Mindy Newton

[quote name='Daniel Barnes' post='37144' date='Oct 3 This is an appealing argument in a sense. If each expert has some probability, say 90%, of finding fault with the theory, then 10 experts would have a probability of only 0.1^10 = 0.0000000001 of not finding fault if one existed. You can't calculate probability that way unless each expert's "testing" were independent of the others. Experts have mostly overlapping knowledge, so they represent colinear measures. --Mindy

Not at all. Suppose you have thing X that is equal to A until a certain time t1, after which it suddenly changes into B: X(t, t ≤ t1) = A; X(t, t > t1) = B, with B ≠ A. This would not violate the law of identity, as for all times t: X(t) = X(t). That we don't find such instantaneous transitions in the real world is an empirical datum, while the law of identity is a logical law, which doesn't give us empirical information. If this were true, it would still be an empirical datum, but in fact it is not true. If you have a milligram polonium 214, 0,5 milligram will be turned into lead 210 in 160 microseconds, but if you have 1000 kg polonium 214, 500 kg will be turned into lead 210 in the same time. It's easy to think of examples where additional time AND energy are not required, such as acceleration. Added mass is accelerated by equivalent added energy in the same time. --Mindy

Umm...you mean "applied deductively," right? Isn't concept-formation inductive and concept-application deductive? We generalize, and then we apply those generalizations to specific cases, right? And those processes are, respectively, induction and deduction -- at least, in Rand's use of the terms. [emphasis added]REB Sorry, yes, I meant "deductive" at the end of my post. Mindy

In the next post, #164, MSK quotes the two-(short)-paragraph passage in which induction slips in: According to the Index, this passage contains the only reference either to "deduction" or "induction" in the entire text of ITOE. "Induction" is also referenced in the following pages of the Excerpts from the Epistemology Workshops: 295-304, 306. However, those passages aren't addressed to what she wrote on pg. 28, i.e., to why she said that concept formation and application "contains the essential pattern of [...] induction and deduction." Instead they're addressed to the issue of establishing a causal relationship. Furthermore, on page 303-04, she says, in response to questioning from "Prof. M": In regard to that answer, Daniel Barnes has commented numerous times (he might even have commented earlier in this thread) about her not seeing that the issue of induction is a logical issue. My best guess in regard to her peculiar statement in the passage on pg. 28 is that she was talking in terms of an analogy and might have realized, if pressed, that what she wrote could mistakenly be taken literally. Ellen ___ I don't understand why concept-formation, or at least the whole process taken to its conclusion in forming a definition of a new concept, isn't easily understood as being inductive. It integrates multiple instances and is "bottom-up" and it creates the categorical knowledge that is then applied inductively. --Mindy

And a happy birthday to you, Mike! That's 40 years young. Bill P (Alfonso) Mike Renzulli Is quite newly Forty years of age. Objectively, He has, you see, Set out to be a sage. Congrats, Mike. --Mindy

I offer a bit of word-play that has taken--or has it given--me quite a few hours of frustration and fun. I call it "The Fuzzy-Wuzzy Chronicles" because...well, you'll see why. The Bear: Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear, Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair, Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't fuzzy, was he! The Buzzard: Buzzy Wuzzy was a bird, But his buzz was seldom heard, Buzzy Wuzzy wasn't buzzy, was he! The Cousin: Cozzy Wuzzy was a coz, But no relationship he was, Cozzy Wuzzy wasn't cozzy, was he! The Cop: 'Cause he was, he wasn't stopped, Fuzz he was, he was a cop, 'Cause he was, he wasn't, fuzz he was, see? I welcome any additions!! I hope to collect a whole bunch of them. --Mindy

Mindy, Bassoon?!!! So that's the problem! A double-reeder! I played first trombone for 14 years in the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra under Maestro Eleazar de Carvalho. (This guy trained Zubin Mehta, Seiji Osawa and some other top talents at Tanglewood.) I also founded Brazil's first brass quintet and we became something of a celebrity group in the classical world down there. During my last 4 years in the orchestra, I doubled as Maeatro Eleazar's assistant conductor, albeit without a contract for that (Brazilian politics and an Objectivist refusal to play them). I conducted all over Brazil as a guest conductor. I was also a composer whose works were performed fairly well for a modern classical composer. I have no complaints. I won some prizes. I then moved out of classical music and started producing popular music records and shows and became the artistic director (A&R man) for Fermata do Brasil. I worked with some of Brazil's top artists. I composed some film scores. I wrote some songs for popular TV programs. I had a brilliant career in classical and popular music. I threw all this away on drug and alcohol addictions. I recovered, but I have not gone back into music except for some very special moments. I ultimately intend to finish some music compositions I had planned from before and a couple of new ones that have developed in my mind over the years that keep haunting me. Michael Don't dis' the bassoon! At least we don't need a spit valve! :-) I'm sure you've noticed how much of film scores, large and small, are solo bassoon? I bet nobody has ever composed 39 concerti for the trombone! ;-) Your background is very impressive! Have you ever performed the trombone-clarinet duo in the ?third? movement of Saint Saens' Third Symphony, the so-called "Organ Symphony?" I adore that melody! Where can I hear some of your work?? Performances, compositions, songs, etc. I guess I can "google" you. This is exciting. I confess to doing a little composition myself. There is no pain or fear or joy that sticks in one's mind like a musical theme does, right? --Mindy

Mindy, Dodecaphonic music is a school of composition designed by Arnold Schoenberg shortly after WWI when people were searching for new forms of trying to understand the universe after that mess and blaming every previous human structure for leading up to it. The technique consists of establishing a twelve-tone row (chosen by God knows what standard), then using that as the basis for a composition. The rule is that you must use up all twelve tones before you are allowed to sound them in sequence again and you must repeat the sequence in the same order. For example, you are allowed to make a chord out of the first five notes, use the next three for melody, and the remaining 5 as a bass line. Or you can make a chord out of all 12 notes at the same time. Or several chords. Or a 12-note melody. And so on. That part is up to you. The only rule is that only after the last note has sounded are you allowed to start the series over. In addition to repeating the series, you are allowed to run it backwards, invert it, transpose it up and down, and so on for more variety. Dodecaphonic (twelve-tone) technique was an attempt to replace tonality as an organizing principle in music. The problem is that the human mind does not organize sound that way. In literature, it would be akin to establishing an arbitrary order for all 26 letters of the alphabet, then only allowing you to reuse a letter after you have used up all the others for writing the words and sentences to an article or book. The music resulting from this method sounds just awful. When it does sound more or less listenable, it is because the composer fudges and leans on the overtone series for his strong notes and lets the really dissonant ones be less important. Alban Berg was a composer who worked more in that manner and even has a famous opera Wozzeck in that style. Schoenberg used the technique in a very strange manner. Imagine a work by, say, Mendelssohn, that keeps the form, orchestration, etc., but is filled full of wrong notes. That's his style. Of the third famous dodecaphonic composer, Anton Webern, this guy wrote extremely short compositions that were full of intricate mathematical formulations, but they sound only a bit more organized than an orchestra warming up. Or better, a chamber group warming up (he mostly wrote chamber music). Other composers have fiddled with this technique. Even Stravinsky did. But no one has achieved any fame as a twelve-tone composer on the scale of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern. They are known as the classicist, Romantic and miniaturist respectively of dodecaphonic music. They even have a colorful title: the Second Viennese School. Most performers I knew during my orchestra career did not protest so much against playing these pieces because they liked the athletic challenge to their playing technique (the pieces are usually very difficult to perform), not because they liked the music. Here is the Wikipedia article if you are interested: Twelve-tone technique. Michael Thanks. I should have consulted Wiki. What is your instrument? I play the Bassoon.

Did you do this with me? GS, Yep. On purpose. Rhetorical emphasis by presenting an example and not talking about it. (There must be a technical name for this, but I don't know it. Artists use this method all the time.) Michael Isn't that "ostensive definition?" --Mindy

You need to learn the difference between pure mathematics and applied mathematics. Yes, in "pure" mathematics, a higher level of abstraction is assumed. Numbers, points, lines, functions, etc., are treated as if they were objects, not characteristics of objects. However, this is a convenience only. It is not a repudiation of the context required to make numbers, and thus arithmetic and mathematics, meaningful. It is just "permission" to leave out the extra language. When people take "science" and/or "mathematics" to be superior, purer, more certain, etc., than philosophy or reason at large, they are mistaking that convenience as lack of encumbrance, which it isn't. There isn't pure mathematics without applied mathematics, and there isn't either without pre-existing concepts. --Mindy

The "object of your awareness" does in fact reside in your brain, the stimuli is what exists outside of your nervous system. When we look at the sky at night do we "see a star" or do we register some light and create an image in our brain? Is this little pinprick of light a star? How about, "we register some light," and that's it. The "registering" is the seeing. --Mindy

In fact the Law of Identity is about as relevant to the problem of induction as a fish is to a bicycle. Here's why: All the LOI states is that in order to exist, a thing has to have an identity. The LOI is however entirely silent when it comes to what that identity is (that is, its nature), and its corollary is equally silent on how it behaves (that is, its causal relations). Unfortunately for this line of argument, the what and how is exactly where Hume's problem begins. The Law of Identity goes much farther than you claim. Identity, or a thing's nature, changes in limited ways, unless the thing is destroyed. The characteristics of, say, swans, vary somewhat, but not wholesale. Some of those characteristics stay the same. That is the basis of inductive certainty. "All swans..." can only refer to what remains a swan. The stability of nature is the basis of inductive certainty. Some characteristics vary, others don't. There are "reasons" as in relations or connections for why the changeable characteristics are so, and why the invariant ones are invariant. Discovering what is what is the nitty-gritty of science. --Mindy

Neither do we know reality, just our own ideas, nor do we speak the truth, just sentences... I was wondering how long it would take for the relativists to reveal their Kantian mistakes. Do you deny that we manufacture images in our nervous system? This is not "a Kantian mistake", LOL, it is simply basic anatomy. Would you say that a photograph "manufactures" its image, or that it captures the visible form of its subject? --Mindy

To see, to recognize, and to identify are different things. Oxygen was always seen, but only lately identified. There are many things that are seen and not recognized, or which many cannot identify. Can you identify monocots and dicots by sight? Can you identify different alloys by sight? Can you tell a mole from melanoma by sight? Does your inability to identify mean that you cannot see plants, metals, or disease? Perhaps you would tell an old friend whom you did not recognize that you "did not see him." Would that mean he was invisible? I could just as easily ask you how many millions of years it will take for you to understand the difference between seeing and identifying. According to your understanding what would it mean to see an atom, since you know what it is that you deny? You cannot answer this without conceding my point. You continue to imagine your conception of an atom, and, because your perception of atoms does not match your imagined idea of a ball or a solar system, you deny that you see atoms. The problem is your conceptual understanding, not your eyes. To be perceived is to be perceived in some form. We smell atoms as odors. We feel atoms as textures, and their motion as temperature. We hear atoms vibrate as sound. We see atoms as the colors and visual forms of substances and entities of everday experience. My claim is orthodox. Read Kelley's book. There is no accepted refutation, Kelley is correct. I write for those who wish to understand, not those who take there own ability to scoff as proof. We do see atoms. We see them in the way that they appear to us as humans with a certain form of awareness. Some of us simply do not fully understand or recognize what we see. I myself make no claim to be able to identify individual atoms. But we all see much more than we can identify. How do you separate "identification" from "recognition?" When we recognize something, we recognize in in some respect, which is also an identification of it in that respect. So to recognize is to identify, at least it is making a partial identification, right? --Mindy

(sigh) 1. If you do things that kill you, you die. What has that to do with ethics? You shouldn't believe everything Rand wrote! What has that to do with artistic taste? Is music that is easily recognized and reproduced "better" than difficult music like dodecaphonic music? Never mind that I don't like dodecaphonic music either, I cannot prove that it is bad, because the criteria I use to judge it are subjective. That said, I far prefer Berg's violin concerto, that is largely dodecaphonic, over any pop song with easy tonality. "Dodecaphonic" wasn't in my OED, but it must mean 12-tone scale. I assume you mean the chromatic scale? I like chromatic melodies particularly, when I can find a good one. The melody to A-Train is chromatic, and it is an addictive delight! More to the point, the division of tones into a scale does have an objective basis. Harmonious and inharmonious steps and chords have an objective basis also. So there's a pop song with ?uneasy? tonality. If you were talking about tone-rows, there are still objective bases on which to evaluate such, and they are chiefly what was claimed for them: the ease of, or even the possibility of relating them given the perceptual capacities of the human ear. --Mindy

Sez you...;-) There's a very well argued case that Kant was coming to the defence of Newton, for example. You would be better to address the point at issue, Mindy, which is not "Is Kant evil?", but "why do Objectivists obsess about Kant when it was Hume that set Kant off in the first place?" My answer to that question is that Rand simply did not understand Hume's problem. Conveniently we have her own testimony to this fact, which one would think would settle the issue. This does raise, however, a second question which is: if Rand didn't understand Hume, how could she be relied on in her judgement of Kant? My point didn't get across. Hume tried to improve knowledge by eliminating arbitrary, non-empirical ideas. Kant, seeing that religion would lose on this basis, went to extremes to defend religion, in the process discrediting all of human knowledge and even making reality inaccessible to us. Hume tried to rid us of groundless ideas, Kant sacrificed ideas and reality in order to salvage religion. --Mindy

It may or may not be possible to exhaust the domain of application. If not, then we have a series of better and better approximations as we explore more and more of the domain. But, each approximation is valid. It holds under the range of conditions that have been explored. The Induction Problem is different. It says that we can never know anything, even approximately. Nonsense! The induction problem (so-called) is that induction is not a logically valid mode of inference. Induction is a practical way of producing general statements from a finite set of instances. The generalization might be true or it might be false. We always -know- (or could know) the particulars. It is the generalization that is not guaranteed to be true. I think you have been reading too much Peikov. Don't. He is more often wrong than right and he is a mathematical and scientific ignoramus. Ba'al Chatzaf Math isn't the holy grail you think. Did you know that two and two don't always make four? Take two bananas and add two quarts of swamp gas. What do you get? You don't get four of anything!! You don't get four objects, or four "measures." Would you like to say that what we can't do is "add" these two particular "twos?" But we can. We can add them to a tank, for example. The point is that numbers are adjectives. "Two" is always two of some kind. We are so accustomed to leaving out the grammatical niceties, we lose sight of their existence. Math is nothing until you get its conceptual context straight. --Mindy

Hume never ever said that we can't know anything. Read -Enquiry into Human Understanding- part 64. Hume states that we clearly perceive prior and posterior events. What we do not perceive is necessary connection. The necessity connection between the prior event (cause) and the posterior event (effect) is a mental construct, a kind of inference. Think of it this way. Nature provides the dots (and we come to know them). We draw the lines connecting them. Ba'al Chatzaf Hume also said we don't perceive our conscious self. --Mindy

Shouldn't such an epoch making discovery be published? I think Peikoff and Harriman were working on a book about this, but Peikoff has apparently dropped out of this project. -NEIL ____ I am curious how L.P. could claim induction is a valid mode of reasoning (correct in every instance) when it is not. The discovery of white crows, black swans and the falsification of the the caloric theory of heat is sufficient to show that induction on a finite set of facts sometimes leads to hypotheses which are not generally true. Induction is a nifty way of producing general hypotheses from particular facts, but there is no guarantee that these hyp;otheses (general statements) are true. Induction and Abduction are the among the means we have to get beyond a finite collection of facts. They are essential for the discovery phase of science. But neither are guaranteed to produce generally true hypotheses. In effect, L.P. has "proved" that the square root of two is rational, which it is not. The general logical invalidity of induction has been known for hundreds of years (at least) and certainly since the time of David Hume. Ba'al Chatzaf From what I've read, Peikoff's theory of induction is the theory of concept-formation. I would suppose, then, that the process by which one delineates a subset of a genus, and parses out the differentiating characteristic, is part of the process of induction. If I'm right, it doesn't aim at explaining hypotheses, unless they are in the form of provisional definitions or some such. --Mindy

Ditto. Thanks for all the references guys. I got a little creative in my own research. I read The Invisible Man. Right now, I'm reading The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Dorian Gray is next! I also saw The Phantom of the Opera in NYC a few days ago for my early b-day present. I'd have to say it's my favorite play. It definitely evoked some deep thoughts and feelings from me, and strengthened my desire to be a plastic surgeon. I'll enjoy checking out the other books listed on this thread. As you are so kindly allowing strangers to analyze your psyche, would you mind telling me how you settled on being a plastic surgeon? --Mindy Read his posts first. He only has 27. --Brant OK, I read his posts. I read that he wants to see beauty in the world. I see that plastic surgery might be a choice related to that sentiment, but so would a lot of others. It's not important, I don't mean to pry, if it is very personal. --Mindy

I've long argued this very point, and now consider the answer rather simple: Rand just doesn't know what she's talking about. She hasn't studied Hume or Kant in any detail, and doesn't really know - or want to know - the main problems involved that these men were wrestling with. Recall in the ITOE (p304-5) what she called "the big question of induction" - the problem central to Hume's critique, and therefore Kant's - she admits she "couldn't even begin to discuss - because...I haven't worked on that subject enough to even begin to formulate it...". That's right: for all her overwrought invective aimed at Hume in her writings, she can't even begin to formulate a response to what is considered his central question! Further, with breathtaking naivety she adds "...it would take an accomplished scientist in a given field to illustrate the whole process [of induction] in that field." Rand doesn't seem to realise the problem of induction is a logical problem, not something "a scientist in a given field" can "illustrate the whole process in that field." With that in mind, what more do you need to know about Rand vs Hume - and by extension, Rand vs Kant? Let me try to defend Rand on this one. Kant's reaction to Hume was shock that religious beliefs had no claim to being reasonable on Hume's terms. He set out to do what was necessary to defend religious beliefs, and he ended up discrediting human cognition and cloaking reality itself in the process. Hume didn't aim at what Kant "achieved." I think Rand was entirely correct in pointing to Kant as a destroyer. The effects of his thought support her unequivocally. --Mindy

Ditto. Thanks for all the references guys. I got a little creative in my own research. I read The Invisible Man. Right now, I'm reading The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Dorian Gray is next! I also saw The Phantom of the Opera in NYC a few days ago for my early b-day present. I'd have to say it's my favorite play. It definitely evoked some deep thoughts and feelings from me, and strengthened my desire to be a plastic surgeon. I'll enjoy checking out the other books listed on this thread. As you are so kindly allowing strangers to analyze your psyche, would you mind telling me how you settled on being a plastic surgeon? --Mindy

Mindy, Things can only be measured against a standard, so you actually brought up a good point. Things like intensity, time, preference, etc. can be easily measured. As you mentioned, there actually are measurements of taste when you break down the parts that go into making taste possible. But you hit on something I have been mulling over, top-down versus bottom-up thinking. To a bottom-up thinker, the taste of scallops actually is (and is nothing more than) the sum of the taste buds and their interaction to chemical stimuli, etc., but to a top-down thinker, the taste of scallops has a nature that goes beyond all that and becomes a thing-in-itself (or experience-in-itself in this case). I would agree that once a thing-in-itself (something to which the law of identity is applicable) exists, there is a quality about it that can be identified, but not measured. With one cavaet. When using Rand's method of extracting a fundamental characteristic from the genus and using it to establish the differentia of a definition, there actually is an ordinal measurement that goes on. It goes something like this: Characteristic A of XXXX is more important than Characteristic B of XXXX. (I will leave the standard of comparison aside for now.) There you have the ordinal 1st and 2nd, i.e, numbers and measurements. This obviously extends to all the other characteristics, so you end up getting a whole bunch of numbers and measurements. For the record, I believe both top-down and bottom-up thinking are necessary for best understanding and knowledge. Michael If I may insert a note about myself: I am often considered to be too nit-picking in discussions. I'm the sort of person who gets complained against as: you just have to win, don't you! and : you've got an answer for everything! This with scorn and dismissal, of course. I'm not assuming I'll get that response here, I'm hoping very much not, but I do discuss these things very seriously. I hope saying this keeps my posts from being mis-understood. I'm trying to get things right to the nth degree. So, I'd like to comment first that when you say "extracting a fundamental characteristic from the genus..." I wonder what you mean, exactly? The differentia is manifest only in the subset that is being defined/conceptualized. It isn't explicit in the definition of the genus, of course, and would be an "omitted measurement" in the concept of the genus. Next, the greater explanatory power of the genus as compared with the differentia is not the sort of measurement that is said to be omitted in Rand's concept-formation. It is differences among the referents of the class. Those are the omitted measurements. The top-down and bottom-up issue is very big in perceptual psychology, and in cognition in general. The top-down approach, which predominates, presents problems for objectivity in perception, and thus knowledge. If the basic level of cognition requires guidance from pre-existing contents or structures, Plato and Kant have won the day. --Mindy

The Story of Philosophy is excellent, by Will Durant.

The Story of Philosophy is excellent, by Will Durant.