Ayn Rand & Epistemology 25

Definitions 10: Doctrine of Ostensive Definition. In my last post, I noted that definitions lead to an infinite regress. Once a word has been defined, then you need to define the words used in the definition. But the words of those definitions need to be defined as well; and this process must go on forever. How does Objectivism propose to evade this infinite regress? Through their theory of ostensive definition. Rand introduces it as follows:

With certain significant exceptions, every concept can be defined and communicated in terms of other concepts. The exceptions are concepts referring to sensations, and metaphysical axioms.

Sensations are the primary material of consciousness and, therefore, cannot be communicated by means of the material which is derived from them. The existential causes of sensations can be described and defined in conceptual terms (e.g., the wavelengths of light and the structure of the human eye, which produce the sensations of color), but one cannot communicate what color is like, to a person who is born blind. To define the meaning of the concept “blue,” for instance, one must point to some blue objects to signify, in effect: “I mean this.” Such an identification of a concept is known as an “ostensive definition.”

Ostensive definitions are usually regarded as applicable only to conceptualized sensations. But they are applicable to axioms as well. Since axiomatic concepts are identifications of irreducible primaries, the only way to define one is by means of an ostensive definition—e.g., to define “existence,” one would have to sweep one’s arm around and say: “I mean this.”

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Definitions 9: Doctrine of Verbalism. Rand is very clear on the relation between knowledge and definitions:

The truth or falsehood of all of man’s conclusions, inferences, thought and knowledge rests on the truth or falsehood of his definitions. [IOTE, 49]

Definitions are the guardians of rationality, the first line of defense against the chaos of mental disintegration. [RM, 77]

There is a serious problem with the Objectivist view of definitions that neither Rand nor her followers have ever adequately answered. The truth and falsehood of man's knowledge cannot possibly rest on definitions, because definitions are ultimately circular. One word is merely defined by other words; so that to expect to find truth and rationality in definitions is to expect what can never be found. As Karl Popper explained in The Open Society and Its Enemies:

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Definitions 8: Doctrine of the Hierarchy of Knowledge. Rand had the habit of drawing dubious premises from trivial premises. With her doctrine of the hierarchy of knowledge, we find her at her old tricks:

[There is a] long conceptual chain that starts from simple, ostensive definitions and rises to higher and still higher concepts, forming a hierarchical structure of knowledge so complex that no electronic computer could approach it. It is by means of such chains that man has to acquire and retain his knowledge of reality. [RM, 18]

To know the exact meaning of the concepts one is using, one must know their correct definitions, one must be able to retrace the specific (logical, not chronological) steps by which they were formed, and one must be able to demonstrate their connection to their base in perceptual reality. [IOTE, 50]

That some concepts are "wider" than others — that animal, for example, is wider than mammal, and mammal wider than deer — is something so trivial that hardly anyone has bothered making a fuss about it before Rand. But the way some Objectivists talk about the hierarchy of knowledge, you would think that only Rand noticed it, while everyone else is in denial that concepts have any such structure. "Knowledge is hierarchal," Rand's disciples keep insisting; to which the obvious retort is, "So what!" The problem with Rand's hierarchy of knowledge is not that it is wrong but that Objectivists exaggerate its importance.

Ayn Rand & Epistemology 22

Definitions 7: Doctrine of the Homogenuity of Reality. The doctrine of essentialism, as Karl Popper has noted, regards knowledge as sort of syllogistic encyclopaedia containing the intuitive definitions of all essences. Rand's view of knowledge is not so very different. She believed that human beings "organize concepts into propositions" and that the truth of these propositions rests on the "truth and falsehood of the definitions of the concepts" used in the propositions, which in turn rests on the truth or falsehoods of the "designations of essential characteristics." Knowledge, Rand insisted, was an integrated whole, tied together by definitions:

Since the definition of a concept is formulated in terms of other concepts, it enables man, not only to identify and retain a concept, but also to establish the relationships, the hierarchy, the integration of all his concepts and thus the integration of his knowledge. Definitions preserve, not the chronological order in which a given man may have learned concepts, but the logical order of their hierarchical interdependence. [IOTE, 40]

Objectivists And Personal Responsibility

In which John Aglialoro, the producer of the double-bomb "Atlas Shrugged" series and David Kelley, founder of the Atlas Society and official script consultant to the project, place the blame for these spectacular failures on everyone but themselves.

Ayn Rand & Epistemology 21

Definitions 6: Doctrine of Essentialism. Karl Popper provides the following gloss on essentialism:

Like Plato, Aristotle believed that we obtain all knowledge ultimately by an intuitive grasp of the essences of things. 'We can know a thing only by knowing its essence', Aristotle writes, and 'to know a thing is to know its essence'. A 'basic premiss' is, according to him, nothing but a statement describing the essence of a thing. But such a statement is just what he calls a definition. Thus all 'basic premisses of proofs' are definitions.

...Aristotle considers the term to be defined as a name of the essence of a thing, and the defining formula as the description of that essence. And he insists that the defining formula must give an exhaustive description of the essence or the essential properties of the thing in question; thus a statement like 'A puppy has four legs', although true, is not a satisfactory definition, since it does not exhaust what may be called the essence of puppiness, but holds true of a horse also; and similarly the statement 'A puppy is brown', although it may be true of some, is not true of all puppies; and it describes what is not an essential but merely an accidental property of the defined term.

But the most difficult question is how we can get hold of definitions or basic premisses, and make sure that they are correct - that we have not erred, not grasped the wrong essence. Although Aristotle is not very clear on this point, there can be little doubt that, in the main, he again follows Plato.... Aristotle's view is less radical and less inspired than Plato's, but in the end it amounts to the same. For although he teaches that we arrive at the definition only after we have made many observations, he admits that sense experience does not in itself grasp the universal essence, and that it cannot, therefore, fully determine a definition. Eventually he simply postulates that we possess an intellectual intuition, a mental or intellectual faculty which enables us unerringly to grasp the essences of things, and to know them. And he further assumes that if we know an essence intuitively, we must be capable of describing it and therefore of defining it. (His arguments in the Posterior Analytics in favour of this theory are surprisingly weak. They consist merely in pointing out that our knowledge of the basic premisses cannot be demonstrative, since this would lead to an infinite regress, and that the basic premisses must be at least as true and as certain as the conclusions based upon them. 'It follows from this', he writes, 'that there cannot be demonstrative knowledge of the primary premisses; and since nothing but intellectual intuition can be more true than demonstrative knowledge, it follows that it must be intellectual intuition that grasps the basic premisses.' In the De Anima, and in the theological part of the Metaphysics, we find more of an argument; for here we have a theory of intellectual intuition - that it comes into contact with its object, the essence, and that it even becomes one with its object. 'Actual knowledge is identical with its object.')

Summing up this brief analysis, we can give, I believe, a fair description of the Aristotelian ideal of perfect and complete knowledge if we say that he saw the ultimate aim of all inquiry in the compilation of an encyclopaedia containing the intuitive definitions of all essences, that is to say, their names together with their defining formulae; and that he considered the progress of knowledge as consisting in the gradual accumulation of such an encyclopaedia, in expanding it as well as in filling up the gaps in it and, of course, in the syllogistic derivation from it of 'the whole body of facts' which constitute demonstrative knowledge.

Looking Forward to Part 3

Atlas Shrugged Part 2 earned a wretched $91,000 in its third weekend, compared to the $468,000 even its turkey predecessor was bringing in at the same point in its run.

Incidentally, Box Office Mojo estimates that Sandy may have affected sales by "at worst 10%".

Atlas 2: An Even Bigger Bomb?

No surprises there.

Despite opening far wider than its predecessor, it's currently falling even faster and harder. Box Office Mojo has the brutal numbers.

Producer Harmon Kaslow claims that his movie is "not for everyone". Clearly he is a master of understatement.

And don't forget the unintentionally ironic merchandising.

Ayn Rand & Epistemology 20

Definitions 5: Doctrine of Essence. Rand introduces essences in the chapter on definitions.

It is Aristotle who first formulated the principles of correct definition. It is Aristotle who identified the fact that only concretes exist. 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. 

Aristotle regarded “essence” as metaphysical; Objectivism regards it as epistemological. 

Objectivism holds that the essence of a concept is that fundamental characteristic(s) of its units on which the greatest number of other characteristics depend, and which distinguishes these units from all other existents within the field of a man’s knowledge. Thus the essence of a concept is determined contextually and may be altered with the growth of man’s knowledge. The metaphysical referent of man’s concepts is not a special, separate metaphysical essence, but the total of the facts of reality he has observed, and this total determines which characteristics of a given group of existents he designates as essential. An essential characteristic is factual, in the sense that it does exist, does determine other characteristics and does distinguish a group of existents from all others; it is epistemological in the sense that the classification of “essential characteristic” is a device of man’s method of cognition—a means of classifying, condensing and integrating an ever-growing body of knowledge.

It is important to note the various connections that Rand maintains between essence, concepts, and definitions. She begins by introducing the Aristotle's view of essence. For Aristotle, essences are "metaphysical." They exist "in" concretes as a special element or "formative power." Rand, however, regards these essences as "epistemological." I've attempted to unpack the meaning of this phrase in another post; I will focus in this post on another side of the issue.

Part II Commences

So far seems to be tracking only slightly ahead of the former, despite being in 3x the number of cinemas this time around. Reviews say it still sucks.
Opening weekend stats.
Metacritic. 
Rotten Tomatoes.

Ayn Rand & Epistemology 19

Definitions 4: Doctrine of Definitions as Platonic Ideas. While Rand did not explicitly believe that definitions were analogous to platonic Ideas, her contention that definitions can be true or false implies that definitions are thoroughly platonic and exist as a kind of disembodied reality.

Definitions can either be regarded as defining the "true" meaning of words (as Rand regards them) or as defining what people mean by the words they use (which is how dictionaries regard them). Now for Rand's view of definitions to be true, words must have meanings independent of the meanings people intend to convey when using them. An individual may be trying to convey meaning X by using word A. But if the "true" definition of X is B rather than A, then the individual actually means B rather than A, irrespective of his intentions. This doctrine is, of course, absurd, yet it is one that Rand appears to have embraced. Consider the most notorious example, from the introduction to The Virtue of Selfishness:

The meaning ascribed in popular usage to the word “selfishness” is not merely wrong: it represents a devastating intellectual “package-deal,” which is responsible, more than any other single factor, for the arrested moral development of mankind.

In popular usage, the word “selfishness” is a synonym of evil; the image it conjures is of a murderous brute who tramples over piles of corpses to achieve his own ends, who cares for no living being and pursues nothing but the gratification of the mindless whims of any immediate moment.

Yet the exact meaning and dictionary definition of the word “selfishness” is: concern with one’s own interests.

This concept does not include a moral evaluation; it does not tell us whether concern with one’s own interests is good or evil; nor does it tell us what constitutes man’s actual interests. It is the task of ethics to answer such questions.

Ayn Rand & Epistemology 18

Definitions 3: Doctrine of Anti-Concept and Invalid Concept. In Rand's infamous chapter on definitions in Introduction to the Objectivist Epistemology, we find the following bewildering assertion:

There are such things as invalid concepts, i. e. words that represent attempts to integrate errors, contradictions, or false propositions, such as concepts originating in mysticism -- or word without specific definitions, without referents, which can mean anything to anyone, such as modern "anti-concepts." Invalid concepts appear occasionally in men's languages, but are usually - though not necessarily - short-lived, since they lead to cognitive dead-ends. An invalid concept invalidates every proposition or process of thought in which it is used as a cognitive assertion. [IOTE, 49]

The most astonishing claim in this paragraph is the final sentence. Invalid concepts spread a kind of curse of invalidity upon everything which uses them as a "cognitive assertion." I'll assume that by "cognitive assertion," Rand means, an assertion about reality. If interpreted in this manner, is the statement true? Hardly. I've already, in previous posts, refuted it. Merely because a concept refers to extra-empirical entitites, or to contradictory beliefs, or to the unreal does not invalidate the concept! Nor does using those so-called "invalid" concepts, even in assertions about reality, invalidate those assertions. The concept bandersnatch can be used in "valid" (i.e., "true," "real") assertions about reality, namely: The bandersnatch is a swift moving creature with a long neck invented by Lewis Carroll. Or: The banderstatch does not exist.

Without realizing it, Rand's decision to regard some concepts as "invalid" not only places concepts referring to mythological creatures beyond the cognitive pale, it also casts a shadow of invalidity over concepts that refer to erroneous ideas. After all, should Marxism be regarded as an invalid concept? After all, Marxism integrates errors, contradictions, and false propositions. But if Marxism is an invalid concept, how are we supposed to refer to that body of thought that Karl Marx inflicted upon the world?

Ayn Rand & Epistemology 17

Definitions 2: Doctrine of Concepts as the Principle Unit of Knowledge. This doctrine is expounded in Rand's Epistemological workshops:

Prof F: My question is about the relationships between concepts and propositions. Concepts are logically prior, aren't they?
AR: Yes.
Prof F: If every concept is based upon a definition, isn't that definition itself a proposition?
AR: Oh yes.
Prof F: Well then, the concept is in this case based on a proposition.
AR: No, but the first concepts are not. First level concepts, concepts of perceptual concretes, are held without definitions.... They are held first without definitions, mainly in visual form, or through other sensory images. By the time you accumulate enough of them, you can progress to propositions, to making use of concepts, organizing them into sentences which communicate something. And the concepts you form from then on, which are abstractions from abstractions, those you couldn't hold visually; they require formal definitions. By the time you get to them, you are already capable of forming abstractions.
And observe that that's true even by simple empirical verification: if you see how a child learns to speak, he doesn't start by uttering sentences. He first utters single words, and then after a while, when he has enough of them, he begins to try to communicate in sentences....
Prof B: It is still true that every concept is prior to any proposition that contains the concept. You have to have the concept before you can use it in a proposition....
Prof F: Yes.
AR: There is something I would like to add. There is a passage in the book where I said every concept stands for a number of implicit propositions. And even so, chronologically we have to acquire concepts first, and then we begin to learn propositions. Logically implicit in a concept is a proposition, only a child couldn't possibly think of it. He doesn't have the means yet to say, "By the word 'table' I mean such and such a category of existents [with all their characteristics]." [IOTE, 177-178]

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Definitions 1: The Doctrine of Immaculate Definitions. For Rand, the basic unit of human knowledge is the concept, which she defined as follows:

A concept is a mental integration of two or more units which are isolated by a process of abstraction and united by a specific definition. 

Note the phrase "united by a specific definition." According to Rand, definitions are a necessary component to conceptual knowledge:

Words transform concepts into (mental) entities; definitions provide them with identity. (Words without definitions are not language but inarticulate sounds.) [IOTE, 11]

Here Rand commits an error that it as the core of her view of definitions. She confuses definitions with meanings. While definitions state the meaning of words, they are not identical with that meaning. They cannot be identical because, as even Rand admits, definitions are condensations of knowledge. The meaning of most words is far too complex to be summed up in a brief definition. That is one reason why it is possible to know the meaning of a word without being able to provide its definition. Rand, however, insists that people must be able to define their abstract concepts if their knowledge is to be "valid." She (implicitly) denies that people can know even when they can't define their terms. This view, however, does not accord with experience. A definition merely states the meaning of one word in terms of other words. It's a way of saying the same thing with different words. The ability to define one's terms measures, not knowledge, but verbal fluency. An articulate person can describe the same thing in a variety of different ways, using different terms. That's all a definition is: saying the same thing using different words. The purpose of definitions is to establish common usage in the words people use, so they know what they mean when they write or speak. Definitions connect meanings (i.e., concepts) to words. Definitions have nothing to do with concept formation. Concepts already express meanings: it's a built-in feature. A concept without a meaning would not be a concept. Definitions merely connect concepts to conventions of word usage. For communication purposes, it is useful that we ascribe similar meanings to identical words. Otherwise, we will never understand one another.

When declaring that words "without definitions" are "inarticulate sounds," Rand misses the point. What she should have said is that words without meanings are inarticulate sounds. Words can only be defined in terms of other words. In the end, there must be a meaning separate from the word itself.

Ayn Rand & Epistemology 15

Definitions: Introduction. The heart and soul of Rand's Introduction to Objectivism Epistemology is the chapter on definitions. I have already suggested that Rand's view of essence is far more important to her epistemology than her much heralded (by Objectivists) hypothesis of measurement-ommission. The problem of universals can easily be recast as the problem of essences. For Objectivism, essences constitute the essential distinguishing characteristic of a concept's referents, and the "proper" defining characteristic of that concept. I'll get into the details of Rand's view of such arcana as "fundamental characteristic" and "essential characteristics" and a later time. What is important now is to appreciate the importance of essences and definitions to the Objectivist Epistemology. Following Aristotle, Objectivism contends that definitions refer to the essence of a concept. Aristotle considered these essences as metaphysical; Objectivism considers them "epistemological."

Given the intimate relation of essences to definitions, it could easily be contended that Rand's problem of universals is tantamount to the problem of definitions. In any case, that is the practical upshot of the Objectivist Epistemology. The first four chapters of IOTE, which discuss concept formation, are without practical consequence. Concept formation is in fact much more complicated process than Rand's speculative musings about it would suggest; and moreover, as I contended in earlier posts, since so much of the work of concept formation is done by the cognitive unconscious, reading the first four chapters of IOTE will not improve your ability to form concepts. The mind simply does not work as Rand contends. Knowing about measurement-omission and conceptual common denominators is quite irrelevant to forming concepts. Rand's theory of concept formation is mere window dressing. Only when we come to her chapter on definitions (the longest chapter in IOTE) do we find doctrines that have any practical import. It is for this reason that I regard the chapter as constituting the heart and soul of the Objectivist epistemology. Essentially, Rand believes in the doctrine of immaculate definitions. For Rand, "The truth or falsehood of all of man’s conclusions, inferences, thought and knowledge rests on the truth or falsehood of his definitions." This doctrine is not only false, it's exceedingly mischievous and even malicious. If taken to heart, it becomes a solvent which disorganizes the mind and renders rational thought very difficult.

Ayn Rand & Epistemology 14

Relation of moral concepts to reality. Rand contended that the failure of "modern" philosophers to solve the "problem" of universals led to a "concerted attack" on man's conceptual faculty. A closer reading, however, suggests that Rand believed that "abstract" concepts constituted the chief problem, rather than just conceptual knowledge in general. In Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, Rand argued that the formation of concepts refering to "perceptual concretes" is "fairly simple." [21] Only when the "conceptual chain" moves away from these perceptual concretes do problems emerge. In other words, it's not so much a "concerted attack" on man's conceptual faculty that concerns Rand. Despite Hume and Kant, Rand does not contend that people have trouble learning such concepts as fish, banana, or penis. It's the moral concepts that tend to preoccupy Rand. The primary practical raison d'etre of Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology is to demonstrate the connection of Rand's moral concepts to reality. How does it fare in this regard?

Per usual with Rand, not very well. In IOTE, Rand prefers to discuss simple "perceptual concrete" concepts, like table, furniture, desk, man, animal, etc. She says very little about moral concepts. The one exception is the concept justice, which gets an entire paragraph of analysis:

What fact of reality gave rise to the concept “justice”? The fact that man must draw conclusions about the things, people and events around him, i.e., must judge and evaluate them. Is his judgment automatically right? No. What causes his judgment to be wrong? The lack of sufficient evidence, or his evasion of the evidence, or his inclusion of considerations other than the facts of the case. How, then, is he to arrive at the right judgment? By basing it exclusively on the factual evidence and by considering all the relevant evidence available. But isn’t this a description of “objectivity”? Yes, “objective judgment” is one of the wider categories to which the concept “justice” belongs. What distinguishes “justice” from other instances of objective judgment? When one evaluates the nature or actions of inanimate objects, the criterion of judgment is determined by the particular purpose for which one evaluates them. But how does one determine a criterion for evaluating the character and actions of men, in view of the fact that men possess the faculty of volition? What science can provide an objective criterion of evaluation in regard to volitional matters? Ethics. Now, do I need a concept to designate the act of judging a man’s character and/or actions exclusively on the basis of all the factual evidence available, and of evaluating it by means of an objective moral criterion? Yes. That concept is “justice.”

She begins by asking which facts in reality gives rise to the concept justice, and then spends the rest of the paragraph artfully dodging the question. Instead of showing what the concept refers to, she opts instead to explain why human beings need justice, which is a different question altogether. Once again Rand makes big claims, only to let us down.

The Objectivization of Cato?

“Cato will become a more Objectivist organization." - New president John Allison, via tweet by Arthur Zey.

It's Just Like Atlas Shrugged!

Not. Here's the number of US Government employees per capita in the last decade. The brief spike in 2010 was the temporary census hiring.

Ayn Rand & Epistemology 13

Universals, definitions, and morality. In the 1949 book Ideas Have Consequences, Richard Weaver advanced the following rather unusual argument:

Like MacBeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. It occurred in the late fourteenth century, and what the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals. The powers of darkness were working subtly, as always, and they couched this proposition in the seemingly innocent form of an attack upon universals. The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence. [2-3]

Although Weaver's argument is phrased in platonistic terminology, in practical terms, it is not much different from Rand's:

Most philosophers did not intend to invalidate conceptual knowledge, but its defenders did more to destroy it than did its enemies. They were unable to offer a solution to the ‘problem of universals,’ that is: to define the nature and source of abstractions, to determine the relationship of concepts to perceptual data—and to prove the validity of scientific induction.... The philosophers were unable to refute the witch-doctors claim that their concepts were as arbitrary as his whims and that their scientific knowledge had no greater metaphysical validity than his revelations.

The differences in these two arguments is mostly terminological. Weaver seems more focused on the relation between universals and what he calls "transcendentals," by which he means, moral law. Rand, on the other hand, stresses the link between universals and knowledge in general, particularly "scientific" knowledge, which she contrasts with religious revelation. However, when we examine IOTE more closely, we find that Rand shares Weaver's passion for moral universals. The attack on universals, for both Rand and Weaver, is primarily an attack on the moral foundations of Western society.

Ayn Rand & Epistemolgy 12

Essences as "epistemological." Rand explains this rather odd juxtaposition of terms as follows:

Let us note . . . the radical difference between Aristotle’s view of concepts and the Objectivist view, particularly in regard to the issue of essential characteristics.

It is Aristotle who first formulated the principles of correct definition. It is Aristotle who identified the fact that only concretes exist. 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.

Aristotle regarded “essence” as metaphysical; Objectivism regards it as epistemological.

Objectivism holds that the essence of a concept is that fundamental characteristic(s) of its units on which the greatest number of other characteristics depend, and which distinguishes these units from all other existents within the field of man's knowledge. Thus the essence of a concept is determined contextually and may be altered with the growth of man's knowledge. [IOTE, 52]