thomtg

[...]I haven't time now to ask my friend who saw the list at the archives for any recollection concerning the question about how she formed her theory of concepts. I'll be gone most of next week for back-to-back conferences, and will have to wait to inquire until after that. I noticed something interesting in reading the material you linked. AR says: The theory to which she alludes concerning stages of mental development of "the human race" came under severe criticism and I think has been entirely discarded by evolutionists and paleoanthropologists (if anyone still proposes it, I don't know who); it was analogous to Haeckel's "recapitulation" theory of embryology. The latter apparently still is taught in a certain number of curricula, but shouldn't be -- See. Ellen Thank you, Ellen, for responding to my query. I will wait for your return from conferences to ask your friend about her reminiscence, if any, of who had asked the last question in the appendix of ITOE. As a small aside (for I wish to respect this thread's pointed focus), on the matter of Ayn Rand's usage of "human race" as possibly alluding to anything analogous to some "recapitulation" theory of embryology, I doubt that this is the case. I doubt that she had anything this dubious in mind. In any case, Prof. E started it. Nevertheless, this usage to me is more metaphorical rather than literal, for we can see the same kind of usage being applied to "mankind" in David Kelley's concluding paragraph in his latest article "The Fourth Revolution." (The New Individualist, Spring 2009) Like Rand, but in a new context, I too shudder to think of the time elements involved for this next revolution to reach the billions of individuals in the world.

Hi Ba'al, Although the date of your query is months past, and you have probably followed up on it yourself, as any rational person with the will and the means would, I will take up the opportunity to answer it with the hope that others here can emend my understanding. (I suspect, had it be titled less cryptically, others might have joined in the discussion sooner.) Having just finished reading in this past week Chapter 4 "Concepts of Consciousness" in Ayn Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (ITOE), I find Rand's view of consciousness to be very Thomistic, in a naturalized way, and by extension, to be very Aristotelian. (Den Uyl & Rasmussen TPTOAR 4, 11) To be conscious is to be conscious of something, always. It is what MSK calls the "mind thing" to be relational, to be intentional. By contrast, to be conscious but without any object of consciousness, to intend but without the intended, is a contradiction in terms. Rand takes this relational view to apply to every level of consciousness, from the neurological to the psychological. For every act of awareness there is a content. Taking this principle of intentionality as a commensurable characteristic of every state of consciousness, Rand distinguishes extrospection, as the process of apprehending some existents of the external world, from introspection, which is cognition directed inward to apprehend psychological actions themselves. Introspection may be recursive, but always standing on some existents of the external world. To be aware is, radically, to be aware of the world. (ITOE 29-30) Suppose the faculty of consciousness has three functions for an animal: cognition, affection, and regulation. (Nathaniel Branden TPOSE 97d) Introspection, a unique activity for man among animals, has for contents the actions of all these functions at the psychological level. Man cannot introspect the neurological process of how he sees a cat chasing a dog through his eyes and through his optic nerves, but he can become aware of his power to see. "Seeing" is an action he can conceptualize introspectively. No cat or dog can become aware of its cognitive action. Surely, a dog can sense pain from a clawing cat, but only man can conceptualize "fear" as an affective response to imminent danger. And if a dog is motivated to run away from a cat, it has no awareness of its regulatory "effort," "resolve," "efficacy," which are within man's power to apprehend. Now, to answer your question specifically, Ba'al, planning is a form of thinking about future actions to achieve some goal. Thinking is a form of cognition akin to perceiving. (Arisotle DA III 3 427a19-23) Recalling is cognition indirectly of contents previously acted on directly; it is cognition of contents previously actively stored. Thinking and planning directed outward toward reality are extrospective. Recalling a thought; thinking about "thinking," "planning," "remembering; and planning to think and remember about them, to make them more efficient and rational, are introspective. (Barbara Branden POET L10) The problem, of course, is that anything psychological is volitional and capable of error. "If it were true [if it were automatic and unerring (my bracket, T.)], we would be living in Atlantis. If men identified introspectively their inner states one tenth as correctly as they identify objective reality, we would be a race of ideal giants. I ascribe ninety-five percent or more of all psychological trouble and personal tragedies to the fact that in the realm of introspection we are on the level where savages were (or lower) in regard to extrospection. Men are not only not taught to introspect, they are actively discouraged from engaging in introspection, and yet their lives depend on it. Without that, nothing is possible to them..." (ITOE 227) We go to zoos en masse to learn about fish, birds, and mammals; botanical gardens to learn about trees, flowers, and cacti; supermarkets to learn about spices, herbs, and edibles. The mind is where we go to learn about psychological knowledge, emotions, and methods; but its vastness admits but one visitor. I have only noticed of late that it is open for business. To live is one thing, as any fern or crab can do; to live consciously is another. Ayn Rand, the second master of those who know, showed us how to take responsibility for knowing our mind. Her own life in this respect is well worth to be emulated.

Robert, The distinction of the two meanings reminds me of a claim that perhaps you have heard about good chess players. Some players of chess can look at a snapshot of a chessboard and can immediately project the full strategies being played in the game, deducing the causal sequences the chess pieces had undergone to the present snapshot instance. And if asked to reproduce the chessboard without looking at the snapshot, they can do so competently. But as good as they are, these same chess players are helpless to make heads or tails out of a snapshot of a chessboard randomly assembled. (I wonder if this was a psychological study.) In any case, would you agree with the following analogical extension? Putting chess pieces on the chessboard, leaving out checkers pieces, makes the chessboard epistemologically meaningful. Arranging the chess pieces so that a good chess player can snapshot it in his mind, makes the board metaphysically meaningful. Epistemological meaning implies having words and grammatical correctness. Metaphysical meaning implies having an integration given the context of one's present knowledge. One expert with more knowledge may grasp the metaphysical meaning from what is merely epistemologically meaningful to a novice. And perhaps this last, this dependency on one's context, made Dr. Peikoff queasy about using the term "metaphysical meaning" beyond ITL. I would have called it "objective meaning" to account for both the existents being identified and the constraints of consciousness. --- Are you suggesting that the Peikovian "arbitrary" is a package-deal, of lumping together Jabberwocky-checkers verses, nonobjective assertions, and malicious motives into one unit? If so, what would be the non-essential element uniting them? Their being meaningless, or their being neither true nor false, or their being supplied without evidence?

Robert, I wonder if there is anything in the Objectivist literature (oral and textual) that prescribes the use of humor in dealing with "the arbitrary." For example, I have noticed, with gleeful satisfaction, MSK's benevolently humorous and witty replies to certain messages on this forum board, which I deem arbitrary in the meaningless/neither-true-false/without-evidence sense. While I would tend to stay silent and only lurk, as may or may not be prescribed by Dr. Peikoff (see bold texts above), I find the head-on approach genuinely courageous, and the satirical messages wonderfully therapeutic. Where I would, were it not the case, angrily or dismissively scroll away from the postings once I made the judgment of their arbitrariness, I now would instead look forward to seeing them, spot their signature, and stay on the same thread, anticipating that a commonsensical but humorour reply would come forth. Is this not a potent approach to dismissing the arbitrary, not granting it legitimacy, while continuing to be open for dialog with the serious? I look forward to your JARS article when its embargo expires.

Stephen, thanks for responding. From my reading of your "Volitional Synapses, VI",I do not see the implausibility of a tumbling milliliter of water at a waterfall being predetermined by conditions from a year or even a million years ago--without human interference. As one regresses in time, one expands the scale of the starting condition. One year makes one orbit around the sun; that makes the starting condition for the milliliter of water to encompass everything within 2 A.U., at a minimum. It is a matter of scale, which seems to be omitted entirely in the hypothesis of metaphysical (physical) contingency. While I accept the idea of the "full trace of the fact" being delimited, I do not see it as a limitation to the law of causality, which is what you are implying in saying that the future action of an entity is not "in every way specifiable out of the present" conditions. (186) Furthermore, I find troublesome the idea of "conditional facts" (184), which, if I interpret you correctly, takes any hypothetical statement as identifying such facts. Some hypotheticals are simply false, if not arbitrary. So, by first artificially limiting the scale from which you specify conditions of necessity, you add in these other outside conditions, and relative to which you then claim some metaphysically given fact to be contingent. I disagree. Here is a reformulation: if (A & not-C & not-D & not-scale & ... & not-volitional) then B. From this, I maintain that there is no basis for metaphysically given facts to be contingent. The concepts of "necessity" and "contingency," as I take them literally, are characteristics of the contents of awareness in any process of thought to help us identify "things outside our control from things in our control." (ITOE 242d) The moon's orbit is thoroughly what it is, including its potential for collision with a behemoth meteor or for going into a chaotic régime. Both of these conditions are also outside of our control (for now). --- Your rephrasing of the analogy of facts to a "form of consciousness" is not what I meant. Let me clarify. I am proposing that facts are the "bit by bit" portions of reality as grasped by our consciousness in instances of a process of thought. (ITOE 243) These bit portions are the "content of consciousness" in the context of some "action of consciousness." (ITOE 31) Only when linked and attributive of a proper, methodical process of thought, do they become facts. Taking as a starting point Ayn Rand's theory of values, with the controlling insight that values are objective (CTUI "What is Capitalism?" 22), I claim that values are a kind of facts; that evaluation is a kind of cognition; and that, intermediately therefore, values and facts are on par ontologically. Hence, facts and values are on par as contents of consciousness--as contents respectively of cognition and evaluation--as contents of psychological actions--as neither in the subject nor naturally occurring. "Fact" and "value" are epistemological conveniences. (ITOE 241) When you say, "Facts are what is the case. They do not require anyone to comprehend the case they are to be the case"--I have to ask, doesn't a value require a valuer? Doesn't a fact require a thinker? Just as the referents of values, as actively chosen by someone, are concrete things (material or spiritual) that can satisfy human needs--so the referents of facts are concrete things that are conceptually identified, as actively thought by someone. As existents become values by means of deliberations; so they become facts by means of propositions. Values and facts don't present themselves in nature ready-made; both require effort to obtain, with no guarantee of success.

Which side of the sameness-identicality distinction would you place "equal," Merlin? And "equivalent"?

Hi Stephen, Keeping pace with you as you jump across time and (hyper)space is worthy of the effort, but I will localize my comments and questions here. And there are two: one metaphysical, one epistemological. 1. Your hyperlink from the above to "Physical Contingency" has an excerpt of another article in whose appendix you cite your definitions of necessity and contingency: Necessity is: if A, then B, even if C. Contingency is: if A, then B, unless C. It seems to me that on this view contingency can be expressed as If A, then B, unless C. if A, then B, if not-C. if (A & not-C), then B. Then, it becomes a matter of substitution of the parenthetical part as A', to yield, "If A', then B". And in which case, "contingency" is the same as "necessity." It becomes a matter of knowledge of what this new A' is, as a condition for B. If, as you stated, that "necessity" and "contingency" are metaphysical concept, then what you have defined involves a commingling of an epistemological relation into the concept of "contingency." 2. Concerning the fascinating blog entry (comments and all) involving Harry Binswanger, I have two questions about the epistemological status of facts. Given the definition of "truth" as an identification of a fact, and given the definition of "identification" as a mental grasping (aka, an awareness) of the nature of something (Peikoff Introduction to Logic Lec1 20min.), I would like to know from you, first, what you think are the referents of "fact"? Secondly, here below is my conception of fact. a) Would you say that this is standard Objectivist epistemology; b ) if so, do you agree; c) if not, why? A person, being aware of reality for the purpose of living, chooses to identify some aspect of it. And let us say that this psychological action is an instance of the concept of consciousness "thought." As a process of consciousness, there is always a content with each action. (ITOE 29) In the case of a thought, the content is a fact (if the fallible action is successful). So too, as a process of consciousness, there is always a resulting product (however well or mis-integrated it is). (ITOE 35) In the case of a thought, the product is a proposition, which is expressed linguistically in the form of a declarative sentence. So, "thought," being a species of "identification," is an action to apprehend an aspect of reality, which, when successful, yields a true proposition, whose content is a fact (and when unsuccessful, yields a false proposition, whose content is an error). For Objectivists, here represented by Binswanger, "Truth qua truth is one relationship between a proposition (as used by a mind) and reality: the relationship of identification"--with "identification" described as not "a kind of physicalistic correspondence." Thus, a fact qua fact comes into being for oneself at the same time as one asserts a truth via a proposition. Since things exist independently of anyone's awareness of them, so facts are the things existing, as grasped by someone's awareness. As existents are perceptually perceived in some forms, so existents are propositionally identified in some facts. Said another way, as the content of a concept is any unit of a category of existents, so the content of a proposition is a fact of reality. Without human awareness, there would be no unit qua unit, or fact qua fact. That propositions are products of consciousness, is a metaphysically given fact; that facts come into being, is a man-made fact. That which a fact designates, just is. Update: As a contrast, how would you compare your view of fact with that of REB's?

Hi Merlin, is it possible for you to post the abstracts here for all to see?

Roger, do you still have the notes or transcripts of the cyberseminar? If so, I'd like to get a copy. Regarding the concept "fact," Rand discusses it in the workshop (ITOE 241-246). There, she contrasts facts against errors and imaginaries. This tells me that facts too are epistemological, not metaphysical as you inferred from her letter to John Hospers. Which of Rand's writings is definitive? I would think the later one. That Cinderella lost a slipper is imaginary; that the three little pigs became bacon for the wolf is an error; that pigs can't fly is a fact. These thoughts identify existents as standing in different epistemological relationships to the thinker. And of course, that "pigs can't fly" is true.

Roger, I interpret the issue of existential import as a problem of asserting the existence of things. The modern interpretation takes the issue to mean that universal statements assert absence, while particular ones assert presence. It is what is drawn in Venn's diagrams: shadings, for absence; Xes, for presence. It seems to be a pretty good division of labor among propositional forms. Contrast this with the traditional interpretation of existential import. In my judgment, traditionalists confound concepts with concretes. Because a concrete is taken always to be enveloped in a concept, albeit in a concept of only one referent, assertions about concretes are thus allowed to take universal-statement forms. And from then, the traditional square of opposition allows for the subalternation relationships, which then permits the sideway relations. But then one has to question whether a concept can have but one referent! It seems to me that this is erroneous. The error may have been caused by a traditionalist conception of the division of cognitive labor between the intellect and the rational soul. That is, concepts are exclusively used by the intellect; and concretes, by the senses. Commenting against Aristotle's psychological treatise, Aquinas sided with Augustine to make this interpretation. (ST I Q84 A1) Ayn Rand's contribution to this issue is to pry apart concepts and concretes while allowing both to be dealt with by man's mind. (ITOE 11a) (In this context, I disagree with your suggestion to fuse back concepts and concretes.)

Hi there. How reliable is this list of names, particularly in their ordering of the first handful? There is a commenter at another blog who seriously questioned whether Allan Gotthelf was Prof. B. This commenter thought he had heard Harry Binswanger saying that the latter had asked Ayn Rand how she had arrived at her measurement-omission theory. I presume the former had heard this at a live lecture from long ago, and I take his comment to be credible. Do we know for sure Allan Gotthelf asked Ayn Rand at the end of the workshop how she arrived at her theory of concept-formation? Ellen, does your anonymous third source have knowledge of this? Alternately, if this comment is to be believed--that it may have been Harry Binswanger who was Prof. B--can someone corroborate this claim by going through all of Binswanger's audio lectures?