Mindy Newton

Mindy, This is another related issue. I happen to agree with you on this point and this is one of the weaknesses of the measurement omission theory. It bears fleshing out. For the record, I do not agree with many of the critics I have read of the measurement omission theory since I adhere in general terms to Rand's idea of comparison against a set standard being a form of measurement and this has been a point they disagree with when things get more complex. But I agree perfectly with this business of difference in kind (or qualia as it is experienced). I still don't understand your earlier part about some kinds of length not being measurable. As to the blog, I suggest you open a thread here on the forum with your theses (which I didn't quite understand from your description) and copy your work to your blog for easy reference. That way your ideas will get better traffic, but the important work will be easy to find if many discussions ensue. Michael The issue of qualia is solved by recognizing that what is omitted during abstraction doesn't have to be limited to measurements. The advantage of omitting nothing but measurements is that what is measured is not omitted. Thus, Rand says a pencil must have some length but may have any length (paraphrased.) That a pencil has a length is not omitted. Exactly what length a given pencil has is omitted. I suppose it is common knowledge that the importance of saying that what is omitted in forming a concept is "just measurements" is that that makes all true statements "Analytic." And if all true statements are analytic, there is no analytic/synthetic dichotomy, so certainty isn't limited to trivial statements such as, "A bachelor is an unmarried man." (I believe that solving this problem (A/S dichotomy) is the chief aim of Rand's theory of concept-formation and conceptual meaning.) My solution: The relation between measurements and the differences they document has a broader categorization. In the pencil example, the measurements are variations on the variable, length. The different colors of flowers are variations on the variable, color. "Male" and "female" are variations on the variable, "sex." Logically, anything that can be described as measurements of a characteristic can also be described as variations on a variable. Notice that the structure remains the same--the differences can be omitted while the characteristic is retained: the variations are omitted while the variable is retained. The advantage in using a broader terminology, of substituting "variable" for "standard of measurement" and "variations" for "measurements," is that there is no need to interpret qualities quantitatively, as measurements. Actual measurements are in fact variations on a variable, so there is nothing lost in using the broader terminology. --Mindy

That's a pip of an epiphany, Brant. --Mindy

Neil, Oodles. Go the other way. What standards of measurement do you think are present in the concept "justice"? Or do you think there are no standards that can serve as basis for comparison? That would make "justice" arbitrary, no? Ditto for riding bikes (which is not exactly concept formation), except you would fall all the time trying to be arbitrary on essential moves that were not gaged correctly. Reality is not as forgiving as our speculations are. Michael Michael, The theory of measurement omission says that all differences are measurements. I don't believe that that can be sustained. Qualia, qualities as experienced, cannot be reduced to quantities (measurements) of something else. This is, as you know, an involved issue. I have three theses to propose to deal with that; with the problem that Rand makes conceptual meaning both abstract and determinate; and with the problem that sentences that predicate an omitted measurement would fall through the cracks in terms of Rand/Peikoff's solution to the A/S dichotomy. I'd like very much to present these ideas, but I think a blog might be more appropriate, because it can be dedicated to that subject... I started to write such a blog, but I can't get access to the blog I set up--and haven't been able to get through to the right person to show me what I did wrong. BTW, your in-box is full, won't take any more PMs. --Mindy

I disagree. The -fact- of non comeasurability of length blows the notion of measurement omission to smithereens. One will have to look elsewhere to find out how we conceptualize. Ba'al Chatzaf I agree that it "blows" measurement omission! I'm just saying we don't need "measurement omission" to "validate" concept-formation. Mindy

Don't knock it. Boom is why you are not speaking German or Japanese and why I was not turned into a cake of soap on some Nazi's bathtub. Technology is a value neutral thing. It can be used equally for good or for ill. Ba'al Chatzaf I have the divisibility test, Ba'al, but I don't know how efficient it is compared to present methods. It does produce a factor, when succeeding. It does not require any division or estimations. I was told that a small improvement in divisibility wouldn't mean anything, that only exponential improvements are of interest. Is that true? It derives from the fact that the single-digit products of any odd number have unique terminal digits. --Mindy

Mindy, Boom? Michael I don't get it... --Mindy

HELP. I can't get into my own blog. Your in-box is full, MSK. --Mindy

This is a little off-topic, but, can any of you mathematicians tell me what interest the world would have in a general divisibility test? --Mindy

I fear that I may be crossing some line of literary etiquette in doing so, but I have a suggestion: Re-write lines 2 and 5 to say, "The sparks of you..." It gives a more regular rhythm, and I think it says about the same thing. Good-feeling poem. Its sincerety comes through, though that's a virtue of your poetry in general. --Mindy

I like this poem, Roger. I have a vague sense that it isn't finished. --Mindy

I'm just getting to read this "room," only a couple of years late. I really like your lines, "Your roses in my heart go on extending/The fragrance of our passing spell's bouquet." It has a little surprise development that doesn't create any stress or stretch...really gratifying. --Mindy

At my childhood home, on a lake outside Atlanta, the window in the door that leads to the patio is almost three stories above the ground. Looking out towards the lake, you would be looking across a long stretch of lawn dotted with several large trees. In late June and July the fireflies on that stretch of lawn are so numerous that, as twilight deepens, you see a cloud of bllinking lights. Because of the distance, I suppose, you don't see the individual blinks, rather the cloud sparkles softly. Also, the cloud sort of "breathes" upward. The inevitable downward movement of individual fireflies isn't apparant, only a pulsing expansion of the cloud of lights. It's very special. Lightening Bugs Buggy little lanterns, Wafting through the air, Sometimes you're not, And sometimes you're there. Summer-nighttime miracles, Oblivious to me, Making light of making light, For anyone to see. Optimistic opticals' Spectacular surprise, Your glowing, gliding guideposts, Shine only when you rise! Mindy Newton I do welcome criticism. I myself feel it is too "cute." Perhaps it's the anthropomorphisization? I'm addressing the fireflies... Perhaps the "Optimistic opticals" and "Spectacular surprise" are forced? It's a play on optical, does 'Optimistic' relate too trivially to "optical?" Does "Spectacular" and spectator, the visual motif, come through? I would actually like to hear all criticism, including such as: "Utterly stinks." --Mindy

I'm with you, Ba'al, not even all lengths are commensurable, as every high-school student knows (or should know.) Universal commensurability is not possible. (That doesn't create a problem for Objectivist epistemology, though.) I'd go on, but this is science, etc., and going on is epistemology... --Mindy

I know you won't find this funny, but that sounds absolutely sick to me. Perhaps there are very significant, and real differences between people? But that rings so false and hollow to me, I wouldn't be able to take five minutes of that kind of torture. Michael As I just re-read my post, I don't think I made my point very well. What I'm thinking is that there is a much more abstract psychological visibility put on view when "the kid" tries to play. It isn't his disability that the other players identify with. (Yes, that would be sick.) It's his desire to try. When these kids play, and watch one another, they have pro players to compare themselves to. And in that comparison, they are very much in the same position as the kid is when trying to play with them. Whatever their skills, they are trying to be the pro player they idolize. They dream of being as good as their heroes on the field, they argue with each other over who is best and about how good they are one day going to be. Striving is fundamental to playing. It is a constant of children's existence that they are learning about the world, and learning to do things that adults know and do. This striving is a big part of their lives. Kids with younger siblings are constantly dealing with the relative ineptitude of those siblings. Sometimes they take a parental attitude and are helpful, sometimes they are bothered by it... But it isn't strange to them. Most will sometimes sincerely celebrate developmental achievements by their younger sibs. It's that attitude that I think may take hold in a situation such as the ball game anecdote. (Which, by the way, I also find contrived. I'm afraid I did not feel warm fuzzies from reading it.) So, at risk of being redundant: when the kid joins the game, and because he is hopeless as a player, the element of his striving to play is highlighted. The kid is totally vulnerable, he is no threat to anyone, he makes their own abilities stand out in comparison. But he really, really, wants to play. He wants to try. And that fact is brought into sharp relief by the situation. It reminds me of Roark's trial, when Rand writes about how the jurors feel about him, how he is rendered unthreatening, and the benevolence that takes hold, and with which they begin to listen to him. Maybe because that one player goes out to help him, the seed of the idea is planted. When they help him, it is not ball that they are playing, it is life, and they are all on the same team! It spontaneously becomes a projective, performance-art experience. They give him a chance, because they, too want to be given a chance. The "engineering" of that chance doesn't matter, because the kid doesn't get it. He thinks he's playing ball, and they identify with his delight, and his determination. It is an abstract, a partial, a single-aspect view of the situation that excites everybody. Observers of the game, while not naming to themselves the sort of abstraction I'm suggesting is at work, see the other players acting out a broad brotherhood that shows their "humanity." And that's worth a few shivers! As to the debate, I think if the different abstractions this event relates to are laid out, we'd find out that there isn't as much disagreement as there is difference of emphasis. This event falls straight into the PC attitude of "main-streaming" retarded school children, etc. That is, I think we'd all agree, a terrible mistake, for the reasons Rand has stated, as well as what several people--the "cons" on this debate, have said. Another abstraction that this event just as truly represents, however, is mine, above (unless someone shoots me down as to its plausibility.) And MSK, particularly, is not going to deny the value he finds in it. Other abstractions may be there to find, but I would propose that the contentiousness of this thread has resulted from which "take" of the event the writer found salient. I would like to know if anyone disagrees that both of these "takes" are legitimate, though they might still argue that one is more to the point than the other. --Mindy

I am sorry Judith, I don't comprehend in what manner charity to a poor, pathetic kid could be a once-in-a-lifetime event. You know if you feel that way you could devote yourself to all the helpless people in your area, and create eureka moments every hour on the hour, instead of ho-hum, daily self-development. But you don't do that do you? Are you giving lip service? Did you ever read Rand's essay that mentioned the play "The Miracle Worker", about Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller? About that "miracle", as Rand called it, when Keller "got it" about words referring to concepts? And Sullivan says, "She KNOWS!" Did you ever read the play itself, or see it performed? If you did, and if you got pleasure from it, that was the vicarious pleasure of witnessing someone else's once-in-a-lifetime event. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about here. It's not the kind of thing you seek out. Those moments just come upon you throughout life, and you can either let them pass you by, or you can seize them and enjoy them. Judith Harking back to the question of why an event of this sort is touching, and should it be touching, I suggest that just maybe the boys, being at the end of the game, and knowing the outcome, looked for a moment, on this disabled kid, with his great desire to try, as being, not different from them, but the same as them. Maybe they reacted to the basic humanity that says take what you've got and do your best with it, "risk it on one turn of pitch and toss" as Kipling would have it. Maybe they felt psychological visibility from him in a way they didn't when they were watching one another play. In him, a little like in Quasimodo, there was the abstraction of desire to succeed put on view. So they felt a kinship with him which they wouldn't have been able to name, but which was the reason they all played ball. To see it played out, they "helped." In doing so they joined him, and perhaps it turned into a celebration of their own love of games and even of life. --Mindy

Sounds good to me. --Mindy

Paul, I'm familiar with "degrees of freedom" in statistical calculations. I'm not familiar with it being used as you do, which is as a physical property? Basically, I believe, it means some way in which a thing is indeterminate. In calculations, that just means one doesn't know what value it takes. But that can't be what it means in physics/metaphysics. Could you fill me in? --Mindy

I agree with you. It isn't the same. Which is why she shouldn't have made that statement. Ellen, Maybe to you she shouldn't have made the statement, but she did and that's what most of (what I call) the intelligent Objectivists understand induction and deduction to be. You keep insisting that Rand's usage should have been only proposition-based (including for those who adhere to her system), but it isn't, except the primitive level I mention below. Also, I made that statement because you keep stating and/or insinuating that Rand's usage of induction was really forming conclusions and her using it to mean concept formation was a mistake or somehow was muddying the waters. But waters can't be muddied when meanings are clear. And Rand made her meaning very clear in this instance. Voila. A clear meaning emerges and you don't like the meaning. All I can say is get used to it. This is where I go back to my dictionary statement. I don't think it was a goof. And I don't think it was misleading. Rand was very clear that she was using the term induction for concept formation (establishing categories), not for propositional reasoning. You can either accept that or not, but it is a huge mistake to call that a mistake. Any dictionary on earth gives more than one meaning for a word. Only on online forums have I seen this practice disparaged. btw - Making a category actually is, on a very primitive level, a proposition. It can be verbalized as "Those things I observed have enough similarities that they can be grouped into a category." Only after that proposition is satisfied do you go about enumerating some of the similarities (and differences with other stuff). That proposition is pure induction. The problem is you can't falsify it with deduction because you can only verify it with observation. If you need a definition, on that level you get what Rand called an ostensive definition, essentially pointing and saying "I mean that." I personally think Rand was brilliant for noticing induction as the essential reasoning process in concept formation. It was a first-class piece of original thinking. Michael Ellen, "Forming conclusions based on experience" would include forming a definition of a group of similar things. --Mindy

I would think that if you comprehend being passionate about doing your best at something, you would be able to see that there are many participants in sports that do it with passion--it really doesn't matter if it is your thing or not. I agree with you, Michael. After playing tennis for many, many years, I still want to hit every ball "sweetly," and hate every poor hit I make. The more you do something, the greater depth the performance has for you. Most of the people in tennis feel that way. Part of that is the public observation of what you are doing, I admit, but most of the really good players are that way with every stroke they make, in practice or in a game. Performing music is the same, (even when your sound in buried by cellos and trombones,) though, in that case there is more difference among people. Practices CAN get boring. I love your point, Michael Kelly, about thinking to be good to people we personally judge to be better than oneself in some way. I recently sent a post to a writer at another site. I was complimentary and admiring. I didn't get any resonse from that person. After feeling exposed and a little rejected, I went over why I wrote what I did, and I felt fine with it. If people considered what it says about them, to say what they do or don't say about various others, I think they'd "say" differently. Envy is endemic and pernicious. Part of taking yourself seriously is being careful about what you do and don't say. --Mindy

I mean by "induction" reasoning from a group of non-contradicted particular observations "that X (obtains)" to the universalized proposition "that X (obtains)" (whether by virtue of hypothesized intervening causal mechanisms or not). I've noticed, however, that often what Objectivists mean by "induction" -- or "inductively" -- is simply generalizing from experience. I'm in process of reading (I've almost finished it) a recent (2007) paper by a prominent Objectivist, industrial psychologist Edwin A. Locke, in which "induction" and "inductively" are used just that way. (See * below.) This sort of vaguely broad usage can lead Objectivists down paths of error: For instance, into thinking that Hume, in denying the validity of inductive reasoning, was claiming that one can't learn anything from experience. Worse, into thinking that Rand's doctrine of "contextual certainty" answers Hume's "logical problem of induction." It doesn't. It accedes that Hume was right. Rand's "contextual certainty" doctrine holds that one could arrive at a generalization which is non-contradicted in one's current context of knowledge but which could turn out to be inadequate to an expanded context of knowledge. Thus her "contextual certainty" isn't in disagreement with the point in regard to the tentativeness of our generalizations which in other circles is called "scientific skepticism." In that respect it uses a different label for the same thesis (or one might say a new bottle for old wine). -- * For instance, Locke writes: The first sentence illustrates the vague use of "inductively." The second I find a rather remarkable statement, given the obvious discrepancy with Locke's own brief description in the same paper of Rand's theory of concept-formation, in which description he says: How then could "facts discovered about members of the class" be "generalized to all members, including those not yet seen," given that, in particular measurements, each member of the class is said to differ from all others? From what he goes on to say, I have to assume he's talking narrowly about causal "facts discovered about members of the class." He writes (repeating the above two sentences and continuing): By that point, Locke is using the idea of "induction" in closer to its historic scientific use, but if one has to go through the procedure indicated in order to arrive at "valid [sic] inductive generalizations," then loop back to the notion that concepts are "formed inductively" in the first place: Seems to me that one is now revolving around a wheel on which there's no beginning! I have the same objection to Rand's description in ITOE of how one arrives at the "essential" characteristic(s). She says (pg. 45, 1990) of "the process of determining an essential characteristic" that one proceeds by "the rule of fundamentality" (her emphasis), which she describes thus: Thus, since she says that a definition is required for completing a concept, again it seems to me that we're presented with an endlessly circling wheel with no beginning: A causal theory is required to form a valid concept but valid concepts are required to from a causal theory...... Ellen ___ Thanks for that explanation, Ellen. I understand better. I think the Objectivist view is that induction is whatever is bottom-up in terms of abstraction. I believe you'll find Rand's positions are right in line with Aristotle on this. Her "metaphysical" account of universals is his account of "essence" and her "epistemological" account is his account of definition. Here's how it's put in the article on Aristotle in the Oxford Companion to Philosophy: "...he outlined an account of what each thing's essence is (the feature which provides the fundamental account of its other genuine properties), [and] of how things should be defined (in terms of their basic explanatory features)..." Aristotle also had a sort of syllogism called a demonstration which aimed at explanation, and worked to organize characteristics hierarchically. It isn't enumerative. (This is part of his Analytics.) The demonstration syllogism may play the role of induction in your detection of circularity in Rand/Locke's account. So it is an intermediate step in forming--fully forming--a concept. A rudimentary concept is a grouping of similar objects (simplifying). But noticing that things resemble one another doesn't immediately separate out all common and not-in-common characteristics. So there is a period of examination and discovery that sorts that out, including the hierarchical organization of facts about and features of the objects. I'm sure this won't be fully satisfactory, but it offers another perspective on what you see as circularity. --Mindy

Do you find that song lyrics make poor poetry? Lyrics that are beautiful in a song tend to fall flat when they are all on their own. It's as if the integrity that the music itself has binds the words, making unnecessary the rhythm, etc. that poetry otherwise requires. --Mindy

Here's the beginning of a poem I wrote: Buggy little lanterns, Wafting through the air, Sometimes you're not, And sometimes you're there. It's about lightning bugs, in case that isn't clear. What I like about it is the third and fourth lines mimic the on-off of the bugs' light. I don't know what that property would be called (rhythmic onomatopoeia?) but it is the sort of thing that poetry must have, I think. Poetry cannot be rendered in prose, because poetry uses word combinations that aren't acceptable in prose. "If you can dream, and not make dreams your master," (Kipling's IF) shows this well. "If you can dream..." is ridiculous as a bit of prose, because everyone "can" dream. Similarly, "make dreams your master," is silly as prose, because we are the authors of our dreams, how could they control us? In poetic interpretation, however, we see that to have dreams is necessary, not childish or unrealistic. And we learn that while dreams, goals, purpose, are essential, they can be elevated above their place, and worshipped and clung to despite changes in circumstances that make them futile or tragic, or they can make us impractically single-minded. In the context of poetry, these unusual word combinations are acceptable, and the reader "stretches" his knowledge of the words to find a meaning for their combination. If the line "works" as poetry, there is some such meaning, and it leads the reader to think of, imagine, or recall, etc., the thing written about in a "new" but not unfamiliar way. This "new" but not unfamiliar way is a here-to-fore unconceptualized aspect of the thing or of one's experience. It is familiar in experience, but not in being put into words. We don't put everything into words. The feeling of the cool air on one's hand when the sun is hot, the excitement of your child's surprising you with a mature insight. There are tons of things we are only able to state or communicate in sentences, paragraphs, articles, etc. Poetry tries to focus our attention precisely on some such aspect of life. Rhyme and rythm, I suspect, add to poetry by creating a sense of integration, "fit," which is needed since sentence grammar is being neglected or defied. This post has gone on a bit on its own momentum, ahem, but I'll put it up and see what response it gets. --Mindy

May I ask about the light-source? It seems to be a round spot, but that would be odd in nature. A fire was suggested, but that wouldn't produce the round highlights. I find myself distracted by wondering about the source of light. Thanks --Mindy

Does she anywhere else use the terms in so vaguely non-technical a way? I looked in the Lexicon. There's no entry for "Deduction." The entry for "Induction and Deduction" cites exactly the quote from pg. 28 of ITOE, no other reference. I think she was seeing a "family resemblance" -- generalizing and applying -- and using the terms "induction" and "deduction" loosely in that context. (I'm being charitable. ;-)) Ellen ___ I don't understand how the terms are being used loosely, vaguely, or "non-technically" (unless that was supposed to be "vaguely non-technical." Do you limit induction to enumeration? --Mindy