John McCaskey on Implicit Concepts

[Robert Campbell]

Part of John McCaskey's critique of Harriman/Peikoff on the history and philosophy of science has been unfolding for the last few days at NoodleFood. Since most participants here are not allowed to comment over there, I've taken the liberty of rerunning Dr. McCaskey's posts in sequence:

http://blog.dianahsieh.com/2010/10/open-thread-on-induction.html#comment-88984360

I wonder if some of my difference with Dave Harriman is terminological.

I don't think you have a fully formed concept until you have an associated word. So if Newton doesn't have a word for (what we call) inertia or velocity or acceleration, then I'd say Newton doesn't have the concept. I wonder if Harriman uses "concept" in a looser sense, where I might use "idea" or "thought." (I don't remember if Ayn Rand has a specific term for an integration that does not yet have the unity that comes with connection to a word.)

I always assumed Harriman used "concept" in the narrower sense and so have long found the apparent lack of a term for, say, inertia or vector acceleration in Newton to be an inconsistency in Harriman's historical accounts. But if he's using "concept" more loosely, then maybe some of that inconsistency vanishes.

Maybe these fall under fact-gathering: Does Harriman mean "concept" in the strict sense? Does Newton really not have a word for inertia, vector acceleration, etc.? Certainly Newtonians of the following generations did, but am I really right that Newton himself did not? And if Newton didn't have the word, then for Harriman's purposes is it still OK to say Newton had the concept?

http://blog.dianahsieh.com/2010/10/open-thread-on-induction.html#comment-89465348

Stoddard wrote "unitary linguistic representation." Francis Bacon called it a "token." I like that. It can be a hieroglyph, an ideogram, a word, or a very short phrase, as long as (as Ayn Rand stresses) it is perceptual and is cognitively manipulated as a unit.

Here is an interesting case: Newton insisted that everything has an inherent force ("vis insita") that is proportional to its mass; he preferred to call it "vis inertiae" -- the force of inertness, the force that keeps action unchanged; it was used at the time to cite the habitual behavior of people. For Newton it was definitely a force and there could be more or less of it -- both anathema to "classical Newtonian" physics as we know it.

Here is the interesting part: As the utter dissimilarity between this force and any others became increasingly clear, the phrase, "vis inertiae," IN LATIN, got used as a unit in ENGLISH texts. In the 18th century, you'll find passages like this: "Newton begins the Principia with definitions of centripetal force, impressed force, and vis inertiae."

The foreign language phrase was functioning as a unit, with the association to "force" slipping away. Then the phrase got turned into its own native standalone word, Anglicized as "inertia," and inertia was no longer conceptualized as a species of force.

That inertia is NOT a force is now one of the elementary things we teach in grade-school Newtonian physics.

http://blog.dianahsieh.com/2010/10/open-thread-on-induction.html#comment-89468392

Could anyone explain the following passage in The Logical Leap? It has me stumped. (It was the last one I asked Harriman about before he stopped replying.)

On pages 131, Harriman says Newton INFERRED the nature of solar force from Kepler's laws. The next two pages summarize the steps in that inference. All the steps appear to be arithmetic or geometric operations (possibly informed by concepts Newton had that Kepler didn't), that is, to be operations we normally think of as mathematical deductions.

Then, on page 133, Harriman summarizes what he has just recounted, but this time says he's shown how Newton INDUCED the nature of solar force from Kepler's laws.

This seems to say that INDUCTION is (or was in this case) CONCEPT-FORMATION followed by some DEDUCTION. Am I reading that correctly? It sounds weird.

http://blog.dianahsieh.com/2010/10/open-thread-on-induction.html#comment-89714897

William and Adrhester: Thanks for all this!

So mapping Ayn Rand's simplified statement over to this more technical vocabulary, we'd say some cognitive product is not yet a concept until it has been lexicalized, that is, until it has been given a lexeme; is that right?

Is there a term (in linguistics or in Objectivism) for a mental integration that has not yet been lexicalized?

Tony W said "implicit concept" but I don't think that's right. An "implicit concept" is a special concept, an axiomatic concept, grasped perceptually, etc., like "unit" or "existent."

I'm talking instead about an idea on its way to being a concept, like "the amount of motion, in a certain direction, and proportional both to quantity of matter and to speed, and the result of a force, and lessened during collision, and always there with hard bodies but I'm not sure yet about gases" before it has become "momentum."

http://blog.dianahsieh.com/2010/10/open-thread-on-induction.html#comment-89748383

William, instead of trying to name the not-yet-concept (am I allowed to use "inchoate" here without people getting weirded out? "inchoate concept"?), can we first name the genus? Maybe an inchoate concept doesn't have a term, but it seems this genus must. How about "idea"?

I can say "I have in mind the idea of a ____" and I might hold in mind the object of the "of" as a word, a phrase, or a long description. The idea has some unity, but it may not yet be reducible to a perceptual lexeme. Still, to some extent, I can manipulate it as a unit.

I had a flash of understanding on this when I watched someone defend, amidst challengers, Harriman's claim that Newton had the "concept" of acceleration. This defender said, "Of course Newton had the concept of acceleration. He knew this and this and this and this and this." The guy gave a paragraph's worth of information about what Newton knew about what we now call acceleration.

The defender stopped and his case seemed pretty weighty. I thought: Yes, I have to admit it, Newton really did know all that stuff. But then another fellow in the conversation said, "Yes, and THAT is exactly the point. THAT was how Newton held it in his mind. He didn't have a word for all that. Whatever he had in mind, he didn't have a concept."

Oh right. He had a . . . what? An idea? A thought? Newton was a genius: he hadn't reduced it to a lexeme, but he could still hold that __idea_?__ and manipulate it as SOME sort of unit.

http://blog.dianahsieh.com/2010/10/open-thread-on-induction.html#comment-89897386

So what bearing, if any, does this have on induction and The Logical Leap?

Harriman does seem committed to the view (I'm less certain about Peikoff on this) that the process is linear. The scientist forms the concept and then induces a universal, general, certain, scientific law. And it does seem Harriman has to be committed to using "concept" in the canonical Objectivist way, that is, that an IDEA is not a CONCEPT until it has been lexicalized -- not until it has been given a word (or the functional equivalent, i.e., a lexeme).

I'm coming to believe that Harriman just didn't realize Galileo, Newton, et al. hadn't yet lexicalized some IDEAS we now treat as CONCEPTS. We say Newton had the CONCEPT acceleration or inertia or momentum, and in high school (Oh! -- "high school" -- a two-word lexeme, yes?) we teach "Newtonian" physics using those CONCEPTS. But lexicalizing those IDEAS actually came at the end, not the beginning, of Newton's discovery of the laws (in many cases not until after he died). And it's the same with many of the great discoveries -- historians struggle to find "circulation" in Harvey, "friction" in Galileo, etc.

But does this matter? Can't we just say it is valid IDEAS -- instead of valid CONCEPTS -- that are the green lights (or the warrants) for valid universal laws? But that seems to destroy Harriman's whole point. But, still, does an IDEA really need to be a CONCEPT for a scientist to sling it around as a unit and come up with general laws? But the laws do need to be expressed as propositions and (to draw on Bacon), "propositions consist of words, and words are the tokens of notions. And therefore if the very notions are badly or carelessly abstracted from things, and are vague and not well defined, and thus deficient in many ways, everything falls to pieces."

I'm back to being frustrated that Harriman did not constrast Dr. Peikoff's induction with induction as Harriman's chronicled scientists learned it. All the great scientists in that period from mid 16th to mid 19th centuries -- Copernicus, Galileo, Harvey, Boyle, the Scottish physicists, the French chemists, Faraday, Darwin, Maxwell -- all these guys learned that induction is the process by which you give an idea (a "notion") an unambiguous name and a clear definition.

A universal law, they were taught, will then fall out straightaway.

Robert Campbell

[sjw]

I think it is interesting how both Harriman and McCaskey both think it is a valid procedure to make epistemological pronouncements regarding how others come to conclusions, but don't tell us how they themselves do it.

If I were to write a book on induction, I wouldn't care about how Galileo or Newton or Rand seemed to do it, because if I were to write such a book, I would presume that I knew what I was talking about. And in so knowing, I suppose I might have some advice for all three characters, not primarily to say that any particular conclusion of theirs was wrong (although, indeed, each did make avoidable errors), but to give them ideas for how to reach them more efficiently and reliably.

The only point I see in studying Newton or Galileo or Rand in this context is to gather up some ideas to play an original theory against to make sure it's covering everything.

Of course, it's not politically-correct to claim to know how to think. It's better to point to dead people and claim to be copying their method.

[merjet]

Robert, thanks for posting. I have occasionally peeked at the dialog on Noodlefood.

There is an entire section on implicit concepts in the Appendix of ITOE2. I picked a couple of quotes that looked most relevant to the dialog.

An implicit concept is the stage of an integration when one is in the process of forming that integration and until it is completed. (ITOE2, p. 162)

And that's not all done instantaneously: it is a process. It is in that process that the future concept is implicit." (ibid)

[Robert Campbell]

Merlin,

I wrote about implicitness and Rand's epistemology here:

http://hubcap.clemson.edu/~campber/impliedepist.pdf

and, in greater depth, here:

http://hubcap.clemson.edu/~campber/goalsvalues.pdf

See particularly pp. 303-307 in the second article, on Rand's notion of the implicit as "available" but "not yet conceptualized," and pp. 308-309 on the baby and the chewable notepads.

Robert Campbell

PS. By Rand's criterion, Isaac Newton did not have an explicit concept of anything that he didn't have a word for, so John McCaskey appears to be understanding David Harriman correctly.

[sjw]

PS. By Rand's criterion, Isaac Newton did not have an explicit concept of anything that he didn't have a word for, so John McCaskey appears to be understanding David Harriman correctly.

Did Rand literally say "word", or something more along the lines of "audio-visual symbol of some kind, including phrases"? It's been a while since I read ITOE but I don't recall her saying something that off the wall.

Shayne

[Robert Campbell]

Shayne,

In the appendix to ITOE (I'm assuming, of course, that Peikoff and Binswanger didn't tamper with the passages in question) she insistents that you have to have a word to have an explicit concept.

Robert Campbell

[sjw]

Shayne,

In the appendix to ITOE (I'm assuming, of course, that Peikoff and Binswanger didn't tamper with the passages in question) she insistents that you have to have a word to have an explicit concept.

Robert Campbell

Isn't that a bit, well, nutty? This must have come up in some philosophical circles before. My personal thought is that I'm in charge of my own concept forming process, and if I want to designate it with a word, phrase, act, or anything else, then that's my prerogative.

Shayne

[merjet]

In comments on Noodlefood, McCaskey considers that maybe Harriman's use of "concept" included implicit concepts (link) and says that Newton used a Latin term "vis inertiae" for what is now called inertia (link).

Edited October 29, 2010 by Merlin Jetton

[Mike Renzulli]

No one is saying you aren't or shouldn't be in charge of the way you form concepts.

The devil is in the details as to how you do it. Besides, the manner in which you do doesn't mean you will be correct.

So if you do form concepts based on your own method don't be surprised if your technique mirror's Ms. Rand's. If not, I would like to know what your method is once you come up with it (if you have not done so already).

Also, if you follow your skepticism to its complete conclusions in developing your tecnique(s) be prepared to be mirred in empiricism.

Isn't that a bit, well, nutty? This must have come up in some philosophical circles before. My personal thought is that I'm in charge of my own concept forming process, and if I want to designate it with a word, phrase, act, or anything else, then that's my prerogative.

Shayne

Edited December 1, 2010 by Mike Renzulli

[Starbuckle]

"My personal thought is that I'm in charge of my own concept forming process, and if I want to designate it with a word, phrase, act, or anything else, then that's my prerogative."

How about hot fudge sundaes to designate and communicate concepts?

Rand's point is that the concept has to be represented by a concrete symbol so that it can be automatized and dealt with. What would be the efficiency or even viability of a conversation, or an internal thought process, that consisted only of "acts" without any symbols being invoked by those acts? If I'm a deaf person and hold my fingers in a certain way, I communicate a letter or word. What would the actions be that allowed to me to think and communicate with any facility but which did not involve any mental concretes?

Hellen Keller did not gain any ability to deal with the concept of "water" in virtue of the fact that she could pour water or fling water, or have her hand plunged in it. One cannot carry buckets of water around with one at all times just in case one might need to refer to water. She gained the ability to deal with the concept of "water" and with other concepts, including much more complex ones, because Anne Sullivan persisted in trying to relate what Keller could perceive to a method of retaining that perceptual awareness in conceptual form. Sullivan sought to convey to Keller what would constitute a consistent bridge between what Keller could perceive and how she could then conceptualize it. This bridge must be both perceptible and symbolic or representative. It has to be economical, it has to be mentally manipulable. The nature of the purpose imposes limits on what can serve as appropriate means.

"Acts" are not mentally manipulable. We might be able to convey a simple set of physical instructions that way, or remember them that way; but we can't translate a philosophical treatise into "acts" and understand it by watching the "acts" (or "pictures" that some philosophers speak of) play out in our minds. We need what every human group that has developed any culture and civilization at all uses: not grunts but words.

Edited December 2, 2010 by Starbuckle

[sjw]

"My personal thought is that I'm in charge of my own concept forming process, and if I want to designate it with a word, phrase, act, or anything else, then that's my prerogative."

How about hot fudge sundaes to designate and communicate concepts?

So your point is that I'm not in charge? That I must form and use concepts as you dictate? Epistemological fascism.

Note in spite of your ridiculous suggestion, I am not advocating using hot fudge sundaes. I am simply advocating epistemological individualism. If we took your argument and applied it to politics it would go something like this:

Me: I reserve the right to ingest whatever I want.

Starbuckle: How about nails? Do you want to consume nails as food?

Shayne

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I'm starting to check this premise. I do believe concepts represented by a word and based on measurement omission exist, but I am starting to understand the mechanics of the brain a bit (just enough to be dangerous ) to disagree with the notion that this is the whole shebang.

In terms of the brain, I think anything that creates a neural pathway in memory is already a concept--or at least the seed of one. I came across a very good analogy (it was in a book about the effects of the Internet on the brain, but I don't recall the name right now).

Imagine a layer of sand, then a trickle of water moving across it. The water will form a groove as it flows. In this analogy, the sand is the brain, the groove is the abstraction and the water is the referent or series of referents. As more water flows through the groove, the deeper it gets until it is as deep as a river, or even a canyon.

I have extended this analogy a bit. If you do not direct the construction of the groove, it will have all kinds of twists and turns through the terrain. But it will still be an integrated abstraction in the brain with an identifiable groove. Directed learning and/or directed concept formation makes us force the water through a straighter groove, so to speak.

(Here the analogy breaks down a bit because there are countless such grooves--all intertwining, enveloping, overlapping, etc.--involved in learning.)

When we come to word versus concept, I have never had difficulty understanding that they are different and complementary. But I have always had difficulty accepting that a concept is only complete when a word is attached.

For instance, here is merely one problem. If you take the abstraction of chair (an article of furniture with supports and a surface for humans to sit on), which of the following is the more valid "complete concept"? Chair or cadeira? The abstraction is this same, but the words come from different languages--English and Portuguese.

Or is there no such thing as a final valid concept?

Here's another. As a part-time poet, I am particularly sensitive to what I call the whispering from wordless abstractions--or words without abstractions--that attach themselves to the thought of the moment and in between the lines.

From what I have seen so far, any thought is actually fit to start a neural pathway. All it needs is intensity of thought or feeling or both--and intensity in this sense can include things like repetition, not just emotions or contrast. The neural pathway can be started with a word or with an abstraction. Not only with the abstraction first, as Rand insinuates.

The thing is that, once started, the neural pathway grows richer and deeper as more data--sensory or abstract--comes its way. And that sounds like it should be a concept to me--at least in a sense that includes biology.

Michael

[kiaer.ts]

Shayne,

In the appendix to ITOE (I'm assuming, of course, that Peikoff and Binswanger didn't tamper with the passages in question) she insistents that you have to have a word to have an explicit concept.

Robert Campbell

Isn't that a bit, well, nutty? This must have come up in some philosophical circles before. My personal thought is that I'm in charge of my own concept forming process, and if I want to designate it with a word, phrase, act, or anything else, then that's my prerogative.

Shayne

Have you even read ItoE? Rand identifies the word as the perceptual level tag which allows us to manipulate the concept as a concrete. That allows for such things as written symbols and the gestures of sign language to serve the same purpose.

Of course Shayne is entitled to "his own" theories, which are his.

Edited December 3, 2010 by Ted Keer