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Comparing it to the passage on p. 15 that I quoted, I guess she meant "aware of some units at the perceptual level being similar, but has not brought them to the conceptual level by integrating." Maybe it's something like a pre-concept to Piaget or a prototype concept to Eleanor Rosch. However, I won't venture to say that is what she always meant, nor that her every use is valid. Edit: My guess is similar to OPAR, p. 75. Another guess is "The First Stage" in D. Kelley's Theory of Abstraction. I don't see any significant challenges in ITOE, 2nd Exp., pp. 44-47 you cited related to my claim that Rand did not hold there was one true definition for all people and all times. She even gives an example for a definition of man she regards as valid for a child: "A living being that speaks and does other things no other living beings can do." (p. 44). She even allows for the possibility that "rational animal" becomes inaccurate based on future discovery (p. 47). An "invalid" definition as she used the word could still be true. She even explicitly said so. "Observe that all of the above versions of a definition of man were true, i.e., were correct identifications of the facts of reality-- and that they were valid qua definition, i.e. were correct selections of distinguishing characteristics in a given context of knowledge." (p. 44, last sentence) What more exactly are you referring to? Off hand, maybe she thought her definition better captured the essential characteristics.

Well, that's a good question, since wind would complicate it more. Or did you mean flatulation?

Tabula rasa usually means 'no innate ideas', not 'no inborn talents'. Do you have a citation for whatever you are trying to attribute to Rand here? Yes, of course. Stephen can answer the last question is he so chooses. As I'm using it, "literally" means "following or representing the exact words of the original." You can believe your interpretation of Rand's words was "literal." I say nowhere close. It's fabrication, especially with its degree of conflict with ITOE, p. 15: "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." Now you (and other readers) can compare your interpretation (post #19) to mine (post #22). Which is closer and how much? Yours: Observe that according to Rand, the child does not become aware of identity until the second stage. Thus the first stage postulates awareness of "entities" that do not have identity. Hence her proposed first stage is a violation of the LOI. Mine: A more reasonable, charitable way to interpret what you quote from Rand is that the child in the first stage does not conceptually distinguish between an entity and its characteristics (identity). Fair enough. Forget I mentioned old SOLO. I'm confident I could find some fabrication there, but it's not worth the effort. In any case, it seems the degree and frequency of your fabrication have increased since the old SOLO forum and our correspondence. Maybe a contributing factor is ARCHN. I don't believe posting my Amazon review on the ARCHNblog is necessary. A link would suffice. My engaging him or not would depend on the nature of his response. True or false depends on a particular definition. Of course, given a particular definition, disputes as to an instance falling under it or not can often arise. Regardless, why all the stress on "one true definition"? Rand did not hold there was one true definition for all people and all times. And if all "democracy" means in this case is the existence of elections, then there is no conflict.

My icons were not to laugh at you. I just think it's funny that anybody would not expect a newborn to detect (or react to) a face inches away within its line of sight, or to detect (or react to) its mother's voice having heard it before birth. A more reasonable, charitable way to interpret what you quote from Rand is that the child in the first stage does not conceptually distinguish between an entity and its characteristics (identity). However, you interpret it to say 'an entity with no characteristics (identity)', which is far from anything she literally said. How's that for my proof of your fabricating? My saying "fabricated potshot" was shorthand for "fabricating a straw man out of Rand's claims and then taking potshots at the straw man." I thought it would be clear enough to most readers. I guess you are an exception. Regarding your fabrications, your recall must be poorer than mine. I didn't restrict myself to your replies to me or even this forum. There is more evidence on old SOLO and here: http://www.aynrandcontrahumannature.blogspot.com/. Also, your praise and glowing review of Nyquist's book suggest your endorsement of his fabrications. As for your question on the truth of definitions, I didn't respond because I thought the answer should be obvious to such a huge fan of Popper. He endorsed the correspondence theory of truth, at least for very concrete propositions. A definition is a kind of proposition. So my answer is correspondence to reality to the extent possible. Beyond that, it is coherence, including coherence with what does correspond to reality.

Was that a sneeze? Carry on. Michael The particles from a sneeze are subject to gravity and follow curved trajectories. But a manifolded hanky or kleenex frustrate calculation of the particular paths in terms of vectors or tensors.

If its eyes are open, the newborn can detect anything put right in front of its face. The thing most often right in front of its face is another human face. Isn't it amazing it's good at detecting human faces? I've read that hearing is well-developed while still in the womb, so a newborn has already heard sounds. What kind of sounds do you think is heard most often? Please be more specific about said gaffe, like quoting or giving page numbers. Or was this another fabricated pot shot?

Can you remember what you thought when you were a baby, especially that time before you had language? The only person in the word of whose "state of mind" you can attest is you. And if you can't remember what you thought, how can you say what anyone else thinks, especially a pre-linguistic child? Ba'al Chatzaf The cognitive development of children, even pre-linguistic ones, is a much studied phenomena. See the works of Jean Piaget, for example. It's fascinating.

HI Stephen, Here you postulate that the baby's knowledge of existents is at first only of "entities". Soon after, they become (to the baby) "identities." But the Law of Identity, according to Rand, asserts that for a thing to exist, it must have an identity. So, surely this Law must apply to the baby's knowledge too; surely it cannot "know" an identity-free entity? One of the identities of an entity is that it is distinct from anything else in the sensory "field". Thus it is not an "identity-free entity", even to the baby.

Why not? Maybe my concept is a little narrow. Maybe it's a borderline case. Maybe such things are more like mere computation without a unit of measurement in the usual sense. If the first then it doesn't kill the concept. It only weakens it, and I'm open to making it stronger.

For the most part, no different than Rand says. Similarities, differences - qualitative and quantitative - and integration provide the foundation of concept formation. Clearly many qualities are given via perception. For the record I don't either, nor did I say it was. As a whole it's excellent. I even said so in Omissions and Measurement. But it does have some flaws. One flaw is the exaggerated role of "measurement omission", which I've provided plenty of explanation for. There she blew it. I recognized it years ago and for a while gave her the benefit of the doubt. That tactic didn't last. I eventually corrected it to my own satisfaction, and moved on. Now "measurement omission" is in my mental file folders by 'phlogiston' and by 'mantra.' Why did she latch onto the uncommon notion of measurement she did rather than the traditional one? She made her choice, but what good reason was there for it? (Aware of its origin, I have a hunch how she got it.) It's not the only case where she had an uncommon meaning for a common word. 'Selfishness' is another. In its case she went to great lengths to make her meaning and purpose for it clear. Not so for 'measurement'. P.S. In post #49 I said I can't stop you from using "measure" as a synonym for "identify". I amend that to: use "measure" to mean "identify using numbers that might be used in nearly any way."

Strictly speaking we can't measure green. We can, or some people can, with the right instrument, measure the wave frequency of light we call green. Of course, the concept green is formed long before, and without the aid of, such measurement. So it's irrelevant to form the concept. The point you make about 'measurement omission' is mildly interesting with respect to Ayn Rand's theory of concepts. Did she mean only measurements we are aware of, or also ones we are completely ignorant of? I suspect only the former, but given her example of a child's "implicit measurement" of length in ITOE, who knows? Heck, maybe she even thought a MLB baseball pitcher "implicitly solves" partial differential equations when planning the trajectory of his next pitch.

I suggest reading Rand's ITOE. If you don't want to do that, I suggest Chapters 3-11 here: http://objectivism101.com/Lectures/

http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/texts/rodin.html

Then you missed the point of my post #38. Maybe that's partly my fault due to inadequately making my point. But the root is wider and deeper. Ironically your second sentence touches the issue. The root extends into the fundamentals of metaphysics and epistemology, and qualities are more fundamental than measurements. Consider the following questions. 1. What is it? 2. What qualities does it have? 3. Is a given quality quantifiable? 4. Is a given quality measurable? 5. If the answer to #4 is 'yes', how is it done? I've ordered these by decreasing fundamentality. Of course, one cannot answer question #1 without delving into #2 to some extent. In some circumstances one can go beyond #2 to bolster the answer to #1. One might insert other questions in the schema, but these are enough for this context. On the other hand, to exaggerate the role of measurement is like trying to "make a mountain out of a molehill" and to reverse the order of fundamentality. It suggests abandoning Aristotle's metaphysics for Pythagoras'. It suggests abandoning entity as the primary existent for number as the primary existent. I can't stop you from using "measure" as a synonym for "identify", and obviously I could not have stopped Rand from doing so. But I use "measure" as it's been handed down by Aristotle, Newton, other scientific giants and the engineers who have vastly improved the conditions of human life. It's not simply a semantic choice between their use and yours or Rand's. It's a matter of precise identification of what measurement is. To measure is to identify in a specific way using an objective standard. To approve of others using "measure" in whatever arbitrary way they please is an open invitation to subjectivity, "junk science" and "junk math". It's analogous to approving of others using "businessman" for the likes of Orren Boyle and certain Enron executives.

Responding to post #45 by general semanticist. I don't have major problems with any of that. But I'll comment, considering what Rand might have said, too. Instead of "our concepts are affected or influenced by language", I'd say our conceptual knowledge is contextual. It depends on the particular experiences we've had and our conceptualization of them. Concepts for Ayn Rand are based on similarities and differences (as they were for John Locke). However, she insisted that all the differences among the referents of a concept were "measurements" (until she got around to addressing concepts of consciousness). Instead of "our knowledge affects the way we perceive the world", I'd say our knowledge affects what we notice when we perceive the world. (Of course, we don't all perceive the world in exactly the same way, color-blind versus normal color vision for example.)

Wow, you're really taxing my memory here. It's been decades since I studied those things. It seems your concern is multi-dimensional measurement, so I think it would fit my scheme similar to other kinds of multi-dimensional measurement. Area = length x width. It's 2-dimensional and the dimensions are of the same kind. Velocity = distance divided by time. It's 2-dimensional but the dimensions aren't the same kind. Take volume (length x width x height). It's 3-dimensional with each dimension the same kind. Of course, there are a lot of multi-dimensional measurements in physics. But extrapolating one could have a measurement with even more dimensions and even more kinds of dimensions. It seems that would cover non-scalar curvature.

I used 'concept' the way Rand did. Other might call it 'universal' or 'general term'. 'Concept' encompasses all the known characteristics of the referents. (Somebody might quibble with this -- that it encompasses all the characteristics, known or unknown. However, that is not important to answering your question.) The definition of a concept encompasses only the fundamental characteristics of the referents.

Not so. A young child, knowing nothing about measurement or even numbers, can perceive that "daddy is bigger than me", or daddy is bigger than a sibling, or similar phenomena. "Implicitly" is mere hand-waving. Not so. "Some things", not "everything".

I know that. Please read "Omissions and Measurement" or "The Corruption of Measurement" for my explanation that "ordinal measurement" is an oxymoron and should not be confused with true measurement. It is a significant disagreement, but my fundamental disagreements are (1) there are qualitative differences besides differences of measurement and (2) qualitative differences are more common and basic. Rand insists that all differences are measurable. It would save both of us much time if you were to read "Omissions and Measurement" before proceeding. There is little difference between the JARS version and the one here - http://www.objectivistcenter.org/events/ad.../JettonOaM3.PDF. The major difference is the book example in JARS versus the occupation example in the other.

I'm responding to post #31 by Michael Stuart Kelly. Many magnitudes have a unit of measurement, but many don't. (Hardness, for example, does not. The Mohn scale does not have a unit of measurement. It is an ordinal scale.) A measurement has a magnitude in both the numerator and denominator of the ratio, both of the same type, and the one in the denominator is the standard. As I explain in "Omissions and Measurements" regarding concept formation, differences in instances that fall under the same concept are not all magnitudes, or even quantitative. For example, two paragraphs in my JARS article are: As this suggests, (1) "congruous" is far more accurate and comprehensive than "commensurable" and (2) "qualitative" is far more accurate and comprehensive than "measurable."

The first sentence is true. Not knowing enough about it, I hesitate to say the second is. In any case, the apparent principle used can be taken too far. Grocery shopping, gambling, economics, and investing are subject to mathematical analysis. That doesn't make grocery shopping, gambling, economics, and investing branches of mathematics. They are cases of already recognized branches of mathematics applied to grocery shopping, etc.

The terms "linguistic scheme" and "multiordinal" are both vague and obscure. It makes an encryption scheme in cryptography sound like a referent of "mathematics." I ask again, would correcting the spelling of Korzbski be doing math? The word "mathematics" is far too common and familiar to warrant the exception for scientific and philosophical terms. Candidates like "substance" and "form" (as used in Greek philosophy), "supervenience", "auto-correlation", some chemical terms, some medical terms, probably some terms in quantum mechanics, yes. "Mathematics", no.

They are given in many introductory logic texts, e.g. David Kelley's The Art of Reasoning. There are 5 rules here: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Definitions Kelley's book has these 5 plus one more: A definition should include a genus and a differentia.

One of the rules of a good definition is that it not be vague or obscure. I note that you misspelled his name, omitting the "y". If you were to correct it, would that be doing math?

Off-hand, I think a better way of saying it is that one measures magnitudes. A measurement is a ratio of one magnitude to another of the same type. For example, the length of a football field is 100 times the length of one yard.