.

Ken said...

@Rey: But "anti-concept" just pushes off the problem one level. How do you tell a concept from an anti-concept?

I could claim that "dog" is an anti-concept, for example. If it referred to something real, it would be possible to say what color a dog was, how many legs it has, whether it has hair, and so forth - none of which are possible. I could argue the same about any concept that is a generalization, because the instances are not all identical.

ungtss said...

Dragonfly, you say "Peikoff claims that statements about characteristics not contained in the definition can be analytic."

how is it that he claims _anything_ is analytic, since he rejects the dichotomy between analytic and synthetic statements?

lloyd, that's an interesting question. i don't think i've seen her address that directly, but my guess would be that she'd say the same word can refer to different concepts in different contexts, as in the case of homonyms, and words that are used in different senses in different contexts to refer to different contexts -- as in the "united states" as "nation" or "state."

similarly, i think her theory of concepts allows for subconcepts, as in the case of a broad concept "dog" with subconcepts referring to different breeds.

in other words, i don't think she was tied to "words can refer to only one concept, and there's no such thing as a subconcept." at least i've never seen her say anything of the sort.

Daniel Barnes said...

Lloyd:
>Is the United states a country, a nation or a state?

Well one thing it isn't, according to Objectivism, is a concept.

Rand: "A concept is a mental integration of two or more units which are isolated by a process of abstraction [from essentials] and united by a specific definition."

But the confusion around Rand's theories are manifold. Primarily there is confusion around concepts and words, and even words and things which Rand herself falls into, despite the flashes of faux nominalism of the ITOE. She even implies that, far from being labels, words and things are somehow fundamentally connected. There is this fascinating passage from "Kant Vs Sullivan" in which she accidentally reveals this strange underlying assumption:

"And, lastly, I suggest that you try to project what would have happened if, instead of Annie Sullivan, a sadist had taken charge of Helen Keller’s education. A sadist would spell “water” into Helen’s palm, while making her touch water, stones, flowers and dogs interchangeably; he would teach her that water is called “water” today, but “milk” tomorrow; he would endeavor to convey to her that there is no necessary connection between names and things (emphasis DB), that the signals in her palm are a game of arbitrary conventions and that she’d better obey him without trying to understand."

In short: only some kind of psychopath would try to deny a "necessary connection" (a phrase usually used to describe logical entailment) between a word and a thing!

This suggests that despite the brief outbreak of nominalism in the ITOE, Rand was deeply wedded to a naiive essentialism.

ungtss said...

"In short: only some kind of psychopath would try to deny a "necessary connection" (a phrase usually used to describe logical entailment) between a word and a thing!

This suggests that despite the brief outbreak of nominalism in the ITOE, Rand was deeply wedded to a naiive essentialism."

I'm learning something very useful from watching Barnes completely fail to understand what Rand was talking about, and draw bizarre conclusions and analyses based on his utter failure of reading comprehension. it's extraordinary, really.

you've ascribed this bizarre idea to her by dropping the context of that quote. in that context, she was not saying that there's some absolute, essentialist link between words and things. she was saying that within the context of a language -- any language -- word use is not arbitrary. "dog" refers to entities with those characteristics. it does not refer to entities with the characteristics of a hippo.

that's not to say we couldn't devise a language in which the word "hippo" referred to the entities we now call dogs. of all people, she would know that, since she spoke 4 languages. but within the _context_ of each of those languages, words _mean_ things, and not other things. they are not arbitrary.

the whole _concept_ of a language is that within the context of that language, words are assigned particular meaning and grammatical form.

but you've dropped that context entirely. you're ignoring the fact that she's talking about words _within the context of a language_. and by dropping that context, you've turned it into some bizarre essentialist claim.

but the essentialism here is not coming from rand. it's coming from your utter failure to comprehend what other people are saying.

i'm learning that when a person is unable to understand what's being said -- when he subjectively perceives it as nonsense because he lacks the ability to comprehend it -- it's likely to appear to be nonsense.

so i don't blame you for thinking rand is nonsense. she probably looks that way to you. but i do blame you for failing to develop your reading comprehension. you literally have no idea what she was talking about.

Daniel Barnes said...

ungtss:
>you've ascribed this bizarre idea to her by dropping the context of that quote.

OK. Please supply then the additional context that supports your view.

Further, please explain why words are not in fact "conventions", which Rand scornfully dismisses as "arbitrary" (actually, they are better described as artificial). She also IIRC scorns the idea that words are conventions in the ITOE.

Daniel Barnes said...

I recommend ungtss familiarise himself with the Foreword to Rand's ITOE, where she ridicules the idea that words are "arbitrary social conventions".

In fact this is an almost undeniable fact. If words are not "social conventions", what are they? Dictionaries capture their meanings as they socially evolve; they are not the outpourings of some lone neologiser for the edification of the population. Further, there is almost always a large arbitrary component to words. A cab these days bears scant resemblance to the cabriolet it has been shortened from. A hamburger in fact contains little ham. A Chrysler Neon has no neon components. And so forth. "Arbitrary social conventions" is a perfectly reasonable description of the situation, though I would choose "artificial" rather than arbitrary.

So it turns out Rand does have bizarre views about words; I do not have to invent them. Now, if you are going to argue that words are not normative conventions, then you must be asserting that they are something that we don't in fact have a choice about; something like natural laws, or perhaps logical derivations, where there is a "necessary connection" of some kind. And low and behold, this is what passages like that in Kant Vs Sullivan imply.

Anonymous said...

"I'm learning something very useful"

No you're not. You're not learning much of anything.

You're wallowing in your own confirmation bias, and then using little phrases like "I've learned so much" to (transparently) convey your scorn and superior attitude.

But learn something? There's no sign of anything of the sort. If there's one thing you can stop pretending, it's that - I don't think anyone here seriously believes it.

Ken said...

@Daniel Barnes: My favorite example of words being arbitrary conventions is "quite", the British and American meanings of which are nearly antonyms.

ungtss said...
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ungtss said...

"OK. Please supply then the additional context that supports your view."

I'm not talking about context _around_ the quote, i'm talking about the context _supplied by the quote_. Everything you need to understand her is right there. But you can't.

Her point there is that in order for a person to learn language, the symbol for a concept must be the _same_, and not _change_ everyday.

She's not saying anything about what the symbol must be. she's only saying that in order for a person to learn language, the symbol must be _consistent_ enough for the learner to discover that the symbol _represents_ the concept.

the logical connection between word and reference is that the word _represents_ the reference. but this logical connection is within the _context_ of learning a language -- which is obviously the context of what she's talking about.

She's not talking about "logical connection" in some absolute context, apart from learning language. She's specifically talking about the context of learning language. A context you dropped, in order to make her idea sound nutty.

you're taking a very simple, uncontroversial point, and turning it into something she wasn't saying -- never said -- wouldn't say.

"Further, please explain why words are not in fact "conventions", which Rand scornfully dismisses as "arbitrary" (actually, they are better described as artificial)."

Well, given how conspicuous your failure to read the other quote was, i'd ask you to actually quote the section where she supposedly said this, so i can read it for myself.

To my knowledge, she'd acknowledge that the form of words is social convention (is it "Dog" or "Chien") but the concept represented by that word is not social convention (the referent "dog" has a word in every language where a culture deals with dogs).

If you believe differently, you're going to need to provide a quote supporting your belief that she actually said that, because i've lost all faith in your ability to read.

Daniel Barnes said...

ungtss then:
>you've ascribed this bizarre idea to her by dropping the context of that quote.

ungtss now:
>I'm not talking about context _around_ the quote, i'm talking about the context _supplied by the quote_.

So first ungtss says I've taken the quote out of context. Then, when challenged, he claims that the "context" is somehow already "supplied" by the quote. Um, ungtss, do you actually know what "context" means?

At any rate, he has effectively conceded that I have not taken the quote out of context. Ergo his quarrel is really that he has a different interpretation of the passage from mine. Well, ungtss is free to interpret the meanings of passages, just like the meaning of words, however he chooses. The issue is really what evidence there is for putting forward a particular interpretation. If we were to say, go to Rand's major work on the subject, and find her deriding the belief that words are an "arbitrary social convention", this would constitute good evidence that she did in fact not believe this. And when we turn to the Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, her main work on the subject, we find the following, which I shall quote at length:

Rand:"(There is also the extreme nominalist position, the modern one, which consists of declaring that the problem is a meaningless issue, that "reality" is a meaningless term, that we can never know whether our concepts correspond to anything or not, that our knowledge consists of words - and that words are an arbitrary social convention.(my emphasis))" - Foreword, ITOE.

Now among the grab bag of various anathemas, we undeniably see Rand scorning the idea that words are mere arbitrary social conventions, just as I have claimed. So we must ask again: if not, then what are they?

ungtss said...

"dropping context" is not the same as "taking out of context.". This is exactly your problem. You see one thing, read something else, make an argument that shows you didn't understand, and then declare yourself victor over morons.

Here's what peikoff had to say about context _dropping_.

Whenever you tear an idea from its context and treat it as though it were a self-sufficient, independent item, you invalidate the thought process involved. If you omit the context, or even a crucial aspect of it, then no matter what you say it will not be valid . . . .

"A context-dropper forgets or evades any wider context. He stares at only one element, and he thinks, “I can change just this one point, and everything else will remain the same.” In fact, everything is interconnected. That one element involves a whole context, and to assess a change in one element, you must see what it means in the whole context."

The element here is "logical connection.". The context is "language acquisition.". You dropping the context, treating "logical connection" as an absolute, outside the context of language.

Then when I told you you were context dropping, and explained that the context was language, you dropped context again and pretended I was saying you were "taking it out of context.". A totally different claim.

And then you go back to your condescending arguments about how much smarter you are. But all you're doing, comment by comment, is showing your inability to comprehend what you're reading.

It's phenomenal really.

ungtss said...

just to avoid the inevitable, the difference between context dropping and "taking a quote out of context" is that "taking out of context" means that the part you quoted is explained by the surrounding portions. but you didn't do that here. you dropped _the context of the quote_, which had to do with language acquisition, not some absolute essentialist view of language.

Daniel Barnes said...

What utter drivel...;-)

Anonymous said...

I note that we've now shifted away from what Rand actually said and thought to another argument over what terms like "context" mean.

I'm pretty sure this is by design.

Daniel Barnes said...

Anon:
> I note that we've now shifted away from what Rand actually said and thought to another argument over what terms like "context" mean.

Yes, well it's quite hard to debate what Rand thought and said with someone like ungtss who really hasnt' read enough to know much about what she thought or said.

So he substitutes what he thinks she might have thought or said.

If you are at all familiar with the ITOE you will be aware that at the very least Rand is contradictory on this issue, both condemning and then de facto endorsing a nominalist view of words.

I argue that it is her nominalism that is the anomaly. She's an accidental nominalist..;-)

But it really is a waste of time discussing it with ungtss. As other former Objectivists have pointed out, he doesn't really know much about basic Objectivist doctrine, let alone the finer points. Hence he has to always steer the discussion into his imagined version of Objectivism, or into trivial side arguments over the meanings of terms.

ungtss said...

let's review.

barnes quotes rand, concluding she said something completely different from what she actually said. specifically, she said language acquisition requires that the learner determine that a word bears a consistent, logical relationship to a referent. barnes decided that instead she meant that words bear some fundamental, inescapable, essentialist link to referents. which she was not saying.

i point out that he dropped the context in which she was talking -- specifically language acquisition.

he tells me to add whatever surrounding section will put it in context.

i told him there's no need to, the context is in the quote, he's just ignoring it.

he tells me i didn't really mean "dropping context," i meant "taking out of context."

i point out that they're two different thinks.

he says i'm talking drivel.

anon pipes up to complain about my clarifying that barnes is misreading what i'm saying.

barnes pipes up again with the endless, vacuous rant about how, as everybody knows, objectivists can't think properly.

it's nice to be able to see this in the context of the denial/avoidance/evasion it is. your antics would have made me angry in a past life. now they're fascinating to observe.

Daniel Barnes said...

ungtss:
>he tells me i didn't really mean "dropping context," i meant "taking out of context." i point out that they're two different thinks.

Look mate, you don't actually appear to know what "context" means. I suggest this is the source of your problem, rather than anything I've written. But by all means, amplify this trivial hairsplitting into a vast chasm of confusion. It's the Randian way!

Daniel Barnes said...

PS: I really, really doubt you should be telling us all what Rand's theories of language acquisition are, given they're set out in the ITOE and you have not read the ITOE.

But I'm sure we'd all like to hear what you imagine she might have written in the ITOE...;-)

Anonymous said...

"anon pipes up to complain about my clarifying that barnes is misreading what i'm saying."

I'm not complaining about it, just pointing out that Barnes gave a quote showing that Rand did, indeed, scorn the notion of words as arbitrary social conventions. But instead of address THAT, there's a battle over what context means.

It's interesting that you criticize Barnes for being condescending or talking as if he's the smartest one in the room, or accuse folks of evasion, when you are every bit as guilty of all of these things yourself. Every accusation you make can be found in your own posts.

Do you justify it by saying, "well, you do it so I'll do it too?" Or is it that you are simply not self-aware enough to realize that you are doing it?

Echo Chamber Escapee said...

Daniel Barnes quotes Rand: "And, lastly, I suggest that you try to project what would have happened if, instead of Annie Sullivan, a sadist had taken charge of Helen Keller’s education. A sadist would spell “water” into Helen’s palm, while making her touch water, stones, flowers and dogs interchangeably; he would teach her that water is called “water” today, but “milk” tomorrow; he would endeavor to convey to her that there is no necessary connection between names and things (emphasis DB), that the signals in her palm are a game of arbitrary conventions and that she’d better obey him without trying to understand."

To which ungtss replies with a whole lot of ranting about "context."

The context of this quote is that Rand is setting up yet another false dichotomy. If language is a matter of "social convention," then the meaning of words can be changed at random, making knowledge impossible. The only alternative is her theory of a "necessary connection between names and things," which salvages her beloved certainty.

Problem is that nobody (except maybe someone suffering fairly extreme psychosis) believes anything like what Rand attributes to her imaginary "sadist."

In reality, those of us who recognize that words are matters of "social convention" understand that, if they are going to be useful social conventions, their meaning can't just randomly change from one day to the next. If I randomly decide to start using the word "dog" for what everyone else calls "milk," I'm just going to cause problems for myself. Witness the difficulty Objectivists have communicating with the rest of the world -- largely as a result of all their Rand-omly redefined words.

The best available evidence indicates that language developed to serve the needs of communicating ideas. It was social convention from the outset (communication being social), and as change occurs in what we need to talk about, so change occurs in language. Such change is not (usually) random or causeless; it's driven by changes in what we need to communicate about -- but that doesn't mean it's not a social convention.

That's the position Rand evaded with her strawman sadist. If this discussion is going to get anywhere, ungtss needs to address this squarely. (I'm not holding my breath.)

Rey said...

@Ken: For the record, I'm not advocating Rand's variously confused positions. My drive-by comment was just to illustrate the sort of hand-waving Objectivists resort to when their ideas are taken at face value, so if there exists a concept that doesn't have a real-world referent like, say, "unicorn," then the Objectivist position is that the concept: Unicorn is actually an "anti-concept" and consider the matter settled.

Your illustration of "dog" as an anti-concept is also quite apropos as it illustrates the absurdity of the Objectivist concept: Concept by accepting it face value and following it to its absurd conclusions.

Daniel Barnes said...

@ECE, I agree. Obviously Rand is creating an absurd straw man to denigrate the undeniable fact that words are a social convention.

The interesting question is why. Why is she expending such spleen on the obvious?

We could expand on this at length, as I think it's quite an interesting and revealing issue. But the short version: I think she's allergic to two words, "social", and "convention".

Recall that her whole philosophy is essentially an attempt to chain-link human knowledge - from the most basic percepts all the way up thru ethics, politics etc - to the physical world.

Because she's a verbalist, and in the thrall of Aristotle's ancient, fallacious doctrine of definitions, words are a critical link in this chain. They, after all, symbolise concepts, the centrepiece of her system. If they are "social" creations - created by everyone and no-one - this clashes with her epistemological individualism. Recall her denigration of "second-handers" etc, people who don't examine every link in their own chain of knowledge and individually verify it according to their own - individually verified - rules of reason*.

Further, if something is a "convention" it is normative; not fixed, like a law of nature or a logical derivation. It can change, or be changed, at will.

So the fact of language being a social convention seriously undermines Rand's dream of an unbroken, unbreakable chain from physical reality to the justified true beliefs inside her head. Of course there is little Rand can do about this inconvenient truth, other than emit derogatory noises - such as describing it as "arbitrary" - and encourage her followers to do the same, without actually thinking it through for themselves.

*I'm not implying of course that this is even remotely possible to do!

ungtss said...

“Look mate, you don't actually appear to know what "context" means.”

The dictionary provides two definitions for the word “context:”

1. The circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed.

2. The parts of something written or spoken that immediately precede and follow a word or passage and clarify its meaning.


Is it “hairsplitting” when the dictionary provides two legitimate definitions for a word?

Of course, because I'm doing it.

You all are focused exclusively on the second definition here. But I’m using the first. You only want to talk about what immediately preceded and followed the quote.

I want to talk about the circumstances that form the setting for the idea – specifically, that rand was talking about “logical connections” in the context of language acquisition.

you want to pretend that the first definition doesn't exist, and the second one is the "right" one. because that serves your purposes. then, 10 minutes later, you'll be back to telling me there's no such thing as a "right," definition, because i'm just falling into all of aristotle's old fallacies.

So is this where you tell me dictionary definitions are not authoritative, but only “common use” according to Barnes?

Or is this where you finally grow up and realize that communicating with other people requires recognizing and clarifying ambiguity in language to get to the heart of it?

Lemme guess.

Daniel Barnes said...

ungtss cites:
>The dictionary provides two definitions for the word “context:”
>1. The circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed.
>2. The parts of something written or spoken that immediately precede and follow a word or passage and clarify its meaning.

Of your two definitions, the second is usually a clearcut case of intellectual malpractice, either intentionally or not. It's good to see you acknowledge that I'm not committing it.

The first version is far foggier, and really is about the background behind the interpretation of a passage. Here it is perfectly reasonable to disagree, as we are talking about the background theories behind an interpretation. I will discuss further below.

ungtss:
>I want to talk about the circumstances that form the setting for the idea – specifically, that rand was talking about “logical connections” in the context of language acquisition.

I have already explained, briefly in above comments, the background context to my hypothesis. You have a different idea behind your interpretation? Well good for you. But unfortunately, just because mine and your background theories about interpreting Rand don't agree doesn't mean that I am "dropping context" or "taking out of context", or whatever. When I last checked, I was unable to directly divine the inner workings of yours, or Rand's mind directly, nor the vast web of "context" that might or might not inform it. I am stuck with what you or she writes. So, as you can see, while missing context in Definition 2) is a clearcut sin, in Definition 1) it's the basis for almost every disagreement ever. So hopefully that clears that up.

You may indeed want to talk about these far wider "circumstances" and "settings". But given that you 1) don't know what Rand's theories about language acquisition are, as you haven't read her main work on the subject and 2) mean something other than the formal logical rules when you say "logic", but when pressed can't really explain what that is, it seems to me you need to clarify your own "circumstances" before criticising the theories of others. In other words, speaking from my own rational self-interest I can see what's in it for you, but it's kinda hard to see *what's in it for me*. Trader principle and all that.

I don't even see what's in it for you, as I am apparently a highly obnoxious and untrustworthy fellow ..;-)

Ken said...

@Rey: I didn't mean to suggest that you were accepting Rand's absurdities, sorry if it sounded like that.

I've also identified another likely anti-concept: "concept". It has no real-world referents...

ungtss said...

"Of your two definitions, the second is usually a clearcut case of intellectual malpractice, either intentionally or not. It's good to see you acknowledge that I'm not committing it."

I had to tell you 3 times before you understood i wasn't accusing you of that, but of another form of context-dropping you didn't want to talk about. You insisted I was talking about this instead. Repeatedly. You do realize that, right? You do realize you dodged the issue by insisting I was saying something other than what I was saying, all objections to the contrary notwithstanding?

"But unfortunately, just because mine and your background theories about interpreting Rand don't agree doesn't mean that I am "dropping context" or "taking out of context", or whatever. "

That's true, but irrelevant. The context is in the quote. She's talking specifically about Helen Keller learning to speak. Language acquisition.

The quote is this:

"And, lastly, I suggest that you try to project what would have happened if, instead of Annie Sullivan, a sadist had taken charge of Helen Keller’s education. A sadist would spell “water” into Helen’s palm, while making her touch water, stones, flowers and dogs interchangeably; he would teach her that water is called “water” today, but “milk” tomorrow; he would endeavor to convey to her that there is no necessary connection between names and things (emphasis DB), that the signals in her palm are a game of arbitrary conventions and that she’d better obey him without trying to understand."

The context is helen keller learning language. You dropped that context and attempted to misinterpret the phrase "logical connection" as some absolute, disconnected from any particular language.

There is no mind-reading necessary here. She put it right up front; right in the portion you quoted. You just chose to ignore it.

And you're still trying to ignore it, by pretending this has anything to do with mind-reading. It has nothing to do with mind-reading. It has to do with reading comprehension and context.

Daniel Barnes said...

ungtss:
>The context is in the quote.

LOL!

So...by accurately quoting Rand, I was really dropping the context of the quote, the dropped context being actually in the quote that I quoted. Genius.

I tried to be reasonable, now I think perhaps I stick to mockery...;-)

ungtss said...

"So...by accurately quoting Rand, I was really dropping the context of the quote, the dropped context being actually in the quote that I quoted. Genius."

Being the part of the quote you ignored. The part that talked about language acquisition.

I do understand your decision to stick with mockery instead of continuing to try and be reasonable. you do seem much more experienced at mockery than at being reasonable.

Daniel Barnes said...

ungtss:
>you do seem much more experienced at mockery than at being reasonable.

Well, I tried. Let me try again.

What you're really trying to say here is that the despite appearances of this quote, Rand did not actually believe that there was a "necessary connection" - in the sense of a logical or physical necessity, like a natural law or a logical derivation - between words and things.

Ok, that's fine. It's a silly thing to think, I totally agree. However, if she didn't believe that, then she must have believed the alternative, which is that words are normative, or simply social conventions that have no determining logical or physical necessity. Right? So we can, if we want, just decide Rand was speaking loosely calling the connection "necessary" and really meant the alternative, that the connection was basically optional (which it is).

However, the problem is that when we turn to other key passages of her writing, such as I have indicated, we find her deriding this alternative, not endorsing it. Which is, of course, consistent with what she says in the quote from Kant Vs Sullivan, despite the fact that you and I find this position absurd. The basic situation seems to be that Rand is inconsistent on the issue, and that this reflects an unresolved tension in her thinking.

This is not so surprising. Philosophers say silly things quite regularly! Rand is far from alone in this. As it happens, I believe there is an explanation for how Rand might end up in this with this strange tension, which I outlined in comments above.

So - am I still so totally unreasonable on this matter?

ungtss said...

"Ok, that's fine. It's a silly thing to think, I totally agree. However, if she didn't believe that, then she must have believed the alternative, which is that words are normative, or simply social conventions that have no determining logical or physical necessity. Right?"

Negative:). The third option is that words have definite meaning _within the context of a language_.

as you yourself tacitly acknowledge when you tell me "you don't know what context means."

how can i "not know" it if there isn't an answer? how can i be wrong if there is no right?

of course there's a "right" and "wrong," within the context of the english language.

not as an absolute within the context of _any_ language, but within the context of our _shared_ language.

of course, words in common usage are not precise tools. words have multiple, sometimes conflicting definitions -- connotation and context play major roles in our meaning as well.

precision is difficult. that's why it's important to sit down and explain what we mean and inquire what the other means to minimize misunderstanding.

if you think her disdain for the idea of "language as social convention" extends further than that, i'd like to see some quotes, because your failure to understand what she was saying here gives me no reason to believe your'e able to understand her anywhere else.

Daniel Barnes said...

ungtss:
>Negative:). The third option is that words have definite meaning _within the context of a language_.

...yes, and a language is a social convention, so all you are doing is saying that the meanings of words are determined by social convention. So your "third option" is just one of our two original options, the normative one, rephrased.


Echo Chamber Escapee said...

ungtss, I would like to suggest that you stop calling yourself an Objectivist at least until such time as you have read -- and understood -- the nonfiction of Ayn Rand. It's pretty clear you either haven't read it or don't understand it, so you do not even know the meaning of the label you've so proudly attached to yourself. One problem you're running into is that the rest of us do know it.

Case in point. You wrote:

if you think her disdain for the idea of "language as social convention" extends further than that, i'd like to see some quotes, ....

If you knew your Rand like a real Objectivist would, you would not be asking this question. I know Rand, and to prove I mean it, I'll give you some hints:

1. ITOE, Foreword, p. 3 (page refs are to the 1st Mentor paperback edition)

Rand defines four schools of thought on the issue of what, in reality, concepts refer to, all of which are wrong. Among them you'll find:

"The 'nominalists,' who hold that all our ideas are only images of concretes, and that abstractions are merely 'names' which we give to arbitrary groupings of concretes on the basis of vague resemblances."

Parenthetically, she adds:

"(There is also the extreme nominalist position, the modern one, which consists of declaring that the problem [of explaining what concepts refer to] is a meaningless issue, that 'reality' is a meaningless term, that we can never know whether our concepts correspond to anything or not, that our knowledge consists of words -- and that words are an arbitrary social convention.)"

2. ITOE, Ch 5, at p 62-63:

"The nominalists of modern philosophy ... claim that the alternative of true or false is not applicable to definitions, only to 'factual' propositions. Since words (they claim) represent arbitrary human (social) conventions, and concepts have no objective referents in reality, a definition can be neither true nor false. The assault on reason has never reached a deeper level or a lower depth than this."

3. Same chapter, p 70-71:

"The nominalist and the conceptualist schools regard concepts as subjective (emphasis Rand's), i.e., as products of man's consciousness unrelated to reality, as mere 'names' or notions arbitrarily assigned to arbitrary groupings of concretes on the ground of vague, inexplicable resemblances.

"...

"The extreme nominalist (contemporary) school attempts to establish the primacy of consciousness by dispensing with existence (with reality) -- i.e., by denying the status of existents even to concretes and converting concepts into conglomerates of fantasy, constructed out of the debris of other, lesser fantasies, such as words without referents or incantations of sounds corresponding to nothing in an unknowable reality."

Do you see yet where Daniel is coming from? If not, go read ITOE and stop expecting the rest of us to do your homework for you.

Michael Prescott said...

The Annie Sullivan analogy is a bit over-dramatic, but I do think there's the germ of a valid point here. Rand seems to be worried that commonly accepted words will get new, "smuggled-in" meanings that will serve to corrupt argument and discussion. This is a legitimate concern, I think.

For instance, we often hear that "the rich" should be "asked" to pay their "fair share" of taxes. In this argument, "rich" is frequently redefined to mean something like "middle to upper middle class." Meanwhile, "asked" is being used in a very questionable sense, since there is nothing voluntary about taxation; effectively, "asked" has been redefined as "compelled." (The term "fair share" is also questionable at best, but we'll leave that for another day.)

We see a more recent example in the attempt by the EU central bankers to confiscate up to 10% of depositors' bank accounts in Cyprus. This is called a "tax," but it is really more of a direct seizure of assets.

The gradual shift of the meaning of "rights" from liberties (the old meaning) to entitlements (the newer meaning) is another case in point.

I'm sure you can think of other examples of language being used in rather shifty ways to smuggle in a new, rather insidious meaning under cover of an older, more benign meaning. I believe this is what Rand was worried about, and why she thought it was so important to be clear on definitions.

That's not to say her position is fully clear or fully consistent. I don't think it is. Personally I could never make much sense out of ITOE. I enjoyed Scott Ryan's takedown of it in his book "Objectivism and the Corruption of Rationality."

Anonymous said...

"Rand seems to be worried that commonly accepted words will get new, "smuggled-in" meanings that will serve to corrupt argument and discussion. This is a legitimate concern, I think."

...How ironic, then, that Rand chose to imbue common words with her own less-commonly-used definitions... which serve only to corrupt discussion.

ungtss said...

Echo, I'd suggest you not fool yourself into thinking I want to take any of your suggestions, given that i don't take suggestions from condescending, contemptuous people who continually show they don't know what they're talking about.

i'd also suggest that you stop telling me i haven't read ITOE. which i have. barnes is the one who said i hadn't read it.

those quotes you provided relate to the "rightness" and "wrongness" of definitions not to the form of words. barnes was talking specifically about the form of words with his annie sullivan example -- different symbols for the same word. purely -- and specifically -- about symbol, not definition.

definition is a whole other question. to which there are "rights" and "wrongs."

you're proving it right now, when you ask me to "stop calling myself an objectivist." why? because to you, and "objectivist" is somebody who has read particular books and believes certain things. and if i don't fit that definition, i'm outside the "right" definition of objectivism.

of course you only use "right" definitions when it suits you. when somebody else wants to do so, you revert back to nonsense about how there are no "right" definitions. until it suits you again. then you're back to telling me i'm not a "real" objectivist according to echo's views on reality.

and barnes, of course, tells me i don't know what the "right" definition of context is. which necessitates there being a wrong one.

that's different from the social convention of symbols. you're talking about two different issues. this has been made clear throughout the conversation, but you're not understanding what's being written.

so i'd like to suggest you spend a little less time making suggestions, and a little more time learning to comprehend what you're reading.

ungtss said...

"...yes, and a language is a social convention, so all you are doing is saying that the meanings of words are determined by social convention. So your "third option" is just one of our two original options, the normative one, rephrased. "

Echo is making the same mistake. The "meaning" of words and the "form" of words are two different issues. We were talking about the form of words. Now you're talking about the meaning fo words. Not the same. Critically different. I keep saying this, but it doesn't seem to be getting through to you.

"Chien" and "dog" are the same word in different languages. Therefore they have different forms. And the forms are by social convention.

But despite having different forms, they have the same definition. This is not a definition by social convention. It is a definition of a particular class of organisms.

The only thing that arises by social convention is the form of the word.

I can understand how a failure to understand this distinction would make her ideas sound crazy. However, you ought to consider the possibility that you're failing to understand more of what she's talking about than you realize.

That's not to say if you understood it, you'd agree with it. But at least you'd understand it.

Anonymous said...

""Chien" and "dog" are the same word in different languages. Therefore they have different forms. And the forms are by social convention.

But despite having different forms, they have the same definition. This is not a definition by social convention. It is a definition of a particular class of organisms."

But a "particular class" of organisms is itself a social convention. The koala was once considered by many to be a bear, even though it is unrelated to what we now call the "bear family". Whether panda bears fit in that category was up for debate for the longest time until they settled the question through some molecular science. (And the "red panda" isn't a bear at all, but it is a panda!)

These categories are every bit as socially-generated, and sometimes arbitrary. They only seem not socially-generated because there is overwhelming consensus - usually - about the boundaries of such a category - until, of course, there isn't. A koala was thought of as a bear because of its appearance, but then the commonly-accepted nature of the category shifted to give genetics a preference, and the koala was disqualified. Once the giant panda and red panda were thought to be of the same category - until they weren't. Pluto was recently disqualified as a "planet" - but some people don't accept it, used to considering it as a planet for decades. If that's not a social convention, what is?

ungtss said...

"But a "particular class" of organisms is itself a social convention. The koala was once considered by many to be a bear, even though it is unrelated to what we now call the "bear family"."

in the very act of correcting the classification of koalas from the imprecise definition of english settlers, scientists are applying an objectively defined definition -- a scientific definition -- in place of the previous, popular definition by non-essentials.

english settlers' definition of "bear" was vague, imprecise -- a sort of general resemblance. in the same way you might call a burly man a "bear." but not really. this is a "definition by non-essentials."

the scientists' definition is much more precise -- based on a systematic study of the organisms' characteristics.

the same principle applies to the red and giant pandas. scientists examined the organism in depth, and determined that the organism known as a red panda should be properly classified with a different family of organisms.

the same principle applies to pluto. scientists still call it a planet -- they've just specified that it's a "dwarf planet" to be more precise, and to group it with the many other dwarf planets in our system.

each example you gave is an instance of scientists correcting and improving definitions -- making them more accurate and precise -- making them reflect more closely the reality they're describing.

the prior definitions were imprecise. the new definitions are more precise. that's how definition works. it's a process of improvement.

but the criterion for improvement is the application of objective criteria -- which is exactly what the scientists are doing in renaming the things you listed.

the scientists' whole project is premised on the idea that reasoned, scientific thought should not permit arbitrary definitions.

Echo Chamber Escapee said...

@ungtss: The only thing that arises by social convention is the form of the word.

That is what you want to believe. It's false.

Meaning, not just form, is a social construct: it's all about how does this group of people in this time and place, collectively, find it useful to carve up reality.

By way of illustration, the Japanese have a word "amae," which refers to an emotion that is described in English as a fond, nostalgic sense of interdependence. It fits well with their social conventions -- which strongly emphasize and value interdependence. But it's completely alien to American society. English has no word for it; Americans have a hard time describing it and quite possibly would not even recognize the emotion if we ever experienced it (assuming we can experience it).

There are numerous other examples. Anon already mentioned Pluto the ex-planet. Why did that happen? Did Pluto change? No. Dd our knowledge of Pluto change? No. Our knowledge of what's in orbit around Sol changed, to the point where a group of astronomers decided it would be more useful to redefine "planet," to carve up the same reality (a bunch of stuff orbiting a star) in a different way into "planet" and "non-planet." Under the new definition, Pluto doesn't qualify. They can do this because the meaning of "planet" is a social convention.

Anonymous said...

"in the very act of correcting the classification of koalas from the imprecise definition of english settlers, scientists are applying an objectively defined definition -- a scientific definition -- in place of the previous, popular definition by non-essentials."

But that does not in any way alter the fact of the category itself being a social convention. Scientists say "no, the koala is not actually a bear, here is our evidence". People consider this information, decide it is reasonable, and then it is more widely adopted.

Pluto is now called a "dwarf planet" by scientists, but that category itself was created at the same time Pluto's status was changed. Diehard Pluto fans still resist the classification. Whether society at large accepts it in time is part of the whole social convention thing.

And it's not like scientists themselves aren't part of the social fabric. Any convention they come up with is still a social convention, in that multiple people agree to categorize things in a particular way. Whether it is a "better" way or is accepted by the majority of the rest of the world does not change the social nature of the convention.

ungtss said...

"But that does not in any way alter the fact of the category itself being a social convention. Scientists say "no, the koala is not actually a bear, here is our evidence".

We're talking about definition in two distinct ways, which i find interesting. You're concerned with whether the "Koala" is defined as "A Bear." I'm concerned with whether the definition of "Bears" includes koalas.

This is a critical difference. Because in defining "koala" as "a type of bear," you are defining by non-essentials. a koala is what a koala is whether or not we call it a type of bear. its essential characteristics are biological. our name and categorization of it are not essential characteristics of the koala. it would be what it is even if nobody ever saw one.

to define the organism by our categorization of the organism is to define it by non-essentials. and that's what you're doing when you define "koala" as "a type of bear."

But I'm not concerned with defining koala. I'm concerned with defining "bear." And to define bear by essentials requires identifying particular characteristics, and giving them a label.

Can you define more broadly or more narrowly? Absolutely. Brown bear, black bear, polar bear. But however you define the word, it must be based on essential characteristics in order to be a properly formed definition.

and it is the method of formation of the definition that makes it a "good" or a "bad" definition. it's the process of formation that counts.

ungtss said...

google provides the following definition:

"An arboreal Australian marsupial (Phascolarctos cinereus, family Phascolarctidae) with thick gray fur that feeds on eucalyptus leaves."

interestingingly, this definition includes both essential and non-essential characteristics. the essential characteristics are "arborial, australian, thick gray fur that feeds on eucalyptus leaves" are essential characteristics. the non-essentials are "marsupial (Phascolarctos cinereus, family Phascolarctidae)".

you could change the non-essential characteristics all around -- change the names, change the classification systems, do whatever you like. a koala would still be a koala.

but change the essential characteristics and you have something else. or add more essential characteristcs and you have a subtype.

Daniel Barnes said...

ungtss:
>Echo is making the same mistake. The "meaning" of words and the "form" of words are two different issues. We were talking about the form of words. Now you're talking about the meaning fo words.

No, Echo is quite correct. It's you who don't seem to realise how this works. So I'll break it down step by step.

We have:
1) A word, a symbol, which is indeed a social convention, constructed of other social conventions called "letters".
2) Now - and this is where your confusion begins - we have a third social convention, which takes the form of a decision or agreement as to what the symbol refers to - its meaning, or definition. A dictionary is a nothing more than the record of the various agreements over the meanings of a word, old and new, popular and obscure.
3) On top of this collection of norms, we introduce a fourth social convention, which are the decisions and agreements around the rules: grammar, spelling etc.

So it turns out that the relationship between words and things has exactly the same logical relationship between facts and decisions, or agreements, or values, or other normative creations. That is, there is none. You cannot derive a convention such as the meaning of a word because assigning a meaning to a symbol requires a decision, either individual (in, say, a private language) or en mass.

So if there is no logical relation, what is the connection between the normative creation of words and the non-normative world of facts and things? It's simple. Words and grammatical rules do relate or pertain to facts - obviously, as we decide to refer them to something! They may be based on or inspired by our basic physical existence - so many of our metaphors seem to spring from our sexual or digestive systems. They can also pertain to historical usages; thus we can decide to update their meaning or change the way they are spelt. They can also be affected by physical facts like, say, shortage of space or time; thus we might decide to use shorthand, or code. And of course we can freely invent new words as new situations arise in the world, or decide to apply old ones to new things.

But merely "relating" or "pertaining" to factual situations is not a "necessary connection". Unlike a the result of a logical derivation, or a law of nature, norms contain a large subjective element - hence, could have been otherwise given other human decisions.

So hopefully this now outlines the situation, and pinpoints exactlywhere you and Rand are fundamentally confused. Once you grasp that norms are the result of decisions, and decisions cannot be logically derived from facts, then perhaps the light bulb will go on.

ungtss said...

“2) Now - and this is where your confusion begins - we have a third social convention, which takes the form of a decision or agreement as to what the symbol refers to - its meaning, or definition. A dictionary is a nothing more than the record of the various agreements over the meanings of a word, old and new, popular and obscure.”

Now we’re getting into some fruitful conversation – thanks.

There are two questions here. First, is agreement necessary? And second, is agreement sufficient to render a definition valid?

As to the first question, I do not think agreement is necessary. Only understanding. You may define a word one way, me another. I don’t have to agree with your definition or adopt it; I only need to know what it is, in order to know what you’re talking about. I can translate your word use into my word use. As long as I know what your word use is.

The second question is whether agreement as to definition is sufficient to render a definition valid. I don’t think it is. I think definition must proceed according to a particular method – specifically, the identification of essential characteristics. Definition by non-essentials leads to definitions which are epistemologically invalid.

For instance, one might define a "koala" as a "bear." this is not a valid definition, because it does not go to any of the essential, distinguishing characteristics of a koala. the definition says nothing about the entity. and therefore, the definition is invalid.

the reason definition by essentials is necessary is to make sure that we use our language to describe _reality_, in a way that clearly and consistently distinguishes different aspects of reality. Because these distinctions are necessary both for understanding and for communication.

And the ultimate goal of definition is understanding and communication.

In other words, agreement as to a definition is neither necessary to its use nor sufficient for its validity.

“Once you grasp that norms are the result of decisions, and decisions cannot be logically derived from facts, then perhaps the light bulb will go on”

Decisions are derived from facts with reference to goals. My goal for definition is to enable clear, effective communication. You may have a different goal. If so, name it. Or perhaps you have no goal at all for your definition. You've said, after all, that goals are overrated.

However, to me, the goal of definition is communication, and the purpose of communication is an efficacious, enjoyable life. Facts dictate the interrelationship of those goals and the means by which one may effectively pursue them.

Daniel Barnes said...

Ungtss:
>The second question is whether agreement as to definition is sufficient to render a definition valid.
>Decisions are derived from goals with reference to goals

Here you are using faux logical language like "valid" and "derive" to describe doing things that can not be achieved with logic. Are you really sure you fully understand the logical problem here?

>you've said, after all, that goals are overrated.

No, I haven't said any such thing. Goals, as they involve decisions, cannot be logically derived from facts.

If you disagree, please demonstrate with a logically valid example moving from a descriptive premise to a prescriptive one.

ungtss said...

"Here you are using faux logical language like "valid" and "derive" to describe doing things that can not be achieved with logic. Are you really sure you fully understand the logical problem here?"

yes i fully do:). remember, we're in the context of definitions now, so we shouldn't use "valid" and "derive" in ways applicable only to propositional logic or calculus. we have to ask what a "valid" definition would be.

as i've explained, a definition is valid if it differentiates one object from another by means of essential characteristics. this leaves plenty of room for variation in definition ... but it still provides a baseline below which definition cannot go without being invalid.

for instance, defining "koala" as "a bear" is an invalid definition, because it does not refer to essential characteristics of the entity we refer to as "koala."

"No, I haven't said any such thing."

True, I had you mixed up with Tod. My bad.

"Goals, as they involve decisions, cannot be logically derived from facts."

No, as I said, goals cannot be derived from facts alone, but must be derived by one's evaluation of the facts with respect to values. i value happiness more than sadness, life more than death, success more than failure.

you may not. if you prefer pain and death to joy and life, that's your prerogative. go ahead and suffer and die. it's your life after all.

facts play the critical role of identifying the relationship between goals, and our means of achieving them.

Daniel Barnes said...

ungtss:
>yes i fully do:). remember, we're in the context of definitions now, so we shouldn't use "valid" and "derive" in ways applicable only to propositional logic or calculus. we have to ask what a "valid" definition would be.

Well that's fine, but now there's no problem to discuss. There are no philosophical problems to begin with around "valid" definitions or "deriving" goals from facts, or is/ought or facts and values or anything else if we are not talking about formal logic and just speaking loosely. As such the question of what a "valid" definition and so forth would be simply disappears. It can be whatever you want it to be, as it's a non-problem.

ungtss said...

i disagree, with question of definitions is a nuanced philosophical issue. it's not a "non-problem" simply because it does not fall under the rubric of formal logic.

For example:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/definitions/

with regard to deriving decisions from facts and goals, you may call it philosophy or something else, but whatever you call it, it's a critically important inquiry if one wants to succeed in life.

Daniel Barnes said...

ungtss:
>with regard to deriving decisions from facts and goals, you may call it philosophy or something else, but whatever you call it, it's a critically important inquiry if one wants to succeed in life.

Well, of course there are many problems in life aside from philosophical ones.

But there is really only one "is/ought" philosophical problem (thought it's also called the fact/value or fact/decision dichotomy), and that is the formal logical one popularised by David Hume. Objectivists believe Rand solved it just because she implied she had, and bandied around logical terminology like "valid" and "derived", and even "relation". But of course she did not, as no Objectivist has ever produced a valid logical derivation of this or anything close to it.

This is a problem primarily due to the central place logic supposedly plays in Rand's system, connecting everything together. So it appears her way out was simply equivocate about what she actually meant by "logic".

>i disagree, with question of definitions is a nuanced philosophical issue. it's not a "non-problem" simply because it does not fall under the rubric of formal logic.

The logical issues around definitions are less well known, but no less fatal to the Objectivist project.

ungtss said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
ungtss said...

if you limit logic to "formal logic," then you've succeeded in limiting the scope of logic so that it does not -- and cannot -- touch real life. that includes both questions about what the real world is, how we should understand it, how we should approach it, and toward what ends we should approach it.

but this is only a result of limiting your understanding of logic to formal logic. because in doing so, you've excluded the real world before you've even begun.

objectivism takes a broader definition of logic, to include rules of reasoning that aren't strictly within the scope of formal logic.

to the extent one says those aren't "philosophy," i'd respond that under a definition of philosophy that excludes real world considerations, philosophy is utterly useless.

i prefer a definition of philosophy that encompasses questions and answers that are actually applicable to the questions and challenges of living on earth.

Daniel Barnes said...

ungtss:
>objectivism takes a broader definition of logic, to include rules of reasoning that aren't strictly within the scope of formal logic.

Well the decision to define "logic" as a form of reasoning that includes other rules of reasoning than formal logic is of course one you and other Objectivists are free to make! You can decide to define "logic" to include intuition, or heuristics, or common sense, or imagination, or any of the other highly useful human intellectual qualities we have tucked away in our brain pan. There is no Grand Authority, whether Aristotle, Big Brother or Ayn Rand or Sacred Lexiconographer who can force you to define terms a certain way. All you need to do is be aware that, obviously, the more you remove your terminology from everyday usage, the more difficult you will find it to communicate with other people.

And if you do choose to talk about problems in formal logic, such as the is/ought gap or the problem of induction, be careful not to equivocate between what you mean by "logic" and what everyone else will be meaning by it. Unfortunately too many Objectivists do.

And now I think we have reached a useful conclusion to this discussion.

Tad M Jones said...

In ITOE Rand explains her position that words are mental tags ,or tools, that aid cognition and the use of words as language and communication are secondary aspects.
Concepts are mental integrations that refer to existents in reality.
Existents are what they are, the law of identity, words do not give existents their properties,even if everyone decides that they do, we (everyone) don't have that power, or do those that say words and meanings are social conventions posit such abilities?

ungtss said...

perhaps we have:). although i will say that in day to day usage, the broader understanding of logic is much more common among normal people. the narrower definition is largely limited to logicians who specialize in thought detached from reality.

Tad M Jones said...

Ungtss re logicians exactly :)

Daniel Barnes said...

Tad
>Existents are what they are, the law of identity, words do not give existents their properties,even if everyone decides that they do, we (everyone) don't have that power, or do those that say words and meanings are social conventions posit such abilities?

Hi Tad,

No-one has made these arguments, please go back and read the comment thread carefully if you have done so at all.

ungtss said...

tad, the thing about this "words are social conventions" argument is that its advocates do not apply it consistently, because if they did, their cognitive landscape would be utter insanity.

instead, they wield the argument inconsistently -- whenever they feel the need to render a clear word muddy, they pull out the old hackneyed "definitions are social conventions" argument. then when they want to use a word clearly, they start claiming words actually mean things again.

this inconsistency is endemic in non-objectivist thought. in fact the inconsistency is a necessary characteristic of it. because if they were consistently non-objective, they'd be completely crazy.

but by being inconsistently non-objective, they can be selectively crazy. blacking out truths whenever they don't want to see them, then seeing truths whenever they want to see them.

you see the same sort of inconsistency in other areas of non-objective thought -- for instance, so-called advocates of tolerance will be brutally intolerant when it suits them, then demand tolerance when it suits them. or they may claim there's no objective truth -- and in so doing, make a truth-claim about the non-existence of truth.

that's the thing about crazy. nobody's ever consistently crazy. if they were, they'd be dead. crazy is always partial.

Echo Chamber Escapee said...

@ungtss: if you limit logic to "formal logic," then you've succeeded in limiting the scope of logic so that it does not -- and cannot -- touch real life. that includes both questions about what the real world is, how we should understand it, how we should approach it, and toward what ends we should approach it.

Another Randian false dichotomy. Either logic is coextensive with "every human cognitive process" (or maybe "every 'valid' human cognitive process" so Rand can dismiss as "invalid" any cognitive process she doesn't like) or it "cannot touch real life." That's crap.

Here is an example of formal logic touching real life. Let's say I am trying to figure out what is wrong with my car. I reason:

P1: If the battery is dead, the car will not start.
P2: The car starts.
Therefore
C: The battery is not dead.

Ooh, look, I applied formal logic to real life!

But notice that I applied a lot more than formal logic. Formal logic can't tell me that P1 is true. I can only know that P1 is true from an empirical understanding of how cars work. Formal logic also can't tell me that P2 is true; I can know that only by attempting to start my car. But given information that I have acquired by mental operations outside of formal logic, formal logic can help me draw a conclusion.

As another example, let's suppose it turns out that:

~P2: The car does not start.

Now formal logic tells me that I cannot infer from P1 and ~P2 that the battery is dead; that would be a formal fallacy called affirming the consequent. The battery might be dead -- but I will have to do some other empirical test to find out for sure.

So formal logic can touch real life. It's just that navigating real life requires a lot more than formal logic. Most of us who think about thinking come to realize that throwing all those different processes into one concept of "logic," as Rand attempts to do, leads to a muddle, not to improved clarity of thought.

Daniel Barnes said...

Is our ungtss learning?

I fear not. He has not grasped what is wrong with his argument yet. What words mean is a decision, made either individualy, like Rand deciding "sacrifice" had a certain meaning, or a child with a private language, or a collectively, like a general meaning you might find in a dictionary.Non Objectivists refer to 'right' or 'wrong' meanings by way of such general standards such as dictionaries. No one argues that words have no meaning. However the persistence of fhis strawman both in Rand and her followers lends weight to my hypothesis in my view.

Anonymous said...

"We're talking about definition in two distinct ways, which i find interesting. You're concerned with whether the "Koala" is defined as "A Bear." I'm concerned with whether the definition of "Bears" includes koalas."

I'm not concerned about it at all, it's an example of a social convention. Either way you look at it, it's still a social convention. Once, people saw koalas and thought they were a type of bear. At that time, koalas were defined as bears, and the larger group of "Bears" included koalas. Until it didn't.

If nobody ever saw a koala, it would be what it is, but it would also be undefined. The universe does not somehow define a thing by virtue of it existing. Only a sentient mind defines a thing. Only a sentient mind has a need to define a thing.

If there were no life at all on Earth, things would exist, but there would be no definitions for those things possible.

And your "essentials" for a koala seem a mite arbitrary. A koala is a marsupial after all, and if it weren't, it might well be a different animal altogether. Why that is non-essential to you is beyond me. But "thick grey fur" is essential? Hairless cats are still cats - a theoretical albino or bald koala surely would be a koala, wouldn't it? Your selection of essentials only serves to raise questions about the validity of this whole "essentials" concept in the first place.

Tad M Jones said...

Blogger Daniel Barnes said...
The Objectivist theory of knowledge is dysfunctional for the same reason many other epistemologies are, in that it confuses two distinct things:

1) The world.
2) Our knowledge of the world.


By 'world' I assume you mean reality. But I am not sure what you mean when say 'two distinct things'. Are these two wholly separate, in that one can never 'really' conceive of the idea that our knowledge of reality is part of reality, an aspect of reality? If that were true , could they ever be reconciled or integrated?

ungtss said...
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ungtss said...

"P1: If the battery is dead, the car will not start.
P2: The car starts.
Therefore
C: The battery is not dead."

Echo, how do you determine the truth of your premises? how do you know that if the battery is dead, the car will not start? how do you know the car starts?

to know the first premise, you must understand how cars work. practically. in the real world. this requires a logical comprehension of a system. which formal logic can't touch.


and how do you know whether the car will start? You identify the proper means of testing it -- which depends on the car. does the car start with a key or a button? better observe to find out. where do you look? well, there's a usual place they put the key slot or start button.

all of those require actual real world knowledge, outside the realm of formal logic. formal logic can't tell you whether your premises are right. it takes a broader kind of logical thinking -- one touching the real world -- to figure out whether your premises are correct.

so no, your syllogism doesn't touch the real world. it leaves out the most important part. the part where you test your premises.

of course that can be very convenient if you don't want to touch your premises ...

"By 'world' I assume you mean reality. But I am not sure what you mean when say 'two distinct things'. Are these two wholly separate, in that one can never 'really' conceive of the idea that our knowledge of reality is part of reality, an aspect of reality? If that were true , could they ever be reconciled or integrated?"

love it tad:).

ungtss said...

Barnes:

"What words mean is a decision, made either individualy, like Rand deciding "sacrifice" had a certain meaning, or a child with a private language, or a collectively, like a general meaning you might find in a dictionary."

Everybody agrees with that. It's trivial. The question is whether it's possible for those decisions to be valid/invalid, or whether no criteria apply to those decisions except that they're made.

I identified a criterion for the decision, explained why it is necessary, and showed the consequences of failing to apply that criterion.

you responded by saying, "well, it's not within the scope of formal logic, so whatever."

so what you're doing here is a) continuing to repeat a trivial point nobody disagrees with you on, b) ignoring my point by c) claiming that if it ain't formal logic, it ain't philosophy.

Echo Chamber Escapee said...

@ungtss: Echo, how do you determine the truth of your premises? how do you know that if the battery is dead, the car will not start? how do you know the car starts?

to know the first premise, you must understand how cars work. practically. in the real world. this requires a logical comprehension of a system. which formal logic can't touch.


Next time, try reading what people write instead of shooting off your keyboard trying to impress us with your prolixity.

In this case, I told you how I know the premises are true and said in so many words that formal logic (alone) can't tell me that. Go back up the thread and look.

But your original statement was that "formal logic can't touch reality." I take that to mean not just that formal logic alone is insufficient to navigate reality successfully (a completely non-controversial point) but that it has no bearing on reality, no point of contact whastoever (which was what Rand thought modern philosophers believe). That's the view I was disputing.

If that is not your actual view, then you need to learn to say what you mean, in terms your audience has a nonzero chance of understanding.

ungtss said...

echo, it's interesting that you assume i'd be insecure enough to try and impress people i don't know. perhaps other people operate in that manner.

i did read what you wrote. and clarified that what you described as "other mental processes" are in fact _logical_ processes. the logical process of learning to understand the causal mechanics of a system, and the logical process of identifying a means of testing a hypothesis.

you want to call those "other mental processes." i want to call them "logic beyond the limited scope of formal logic."

formal logic _has_ no connection to reality, unless attached to reality by means of _other_ logical processes -- the processes you're describing as "other mental processes," and i'm describing specifically as logical processes.

like the logical process of planning a computer program. or reverse engineering a car. or designing an experiment.

those processes are scrupulously logical. they're just not "formally" logical.

and those are the points at issue.

is there "logic" beyond "formal logic?"

"yes."

can formal logic touch reality without the application of "real-world" logic?

no.

Daniel Barnes said...

Echo:
>But [ungtss'] original statement was that "formal logic can't touch reality."

This is just a standard Randian catchphrase, one of the movement's "thought-terminating cliches".

What they really mean by it is simply that logic cannot establish the truth of premises, only conclusions.

This is not really a problem for non-Objectivists, as logic is just one of a number of useful tools humans have developed in our intellectual arsenal. However, Rand made a really big deal about it - as in logic being "man's means to establish the truth of his answers", "check your premises" etc. So all this wailing and gnashing of teeth about "logic being detached from reality" is really just the sound of disappointed Objectivists discovering that Aristotelian logic is not capable of doing what Rand promised it would. It was a major mistaken assumption on Rand's part. Even Aristotle knew you couldn't establish the truth of premises by logical means.

Of course, there is an easy way to try to save face in this situation - simply declare that when you say "logic", you mean something else other than "logic". Perhaps "the art of non-contradictory identification" or some other limp word-salad.

One is tempted to remark that this is all a bit A=not A, but nonetheless that appears to be the situation Rand has played herself into.

ungtss said...

"of course, there is an easy way to try to save face in this situation - simply declare that when you say "logic", you mean something else other than "logic"."

alternatively, one could simply declare that one's definition of "logic" includes more than "formal logic." which is what has been done here.

but of course your definition of logic is the "right" definition, isn't it:). until it's useful for you to argue that there are not "right" or "wrong definitions" again. then you'll change your mind:).

Daniel Barnes said...

I wrote:
>The Objectivist theory of knowledge is dysfunctional for the same reason many other epistemologies are, in that it confuses two distinct things:
1) The world.
2) Our knowledge of the world.

Tad wrote:
>By 'world' I assume you mean reality. But I am not sure what you mean when say 'two distinct things'. Are these two wholly separate, in that one can never 'really' conceive of the idea that our knowledge of reality is part of reality, an aspect of reality? If that were true , could they ever be reconciled or integrated?

Hi Tad,

Let's replace my example with this:

1) The territory
2) The map

Now let's take your questions, and substitute these terms, and see if your questions still hold.

- Are they "two distinct things"?

- Are these two wholly separate, in that one can never 'really' conceive of the idea that our map of the territory is part of the territory, an aspect of the territory?

- If that were true, could they ever be reconciled or integrated?

What do you think now?

ungtss said...

an accurate map is not "wholly separate" from a territory if it accurately represents it.

it is then linked to the territory as a "representation" of the territory. and it may be a wholly accurate representation, or an inaccurate representation. depending on whether or not your cartographer has his head up his butt.

Daniel Barnes said...

ungtss:
>alternatively, one could simply declare that one's definition of "logic" includes more than "formal logic." which is what has been done here.

Yes, and if I include vodka, or arsenic, in a glass of water you're really not dealing with just water any more are you?

>but of course your definition of logic is the "right" definition, isn't it:). until it's useful for you to argue that there are not "right" or "wrong definitions" again. then you'll change your mind:).

But I've already explained to you what's wrong with this argument. Let me try again.

What you're trying to do here is communicate with other people, discussing a set of problems. If a problem is basically a problem in formal logic - say, is/ought - then the "right" definition of logic in such a discussion is indeed, formal logic. The "right" definition is the one that best fits the problem you're trying do discuss. Otherwise you are equivocating, or simply irrelevant.

Now can you see where your misunderstanding lies?

So the first step in this sort of discussion is to try to understand the problem in the first place. This is where Rand has almost always gone wrong, and her followers follow her. She doesn't seem to understand things like the is/ought problem in the first place, hence her "solutions" either fail or are entirely beside the point.



Tad M Jones said...

the world/territory,knowledge/map
analogy kinda misses the point I was trying to make, knowledge is part of reality how is a map a part of the territory?

Daniel Barnes said...

ungtss:
>an accurate map is not "wholly separate" from a territory if it accurately represents it.

Excellent. I am happy to agree then that logic can indeed usefully "represent" reality - just as in Echo's example - and are, in principle, only as "wholly separate" as a map is from its territory.

ungtss said...

"Yes, and if I include vodka, or arsenic, in a glass of water you're really not dealing with just water any more are you?"

interesting that you would analogize logical processes such as reverse engineering, experiment, and system-comprehension to "arsenic."

perhaps a better analogy would be if you put "apples, oranges, and peaches" in a basket, you still have "fruit."

"What you're trying to do here is communicate with other people, discussing a set of problems."

as are you.

"If a problem is basically a problem in formal logic - say, is/ought"

who said the is/ought problem is a problem in formal logic? you yourself have said that formal logic can draw no bridge between them. so why in hell would we try and solve the problem in a context in which it cannot be solved?

"- then the "right" definition of logic in such a discussion is indeed, formal logic. The "right" definition is the one that best fits the problem you're trying do discuss. Otherwise you are equivocating, or simply irrelevant."

Agree. And since formal logic has no answer to the problem, perhaps the "right" definition of logic is one that can solve the problem.

or no. we should use a definition of logic that can't solve the problem. then declare everything else "non-logic," and therefore "beside the point."

sounds like you don't want to solve the problem, to me.

ungtss said...

"Excellent. I am happy to agree then that logic can indeed usefully "represent" reality - just as in Echo's example - and are, in principle, only as "wholly separate" as a map is from its territory."

The process of creating that representation, however, falls outside the scope of "formal logic," despite being a brutally, rigorously logical process, in the broader sense. that's the point you keep missing.

you can't make a map with formal logic. so why talk about such a definition of logic so limited as to be useless in this context?

Daniel Barnes said...

ungtss:
>perhaps a better analogy would be if you put "apples, oranges, and peaches" in a basket, you still have "fruit."

Actually, you're putting formal logic, apples, oranges, peaches, and Randian slogans in a basket and calling it "logic".

ungtss said...

"Actually, you're putting formal logic, apples, oranges, peaches, and Randian slogans in a basket and calling it "logic"."

So "reverse engineering," "scientific experiment," "cartography," and "abduction" are Randian slogans?

yeesh.

Daniel Barnes said...

ungtss:
>who said the is/ought problem is a problem in formal logic?

It was framed as a logical problem of derivation by David Hume. His solution, which is negative, is that the latter cannot be validly derived from the former. If you can reframe the problem so it can be usefully solved in formal logic, then that would be a major breakthrough, and very welcome.

However, if you or Ayn Rand would like to propose a different problem - say, how to derive goals from facts using some unspecified combination of formal logic, apples, oranges, peaches, and some slogans such as "the art of non-contradictory identification", well that's up to the two of you.

ungtss said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
ungtss said...

his failure to solve the problem is an artifact of attempting to solve it within a context which excludes any means of solution.

the created the problem so it couldn't be solved.

and if you want to call all the logical processes we engage in in real life -- the ones i keep listing and you keep ignoring -- something other than logical processes, in order to maintain the delusion that no logical solution to "is/ought" is possible -- that's your call too.

but you're not fooling anyone. you've simply selected a context for the problem within which a solution is impossible by virtue of the context you've selected.

a context that has no relation whatsoever to the actual "is/ought" problem faced by human beings in real life.

the actual "is/ought" problem faced by us is not faced in a purely abstract, formal context. it's faced in the context of us as living organisms with particular characteristics, such that our actions affect our condition as living organisms.

and within that context -- the proper context for addressing the is/ought question -- the is/ought question is quite easily solved.

but of course if you don't want to solve it, you'll pick a context in which it can't be solved, then point to your self-created failure as proof of its insolubility. and hope they don't notice you created the problem yourself.

Daniel Barnes said...

ungtss:
>and if you want to call all the logical processes we engage in in real life -- the ones i keep listing and you keep ignoring -- in order to maintain the delusion that no logical solution to "is/ought" is possible -- that's your call too.

I don't ignore things like "reverse engineering," "scientific experiment," "cartography," and "abduction" .

It's just you keep calling them "logical processes", which makes it look like you're equivocating when they are, at best, only partly logical. Things like "reverse engineering" "and "scientific experiment" are hypothetic-deductive, requiring imaginative conjecture - that is, guessing - which is then tested deductively. Abduction is also guessing, which is how the introducer of the term CS Pierce described it. Cartography is making-and-matching, creatively inventing something then comparing it, a process that has little if anything to do with logical relations.

There are these, and lots of other human tools for knowledge, such as heuristics, intuition, common sense etc. You can label all these as "logical processes" if you like, just as you can label apples "logic" if you want to. Just don't be surprised if you find it hard to communicate clearly with others.

The question is why one might want to label these different things in a confusing way. I have already conjectured as to this.

Echo Chamber Escapee said...

@ungtss:alternatively, one could simply declare that one's definition of "logic" includes more than "formal logic." which is what has been done here.

And I reject that proposed redefinition because it provides no advantage over just saying that we use a combination of different mental processes to navigate reality (which you seem to agree with) ... and it obscures a crucial distinction among those proceses.

"Logic" - formal logic - has the unique property that if you start from true premises and apply only valid forms of inference, you are guaranteed to arrive at truth.

This is not the case with any other mental process I am aware of: induction, abduction, random guessing, trial-and-error, direct observation, scientific method, free-association, and whatever else it is the brain can do. Every one of these processes carries an inescapable risk of error -- i.e., of starting with true premises and ending up with a false conclusion. (In formal-logic terms, they are all invalid, which, I emphasize, does not mean "should not be used.") There are tactics to reduce the risk, and it is useful to learn about and apply them. But one generally cannot reduce the risk of error in any of these processes all the way to zero, and one often can't even reduce the risk to insignificance.

Do you see this difference?

This is the vitally important difference that Rand is trying to bury by lumping disparate processes under the rubric of "non-contradictory identification." She does it becaue she wants to defend a bunch of conclusions that are at best uncertain but claim that she has achieved the certainty of formal logic.

That is what I refuse to let her -- or anyone else -- get away with.

Daniel Barnes said...

ungtss:
>a context [logic] that has no relation whatsoever to the actual "is/ought" problem faced by human beings in real life.

So to summarise: your proposal to solve the famous logical problem of the relation between "is" and "ought" is to simply appeal to a different meaning of the word "logic".

This is equivalent to trying to solve the problem of not having enough money in your bank account by trying to appeal to a different meaning of the word "money"...;-)

This is, of course, what we've said Objectivist "solutions" are like all along.

Daniel Barnes said...

Echo:
>She does it becaue she wants to defend a bunch of conclusions that are at best uncertain but claim that she has achieved the certainty of formal logic.

Yes. I conjecture Rand was very impressed by the prestige associated with logic, not to mention the promise of certain conclusions. Hence her constant echoing of logical terms like "validity" etc. But unfortunately she was not clear about its limitations. Hence all the subsequent fudging.

ungtss said...

"Things like "reverse engineering" "and "scientific experiment" are hypothetic-deductive, requiring imaginative conjecture - that is, guessing - which is then tested deductively."

First, you're mistaken about how hypotheses are tested. They are not tested deductively. They are tested experimentally, by means of devising experiments which isolate variables, based on the experimenter's understanding of a system.

but science is only "partially logical" you say?

what would it need to be in order to be "fully logical," in your view? it would need to be like naked deduction, having no means of determining the validity of its premises?

No, on the contrary, science is not "partly logical." rather, formal logic by itself lacks the means to do anything useful in human life on planet earth, unless supplemented by the other forms of logical thinking.

as to whether people will have a hard time understanding me, you might take a look at the wikipedia article on "logical reasoning." or the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy.

i'm afraid your limited, impotent definition of logic is the minority view. the rest of us have a broader view.

ungtss said...

"And I reject that proposed redefinition because it provides no advantage over just saying that we use a combination of different mental processes to navigate reality (which you seem to agree with) ... and it obscures a crucial distinction among those proceses."

i guess the question here is what the "crucial distinction" is. to you the crucial distinction appears to be between "perfect reliability" and "everything else. to me the crucial distinction is between "methods structured according to some reliable principle" and "methods that are not.

thus "random guessing," and "free-association" and "whatever else your brain can do" would go in the junkheap. everything else would go on a spectrum of logical thought, reliable to varying degrees within their respective contexts.

this is how normal people use the word "logical." they don't limit it to the naked, impotent form of formal reasoning you're describing.

the only reason one would do that would be in order to lump all the _useful_ forms of human logical reasoning together with the arbitrary, useless ones. which you've done, by lumping "scientific reasoning" together with "random guessing."

i can think of very few things more destructive than lumping science in with random guessing, in opposition to a form of reasoning that's useless on its own.

""Logic" - formal logic - has the unique property that if you start from true premises and apply only valid forms of inference, you are guaranteed to arrive at truth."

Yes, it also has the property of being utterly useless by itself.

Daniel Barnes said...

ungtss:
>i'm afraid your limited, impotent definition of logic is the minority view. the rest of us have a broader view.

I must say I am enjoying the spectacle of these alleged Objectivists dissing Aristotle...;-)

ungtss said...

you might read aristotle's "posterior analytics," in which he deals with logic in the real world.

or you might continue to evade every point i make, and continue to spout your own posterior analytics. because from the smell of things, that's where your analytics originate.

Daniel Barnes said...

ungtss:
>you might read aristotle's "posterior analytics," in which he deals with logic in the real world.

I have, actually. Please cite the passages you have in mind that support your view.

ungtss said...

Part II:

"What I now assert is that at all events we do know by demonstration.
By demonstration I mean a syllogism productive of scientific knowledge,
a syllogism, that is, the grasp of which is eo ipso such knowledge.
Assuming then that my thesis as to the nature of scientific knowing
is correct, the premisses of demonstrated knowledge must be true,
primary, immediate, better known than and prior to the conclusion,
which is further related to them as effect to cause. Unless these
conditions are satisfied, the basic truths will not be 'appropriate'
to the conclusion. Syllogism there may indeed be without these conditions,
but such syllogism, not being productive of scientific knowledge,
will not be demonstration."

That's right barnes, a "demonstration" is a particular type of syllogism.

ungtss said...

and lest you complain that it doesn't mean what i say it means, look at this:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-logic/#Def

that's "definitions," in an article on aristotle's logic. because definition is a type of logic.

Daniel Barnes said...

I am puzzled as to how this particular passage supports your view, as all it asserts is that in a syllogism, the conclusion will be true provided the primary premises are true - the conclusion is "related to them as effect to cause". Well...so what? Who would disagree? The problem is always establishing the truth of the primary premises, which are statements about the real world as you say.

To be honest, rather like your Chomsky quote earlier, this feels like you just cut-and-pasted it from somewhere without really grasping what it was about.

ungtss said...

"as all it asserts is that in a syllogism, the conclusion will be true provided the primary premises are true"

here comes that reading comprehension problem again. the quote says more than that. he gives definite criteria for determining the truth of the premises:

"premisses of demonstrated knowledge must be true,
primary, immediate, better known than and prior to the conclusion,
which is further related to them as effect to cause."

these are criteria (albeit primitive criteria) for valid knowledge that do not come from syllogism, but are our means of validating the truth of a demonstration, and therefore part of the process of demonstration.

as to chomsky, i recall that it took 4 or 5 go-arounds before you understood what i was illustrating with that quote, at which time you dropped the subject.

ungtss said...

also, do you intend to address the fact that the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy characterizes aristotle's theory of definition as part of his logic? or are you going to ignore that point entirely?

Daniel Barnes said...

Seriously ungtss - it's you who seem to have a reading comprehension problem.

Because in the passage that you cite, your so-called "criteria" for the truth of the premises is that they are...true! I suppose it doesn't get any more "primitive" than that! A bit laughable really.

You really are a bit at sea here, and really not that interested in being steered back to shore - certainly not by me. But I do thank you for your exposition of the Objectivist method for solving famous problems in logic - namely, just change the meaning of the word "logic"! That's all it amounts to, after all your dozens of posts. It's an excellent demonstration of why Objectivists are not taken seriously.

ungtss said...

ungtss:

"also, do you intend to address the fact that the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy characterizes aristotle's theory of definition as part of his logic? or are you going to ignore that point entirely?"

"But I do thank you for your exposition of the Objectivist method for solving famous problems in logic - namely, just change the meaning of the word "logic"!"

Stellar way to maintain the illusion that you make any sense. Just ignore what other people say. Don't address their arguments. Ignore. Then reaffirm your rightness.

Guaranteed to make you feel like you're right for a lifetime.

ungtss said...

"Because in the passage that you cite, your so-called "criteria" for the truth of the premises is that they are...true! I suppose it doesn't get any more "primitive" than that! A bit laughable really."

Read again. "True" is one of the criteria. There are others. You ... forgot about the others?

Daniel Barnes said...

ungtss:
>Stellar way to maintain the illusion that you make any sense. Just ignore what other people say. Don't address their arguments. Ignore. Then reaffirm your rightness.

But I have asked you many times to clearly and concisely summarise your various positions. You never do.

So I have attempted to summarise this one for you. I believe it is accurate. You have not, as yet, actually denied it.

So here it is again.

You are proposing to solve logical problems, such as Hume's "is/ought", by simply appealing to a different meaning of the word "logic".

That seems to be your position in a nutshell. As I say, if that's what you want to do, fine. However, you should understand why others might say this really doesn't solve the problem, any more than the problem of having no money in your bank account is solved by an appeal to a different meaning of the word "money".

Now, this is quite different from the useful exercise of reframing a problem so it can be solved, or examining it to discover if it is really a just a verbal problem, or another form of non-problem. Your proposal is merely equivocating, leaving the original problem intact.

It's also quite different from proposing another quite different problem, and then trying to call it the "is/ought" problem. This is also just playing with words, and leaving the original problem intact.

It seems to me your approach has been mostly the former, and occasionally the latter.

If you deny that my summary is accurate, once again I invite you to explain why it is incorrect, and briefly summarise your view yourself.

Echo Chamber Escapee said...

Regarding whether formal logic is useless becuase it (by itself) cannot establish the truth of its premises: I decided to apply ungtss's reasoning to other kinds of tools. And I realized that a saw is just as useless as formal logic. After all, I could spend all day making sawing motions in the air and never produce any wood; the wood has to come from somewhere other than sawing.

Or maybe a tool is not rendered useless just becasue the tool itself is incapable of producing the input material on which it works.

Formal logic is not useless or incapable of touching reality any more than a saw is. Both are tools, useful for some things but not for everything. Ditto for any other single mental proccess -- even random guessing has its uses. There's a huge middle ground between "not useful for everything" and "useful for nothing."

Daniel Barnes said...

ungtss:
>Read again. "True" is one of the criteria. There are others. You ... forgot about the others?

But your approach is so indiscriminate and cut-and-paste, just like this chunk of Aristotle whacked up without any explanation, that I can hardly be bothered seriously discussing it. After all, you don't seem to have seriously tried to understand it before hitting "paste", otherwise you would have done your readers the courtesy of clarifying the obvious absurdities in advance. So all I need do is point out the obvious absurdities, as these indicate to me you haven't digested what you're cut and pasting.

And you're doing it again now - expecting me to do the heavy lifting of providing the interpretation of the passage you supplied as to how it relates to your argument!

Once again, I can see what's in it for you, but what's in it for me?

I will make a general comment, however, that none of these "criteria" - where they are not circular - are reliable criteria for truth. Aristotle himself acknowledges this in that he ultimately appeals to intuition of the essences, and not these other "criteria", as the only reliable guide to truth. There is actually no such thing as a "criterion" of truth. Not even the rules of logic are reliable criteria, namely because all logic does is guarantee the transmission of truth - from premises to conclusion.

Daniel Barnes said...

Echo:
>Formal logic is not useless or incapable of touching reality any more than a saw is

Yes, if you don't know how a saw works, and promised that it was a magic device that you waved and it built a house, you will be very disappointed with the hard work - and other instruments - you actually need..;-)

This is basically the position of Objectivists. Rand promised them a magic instrument for knowing reality without actually knowing how logic really worked. It's a perfectly useful tool; Objectivists just expect more than it can possibly deliver.

Daniel Barnes said...

ungtss:
>also, do you intend to address the fact that the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy characterizes aristotle's theory of definition as part of his logic? or are you going to ignore that point entirely?

Aaaaaannnnndddd....just to show that I do address your points - even painstakingly, and even when they are as hopeless and trivial as this one - I will address this, even though it's not clear as to what you're trying to say.

The answer is, obviously, that definitions are part of Aristotle's logic, just as they are part of modern logic.

Definitions are, in Aristotle's system, statements of essences. But these statements of essences can not themselves be logically derived. Got that? They are part of his logic, but are not themselves logically derived. Even Aristotle knew this, in that he knew we could not try to prove the truth of all statements.

So definitions are part of his system, but are not justified by his system, just as they are part of modern logic, but neither modern logicians - nor the Stanford Encyclopedia - claim the truth of premises can derived by it.

Got it now?

ungtss said...

"You are proposing to solve logical problems, such as Hume's "is/ought", by simply appealing to a different meaning of the word "logic"."

Yes, the meaning of the word logic used by normal people in everyday life, wikipedia, and the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. in other words, the broad, useful, meaningful one.

"But your approach is so indiscriminate and cut-and-paste, just like this chunk of Aristotle whacked up without any explanation, that I can hardly be bothered seriously discussing it."

Let's put this back in context. I stated my opinion that logic was broder than formal logic. you said it amused you to hear me disagree with aristotle. i told you to read the posterior analytics to see that aristotle doesn't disagree with me. you said you had, and asked me for a citation.

a citation to what? i citation to show that aristotle does not disagree with my point that logic is broader than formal logic.

so what do i do? i cite a section in which he identifies criteria for premises -- how we can test them for truth.

and then i cite a stanford philosophy website in which they categorize his theory of definitions under his "logic."

and now you want to complain that i pulled a section out of nowhere, and accuse me of making you do the heavy lifting? sorry bub. you're the one that said i was rejecting aristotle. where's your citation to support your contention?

Echo,

"And I realized that a saw is just as useless as formal logic. After all, I could spend all day making sawing motions in the air and never produce any wood; the wood has to come from somewhere other than sawing."

in the case of formal logic, you're dealing with a saw handle that's had its teeth removed. it's not that you can wave it around doing nothing, it's that it _can_ do nothing, without the additional tools which you lump together in a group including "scientific reasoning" and "random guessing."

ungtss said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
ungtss said...

"The answer is, obviously, that definitions are part of Aristotle's logic, just as they are part of modern logic."

Now read what you wrote earlier:

Ungtss: "i'm afraid your limited, impotent definition of logic is the minority view. the rest of us have a broader view."

Barnes: "I must say I am enjoying the spectacle of these alleged Objectivists dissing Aristotle...;-)"

So now we've gone from "ungtss is dissing aristotle by claiming that the narrower view of logic is a minority view" to "well, aristotle held that broader view, but we don't anymore."

see how you changed positions after i backed you into a corner? see how you went from claiming i was dissing aristotle to admitting he would agree with him, but times have changed?

it didn't go unnoticed, barnes:).

Daniel Barnes said...

ungtss:
>Yes, the meaning of the word logic used by normal people in everyday life, wikipedia, and the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. in other words, the broad, useful, meaningful one.

But here you go again.

Hume's problem is a formal one (with implications that of course travel far outside of formal logic as a result - perhaps this is yet another source of your confusion on the issue)

So you can't "solve" it with an informal definition of logic. It's that simple.

Your reply when confronted with this is to then try to substitute a different, informal problem and call it the "is/ought" problem.

Either way is a clear equivocation. This can even be demonstrated practically, as follows:

You appeal to wikipedia, Standford, Uncle Tom Cobbly and all to try to justify your position as to the meaning of "logic" in the context of Hume's problem. But if everyone agreed with you, Hume's problem would also then be generally considered solved, just as you consider Ayn Rand has solved it by these means

Now, if you would care consult the Wikipedia, or perhaps write to the Stanford Encyclopeadia, or consult any number of philosophical or logical authorities, you will see that it is not at all generally regarded as a problem that has been solved, let alone by this means.

Ergo you are merely equivocating to no productive end.

You do not seem to understand the implications of your own claims.

Daniel Barnes said...

ungtss:
>see how you changed positions after i backed you into a corner? see how you went from claiming i was dissing aristotle to admitting he would agree with him, but times have changed?

You're just playing a game in your mind.

I was amused because you were dissing Aristotle without realising it. Because Aristotle's system is a "floating abstraction" disconnected to reality too - a means of reliably transmitting truth, but not attaining it in the first place.
Why? Because ultimately the only way Aristotle himself believed he could connect his system reliably to reality was not through your "criteria" - which he deemed insufficiently reliable - but was through the intellectual intuition of the essences. . Which of course Objectivism rejects!

So Aristotle himself is the architect of the very type of "disconnected", "severed" system you expend so much spleen on. It's a highly amusing situation, made even more so by your strange belief you've somehow backed me into a corner over it.

Of course, all you're doing is, once again, obsessing about some passing observation in lieu of having any kind of interesting or pertinent contribution to make.

ungtss said...

“Hume's problem is a formal one (with implications that of course travel far outside of formal logic as a result - perhaps this is yet another source of your confusion on the issue)

So you can't "solve" it with an informal definition of logic. It's that simple.
Your reply when confronted with this is to then try to substitute a different, informal problem and call it the "is/ought" problem.”

Yes, that’s exactly my reply, because your form of the “is/ought” problem is contrived and irrelevant. You set it up in a context in which no solution is possible, and a context totally foreign to actual human existence. So it’s a stupid, irrelevant problem. And the absence of a solution to a stupid, irrelevant problem is not particularly noteworthy. What is noteworthy is that people think the absence of solutions to contrived, stupid problems is noteworthy.

“You appeal to wikipedia, Standford, Uncle Tom Cobbly and all to try to justify your position as to the meaning of "logic" in the context of Hume's problem. But if everyone agreed with you, Hume's problem would also then be generally considered solved, just as you consider Ayn Rand has solved it by these means”

Who said everybody agreed with me? Clearly you don’t agree with me. When did I ever say everybody agreed with me?

My appeal to Wikipedia and the Stanford encyclopedia is to demonstrate that my definition is not idiosyncratic, but rather well-established among people both outside and inside the ivory tower. Not to prove everybody agrees with me, but to prove that a lot of people do. In response to your claim that I am the one with the idiosyncratic definition.

“Because ultimately the only way Aristotle himself believed he could connect his system reliably to reality was not through your "criteria" - which he deemed insufficiently reliable - but was through the intellectual intuition of the essences.”

Everything I’ve read both by him and of him has stated the opposite. Care to cite your claim?

Daniel Barnes said...

ungtss:
>Everything I’ve read both by him and of him has stated the opposite.

What, are you claiming that the intuitive grasp of the essences is not, in Aristotle, the source of infallible knowledge? Big call.

>Care to cite your claim?

There is a good deal of complexity and ambiguity in Aristotle that is easy to misinterpret. Given your propensity to equivocate, and your confused citations to date, I don't see much point in discussing it with you.

However, if you are able to give a coherent explanation of your reading of Aristotle i.e. one that somehow excludes intellectual intuition as the infallible connection to truth, then perhaps I might consider it. It certainly is a bold position to take.

Daniel Barnes said...

ungtss now:
>When did I ever say everybody agreed with me?

ungtss then:
>Yes, the meaning of the word logic used by normal people in everyday life, wikipedia, and the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. in other words, the broad, useful, meaningful one.

Now you're just resorting to pure pedantry. Goodbye.

ungtss said...

"ungtss now:
>When did I ever say everybody agreed with me?

ungtss then:
>Yes, the meaning of the word logic used by normal people in everyday life, wikipedia, and the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. in other words, the broad, useful, meaningful one."

"Now you're just resorting to pure pedantry. Goodbye."

that takes your inability to read to a new level:). you read "used by everyday people, wikipedia, and stanford encyclopedia" as "used by everyone on earth."

"used by many legitimate, credible sources" = "used by all."

extraordinary. i can only imagine how crazy the world must look through the eyes of a person who can't read properly.

ungtss said...

it occurs to me that the fundamental inability to understand i'm seeing here probably stems from a failed cognitive framework. you don't seem to understand simple distinctions like "some" and "all." i'm not sure why that is, but i'm starting to suspect that's why you're consistently unable to understand what's being written.

i remember when i read AR for the first time, i didn't have the cognitive framework to understand her either. my brain literally couldn't grasp it except at the most basic, superficial, animal level.

it makes me realize that understanding requires a cognitive framework in which to put concepts -- like "some" and "all." and if you lack that cognitive framework, you can't possibly understand.

of course, we all have to develop that cognitive framework over the course of our lives. mine has expanded greatly as a result of my conversations with the intelligent people on this blog, including lloyd, prescott, and nyquist.

but your mind works in a fundamentally different way. and although i can't pretend to understand what that is yet, i think your inability to distinguish between "some" and "all" is a clue.

Daniel Barnes said...

ugntss:
>that takes your inability to read to a new level:). you read "used by everyday people, wikipedia, and stanford encyclopedia" as "used by everyone on earth."

No, you're just playing the pedant. You're not here to "learn" a thing. This much is quite obvious. So therein lies the lesson.

ungtss said...

"No, you're just playing the pedant. You're not here to "learn" a thing. This much is quite obvious. So therein lies the lesson."

you claim to understand by intentions, but you can't tell the difference between "some" and "all."

check your premises:).

Echo Chamber Escapee said...

@Daniel Barnes, to ungtss: However, if you are able to give a coherent explanation of your reading of Aristotle i.e. one that somehow excludes intellectual intuition as the infallible connection to truth, then perhaps I might consider it. It certainly is a bold position to take.

Bold -- and contrary to every interpretation of Aristotle I've ever encountered, including Rand's (as anyone who has read and understood ITOE would know).

"But Aristotle held that definitions refer to metaphysical essences, which exist in concretes as a special element or formative power, and he held that the process of concept formation depends on a kind of direct intuition by which man's mind grasps these essences and forms concepts accordingly." (ITOE Ch 5, p. 68-69, emphasis in original). Rand describes this as a "radical difference" between her theory and Aristotle's. In various places, she criticized both the notion of grasping anything by "direct intuition" and the broader notion of essence as metaphysical.

But ungtss has surprised us before with bold re-interpretations of Rand ... so why not Aristotle too?

ungtss said...

rand is running off of a mistranslation of aristotle. the better translation for "essence" is "identity."

The word "Essence" was introduced by Roman translators who did not understand Aristotle's phrase, "to ti ên einai" -- literally, "the what it was to be” or "to ti esti" (the 'what it is.').

the roman translators literally coined the word "essentia" to account for the entire phrase, "to ti ên einai."

how do i know that "identity" is the better translation of what he was talking about?

because as aristotle explained, "the essence of a thing is what it is said to be in respect of itself.” (1029b14).

rand got from "what it is said to be in respect of itself" to something "existing in concretes" by means of poor translation.

Anonymous said...

ungtss said...
rand is running off of a mistranslation of aristotle. the better translation for "essence" is "identity."

The word "Essence" was introduced by Roman translators who did not understand Aristotle's phrase, "to ti ên einai" -- literally, "the what it was to be” or "to ti esti" (the 'what it is.').

the roman translators literally coined the word "essentia" to account for the entire phrase, "to ti ên einai."

how do i know that "identity" is the better translation of what he was talking about?

because as aristotle explained, "the essence of a thing is what it is said to be in respect of itself.” (1029b14).

rand got from "what it is said to be in respect of itself" to something "existing in concretes" by means of poor translation.


I may have just become a born again Aristotelian :)tmj

Echo Chamber Escapee said...

@ungtss: rand is running off of a mistranslation of aristotle. the better translation for "essence" is "identity."

I'll admit straight out that I don't know ancient Greek at all, so I'm not going to argue over whether "essence" or "identity" is a better translation.

In any case, it seems to be beside the point. Daniel asked you to explain your reading of Aristotle that "excludes intellectual intuition as the infallible connection to truth." I don't see how just replacing "essence" with "identity" does anything to accomplish this.

So, let's assume "identity" is the better translation. Now, according to Aristotle, how do we know/discover the "identity" (the "what it is") of a thing? Did he, or did he not, claim that the "what it is" was metaphysically in the thing and knowable through direct intuition?

Are the many generations of Aristotle scholars who say he did make this claim wrong?

ungtss said...



It was beside Daniel's point, but not beside yours. You quoted a section in AR in which she misunderstood Aristotle. I was showing where her misunderstanding came from.

"So, let's assume "identity" is the better translation. Now, according to Aristotle, how do we know/discover the "identity" (the "what it is") of a thing? Did he, or did he not, claim that the "what it is" was metaphysically in the thing and knowable through direct intuition?"

Here is Aristotle's statement of how we come to have scientific knowledge. The section in bold is the answer to your questions.

"So out of sense-perception
comes to be what we call memory, and out of frequently repeated memories
of the same thing develops experience; for a number of memories constitute
a single experience. From experience again-i.e. from the universal
now stabilized in its entirety within the soul, the one beside the
many which is a single identity within them all-originate the skill
of the craftsman and the knowledge of the man of science, skill in
the sphere of coming to be and science in the sphere of being.

We conclude that these states of knowledge are neither innate in a
determinate form, nor developed from other higher states of knowledge,
but from sense-perception.
It is like a rout in battle stopped by
first one man making a stand and then another, until the original
formation has been restored. The soul is so constituted as to be capable
of this process.

He says explicitly that knowledge is not innate, but comes from sense-perception.

As to what he means by "From experience again-i.e. from the universal
now stabilized in its entirety within the soul, the one beside the
many which is a single identity within them all,"

that is the same thing rand was describing with the word "concept" -- a universal, stabilized in its entirety within the soul and the single identity within them all.

As to whether Aristotle scholars are wrong, if you take a look, most Aristotle scholars recognize Aristotle as a formative empiricist, and place him in contrast to Plato, the intuitionist and rationalist.

This understanding of the origins of the word "essence" isn't novel either -- it's in the stanford encyclopedia and wikipedia as well. including the explanation of how the word came into existence.

and this is not to say aristotle is the be-all-end-all of philosophers either. he made his mistakes. but this mistake was not his, but AR's.

Daniel Barnes said...

@Echo,

Having just seen ungtss' "bold re-interpretation" it becomes quite obvious he is simply trolling, and it is as doubtful he has read Aristotle as it is the ITOE or much else of Rand.

Why do I suspect that? Two reasons:
1) If you google his direct comments on Aristotle, the first hit you get is...the Stanford Encyclopaedia entry on Aristotle that he's been using in this discussion - only this time without attribution, so it makes it look like he's been reading the original. Even key phrases appear to be intact.
2) As you note, and like his previous cut-and-pastes, this is curiously irrelevant to the topic at hand, as if he really doesn't quite grasp the question. In this case, whether "essence" stands for "identity" is beside the point because the question is how knowledge of that essence or identity is truly established. This is where Aristotle's famous doctrine of the intuition of the essences comes into play. Yet ungtss does not acknowledge, nor perhaps understand this, nor does he attempt to explain the other Aristotle quotations that support it, nor even mention nous, nor the massive raft of scholarship behind this doctrine. It is, as I said earlier, a massive and complex call to try to overturn all this, and a couple of derivative lines and a reference to Rand is laughably inadequate.

As such, it's almost impossible to avoid the impression that he's simply bluffing, ducking and weaving, and just making it up as he goes along.

Michael Prescott said...

This statement by Aristotle would seem to mean that identity/essence has an ontological status as something existing in the entity: "the one beside the many which is a single identity within them all."

In other words, Aristotle seems to view a universal (in the ontological sense) as something that has a real existence within an entity.

He seems to think we divine this ontological identity/essence by means of direct sense perception, not concept formation; "We conclude that these states of knowledge are neither innate in a determinate form, nor developed from other higher states of knowledge, but from sense-perception."

It is important to distinguish between the ontological and epistemological uses of the term "universal." Ontologically, the Aristotelian universal exists inside each entity. Epistemologically, it is discovered by means of sense perception in some mysterious way.

When he says that "these states of knowledge are not innate," he is talking about universals in the epistemological sense. But he does think universals are innate in the ontological sense, and that the mind has the ability to detect these innate properties via direct perception.

Michael Prescott said...

BTW, Rand does not seem to have grasped the fact that "universal" can be used in an ontological sense. The "problem of universals" is ordinarily construed as an ontological problem: We have all seen many trees, but we have never seen 'Tree' as such, so ... do universals exist?

Rand construed the problem as epistemological: "What does the concept 'Tree' relate to in the real world?" This is a related but distinct question.

Scott Ryan's book goes into detail about this issue.

Anonymous said...

it does seem though c-ing and p-ing notwithstanding all of his arugments and points are thoughtful not random, while most responses he receives are merely derisive just sayin

ungtss said...

Prescott,

I appreciate your thoughtful and intelligent input as always.

"This statement by Aristotle would seem to mean that identity/essence has an ontological status as something existing in the entity: "the one beside the many which is a single identity within them all."

There's a critical piece of context here -- he tells you where this universal comes from and where it exists --

"From experience again-i.e. from the universal
now stabilized in its entirety within the soul"

In other words, this universal arises "from experience" and is stabilized "within the soul."

in other words, the universal is within us -- not within the object. if it were within the object, it would not be "within the soul." if it was innate, it would not "arise from experience."

ungtss said...

in other words, i think he's talking about universals in the epistemological sense when he says "the one beside the many which is a single identity within them all," because immediately prior to that clause, in the same sentence, he describes universals in epistemological terms. It would be odd for him to shift from one understanding of universals to other mid-sentence. And at the very lease, I have no reason to believe he did so.

gregnyquist said...

Yes, that’s exactly my reply, because your form of the “is/ought” problem is contrived and irrelevant.

This is-ought problem, regardless of "form," is hardly contrived and irrelevant, unless one believes that logical fallacies are "contrived and irrelevant." Consider the following syllogism:

Eating human beings is not in a person’s self-interest.
Socrates is a human being.
Therefore, one ought not to eat Socrates.

This is an invalid syllogism. In logic, you cannot validly reason from two "is" premises to an "ought" conclusion. That's what the is-ought gap is all about.

Now you can define your terms however you please and claim that under some new "logic," reasoning from an "is" premises to an "ought" conclusion is somehow "valid." But that's merely a verbal solution. What gives formal logic its power is that there is an actual method to distinguish valid from invalid conclusions. With reasoning from "is" to "ought," with induction, and with other useful but invalid inferences, how is one to test validity? In short, there's no way to distinguish between good and bad, valid or invalid conclusions. This is something that Rand appears not to have fully grasped.

Now there are ways to evaluate conclusions about matters of fact derived from invalid inferences: namely, what we have been advocating all along, empirical testing, criticism, peer review. But this involves an approach quite different from Rand. Rand strongly implies that conclusions can be tested by the (alleged) quality of thought that went into them. You think the "proper" way, you'll get the right conclusions. While this might work with formal logic, it's not going to work with any other types of thought. Where validity cannot be attained by looking at the process by which conclusions are reached, conclusions must be tested after they are made. In those cases, how the conclusions are made are not really important, and indeed, it's a waste of time to bother oneself about them.

ungtss said...

"Eating human beings is not in a person’s self-interest.
Socrates is a human being.
Therefore, one ought not to eat Socrates."

that's invalid, but there's a third premise available: that one ought not do what is not in one's self-interest.

given that premise, the conclusion is valid.

is that premise true? of course it is:). but you cannot prove whether or not it is with reference to formal logic alone. you cannot prove whether ANYTHING is or is not with reference to formal logic alone.

to show that that premise is true, one must understand the nature of "ought," and the relationship between human values. when those "ises" are known, the ought becomes clear:).

"In short, there's no way to distinguish between good and bad, valid or invalid conclusions. This is something that Rand appears not to have fully grasped. "

On the contrary, I'd say that she grasped that the majority of philosophers had come to that conclusion, and set out to show why they were wrong:).

the trick is, there's no way to distinguish between good and bad, _solely within the context of formal logic_, because formal logic cannot test the truth of its premises. one must look out into the real world, and learn about it by other logical means, if one wishes to test one's premises.

"Now there are ways to evaluate conclusions about matters of fact derived from invalid inferences: namely, what we have been advocating all along, empirical testing, criticism, peer review. But this involves an approach quite different from Rand. Rand strongly implies that conclusions can be tested by the (alleged) quality of thought that went into them."

Aren't empirical testing, criticism and peer review only as good as the "quality of thought" that goes into them?

Anonymous said...

"that's invalid, but there's a third premise available: that one ought not do what is not in one's self-interest.

given that premise, the conclusion is valid."

Except you have not established that eating Socrates is not in one's best interest.

He might be tasty.

ungtss said...

haha true, but it's necessitated by the first premise nyquist gave us -- that eating people isn't in our best interest.

Anonymous said...

would Ayn Rand have agreed with the fairly recent "arbitrary social convention" that "quote" is a noun?, as in "I'm not talking about context _around_ the quote, i'm talking about the context _supplied by the quote_. Everything you need to understand her is right there. But you can't."

ungtss said...

she'd most likely recognize that the use of "quote" as a noun is simply an colloquial abbreviation of the noun "quotation."