The Logical Leap: Induction in Physics

[Xray]

George, in addition to what you say, it has been pointed out more than once to Xray (and Neil Parille) that her argument is fallacious .

Merlin,

That an argument has been "pointed out" as "fallacious" says nothing about whether it IS fallacious.

For example, arguments supporting the theory that the earth is not the center of the universe were pointed out as "fallacious" too ...

Ayn Rand often used "concept" to mean "universal", which does refer to multiple concretes.

Indeed, to Rand, concept = category (subsuming multiple concretes).

MJ: Not all concepts are universals. Ones that refer to an alleged, singular being like God is not a universal.

On the other hand, "god" is a universal, since it can refer to Greek gods, Roman gods, etc.

Correct. And it is precisely such contradictions in a philosophy stressing so much the importance of 'non-contradiction' which are the stumbling blocks. Keep digging and you will discover even more.

The problem with Rand is that she got so many basic things wrong.

In ITOE, on page 16, she states:

"Concepts of materials are formed by observing the differences in the constituent materials of entities. Materials exist only in the form of specific entities, such as nugget of gold, a plank of wood, a drop or an ocean of water." (Rand)

Wrong. Just think of e. g. "mucus".

If mucus is not a material, then what is it? Did you fail to notice that she included a drop of water as material? How does a drop of water fit, but not mucus, which has water as a major component?

material, adj. - of matter; of substance; relating to or consisting of what occupies space; physical (source)

Merlin, the issue was not about whether mucus can be called a material. It was about Rand's claim that every material exists only in the form of specific entities. She needed that idea (see ITOE, p. 16) to keep up her 'measurements ommitted' stuff with uncountables.

Edited August 7, 2010 by Xray

[Daniel Barnes]

How would you suppose observing and discovering and demonstrating could be done without testing at each step?

And notice her saying that definitions can change with the growth of knowledge.

Generally, Ellen, when you're in a hole, my friendly advice is to stop digging....;-)

Shall I just give you a very short list of the problems you face by sticking to this contention of yours?

1) Let's repeat: Nowhere, not in any of Rand's writings, does she refer to definitions as being merely hypotheses. After all, the word "hypothesis" implies something highly speculative, something merely possible, something that may or may not be true, something that is inherently uncertain. Can you really look me in the eye and try to tell me that if all our knowledge rests on definitions, and all definitions are hypotheses, Rand intended her argument to be that all our knowledge is hypothetical? That all our knowledge is uncertain? By making this claim you have effectively made Rand into an unadulterated epistemological skeptic. Now you must explain how your contention fits with the documented evidence to the contrary: that is, her plentiful screeds denouncing all forms of skepticism!

Now, as it happens, the contention that Rand's epistemology naturally entails a comprehensive skepticism can indeed be made - I made it myself years ago, and have regularly called it skeptical both here and elsewhere. I can also explain the clash between this logical conclusion and Rand's vitriolic pronouncements to the contrary: Rand had simply not thought through the consequences of her own theory (this is quite common with all kinds of thinkers). She hated the idea of skepticism, whipped up what she reckoned sounded like a solution, and never thought much more about it, never dreaming that she might be entailing what she despised. She was an Accidental Skeptic. As she was mostly surrounded by sycophants, and she'd never been much for listening to criticism anyway, there wasn't anyone who would say to her "Hey...just a second...?"

That's what I think. I have no idea how you intend to explain this clash, however.

2) But despite all this, in the spirit of debate let's bend over backwards and grant you that Rand indeed did intend to argue that "definitions are hypotheses". Unfortunately as I pointed out earlier, even if this was the case, it is still not sufficient to make her doctrine of the truth/falsity viable because this requires the hypothesis be testable. Now, once again there is nothing clearly stated in Rand anywhere whatsoever about testability of hypotheses being the source of their truth or falsity - this claim stands purely on your interpretation of a couple of typically vague, handwaving statements by Rand. Against this, I submit as counter-evidence the examples you yourself supplied of Rand applying her doctrine to the definitions of "selfishness" and "sacrifice". These are two central concepts to her philosophy, so one would think she would be careful in such application. However what we get are in your own words, two "goofs". Why are they goofs? Because they are untestable propositions. They are true by definition, and by definition only, thus untestable as on that basis they cannot possibly be false. Further, nowhere in her writings does she realise she has "goofed" and either attempted to correct the situation or disavow it. In fact I put it to you that she would have reacted with outrage at the suggestion that they were "goofs". So it seems almost impossible to seriously claim she is aware of the issue of testability. Finally, given that we have two notable applications of Rand's doctrine, which result only in two notable "goofs", we must ask: if her theory is as good as you claim, where are the plethora of notable non-"goofs" her theory produced? I have already asked you this question and so far you have declined to respond. I must say it might somewhat improve the chances of making your argument fly if you did.

3) But let's take the spirit of debate to the utmost, ignore all the above and grant that both of your contentions are true: that Rand really meant to say that a. "definitions are hypotheses", and b. testability is the condition under which they might be decided true or false.

Where would that leave Rand? Well, for starters it would mean that her epistemology is identical with, and adds nothing to, that already expounded by Karl Popper some 30 years before Rand - and at that only a very brief, vague, sketchy, ambiguous version, with the very features that make it viable existing largely through implication via generous interpretation. In that case, you might as well just ignore Rand on epistemology and go to Popper for the straight dope, as he has volume after volume explaining it all detail, answering objections that Rand never dreamed of. So much for Rand as world-shaking epistemological innovator, I'm afraid. It also means a full banquet of humble-pie eating for what has obviously been a terrible misunderstanding about Rand's remarks about skeptics, not to mention a full concession by Objectivism to Hume's problem of induction. And as everyone has apparently misunderstood her, especially 99.999% of her own followers, clearly Rand was highly overrated as a communicator too...;-)

I wonder what options that leaves? You could, I suppose, introduce the suggestion that not all definitions are, after all, hypotheses. But then that leaves the problem of now explaining what this other kind is, how it works, how its truth/falsity is established etc, so you'd be going back to square one. Or perhaps there are now going to be two types of hypotheses: certain and uncertain ones...;-)

While I for one can hardly knock the idea of speculative interpretation of Rand, I can't see that your case rests on anything more than your confidence in your powers of interpretation. While these are undoubtedly strong, I cannot see how they can continue to resist the weight of the overwhelming arguments against your claim.

Edited August 8, 2010 by Daniel Barnes

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I'm not going to argue this, but I will provide couple of quotes from ITOE, Chapter 5 - "Definitions" that might help the discussion along.

In Rand's theory, definitions change as man's knowledge changes for reasons of accuracy. Later versions are different, are more accurate, but they do not contradict earlier versions.

If definitions are contextual, how does one determine an objective definition valid for all men? It is determined according to the widest context of knowledge available to man on the subjects relevant to the units of a given concept.

Objective validity is determined by reference to the facts of reality. But it is man who has to identify the facts; objectivity requires discovery by man—and cannot precede man's knowledge, i.e., cannot require omniscience. Man cannot know more than he has discovered—and he may not know less than the evidence indicates, if his concepts and definitions are to be objectively valid.

In this issue, an ignorant adult is in the same position as a child or adolescent. He has to act within the scope of such knowledge as he possesses and of his correspondingly primitive conceptual definitions. When he moves into a wider field of action and thought, when new evidence confronts him, he has to expand his definitions according to the evidence, if they are to be objectively valid.

An objective definition, valid for all men, is one that designates the essential distinguishing characteristic(s) and genus of the existents subsumed under a given concept—according to all the relevant knowledge available at that stage of mankind's development.

. . .

Only when and if some discovery were to make the definition "rational animal" inaccurate (i.e., no longer serving to distinguish man from all other existents) would the question of expanding the definition arise. "Expanding" does not mean negating, abrogating or contradicting; it means demonstrating that some other characteristics are more distinctive of man than rationality and animality—in which unlikely case these two would be regarded as non-defining characteristics, but would still remain true.

Michael

[Neil Parille]

George,

You write:

The claim that God is unknowable has been a mainstream Christian doctrine for many centuries. And one cannot form a concept of something that is unknowable; if one could, it would not be unknowable.

I think it depends on what you mean by "unknowable." As I read the Christian tradition, Christian theologians believe that God may be known, but not exhaustively. For example, Calvinist John Frame writes in The Doctrine of the Knowlege of God that:

That means that in knowing God, as in any other aspects of human life, we are subject to God's control and authority confronted with his inevitable presence. As we learned in out discussion of God's incomprehensibility, we dare not aspire to the kind of knowledge that God has of himself; we must be satisfied with the kind of knowledge that a servant has of his lord . . . .

Or Catholic Jean Danielou in God and the Ways of Knowing:

Through these works, the living God reveals His method of action, His customs. It is through these that we are able to know Him.

These are the first two books I grabbed off my shelf.

-Neil Parille

Edited August 8, 2010 by Neil Parille

[Daniel Barnes]

And Daniel's reply from last December:

I have no idea why you are recycling these posts. Perhaps this indicates an underlying misunderstanding.

If so, let me put it this way:

First, we have two different theories:

1) Nominalism

2) Essentialism

Then recall that we have two different potential applications of these theories:

1) As a means (or a method)

2) As an ends

You can probably put it together yourself from here.

[Daniel Barnes]

Although I agree with you that she was an "essentialist," she was not a classical essentialist (and he wasn't what's generally called a "nominalist").

BTW, I warmly welcome you to the "alternate universe" that GHs seems to believe those who might call Rand an "essentialist" inhabit....;-)

[Brant Gaede]

While I read ITOE in the 1960s, I never understood the reason to study it further or remember it better than I have. The irrationalists aren't going to be stopped by it for generally irrationality is willful and a lot easier than rationality too boot. Rational people don't need it except to argue with the irrational people, which is irrational, and guess who thus wins? Jello-brained college students, in the arms of their Marxist profs, are beyond help regardless.

Concepts are ideas. Who really cares how many referents an idea needs? Whatever comes from years of debate, the idea will still be there even if the idea is false. Let's consider pride, already on the table for our delectation. Pride is a positive feeling concurrent from successful action. Guilt is the opposite. Pride (pleasure) tells us we did the right thing. Guilt (pain) tells us we did the wrong thing and need to do something about it. Pride is a reward and not a call for action except for the green light. Guilt is a call for action to alleviate the cause of the pain if not gain pride. We naturally seek happiness and these emotions are helpful guides. Is guilt an extra referent for pride or pride for guilt? Probably not, albeit maybe opposite sides of the same coin.

-- Brant

blinded by science

Edited August 8, 2010 by Brant Gaede

[Xray]

In Rand's view of definitions, of course definitions are hypotheses -- they're always-revisable-with-further-knowledge attempts to identify the most accurate distinguishing characteristic(s) of a category -- and of course they can be outright falsified as incorrect classifications as well as being superseded by further knowledge.

I'm at a loss trying to connect things you're asking with any belief that you ever read ITOE.

Ellen

I don't recall Rand stating anywhere that definitions are hypotheses. She said definitions are contextual, which is something entirely different.

The contextuality of a term's usage (and hence its varying definitions depending on the context) rarely poses a problem in communication. Every competent speaker of the English language will know e. g. what is meant when the word gravity is used in the context of speaking about an object falling to ground, and what is meant by gravity when speking about the 'gravity' of a crime.

Do you believe Rand discovered anything here that was really new?

In Rand's theory, definitions change as man's knowledge changes for reasons of accuracy. Later versions are different, are more accurate, but they do not contradict earlier versions.

They can contradict earlier versions dramatically.

Just think of an inherent dynamic in language itself: the phenomenon of words changing their meaning.

When I started learning English as foreign language several decades ago, the definition of the term "gay" was 'cheerful'. The phrase "A group of gay people" meant 'a group of cheerful people'. In the course of time, "gay" then underwent a dramatic change of meaning, and on opening Longman's Dictionary of Contemporary English, the first entry regarding "gay" is its definition as 'sexually attracted to members of the same sex; homosexual.' The former definition of "gay" as 'cheerful' is still listed, but as 'old-fashioned'.

Today, one cannot use the term "gay" in the sense of 'cheerful' any longer without causing misunderstandings in communication.

Rand's statement that "Definitions are "not changelessly absolute, but contextually absolute" (ITOE, p. 85) would cover that. But again, my question: What was really new about that?

Rand on p 148 of ITOE is not Rand but Binswanger-Peikoff's representation of Rand, which may or may not be correct. Anyway, I don't care.

If it went as far as B&P actually having tampered with the annex in ITOE containing the Q&A sessions, that whole annex would be worthless as a primary source of Rand's words.

Maybe Ellen can shed light on the matter?

Ellen:

IIRC, you mentioned in a recent post that "Larry" was the question-asker "Prof M." in one of (or in all?) the Q&A sessions. Is it possible for you to ask Larry if the Q&A section in ITOE accurately renders the questions he asked and the answers aswers he received? TIA for your help.

Edited August 8, 2010 by Xray

[merjet]

That an argument has been "pointed out" as "fallacious" says nothing about whether it IS fallacious.

Your saying something is fallacious or not says nothing about whether it IS or IS NOT fallacious.

Indeed, to Rand, concept = category (subsuming multiple concretes).

Not always.

Merlin, the issue was not about whether mucus can be called a material. It was about Rand's claim that every material exists only in the form of specific entities. She needed that idea (see ITOE, p. 16) to keep up her 'measurements ommitted' stuff with uncountables.

Oh, do you deny that a drop of water or ocean of water is an entity? Do you deny that mucus is comprised of molecules and atoms, which are entities?

She needed that idea (see ITOE, p. 16) to keep up her 'measurements ommitted' stuff with uncountables.

Hogwash. Her "measurements omitted" idea is not restricted to entities. Like I've already said, her primary example, length, is not an entity. You are mangling Rand's words again. "Countable" and "uncountable" do not even appear in ITOE.

[Philip Coates]

> The irrationalists aren't going to be stopped by [iTOE] for generally irrationality is willful and a lot easier than rationality too boot.

Good point, Brant. You can be very perceptive sometimes when you don't post at 3 AM.

[BaalChatzaf]

Exactly how many equations are required for you to take a book seriously? Is there a minimum number?

If there is one equation and that equation is the Einstein Field Equation I will give the book a second look.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[tjohnson]

Definitions are used to identify concepts. If the definition does not match the concept then one might say it is incorrect or false. This is all Rand is saying, IMO.

[Dragonfly]

Definitions are used to identify concepts. If the definition does not match the concept then one might say it is incorrect or false. This is all Rand is saying, IMO.

Does not match what concept? You'll have to define that concept first, so you're back to square one. One definition may be more practical than another one, but as long as a definition is not contradictory in itself, there is no "incorrect" definition. That a definition may not correspond to something in real life is not relevant, you can very well define gnomes, unicorns and circles.

[Xray]

If some thing's wrong with ITOE just ID and correct it. It will still be Objectivism--no?

Not with the premises corrected.

You would think Xray would want to improve ITOE, not toss it in the trash. That's, however, not the feeling I get. So, ray-gun gal, if IYHO ITOE was corrected in its flaws would you find value there? And if you would what would that be?

There would be no point in improving the book ITOE since it would imply correcting Objectivism's premises themselves. But if the O'ism's premises were corrected, they would of course no longer be 'Objectivist' premises ...

I would not toss ITOE in the trash though, nor any of Rand's works, for they offer plenty of material for analysis. It was actually ITOE which got me interested in epistemology and made me aware of the huge challenges this basic part of philosophy is facing today in view of the rapid developments in science. Which philosopher can answer today epistemology's traditional key question "What can I know?" without possessing substantial and detailed knowledge in disciplines like neuroscience, biology, psychology, physics, etc.? Imo the role of the 'philosopher' in that field will be taken over more and more by experts in those sciences.

Regarding your question pertaining to the finding of "value": I have found a lot of value in books written about Ayn Rand. B. Branden's biography of AR is one of the most moving, compelling books I have read in my life.

I have just started reading Jennifer Burns's 'Goddess of the Market', and have the feeling that I'm holding yet another masterpiece in my hands. Meticulously researched and documented, it satisfies the demands of the most acribic scholar, and in addition, it is also beautifully written! These things don't often go together, but Burns seems to have accomplished it.

When thinking about Ayn Rand - imo no one who has studied her work and life story will remain indifferent in his/her attitude toward this polarizing figure.

Edited August 8, 2010 by Xray

[Brant Gaede]

If a philosophy is based on reality and reason, Xray, how is it going to be knocked off its foundation by anyone's work in epistemology?

--Brant

begs a question

[Dragonfly]

If a philosophy is based on reality and reason, Xray, how is it going to be knocked off its foundation by anyone's work in epistemology?

If.

[Xray]

If a philosophy is based on reality and reason, Xray, how is it going to be knocked off its foundation by anyone's work in epistemology?

If.

So true: If.

Question to Objectivists: what specifically do you consider as evidence supporting the claim that Objectivism is "based on reality and reason"?

I also have a lot of questions pertaining to so-called "objective" reality.

I'll start with a simple example: Imagine a human individual sniffing at a piece of paper and smelling nothing specific. When you let a dog sniff at the same paper, the dog will recognize smells a human nose can't detect. Whose perception of "reality" here is (more) "objective" - the human's or the dog's?

Edited August 8, 2010 by Xray

[Brant Gaede]

If a philosophy is based on reality and reason, Xray, how is it going to be knocked off its foundation by anyone's work in epistemology?

If.

So true: If.

Question to Objectivists: what specifically do you consider as evidence supporting the claim that Objectivism is "based on reality and reason"?

I also have a lot of questions pertaining to so-called "objective" reality.

I'll start with a simple example: Imagine a human individual sniffing at a piece of paper and smelling nothing specific. When you let a dog sniff at the same paper, the dog will recognize smells a human nose can't detect. Whose perception of "reality" here is (more) "objective" - the human's or the dog's?

It says it is and I've always taken it at its word. So by the very essential nature of the philosophy dogma must be excluded as not congruent with Objectivism, notwithstanding the abundance of dogmatic Objectivists.

Most people don't understand how simple the philosophy really is. It is not the catechism.

I don't understand your question. Dogs don't have a philosophy. "Objective reality" is merely reality rationally identified and understood.

--Brant

Edited August 8, 2010 by Brant Gaede

[tjohnson]

Definitions are used to identify concepts. If the definition does not match the concept then one might say it is incorrect or false. This is all Rand is saying, IMO.

Does not match what concept? You'll have to define that concept first, so you're back to square one. One definition may be more practical than another one, but as long as a definition is not contradictory in itself, there is no "incorrect" definition. That a definition may not correspond to something in real life is not relevant, you can very well define gnomes, unicorns and circles.

You can't define a concept, you can only imagine it. If I imagine a horse, but define 'horse' as a cow then it is an incorrect definition.

[Dragonfly]

You can't define a concept, you can only imagine it. If I imagine a horse, but define 'horse' as a cow then it is an incorrect definition.

What you imagine is irrelevant. Nobody can know what you're imagining, people can only judge what you define on its own terms. You might for example give a generally accepted definition of a horse, while you're imagining a cow or a unicorn. Your definition might also be unconventional, i.e. you define a horse with the attributes of a cow, which would be impractical due to communication difficulties, but it wouldn't be incorrect, you'd only choose a different and possibly confusing term. In general it's advisable to use generally accepted definitions to avoid communication problems, but sometimes a new and different definition may be useful, as long as you clearly state what your new definition is and why you use it.

[George H. Smith]

George,

You write:

The claim that God is unknowable has been a mainstream Christian doctrine for many centuries. And one cannot form a concept of something that is unknowable; if one could, it would not be unknowable.

I think it depends on what you mean by "unknowable." As I read the Christian tradition, Christian theologians believe that God may be known, but not exhaustively. For example, Calvinist John Frame writes in The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God that:

That means that in knowing God, as in any other aspects of human life, we are subject to God's control and authority confronted with his inevitable presence. As we learned in out discussion of God's incomprehensibility, we dare not aspire to the kind of knowledge that God has of himself; we must be satisfied with the kind of knowledge that a servant has of his lord . . . .

Or Catholic Jean Danielou in God and the Ways of Knowing:

Through these works, the living God reveals His method of action, His customs. It is through these that we are able to know Him.

These are the first two books I grabbed off my shelf.

-Neil Parille

I think you will find that most Christian theologians, including the ones you cited, maintain that we cannot know God's nature conceptually -- and that was the point I was addressing. Even Aquinas, who was very clear about God's unknowability, argued that we can get some notion of God, however imperfect, via analogical reasoning. Christian mystics believed that we can directly experience God, while not comprehending the nature of our experience, through various programs of discipline and training.

Other methods have also been proposed, but natural reason has almost always been regarded by Christians as an inadequate instrument by which we can know God. Hence the extreme importance of revelation, such as the Bible and miracles, in Christianity. It is from divine revelation that our chief knowledge of God is derived.

For example, in one of the passages you quoted, the Calvinist John Frame says that God is "incomprehensible" so we can know him only as a servant knows his lord. By this he means that we "are subject to God's control and authority." This is a typical Calvinist line. (Calvin insisted that God is an inscrutable mystery.) It means that we must consult the Bible to know what God demands of us, and then we must obey unconditionally.

Ghs

[tjohnson]

You can't define a concept, you can only imagine it. If I imagine a horse, but define 'horse' as a cow then it is an incorrect definition.

What you imagine is irrelevant. Nobody can know what you're imagining, people can only judge what you define on its own terms. You might for example give a generally accepted definition of a horse, while you're imagining a cow or a unicorn. Your definition might also be unconventional, i.e. you define a horse with the attributes of a cow, which would be impractical due to communication difficulties, but it wouldn't be incorrect, you'd only choose a different and possibly confusing term. In general it's advisable to use generally accepted definitions to avoid communication problems, but sometimes a new and different definition may be useful, as long as you clearly state what your new definition is and why you use it.

Like I said in another post, if I observe a class of animals with 3 legs, yet a describe (define) them as having 4, then that is incorrect. If my definition does not match I am imagining/conceiving then this is what I imagine Rand is talking about with respect to definitions. I don't at present, however, understand the part about the essential characteristic that makes all the others (or the greatest possible number) possible.

[Daniel Barnes]

Definitions are used to identify concepts. If the definition does not match the concept then one might say it is incorrect or false. This is all Rand is saying, IMO.

Does not match what concept? You'll have to define that concept first, so you're back to square one. One definition may be more practical than another one, but as long as a definition is not contradictory in itself, there is no "incorrect" definition. That a definition may not correspond to something in real life is not relevant, you can very well define gnomes, unicorns and circles.

What Dragonfly said.

[Ellen Stuttle]

Definitions are used to identify concepts. If the definition does not match the concept then one might say it is incorrect or false. This is all Rand is saying, IMO.

You can't define a concept, you can only imagine it. If I imagine a horse, but define 'horse' as a cow then it is an incorrect definition.

You seem to be understanding the issue of incorrect or false definitions. However, you still think of concepts as being images, which isn't what Rand meant by "concept." By the concept of something she meant all knowledge, known or yet to be known, of all aspects of that type of something. She meant an open-ended category into which each further example and all further learning about that category would go. She analogized a concept to a file-folder into which is collected papers relevant to a particular category (say, e.g., household expenses).

Another way one might think of it is more like a nested set of buckets, with the largest bucket being "existents," every kind of anything, and then smaller buckets for "entities," "attributes," etc., then buckets within those, with progressively finer levels of distinguishing characteristics.

The way I actually think of conceptual hierarchies is in terms of the biological classification system, borrowing the image of evolutionary "tree." I started thinking by reference to this image before I ever learned that Ayn Rand had named her philosophy "Objectivism" and that courses were being taught on (and by then there was a newsletter about) "Objectivism." I'd read Atlas Shrugged starting in June '61, just after my freshman year of college; then I read it again, carefully studying its structure, the following summer, but Atlas was the extent of my acquaintance with Rand's philosophy.

I was a psychology major, and I was already troubled by difficulties "integrating" things in the field of psychology because of the way definitions were employed. There would often be definitions specific to some particular study or group of studies -- e.g., "we shall define personality as X set of measures on Y tests." Then another researcher would use a different "operational definition," etc. The result was that it was impossible to add anything up. There wasn't any body of knowledge about *this* concept, or *that* concept, with there being insufficient comparability from study set to study set. So I was feeling increasingly distressed by this situation.

Then, first quarter of my Junior year, along with a couple psych courses, I took a course in anthropology and one in sociology. I loved the anthropology course because of the professor -- Melville Herskovits, a brilliant man of 19th-century style intellect. The sociology course was another story. But even with my being enthralled by Herskovits' lectures, I grew more and more troubled because here were two whole areas -- anthropology and sociology -- where terminology overlapping psychology's terminology was being used, but in ways which I felt just created an Augean Stable muck of language that needed to be cleaned up and put into order so as to enable comparisons from here to there to there. I saw no way to trace intelligible paths through all of it, no overarching conceptual framework in which one could get bearings.

I contrasted this to the situation in the physical sciences, where you could arrange elements systematically on the periodic table, for instance. But it seemed to me that the best sort of schema to use for the subject matter would be something similar to the biological classification scheme. And then I began to think that that scheme was a good visual model for how all concepts should fit together -- the large, all-inclusive category (living organism in the case of biology; every type of everything for the whole realm of concepts), subdivided into smaller and smaller sub-lineages Only with the total set of concepts, one needs cross-connections from category to category, not just increasingly finely divided "branches."

The general biological-classification image, though, is what I took as my "prototype" ideal of conceptual hierarchy. Thus, when I read ITOE -- as it came out in serial form, starting about four years later -- Rand had no trouble selling me on her basic way of going about thinking of "concepts."

I saw nothing odd, or even problematic, in the connected ideas:

1) that it's necessary to accurate thought to have one's concepts clearly formed and clearly interrelated; and

2) that definitions are how you keep track of where you're placing concepts in the over-all system, just as the species and genus identifications are how you keep track of where an organism fits in the biological classification scheme.

What I do find odd is that people who are steeped in the hard sciences, such as Dragonfly and Ba'al, would buy the idea that there are no such things as correct definitions. This while both of them say strenuously on another thread, "Einstein Method, Rand Misunderstanding," that we have no reason to believe that "light" (electromagnetic radiation) travels as waves via a mechanical ether.

Ok, DF and Ba'al, so, suppose someone defines "light" as "waves which travel via a mechanical ether." Are you going to say that this definition isn't incorrect? Or would you see the light in regard to the possibility of a definition's being factually false regarding the phenomenon being defined?

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Does not match what concept? You'll have to define that concept first, so you're back to square one. One definition may be more practical than another one, but as long as a definition is not contradictory in itself, there is no "incorrect" definition. That a definition may not correspond to something in real life is not relevant, you can very well define gnomes, unicorns and circles.

See the last two paragraphs of my post above re an "incorrect" definition. I'll repeat part of the last paragraph. Suppose someone defines "light" as "waves which travel via a mechanical ether." Are you going to say that this definition isn't incorrect?

Regarding your claim that one first has to define a concept to have a concept, here's a story of one child beginning to acquire concepts.

Many years ago, almost 30, I was visiting my brother in Peoria on the occasion of his graduation from college. One of my sisters was also staying at my brother's house along with her daughter, my niece Dawn. Dawn was just at the stage so dramatically depicted in "The Miracle Worker," the stage of getting the idea that every type of something can be given a name. (Helen Keller only reached that stage belatedly, and only with the assistance of heroic efforts on the part of a dedicated teacher. Dawn, having normal sensory faculties, was on schedule in normal child development.)

Dawn was elatedly excited with realizing that every type of thing can be named. She was going about the house, pointing to this sort of item, then that, then that. As she pointed, she said a made-up word of her own which sounded to me like "Ents" (pronounced as if in "existents"). So she went around pointing to item-type after item-type, saying as she did so, "Ents. Ents. Ents." I translated this as meaning, in an adult sentence, "That thing needs a name, and that thing, and that thing..." It was like she was making a list which could be titled "Things to be named," and then as she acquired the name for each of the things, checking it off the list.

She didn't have identifications beyond "that sort" for any of the categories of types she was forming. She didn't remotely have the vocabulary to give definitions. Definitions came later, with a lot more words acquired and the ability to relate category types to one another, to place particular categories in a framework of categories.

If we had to define first before acquiring beginning-level concepts, how would we ever acquire concepts?

At later stages, when we've learned a lot more than Dawn knew, we might acquire new concepts by means of their definitions. For instance if we're learning the language of a technical field, we might consult a glossary of terms and learn what some of the concepts are by reading the definitions. (Some of the concepts we'd probably have known before, at least vaguely, but learning a formal definition can sharpen understanding, if it's a well-phrased definition.) Or if we hear or read a new word, we might ask for a definition ("What does that mean?") or look the word up in a dictionary.

If a person is trying to form a new concept, however, the person doesn't have a definition first, instead a vague general delineation of the sort of phenomenon needing to be defined.

Ellen

Edited August 9, 2010 by Ellen Stuttle