What are first-level concepts?

[merjet]

Ayn Rand used the term "first-level" several times in ITOE2, many of them in the Appendix, which is a transcript of an oral discussion Rand had with others. The following are some excerpts, with #2-#4 from the Appendix.

1. In the process of forming concepts of entities, a child's mind has to focus on a distinguishing characteristic-i.e., on an attribute-in order to isolate one group of entities from all others. He is, therefore, aware of attributes while forming his first concepts, but he is aware of them perceptually, not conceptually. It is only after he has grasped a number of concepts of entities that he can advance to the stage of abstracting attributes from entities and forming separate concepts of attributes. The same is true of concepts of motion: a child is aware of motion perceptually, but cannot conceptualize "motion" until he has formed some concepts of that which moves, i.e., of entities (ITOE2 15).

2. What I call the "first level" of concepts are existential concretes—that to which you can point as if it were an ostensive definition and say: "I mean this." Now, you can point to a table. You cannot point to furniture (ITOE2 205).

3. But we are referring here to the order of concept-formation. The fact that functions can be observed perceptually is not the essential issue here. A child can see a moving object directly, but he cannot form the concept "motion" until he has formed the concept "object." Therefore, it is the order of possible conceptualization that is different here. This is what makes concept-formation hierarchical. This is what forms the dependence of certain concepts on certain others in human conceptual development (ITOE2 210).

4. My answer is that although there is an element of the optional for certain first-level concepts, the logical determination of which concept is primary, or first, and which is derivative depends on whether that second concept required the conceptualization of the first, before it could be conceptualized (ITOE2 211).

Harriman also used "first level" in The Logical Leap. As reported by Harriman here, some readers have raised the issue of whether concepts of attributes and actions are properly regarded as “first-level” concepts. The term "first-level" is used in two ways -- logical and temporal. The first is a hierarchy of concepts based on the closeness to perception. The second is the order by which concepts are acquired by a person. Of course, to adequately address the latter, we need to give due consider to children, including babies, who can't introspect and tell us their thoughts. Harriman's use of "first-level" seems to be primarily the logical one. Rand clearly used both. One thing in common is that the criteria for "first-level" is what can be perceptually observed, which obviously includes attributes and actions as well as entities.

Those who believe that attributes and actions cannot be first-level probably rely on #1 and other things Rand wrote such as:

5. The first concepts a child forms are concepts of perceptual entities; the first words he learns are words designating them (ITOE2 10, clearly temporal).

Regardless, it seems odd to claim that attributes and actions cannot be first-level, given they can be perceived. Also, an entity without attributes or actions is impossible. So one might say they are implicitly first-level, especially considering another quote from Rand about children:

6. The child does not think in such words (he has, as yet, no knowledge of words), but that is the nature of the process which his mind performs wordlessly (ITOE2 10, describing acquiring the concept length).

Length is an attribute, and #6 strongly indicates she allowed for implicit or rudimentary concepts. Indeed, she posits implicit concepts quite often in ITOE, including for axiomatic concepts.

7. The building-block of man's knowledge is the concept of an "existent"—of something that exists' date=' be it a thing, an attribute or an action. Since it is a concept, man cannot grasp it [i']explicitly until he has reached the conceptual stage. But it is implicit in every percept (to perceive a thing is to perceive that it exists) and man grasps it implicitly on the perceptual level—i.e., he grasps the constituents of the concept "existent," the data which are later to be integrated by that concept. It is this implicit knowledge that permits his consciousness to develop further. (ITOE 6-7)

So why shouldn't concepts of attributes and actions be at least admitted as implicit first-level concepts that necessarily accompany first-level concepts of entities? I believe parents/caretakers typically teach words for entities first. However, if implicit or rudimentary concepts are admissible, then I believe there are some other candidates for first-level concepts besides entities, e.g. some sounds, colors, shapes, size and even motions.

Edited December 7, 2010 by Merlin Jetton

[BaalChatzaf]

. However, if implicit or rudimentary concepts are admissible, then I believe there are some other candidates for first-level concepts besides entities, e.g. some sounds, colors, shapes, size and even motions.

Correct. I have had the privilege of seeing my children and grand-children utter their first words. All beginnings are hard and all first attempts must be simple. The kiddies learn the name for things, sounds, colors and actions. One of the things my kids seemed to like was when I bent over them and said "Up!" and I extended my hands to them. They reached up to my hands and smiled a smile, and then I hoisted them to a sitting position. They seemed to like that game. Sometimes they would be there and say :"up! up!" meaning that they wanted a hoist.

So "Up" was a direction and an action (as in going up or lifting up).

Rand missed out on some interesting an informative experiences because she was barren and she was not a care taker or nurturer to a child. I tended to take everything she said about how kids learn con grano salus since she did not know first hard what she was talking about. Anything she know about kids (other than herself and her sister) was second and third hand. When it came to the formation of concepts in childhood, Rands assertions were an example of the ignorant leading the uninformed.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[kiaer.ts]

Regardless, it seems odd to claim that attributes and actions cannot be first-level, given they can be perceived. Also, an entity without attributes or actions is impossible. So one might say they are implicitly first-level . . .

Observe a child. They learn the concepts for entities long before they learn the concepts for attributes. I have nephews of three and five. They confirm this most empirical of Rand's observations. Children recognize entities as such long before they attend to their separate attributes or form concepts for their attributes or the concepts of relations between entities such as bigger than, higher than, and so forth.

[sjw]

Regardless, it seems odd to claim that attributes and actions cannot be first-level, given they can be perceived. Also, an entity without attributes or actions is impossible. So one might say they are implicitly first-level . . .

Observe a child. They learn the concepts for entities long before they learn the concepts for attributes. I have nephews of three and five. They confirm this most empirical of Rand's observations. Children recognize entities as such long before they attend to their separate attributes or form concepts for their attributes or the concepts of relations between entities such as bigger than, higher than, and so forth.

The concept "first level" is not synonymous with "first." It refers to the logical structure of concepts not the temporal order in which they are reached.

To make the case that an attribute, like the color "blue", is not first level, one must identify the units a concept like "blue" is abstracted from, and those units must not be concretes. In other words one must show that it is necessarily an abstraction from an abstraction.

Shayne

[merjet]

Observe a child. They learn the concepts for entities long before they learn the concepts for attributes. I have nephews of three and five. They confirm this most empirical of Rand's observations. Children recognize entities as such long before they attend to their separate attributes or form concepts for their attributes or the concepts of relations between entities such as bigger than, higher than, and so forth.

What criteria are you using to say they have "learned the concept" -- that they can say the word? How do you know their word usage isn't controlled by their parents/caretakers, who happen to use entity-words when speaking to the child in preference to, say, action or event words.

Katherine Nelson, a psychology professor whose specialty is child cognitive development, proposed that concepts of events are learned before or along with concepts of objects. In her book Language in Cognitive Development, much of which is available on Google Books here she says:

The claim was that infants would form concepts of objects that were functional in their own lives, and would therefore learn to name them easily and early. The object's function from the child's point of view (e.g. rolling a ball) would form the the core of the concept, and its perceptual appearance would be added as a cue to the identification of instances. Later, we proposed (Nelson, 1982, 1983; Nelson & Lucarello, 1985) that object concepts were first embedded in event representations, accounting for some of the earliest uses of object words to refer to whole events (discussed in the next section (p.110).

Maybe there are other pertinent examples that come even earlier in a child's life, e.g. milk embedded in the event concept eating, rattle embedded in the event concept "shake the rattle." Wordlessly, of course.

How about the concept sound? A baby can hear that the sounds mommy makes when talking to the baby differ from those she makes when talking to somebody else, which differ from yet other sounds, e.g. the rattle.

Edited December 7, 2010 by Merlin Jetton

[merjet]

One of the earliest words many children learn is "no" or the foreign language equivalent. This is likely before they learn to say it. Obviously "no" does not name an entity, but a forbidden action the way it's used.

I tried a search with Google. There were many hits, but I didn't find much relevant to "no" as a first or early word. "Mama" and "daddy", of course, are often the first words a child learns to say.

Let's also consider such words as "eat" and "sleep" even before a child is capable of saying them.

Edited December 8, 2010 by Merlin Jetton

[BaalChatzaf]

How about the concept sound? A baby can hear that the sounds mommy makes when talking to the baby differ from those she makes when talking to somebody else, which differ from yet other sounds, e.g. the rattle.

There was never any "baby talk" in our house. We (wife and I) talked to our kids, or any kids for that matter, as though talking to people. We did not use the affected high pitch the some folks use when talking to children. We always spoke to our kids (at any age) in complete sentences. When we indicate an object to them we would say "This is an X". When we played Up and Down with them we would saying "Going/go up" or "Going/go down" so that the action and the direction were uttered together. If we speak to are children as though they are simpletons then it comes as no surprise that they turn out to be simpletons. I always treated kids as people. All they lacked was bone length, muscle mass and experience. That comes in due course.

It has been my experience that youngsters have "all their marbles" by the age of six or seven. By that age they can reason, understand cause and effect and are perfectly capable of comprehending definitions. With kids it is always useful to bolster definitions with specific examples to nail the concept and definition down. That way they youngsters are not left with "hanging definitions" and ungrounded concepts. We also found that definition by analogy or metaphor is useful. For example what is a mitten? A mitten is like a sock, but it goes on the hand and not the foot. That helps to solidify the meanings words.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[sjw]

How about the concept sound? A baby can hear that the sounds mommy makes when talking to the baby differ from those she makes when talking to somebody else, which differ from yet other sounds, e.g. the rattle.

There was never any "baby talk" in our house. We (wife and I) talked to our kids, or any kids for that matter, as though talking to people. We did not use the affected high pitch the some folks use when talking to children. We always spoke to our kids (at any age) in complete sentences. When we indicate an object to them we would say "This is an X". When we played Up and Down with them we would saying "Going/go up" or "Going/go down" so that the action and the direction were uttered together. If we speak to are children as though they are simpletons then it comes as no surprise that they turn out to be simpletons. I always treated kids as people. All they lacked was bone length, muscle mass and experience. That comes in due course.

It has been my experience that youngsters have "all their marbles" by the age of six or seven. By that age they can reason, understand cause and effect and are perfectly capable of comprehending definitions. With kids it is always useful to bolster definitions with specific examples to nail the concept and definition down. That way they youngsters are not left with "hanging definitions" and ungrounded concepts. We also found that definition by analogy or metaphor is useful. For example what is a mitten? A mitten is like a sock, but it goes on the hand and not the foot. That helps to solidify the meanings words.

Ba'al Chatzaf

The principle behind what you're saying is sound, but adults learn "baby talk" from babies who find it amusing, and adults like to amuse. There's nothing wrong with a child giggling at an adult acting as the court jester. Another issue is adding emotional tone to whatever it is you're trying to communicate to the child. That's merely a stylistic issue, nothing wrong with it; it's akin to training wheels on a bike, something to help the child infer intent. Adults do this with each other using more subtle cues.

Talking beneath the child is a different issue than these.

Shayne

[merjet]

Today Tom Minchin updated his 1-star review of The Logical Leap here.

He says Dr. Harry Binswanger has advanced the idea that there are two classes of first-level concepts: "absolutely first-level concepts" and "relatively first-level concepts", with which Minchin obviously disagrees.

Then he makes his own, yet similar, assertion:

As a factual issue, it is correct that many concepts of attributes, e.g., "red" and actions, e.g., "move" are close to the perceptual level.

Many concepts of attributes and actions are "close" to the perceptual level, yet they are not first-level.

This obviously flies in the face of what Ayn Rand said:

What I call the "first level" of concepts are existential concretes—that to which you can point as if it were an ostensive definition and say: "I mean this." (ITOE2 205).