Award for Kindness

[Mindy Newton]

Perception integrates, yes. Experience is perceptual, yes. None of that means we have innate forms which we impose on sensory data. That is the issue.

Mindy,

Isn't the very act of integration, which is an innate capability, such an imposition on sensory data?

So what is your criteria to say that one is innate and another is not, when evidence of both is repeatedly observed and measured?

I see you making declarations, but that is not a good criterion, at least a simple declaration does not meet my own standard of knowledge.

Rand did this a lot, i.e., "man's needs are..." or "sensations, as such, are not retained in man's memory..." etc., and this habit is one of the weakest parts of her arguments. She basically says something is so because she says it is so. (Often she was right, but that is not what I am discussing, which is her method of discourse.) These kinds of declarations are premises I used to accept—on faith, in fact, since I used to believe there was something I was missing that would be explained later in the literature. But it isn't. Now I check any and all premises when I perceive a clunker.

It's my mind for me, now, not anyone else's. Nowadays I need more than simple statements to become convinced by anything.

Michael

Innate capabilities are not innate ideas. Integration of sensory data does not falsify it. As to the latter, it might help to note that some integration is a logical necessity. Everything impinging on a nerve within the briefest time you want to specify is integrated into one signal.

I would like to defend Rand against that allegation separately.

As to being convinced, it was you who asserted a characterization, and thus who bears the onus of supporting it. I am arguing that you have not met that burden.

= Mindy

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Mindy,

There is no reason to defend or attack Rand right now. Many things she got right and some things she got wrong. But this has nothing to do with the ideas.

I used to believe in the tabula rasa view, which is the one you express, but I saw clearly one day that one big honking element was left out: the growth cycle.

Growth does not come from experience. It is innate. And everything that comes with growth is innate. The tree's future with leaves, branches and fruit, is already present in the acorn and needs no experience to develop along that path. A tree will never grow into an elephant through experience. In fact, I call that the innate part.

The impact of experience will either stop its development cold (and it dies) at one end, or result in it fully developing its strongest potential on the other end. Even this potential has an innate limitation in that it surges, then peaks, then withers over time. Experience does not account for that template, to use Dragonfly's term. That development template is innate.

In human terms, we do not develop language through experience alone. We mature. We don't need to learn how to develop a language. We just need to wait for the maturing time and it will come all by itself. We can refine that innate knowledge that develops on its own with experience, and expand it exponentially, but we do not replace a maturing capacity with experience.

A one-month old infant cannot develop a language no matter what its experience is, and, presuming it is essentially healthy, a five-year old child cannot not have developed a language no matter what its experience is. No one teaches the child how to do the first steps. He just knows after a certain time. Even Tarzan developed a language (to use a fictional example), but no one taught him how to. He simply knew and started doing it. That's the point when experience kicked in. Not before.

Now if we imagine that the mind has no innate growth nature, that it will only grow with experience and all the knowledge it acquires arises solely from experience, you get the tabula rasa view. You just pour experience into it and push the start button and it works.

From what I observe, this is true for one part, but not for the other. A good portion of the mind works on autopilot and the pilot's name is "law of identity" with the growth cycle included, not just a frozen-in-time perspective.

Michael

[Mindy Newton]

Mindy,

There is no reason to defend or attack Rand right now. Many things she got right and some things she got wrong. But this has nothing to do with the ideas.

I used to believe in the tabula rasa view, which is the one you express, but I saw clearly one day that one big honking element was left out: the growth cycle.

Growth does not come from experience. It is innate. And everything that comes with growth is innate. The tree's future with leaves, branches and fruit, is already present in the acorn and needs no experience to develop along that path. A tree will never grow into an elephant through experience. In fact, I call that the innate part.

The impact of experience will either stop its development cold (and it dies) at one end, or result in it fully developing its strongest potential on the other end. Even this potential has an innate limitation in that it surges, then peaks, then withers over time. Experience does not account for that template, to use Dragonfly's term. That development template is innate.

In human terms, we do not develop language through experience alone. We mature. We don't need to learn how to develop a language. We just need to wait for the maturing time and it will come all by itself. We can refine that innate knowledge that develops on its own with experience, and expand it exponentially, but we do not replace a maturing capacity with experience.

A one-month old infant cannot develop a language no matter what its experience is, and, presuming it is essentially healthy, a five-year old child cannot not have developed a language no matter what its experience is. No one teaches the child how to do the first steps. He just knows after a certain time. Even Tarzan developed a language (to use a fictional example), but no one taught him how to. He simply knew and started doing it. That's the point when experience kicked in. Not before.

Now if we imagine that the mind has no innate growth nature, that it will only grow with experience and all the knowledge it acquires arises solely from experience, you get the tabula rasa view. You just pour experience into it and push the start button and it works.

From what I observe, this is true for one part, but not for the other. A good portion of the mind works on autopilot and the pilot's name is "law of identity" with the growth cycle included, not just a frozen-in-time perspective.

Michael

There is a reason to defend a value if one sees it attacked.

Growth isn't the issue, Michael. Nature isn't the issue. The structures and growth dictated by DNA are not innate content. The ability to learn a language is not innate content. If we do not stay focused on the original point, all our discussion so far will be wasted.

= Mindy

Edited October 12, 2008 by Mindy

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

There is a reason to defend a value if one sees it attacked.

Mindy,

I don't know what value you hold for dogmatic statements, but that is what I was objecting to. I object to statement in lieu of fact regardless of who claims it. In the case of Rand, she makes a few, calls them "premises" and builds from there. (Not all her premises are dogmatic, but a few are.)

If you don't think Rand did that, bring it on. I am interested to see where she backed up her more dogmatic statements, like the one I cited about sensations not being stored in memory (and that is merely one out of others). I have read her extensively and I have found practically no discussion of this particular subject by Rand other then dogmatic claims presented as if they were facts, then reasoning developed over top of them.

I personally see no attack in this. But I go from the premise of correct identification in first place, then everything else. I check premises of the concepts I use. I do not defend Rand in first place, then try to make it all fit. I build my normative abstractions from cognitive ones, not the reverse.

Frankly, if you want top talk about defending Rand, I believe I have done more to do that with protesting against the boneheaded methodology by Valliant in dealing with her intimate affairs than most people who claim to defend her. At least a lie about her will not be presented to the world as fact without serious investigation and objection. Rand deserves to be presented truthfully to the public and not in a distorted manner, principally when her own writing is presented.

The ability to learn a language is not innate content.

Please define ability and define content.

I realize that growth is not the issue in your position (which comes from Rand whole from what I have read so far). But growth of ability is totally ignored as an epistemological issue in that position. There are a few speculations by Rand in ITOE about how an infant first integrates concepts, but she treats the issue not as organic growth, instead as merely the mind needing to learn and catch up, so to speak. In other words, from her treatment, if an infant has had the proper experience, it's mind would be able to handle complex concepts with no problem. The only real problem (in that view) is experience and getting the new equipment (the mind) properly primed. Rand does not treat the infant's lack of conceptual ability at that stage as the mind not being biologically ready to act yet. There is precious little discussion of biological maturity of ability in her writing and outright denial at times when she discusses talent.

She also dealt with growth a bit in The Comprachicos, but she dealt more with indoctrination and education than maturing biological mental ability.

That is a premise I have checked in Objectivism and found wanting. But my conclusion is not that Objectivism is flat-out wrong. I see a problem of scope. The part that is right is right. (Experience does provide content for the mind, for example.) It does not tell the whole story, though. Some content develops innately just as surely as a tree branch grows from a seed. (Left-handed and right-handed are other examples. This can be overridden by training, but if left unchecked, it will develop on its own without specific learning to be that way.)

On examining this issue in another light, I see no reason to believe that the mind is not organic. I believe that it is organic. This means that, like all organic things, it gets born, it grows and gets bigger and more complex and develops new parts as it matures, then it withers after peaking and finally dies over time (if no disease or accident cuts its existence short).

Trying to imagine that the mind does not go through these phases (i.e., that it is not organic) in my present view is nothing short of claiming that there is a soul similar to the one presented in most religions that ties the mind to the body. I can't go there without some kind of evidence. My observations and readings contradict this.

(How to work with this and strengthen the mind in old age is another issue—a related one, but beside the point on the premise level. Either the mind is life and emerges from life and is intimately connected with it, or it is a thing set apart from the rest of existence that obeys a different set of natural laws. Hmmm... that almost sounds like Kant's starting point... )

Inductively, I cannot claim that the mind is life, but contradicts some fundamental parts of life without experiments and testing to confirm such a speculation. I have seen none so far.

Michael

[Mindy Newton]

There is a reason to defend a value if one sees it attacked.

Mindy,

I don't know what value you hold for dogmatic statements, but that is what I was objecting to. I object to statement in lieu of fact regardless of who claims it. In the case of Rand, she makes a few, calls them "premises" and builds from there. (Not all her premises are dogmatic, but a few are.)

If you don't think Rand did that, bring it on. I am interested to see where she backed up her more dogmatic statements, like the one I cited about sensations not being stored in memory (and that is merely one out of others). I have read her extensively and I have found practically no discussion of this particular subject by Rand other then dogmatic claims presented as if they were facts, then reasoning developed over top of them.

I personally see no attack in this. But I go from the premise of correct identification in first place, then everything else. I check premises of the concepts I use. I do not defend Rand in first place, then try to make it all fit. I build my normative abstractions from cognitive ones, not the reverse.

Frankly, if you want top talk about defending Rand, I believe I have done more to do that with protesting against the boneheaded methodology by Valliant in dealing with her intimate affairs than most people who claim to defend her. At least a lie about her will not be presented to the world as fact without serious investigation and objection. Rand deserves to be presented truthfully to the public and not in a distorted manner, principally when her own writing is presented.

The ability to learn a language is not innate content.

Please define ability and define content.

I realize that growth is not the issue in your position (which comes from Rand whole from what I have read so far). But growth of ability is totally ignored as an epistemological issue in that position. There are a few speculations by Rand in ITOE about how an infant first integrates concepts, but she treats the issue not as organic growth, instead as merely the mind needing to learn and catch up, so to speak. In other words, from her treatment, if an infant has had the proper experience, it's mind would be able to handle complex concepts with no problem. The only real problem (in that view) is experience and getting the new equipment (the mind) properly primed. Rand does not treat the infant's lack of conceptual ability at that stage as the mind not being biologically ready to act yet. There is precious little discussion of biological maturity of ability in her writing and outright denial at times when she discusses talent.

She also dealt with growth a bit in The Comprachicos, but she dealt more with indoctrination and education than maturing biological mental ability.

That is a premise I have checked in Objectivism and found wanting. But my conclusion is not that Objectivism is flat-out wrong. I see a problem of scope. The part that is right is right. (Experience does provide content for the mind, for example.) It does not tell the whole story, though. Some content develops innately just as surely as a tree branch grows from a seed. (Left-handed and right-handed are other examples. This can be overridden by training, but if left unchecked, it will develop on its own without specific learning to be that way.)

On examining this issue in another light, I see no reason to believe that the mind is not organic. I believe that it is organic. This means that, like all organic things, it gets born, it grows and gets bigger and more complex and develops new parts as it matures, then it withers after peaking and finally dies over time (if no disease or accident cuts its existence short).

Trying to imagine that the mind does not go through these phases (i.e., that it is not organic) in my present view is nothing short of claiming that there is a soul similar to the one presented in most religions that ties the mind to the body. I can't go there without some kind of evidence. My observations and readings contradict this.

(How to work with this and strengthen the mind in old age is another issue—a related one, but beside the point on the premise level. Either the mind is life and emerges from life and is intimately connected with it, or it is a thing set apart from the rest of existence that obeys a different set of natural laws. Hmmm... that almost sounds like Kant's starting point... )

Inductively, I cannot claim that the mind is life, but contradicts some fundamental parts of life without experiments and testing to confirm such a speculation. I have seen none so far.

Michael

Define "ability" and "content?" I use the standard dictionary definitions, and I believe we both have been doing so for some time, no?

Itchiness is a content, green and red are also, the sights, sounds, feels, etc. that experience consists in, and then the memories, general ideas, plans, thoughts, etc. are contents. Having two eyes is not content. Biological growth is not content. Biological changes such as reproduction and aging are not content. Yes, the mind goes through phases of growth. To do so is not having innate content.

= Mindy

[Brant Gaede]

Define "ability" and "content?" I use the standard dictionary definitions, and I believe we both have been doing so for some time, no?

Itchiness is a content, green and red are also, the sights, sounds, feels, etc. that experience consists in, and then the memories, general ideas, plans, thoughts, etc. are contents. Having two eyes is not content. Biological growth is not content. Biological changes such as reproduction and aging are not content. Yes, the mind goes through phases of growth. To do so is not having innate content.

I submit that there is a very fine--maybe too fine--a line between brain structure and brain content. A baby's acquisition of both mental structure and content is so powerful and continually on-going so as to almost make your position abstractly academic and of little value in the nature of its focus. For me this is like an arcane epistemological discussion when I already know the brain is there to figure things out for the sake of right actions. If the "right actions" lead to the wrong results I then become very interested in how I screwed up: Tell me, Dr. Epistemology!

Once the structure of the human brain matures it still of course, acquires more content. Desire for knowledge accelerated by expanding structure of the brain is replaced by only the desire, I do speculate, as a profound kind of mental habit and inertia.

--Brant

Edited October 12, 2008 by Brant Gaede

[Brant Gaede]

For me this is like an arcane epistemological discussion when I already know the brain is there to figure things out for the sake of right actions. If the "right actions" lead to the wrong results I then become very interested in how I screwed up: Tell me, Dr. Epistemology!

Mindy. I'm sorry I wrote this! I got carried away. It was cowardly sexism on my part in that, as has been pointed out to me off list, I don't let myself go like this with the male posters. I probably owe you more than this apology.

--Brant

[Mindy Newton]

For me this is like an arcane epistemological discussion when I already know the brain is there to figure things out for the sake of right actions. If the "right actions" lead to the wrong results I then become very interested in how I screwed up: Tell me, Dr. Epistemology!

Mindy. I'm sorry I wrote this! I got carried away. It was cowardly sexism on my part in that, as has been pointed out to me off list, I don't let myself go like this with the male posters. I probably owe you more than this apology.

--Brant

Not a problem. But the significance of this issue couldn't be greater! It is parallel with Kant's starting place, as I mentioned before. For the efficacy of the mind, it is absolutely crucial.

= Mindy

[Mindy Newton]

For me this is like an arcane epistemological discussion when I already know the brain is there to figure things out for the sake of right actions. If the "right actions" lead to the wrong results I then become very interested in how I screwed up: Tell me, Dr. Epistemology!

Mindy. I'm sorry I wrote this! I got carried away. It was cowardly sexism on my part in that, as has been pointed out to me off list, I don't let myself go like this with the male posters. I probably owe you more than this apology.

--Brant

Not a problem. But the significance of this issue couldn't be greater! It is parallel with Kant's starting place, as I mentioned before. For the efficacy of the mind, it is absolutely crucial.

= Mindy

It's about twenty minutes later than my last post, and I find myself thinking that I've worn out my welcome here.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

The ability to learn a language is not innate content.

Please define ability and define content.

Define "ability" and "content?" I use the standard dictionary definitions, and I believe we both have been doing so for some time, no?

Mindy,

Let's start with ability:

a·bil·i·ty (-bl-t)

n. pl. a·bil·i·ties

1. The quality of being able to do something, especially the physical, mental, financial, or legal power to accomplish something.

2. A natural or acquired skill or talent.

3. The quality of being suitable for or receptive to a specified treatment; capacity: the ability of a computer to be configured for use as a file server..

Definition 1. Defining ability as "the quality of being able" is too much tautology to be useful.

Definition 2. You stated "ability to learn a language is not innate content." According to this definition, is a skill or talent content? If not, how can it be learned? Who teaches it? Then there is the problem of being natural or acquired. Why would a dictionary include both natural (innate) and acquired on the same word if it meant something different in each case? In other words, if a "natural skill or talent" is not innate content, when it becomes acquired, what is it if not mental content? I see "mental content" in genus terms and "skill or talent" in differentia terms. (For the recored, there is also a physical component, but that is not germane to this point since it depends on the mental.) I would never consider a skill or talent as anything but mental content as this would contradict the conceptual hierarchy. Since you do (if you accept this definition), this is why I have asked you for your definition. To be clear, within the confines of this definition, a "skill or talent" that is not mental content would be an example of the stolen concept fallacy.

Definition 3. This is a passive state. If this definition is used, then the "ability to learn a language" is an innate receptivity to having content poured into it which will result in language. Now here is the clincher with this one. Who or what does the pouring so that it turns into that specific form of content? If you say "prewired," that prewiring (receptivity) emerges over time. It is not present in a newborn. If something like such capacity is not present, then becomes present later, yet we are talking about the same mind, that is mental content that emerges innately.

This is a pretty standard definition of ability, yet I do not see it serving well as a premise for your position. In fact, I see the standard definition practically presuming that both innate (natural) and learned (acquired) mental content exist.

I don't have time to do content right now, but I will get to it.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

It's about twenty minutes later than my last post, and I find myself thinking that I've worn out my welcome here.

Mindy,

Not from my end. I enjoy your posts. Disagreement is not hostility.

As you can tell, I am deadly serious about checking premises, but that is not attacking anyone.

Michael