dan2100

Regarding architecture: Do esthetic theories matter one whit to an architect as opposed to estheticians?

--Brant

The same might be asked of novelists, poets, painters, sculptors, dancers, composers, musicians, etc., no?

Competition may have gotten our genes this far but I think cooperation is going to be required in the next step of man's evolution. I'm not sure how 'altruism' fits in to this but I get the impression that 'altruism' means a sort of "forced cooperation" - but in this case the force is achieved through invoking feeling of guilt, duty, etc.

Forgive the quick response due to lack of time, but two points. One, this just sounds platitudinous. No offense, but it does.

Two, if you're going to evoke bio-evolution, then the standard view in evolutionary theory is competition is all there is. When you see cooperation, dig deeper and you find it's because of competition. In other words, in evolutionary terms, competition explains or is more fundamental than cooperation.

One more comment: Rand's view is altruism actually got us into this mess -- whatever that mess is -- and more of the same -- including saddling people with feelings of guilt or some sense of duty -- will not result in a step forward but either in a step back or the status quo.

I feel it'd be good starting place to evaluate whether Rand's view on the "ethics of emergencies" is really consistent with the rest of her views here -- rather than just accepting it as part of Objectivism. (And, in my mind, Objectivism is completely open to revision -- as is any philosophical system. Deciding whether the outcome of any revision is still Objectivism depends on what one means by the term. And all such systems and movements face issues of identity and integrity -- i.e., what alterations are possible that remain inside the pale and which ones push one definitely outside it. I don't have an easy formulaic answer for this... Of course, regardless, I think you'd want to know what the correct position to take on this -- rather than what's the Objectivist one, especially given your comments on this being a "weak" part of the system.)

Wow, there's alot in there. First of all, I think that pretty much always, conscious human action is motivated by self interest and might be altruistic/sacrificial or not. For me, it is not a self interest OR altruism binary situation. Without this, whYNOT and others run the risk of getting muddled in terminology before meaningful discussion happens.

I believe I do know the correct position to take on this. I can arrive at this based largely on Rand's type of logic, but with one small but critical difference, leading to a very different outcome. However, projecting this outcome as objective and universally applicable is a leap I can't take.

Anyway, I believe I can quite justifiably paint a more accurate picture of what 'qua man' is. Without getting into too much detail, evolutionary biology quite clearly tells us that altruism (close enough to Rand's version) is built right into us for the most part. We are hard wired to struggle with often competing forces of selfish and altruistic drives.

In this situation, a "normal" person morally without question should indeed risk their own life to help. How much risk? Well that's an excellent question. Same thing with the starving child, yes we DO have an obligation to help. Altruism is part of what we are, it helped create who we are, it is part of "qua man".

Of course I cannot provide an objective basis of why this should apply to everyone without exception. There are strategies that co-evolve that might be in conflict and their morality is as objective as mine - in other words not objective at all. But I can say at least the vast majority would be described by what I'm saying.

Bob

No time at the moment to respond to all your points. Just wanted to comment on two. One is the evolutionary biology approach. I think the jury still out and this field changes so much, especially in terms of looking into human behavior, in recent years, that I'd be careful in drawing too many conclusions of what's wired in or where certain behaviors or beliefs come from. Evolutionary psychology, in particular, is, in my opinion, rife with many "just so" explanations that seem more like the researcher rationalizing a case than actually explaining anything. (I want to post something on testing evolutionary hypotheses later, though it won't apply to this particular case.)

Two is that the helping the starving child case I recall Rand making was that of helping a starving child who's a stranger over helping one's own child -- not one of helping a starving child versus doing nothing. (And, in a way, people already do this now without being Objectivists or knowing anything about Rand: think of all those starving children now who go unfed while parents feed their own children. This doesn't mean they're following a conscious moral code here, but if you're going to argue the evolution of your species wired people to help children, then there are an awful lot of cases where they don't. (Of course, to be fair, you make the case that there's a conflict wired in -- and that might fit this case of helping one's children versus helping other children, though this would need to be tested and not merely proclaimed, no?))

AFAICS in Objectivism your son would be acting immorally on two counts. First, he's initiating force on someone who didn't attack him first. Second, he's be risking his life - his opponent is armed with a meat cleaver - for a stranger. This is immoral. Rand is very clear on this point. This is one of the more original points of her ethical theories. So even if he should save the girl's life, his schoolmates should then roundly condemn and shun him, as Rand is also very clear that immorality should not be tolerated.

The only exception might be if the schoolgirl in question was the love of your son's life.

You think so? Two counts?

I would say that Objectivism would say that he has no moral obligation to intervene. But I disagree.

Bob

I think you're right that there's no moral obligation to intervene -- though this would depend on the particulars of the relationship. I think a classmate relationship wouldn't be as strong in terms of potential for moral obligation as a friendship. (And I'd judge someone who did absolutely nothing but claimed to be a close friend as a bad character and treat him or her accordingly. I'm not sure I'd do the same for a classmate, though I certainly wouldn't expect, say, a total stranger to feel any obligation in this case.)

One must also be careful here, too, to distinguish between a moral obligation -- such as one should aid one's friends even when it might cause one discomfort or risk -- and a legal obligation when one must do something or one is violating someone's right -- such as I've signed a contract to protect the girl and then say, when the the other kid is running after her with seeming murderous intent, "Whoa! This was a stupid idea and I'd rather watch to see how she gets out of this fix. Hey, anyone getting this to put on YouTube later?" and merely look on.

AFAICS in Objectivism your son would be acting immorally on two counts. First, he's initiating force on someone who didn't attack him first. Second, he's be risking his life - his opponent is armed with a meat cleaver - for a stranger. This is immoral. Rand is very clear on this point. This is one of the more original points of her ethical theories. So even if he should save the girl's life, his schoolmates should then roundly condemn and shun him, as Rand is also very clear that immorality should not be tolerated.

The only exception might be if the schoolgirl in question was the love of your son's life.

Rand never said that one may legitimately use defensive violence only when one is personally attacked.

Nor did Rand ever say that coming to the aid of an innocent victim, or potential victim, is necessarily immoral.

Ghs

Agree on your first sentence, but I think Rand did bring up the case of aiding strangers and, unless I'm mistaken, she did say it was immoral to sacrifice higher values in this case. I think the case she used was helping one's own child over helping a stranger's -- if both were starving. (I forget the exact reference here.) That doesn't exactly map onto this case -- unless one thinks of it as would you prefer to risk your child to save another child from the meat cleaver wielding classmate.

AFAICS in Objectivism your son would be acting immorally on two counts. First, he's initiating force on someone who didn't attack him first. Second, he's be risking his life - his opponent is armed with a meat cleaver - for a stranger. This is immoral. Rand is very clear on this point. This is one of the more original points of her ethical theories. So even if he should save the girl's life, his schoolmates should then roundly condemn and shun him, as Rand is also very clear that immorality should not be tolerated.

The only exception might be if the schoolgirl in question was the love of your son's life.

On your first point, there's nothing immoral in Objectivism on attacking an aggressor. Rand was against initiating force, but once someome initiates force, there's nothing to limit retaliation to the victim of said initiation. (And here I think she was consistent with Objectivism as I see it.) Were this not so, this would end up with a very odd outlook: only the victim could retaliate and everyone else would be morally tied up in not doing anything against an aggressor. Imagine the case of the little old lady being mugged being some violent but rather lanky thug and the well armed body builder saying, "I cannot stop the thug. He hasn't aggressed against me. Hey, let's see how granny gets out of this one."

On your second point, there is something to debate. It matters here what the risks are, though in most of these cooked up situations the problem is likely to rest on habits inculcated rather than someone soberly considering the options.

Human action a la Mises would define action as purposive behavior without asking about what motivates that behavior. In this case, the only question would be whether a given behavior is purposive or not -- not whether it's ultimate motivation or goal defies reason in the everyday sense.

This almost sounds like treating a person like a robot. I have doubts about an analysis that doesn't include emotional factors.

No, I don't think it does, quite the contrary. It separates fact from speculation quite nicely. I think it's a very useful way of looking at human behaviour, emotional behaviour included. Dan is doing an excellent job of explaining this and I think this is an important idea. The idea here, and of course correct me if I'm wrong - it's been a little while since I've dug into this - is that we MUST limit ourselves to what we know - or at least our speculations cannot contradict what we know as fact. The motivations/ethics/psychology is still a black box, but the action is perfectly clear.

We cannot take the alcoholic's word for it that he wants to stop drinking more than anything else when he cracks open another beer and chugs it. Regardless of what he says, it's his ACTION that tells us that he prefers to drink. See, this helps us understand on a more precise level that although he might VALUE sobriety and understands his destructive behaviour, he doesn't value sobriety enough to put up with the discomfort of getting there. In other words, the price is too high - at least right now. Now perhaps you can see the connection to Economics. Anyway, emotion or not is irrelevant, all we are doing is ordinally ranking a series of values as determined by ACTION, not words, not emotion, not psychology. Why the action was chosen is very deliberately NOT addressed. What it tells us is that A is valued over B if A was chosen, nothing more. Emotion, psychology, whatever can analyze further, but you cannot say that B is more valuable if when given the choice, you don't choose it.

As Dan points out too, it's important to remember that choice indeed must be involved. We can't make a value judgment if there's no choice. There must be an A, B, C.... type of choice, or to act or not to act is also a choice.

Bob

Thanks Bob! I'm only relying on Mises and his Austrian commentators here. I think everyone should give his Human Action a go.

I wanted to expand on costs. I think in Austrian economics the cost of any action is always what the actor imagines she or he is giving up -- not actually what's given up. In the case of our alcoholic friend, he's probably imagining the pain of not drinking, at the moment he decides to imbibe, is more than the pleasure he'll get from taking a drink.

To expand on this a bit more, this also goes for actions we know for which they won't work at all. The alcoholic presumably succeeds in drinking -- even if that goes against his professed goal of sobriety and perhaps his long range plans of maybe maintaining his health and keeping his job or marriage. But what about purposive behavior we know won't actually work, such as -- borrowing an example often used in Austrian circles -- rain dances. Presumably, people do rain dances to bring on rain. It seems to be the case that rain dances have no actual causal relation to rain -- in other words, whether someone does a rain dance has no impact on whether it rains. Yet the rain dancer seem, obviously, to believe it causes rain. This explains why they do they dance and the economist can explain the rain dancer's actions in terms of the latter's preferences -- even if the former believes this will never work and is a total waste of time and effort; that it's, thereby, irrational in terms of how the world actually works.

And the same economics applies to rain dancer as applies to investing money in weather forecasts or grain futures. In a sense, one might say, Mises and those of his school have managed to make a distinction that works in reality and, because of this, probably identifies a valid difference -- i.e., it cuts reality along lines that makes sense rather than merely imposing an arbitrary construct such as classical and neoclassical economists do with their models of human behavior.

I know this hasn't become a 'what if' scenario (yet!), but to supply just one emotional factor/for instance - I think I would find value in rescuing a stranger from a river.

On two counts - human empathy, and not wanting to face myself later for not rising (diving) to the situation.

(Though if it were the Zambezi in torrent, I'd weigh the odds, likely hold back, and just have to live with the decision.)

The reason I raise this is to illustrate that 1. this doesn't necessarily constitute self-sacrifice (unless I die in the attempt), and is actually motivated by self-interest 2. more importantly, I don't think a SINGLE ACTION represents altruism... or egoism, for that matter.

Therefore, one who is a lifelong egoist by conviction can easily, on conditional occasions, make an unselfish act,or an apparently sacrificial act.

Is there a contradiction with Objectivist ideology? To quote the Galt Oath, "I will never live for the sake of another man..." I think that 'LIVE' answers the question.

In my opinion Objectivism's view on Emergency Situations is weak, but judge for yourself.

I feel it'd be good starting place to evaluate whether Rand's view on the "ethics of emergencies" is really consistent with the rest of her views here -- rather than just accepting it as part of Objectivism. (And, in my mind, Objectivism is completely open to revision -- as is any philosophical system. Deciding whether the outcome of any revision is still Objectivism depends on what one means by the term. And all such systems and movements face issues of identity and integrity -- i.e., what alterations are possible that remain inside the pale and which ones push one definitely outside it. I don't have an easy formulaic answer for this... Of course, regardless, I think you'd want to know what the correct position to take on this -- rather than what's the Objectivist one, especially given your comments on this being a "weak" part of the system.)

Human action a la Mises would define action as purposive behavior without asking about what motivates that behavior. In this case, the only question would be whether a given behavior is purposive or not -- not whether it's ultimate motivation or goal defies reason in the everyday sense.

This almost sounds like treating a person like a robot. I have doubts about an analysis that doesn't include emotional factors.

I'd have to re-read Mises on this, but I don't think that was the idea -- to treat humans as robots. Rather, it was to isolate specific value considerations from economics -- to avoid economists judging ends or value and focus on describing the general features of human action. For instance, the law of supply and demand applies regardless of what values we plug in -- and regardless of what motivates people -- just as long as actors have values and much choose between values, the law applies. And, in my mind, this is a real gain -- or we end up with an economics constantly overlooking such laws because it's involved in lecturing people on their particular values.

On this, see also Kirzner's The Economic Point of View. This title is available for perusal online at:

http://all.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=304&Itemid=27

Oh, no! Not Dan Ust! In 20 days he'll have more posts up than the guy who runs this joint.

--Brant

Very funny! I'll take that as a welcome to to the list.

"All people act out of self-interest".

Well I don't think so. My experience of people is that it's not that they don't do what they should do; not even that they don't do what you expect them to do; but that they don't do what they expect themselves to do.

Often, their actions are so self-disinterested, that those are irrational to the point of insane self-damage.

Without, often, the least momentary pleasure or gain that you can point to. Except for perhaps trying to impress other people. (Now, that's altruism and self-sacrifice in my book.)

Tony

I think one has to be careful about this. I agree that people often behave in ways that startle and surprise themselves. But in any situation this might be for many reasons -- and not just because they momentarily lost control. In fact, it might be that they selected an easier path or weren't aware of the correct course (or made earlier choices to avoid this -- as in people who don't look into something too deeply when they seem to know a conflict might arise).

Also, altruism and self-sacrifice in Rand's terms would need a framework of specific objective values -- specifically, hierarchical ones -- to know when a sacrifice was being made. The problem here might be that what looks like a sacrifice to someone might not look like one to the supposed sacrificer. This doesn't mean it isn't, but one would have to verify this by looking into the aims and motives of the supposed sacrificer. You do mention this, but I just want to be clear that this might not be easy to do in many cases.

I don't think it's that complicated and Rand's ideas on altruism can be described and evaluated scientifically. Because of man's life as the standard of value idea, Rand's sacfrices and altruism are very much in line with that of Evolutionary Biology.

Altruistic acts are acts that confer a survival advantage to another individual at the cost of a survival disadvantage to the individual performing the act. I think this fits well with Rand's concept. Unfortunately evaluation of her ideas in this context mean her ideas don't hold up to scrutiny.

Also, with regards to X-ray's ideas about sacrifice being impossible (ie acts are by definition always in self interest). I think both Rand's take on altruism AND X-ray's ideas are true.

IIRC, Human Action Theory is a basic tenet of Austrian Economics which basically states that whenever a person chooses between alternatives, a preference is displayed. If a person has a choice and chooses A over B, by definition they prefer A. The ACT is everything, because it's the only thing we can see and measure. To criticize the decision is to substitute your values. Actions, in their view are always in ones self interest regardless of how twisted or destructive we may judge them to be. The drug addict has his own reasons to choose the drug over recovery.

Therefore while it might be impossible not to act in self interest, it is certainly possible to perform an act that is altruistic. I don't see is as exclusive.

Bob

What about the effect of emotions in all this? I think in many cases one's emotional states are so overpowering that one can make choices that defy reason. We humans cannot separate reason from emotion completely and there are emotional factors in all our reasoning and our emotions are influenced by our reasoning. In example of the former is indicated in the saying "sleep on it" because why would sleeping on some idea help in the decision making process other than on an emotional level?

Human action a la Mises would define action as purposive behavior without asking about what motivates that behavior. In this case, the only question would be whether a given behavior is purposive or not -- not whether it's ultimate motivation or goal defies reason in the everyday sense. For instance, imagine what's normally called an alcoholic. He says he doesn't want to drink and yet he drinks. In Misesean terms, he's got a goal inherent in his behavior -- that is, to drink. Hence, it's an action and even though it conflicts with his professed goals, it tells us something about his values -- that he values drinking over not drinking despite what he says to the contrary and even if he admits his value choice here doesn't make sense (e.g., it conflicts with both his other values and his professed goal of not drinking).

Still, there might be states one is in where there's no choice involved whatsoever, but these tend to very rare and then I believe we're outside the scope of action: we're no longer talking purposive behavior but just plain old behavior. This is so when there are no imagined alternatives or when the actor literally has no control. (On the latter, thinking of the knee-jerk response.) Of course, in judging such behaviors, one might have to examine the wider context. Going back to the alcoholic example, it might that taking a single drink seems completely out of his choice, but the choice to go near a bar after he's stated he doesn't want to drink today seems to belie that. In fact, a thing people often do to control supposedly irresistable urges is to avoid situations where they'll arise. So, there's a meta-level action going on here: the person who might binge on potato chips doesn't keep them in her cupboard. She acts purposively to avoid putting herself in a situation where she might lose control.

I'm in midst of moving, so I had to retrieve my copy of Furnishing the Mind from my new library to more fully respond. Prinz does address the issue of logical connectives in chapter 7 "The Perceptual Basis." There he examines counterexamples, but it's more of a list of strategies for dealing with them -- concepts of logic (disjunction, etc.), mathematics, and other seemingly non-empirical ones -- than anything else. And, re-reading it very quickly this morning, he doesn't list a motor experience strategy. (A few years ago, I emailed Prinz regarding mathematical concepts -- specifically citing Kitcher's The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge and your and my review of that work, but I didn't get a substantive reply and he was unfamiliar with Kitcher's work.) He doesn't commit to any strategy in the end, but in this chapter is merely out to show that the counterexamples can be countered by some strategy rather than to settle on a particular one.

I actually had some notes on his not using processes for his proxytype theory. I want to raise some of my criticisms later on this site, but three I think should be raised now is he doesn't deal explicitly with "abstractions from abstractions," he doesn't have perceptions of processes exactly down (which would give him the whole Kitcherian shebang, no?), and, at one point, he even goes so far to offer that "negation" might not be a concept (p183). This last seems like limiting scope -- one of his criteria -- to suit the theory.

Stephen's and my review of Kitcher's book is online at:

http://objectivity-a...number6.html#55

Why is this topic under epistemology? I know it touches on it, but the core issue seems to fall more closely under ethics...

Dan,

You are right. I am moving it.

btw - Welcome to OL.

Michael

Thanks for welcoming me and also for running an interesting site.

I think I'm in agreement. One has to distinguish between the two when applying lables, but they aren't really conflicting. Self-interest does not preclude altruism if you define altruism objectively.

Dependent on context, it might or might not preclude it. I must also add that I don't believe Rand was completely consistent on this issue. This kind of harks back to the survivalist debate of the 1990s (viz., survival vs. flourishing). Sometimes she sounds like a survivalist (think of her more explicit statements on egoism and on using life as the standard of value) and sometimes she doesn't (think of her talk about the life of man as man and also her depictions of moral action in her novels and stories).

That said, one must be careful here, especially in the context of discussions of Objectivism and Rand to be sure one explicitly states what one means by altruism and self-interest. This is no different were one to be discussing, say, "capitalism" amongst Marxists. In both cases, there are very definite views of the terms in play that'll likely trigger much more misunderstanding if one doesn't clearly define them up front. I'm sure you and most here agree.

I don't think it's that complicated and Rand's ideas on altruism can be described and evaluated scientifically. Because of man's life as the standard of value idea, Rand's sacfrices and altruism are very much in line with that of Evolutionary Biology.

Altruistic acts are acts that confer a survival advantage to another individual at the cost of a survival disadvantage to the individual performing the act. I think this fits well with Rand's concept. Unfortunately evaluation of her ideas in this context mean her ideas don't hold up to scrutiny.

Also, with regards to X-ray's ideas about sacrifice being impossible (ie acts are by definition always in self interest). I think both Rand's take on altruism AND X-ray's ideas are true.

IIRC, Human Action Theory is a basic tenet of Austrian Economics which basically states that whenever a person chooses between alternatives, a preference is displayed. If a person has a choice and chooses A over B, by definition they prefer A. The ACT is everything, because it's the only thing we can see and measure. To criticize the decision is to substitute your values. Actions, in their view are always in ones self interest regardless of how twisted or destructive we may judge them to be. The drug addict has his own reasons to choose the drug over recovery.

Therefore while it might be impossible not to act in self interest, it is certainly possible to perform an act that is altruistic. I don't see is as exclusive.

Bob

I'm steppping into the middle of this discussion, but just reading this post, I think the difference is what one is defining a sacrifice in regards to. Rand's view, if I understand it correctly, is there are objective values and, what's more, there is a hierarchy of these objective values. So, a sacrifice in her terms would be giving up something of greater value for something of a lesser value (or, at the limit, of no value or negative value if such is imaginable) -- which is how Rand defined altruism too.

Now, she doesn't posit that people automatically know these objective values, so from a Misesean approach -- i.e., looking at action without objective values -- one will see people simply acting -- i.e., pursuing their values and one might think an altruist act is not really a sacrifice. After all, someone is exchanging one situation for another -- and via the Mises view, the actor is always acting for a betterment. So, per Mises, it always looks like the actor is never sacrificing -- even if the end result either goes against objective values (per Rand and others who hold similar views of values) or later has regrets (in which case, the action was always directed toward betterment and so wasn't intended toward regret). (And Rand does define her concept of "value" neutrally as something which one acts to gain or keep. Thus, her concept of value doesn't presuppose her particular moral system. Instead, this is more a case of defining the term and her moral system would be a way of answering the question of what one should value. One can look at this as food for "rational reconstruction" -- as in one already has values and tries to rework them to make them more rational or objective.)

And here one can and must distinguish, I think, between the Misesean economic point of view and the Randian moral point of view. In the former, I think sacrifice is literally defined out of existence -- or has no place. In the latter, it's a real thing but this in the context of an objective scale of values. (The fear some libertarians might have here is, of course, armed with an objective morality, some would want to enforce it. But that's another issue and a problem of overlooking the value of autonomy in action -- which, I believe, is an objective value.)

Why is this topic under epistemology? I know it touches on it, but the core issue seems to fall more closely under ethics...

Continuing with my overview of Jesse J. Prinz’s Furnishing the Mind: Concepts and Their Perceptual Basis, last time I went over his six "desiderata" -- the criteria he thinks any viable theory of concepts has to meet. (See http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=8342 ) Following the order in the book, after going over the desiderata, he evaluates some major rival theories against them. I'm leaving much out here and hope that the details can be filled in later in responses.

Imagism

The first rival he considers at length is "imagism" (not to be confused with the poetry movement), which he traces back to ancient times, though elaborate defenses of this view probably weren’t found until Berkeley and Hume. (What about Ancient and Medieval philosophers? It seems both imagism and definitionism (see below) have their roots in Ancient philosophy and representatives among Medieval philosophers. Also, John Locke is often classed as an imagist, but, as Prinz notes, he did not have a view of abstracting ideas from the details of any particular object.) Imagism holds that "concepts are derived from perceptual states" and are mental images – recollections or combinations of previous perceptions or impressions. (p26)

How does this fare against Prinz’s criteria? He believes it scores strongly on acquisition – namely that "concepts are acquired by storing perceptual states in memory" and "imaginative combinations" of these. (p27) This also goes for explaining "phylogenic acquisition" – or how such capabilities evolved in the first place. One criterion down, five to go!

He also believes imagism gives a good "account of cognitive content" – one could form different images or concepts from the same referent. (p27) This strikes me as another win for imagism.

He thinks it also does fair against the categorization criterion. Obviously, it explains some types of identification as "concepts are qualitative similar to percepts." To use his example, a perceived dog will be experienced as similar to and "can be directly compared to the DOG concept…" (p27) But see below on how this creates a problem.

This works for category production too because one can "read information off" concepts as images. The dog concept image would have fur, a tail, and bark properties. (Or would it? Different people might produce different dog concepts -- maybe yours might lack a tail or mine might lack bark. What if I'm a deaf person? Might my dog concept, if it's derived from my "image" of dogs,lack a bark property?) This might well explain typicality as typical members of a category are more like the concept as an image. (p28)

Prinz notes that imagism fails for the scope criterion. It’s hard to see how there be mental images for "nonperceptible entities or objects" such as "virtue, truth, [and] prime number." (p28) (Even so, one might think of how people who use logical operations often do use some form of imagery as an aid. Think of the use of Venn diagrams. See, e.g., Eric Schechter's Classical and Nonclassical Logics: An Introduction to the Mathematics of Propositions, especially chapters 3 and 4.)

He also presents a cogent case for imagism failing – at least in its traditional forms – against the intentional content, compositionality, and publicity criteria. On the last, it’s hard to see how people experiencing different objects – say, different dogs – and, therefore, having different mental images – your image of a dog might be like a golden retriever, mine like a bulldog – would share the same concept.

With compositionality, some combinations – Hume’s "golden mountain" (see Hume's An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding) – fit snugly into the imagist account, but others – Prinz offers "carnivorous plant" – do not. In his example, it’s hard to figure what the image for a "carnivorous plant" concept should be. Needless to say, concepts for virtue and other nonperceptibles seem more daunting. Does "virtuous polity" conjure up an image? How about "transitive relation?"

Decomposition appears to work against imagism as well. He notes that once one has an image for a carnivorous plant, it’s hard to see how this can be broken apart or applied to other plants or carnivores – much less to other carnivorous plants. (p32)

Intentionality offers at least one hurdle: resemblance. Prinz points out that the dog concept should refer to dogs and only dogs, but its image resembles both dogs and wolves. Depending on how full-blooded this image is, it might resemble even more: stuffed animal toys, paintings of dogs, or films of dogs. (p30)

Overall, despite his sympathy for imagism - aspects of it are adopted into his proxytype theory - Prinz finds it wanting and so rejects it.

Definitionism

The second rival he considers at length is definitionism: "concepts are definitions." (p32) He locates its origins in ancient times with Plato’s view of Forms. He traces its adherents to more recent times in the views of Frege and Christopher Peacocke. (pp33-6)

He believes definitionism does quite well with the intentional content, compositionality, cognitive content, and publicity criteria. (p37-8) However, he notes it has "serious flaws" with the acquisition, categorization, and scope criteria. On the last, he uses Wittgenstein’s analysis of the concept of "game" and the notion of family resemblances. (Cf. Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations §66-8)

Kelley (The Art of Reasoning (1988)) believes Wittgenstein gives up too easily when searching for common, defining feature for games. However, this doesn’t rescue definitionism, but only shows that Wittgenstein’s criticism is not strong. For Kelley and for Rand, a major problem with definitionism is that it confuses part with whole – specifically confusing the definition of a concept with the concept. This bleeds into the whole theory, including acquisition. Rand notes that the definition of a concept usually comes after acquiring or recognizing it. (Cf. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology 2/e, especially chapter 5.)

Prinz believes acquisition is a bigger hurdle, as definitionism seems to presuppose either some innate "seed" concepts or some non-conceptual starting points. The latter, he notes, are often met by alloying definitionism with imagism. (pp34-5) This mix is not without its problems, but I won't touch on them at this time.

His attack on definitionism’s failure to meet the categorization requirement seems, likewise, not strong. That base level concept not be of the high level categories could be due to context, though this shows concepts could not be just definitions. (pp42-4)

Overall, definitionism, like imagism, seems to pass some criteria, but fail others in some significant ways -- meaning, as you might guess, Prinz rejects it.

Prototype Theory

Next, he considers prototype theory. This theory views concepts as based on "typical features" – "ones that are diagnostic, statistically frequent, or salient" – and "unlike defining features, they are often contingent…" (p52) He points out that there "are a number of ways to make prototypes more precise" – "a prototype might be a point in a multi-dimensional space, a mental image of some real or idealized category instance, or a set of feature representations…" (p53) To illustrate the last, he uses a "set of binary features" to represent the concept "bird": "has wing, flies, has feathers, has a beak, eats worms."

The strengths of prototype theory should be obvious: it "explain typicality effects and basic level categories." (Typicality effects are things like how a more typical member of a category is readily identified -- e.g., a rose bush is more readily classed as a flowering plant than is grass.) It also "boast a plausible account of concept acquisition. Casual observation of category members is rarely sufficient for discovering a unifying definition, but it is sufficient for abstracting a prototype." (p56) He also believes it scores well on scope and cognitive content criteria, though I won't touch on these at this time.

Even so, he lists serious problems with it on the criteria of intentional content, compositionality, and publicity. He also notes that the high score on the categorization criterion is not without its problems. The problem with intentional content is that the more typical examples are more referred to or even fall under the concept to a "greater degree:" "… the bird prototype refers to sparrows more than it does to ostriches." (p59) (One might wonder if, as Wittgenstein is too quick to knock down definitions for the concept of game, Prinz is making up an easy to trash version of the bird prototype. Maybe the prototype could change so that having feathers becomes more central than flying or other features. This is perhaps the weakness of Prinz’s overall account: he does not have a robust account of concept change. Perhaps concept change could be a seventh criteria...)

He attempts that attempts to get around this problem, such as assigning a threshold to reference complicate the theory and seem dubious at best. For instance, to use another of his examples, "eels are fish, but they are utterly dissimilar to the FISH [sic] prototype" and "being above the threshold for the fish prototype is not necessary for being a fish." Add to this, "eels are very much like snakes in appearance and likely to exceed the threshold for the SNAKE prototype." (p60)

This seems to hold only if one is maintaining a very tight link between this prototype and a specific sense modality and even just a narrow range for that. Eels look like snakes, but they don’t feel like snakes. (They probably don’t taste like snakes either.) They also have a different bone structure, DNA, etc. They are not obligate air breathers. Also, just in terms of the visual approach, they might look like snakes at the gross level but are not covered in scales like snakes, do not act like snakes, or live under the same conditions as snakes. Even a casual and purely visual observer might note that. Prinz might not be testing the best version of prototype theory against his criteria.

Prototype theory’s failure with regard to compositionality is also notable. This is because typical properties or typical instances of compounded concepts tend to be atypical of their component concepts. His telling example is "pet fish" – they "typically live in bowls, but neither pets nor fish typically live in bowls…" (p62)

Similar to imagism, the publicity criterion is also tough on prototypes: it’s hard to see how, in many cases, two individuals would form and share the same prototypes. Prinz uses dogs to illustrate this, but let’s consider pets again. Someone exposed to more exotic pets is likely to have a very different "pet" prototype than someone exposed only to the "traditional" pets for Americans of cat, dog, goldfish, and parakeet. The latter is unlikely to include cricket, monkey, iguana, or chinchilla in her repertoire of pets – and unlikely to class them together. Back to dogs, Prinz points out that Larry Barsalou found that "typicality judgments vary considerably." This varies not only between people, but for the same person at different times. (I suspect the reader who thought of "pets" as dogs, cats, and goldfish, before reflecting on this, has a slightly wider prototype after reading this. I’ve noticed such a tendency in myself: exposure to new examples – even just from reading about them – seems to broaden and refine one’s concepts.)

Categorization, which seems a big plus for prototype theory, has a problem with regard to changes. Prinz cites Frank Keil's 1989 book Concepts, Kinds, and Conceptual Development regarding transforming a prototypical raccoon into a prototypical skunk via painting a white stripe down its back. (One can more easily think of the Pepé Le Pew cartoon where Pepe, the skunk, falls madly in love with a black cat that accidentally gets a white stripe painted down its back. I certainly don’t think – though Pepé Le Pew does – that the cat is now less a cat, more skunk. Pu does not see the transformation of the cat, so his belief is based only on the final appearance. This seems to point to Keil’s example not being good test. Cf. Keil pp159-82.) This example, though somewhat artificial, illustrates something deeper is happening with categorization – or people would find the painted raccoon more like a skunk and misclassify it often. (Again, I feel this might not be the best account of a prototype. If the prototype is limited to purely (visual?) surface appearances, then prototype theory faces a serious challenge when the raccoon is painted. However, if the prototype is expanded a bit to include other features of the raccoon, this doesn’t appear to be a good test at all – it’s easily dealt with by noting that raccoons can be painted to look like skunks. But it seems that snakes, octopodes, and tudor style homes cannot be painted to look like skunks.)

Prinz also points to how abstract prototypes might cause problems. He conjures up a prototype of "tropical fish" based on experiencing "a species… in which adults have blue scales and juveniles have yellow fins, but very few have both." The yellow-finned, blue-scaled prototype is unlikely to be close to any real world instance – the "typical" instance would be either but not both. (p64)

Again, the refrain is: prototype theory passes some criteria and fails others, so it fails as a general theory of concepts -- just like imagism and definitionism.

I hope to cover Prinz's evaluations of exemplar theory and "theory" theory also known as the "knowledge approach" next time. (On the latter, see Gregory L. Murphy's aptly named The Big Book of Concepts pp60ff.)

Daniel Ust, welcome to Objectivist Living!

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Re: #3

Yes, makes sense. Does Prof. Prinz connect logical connectives like disjunction to motor exerience?

I have not studied this book yet. Your review is informative and a good invitation. I appreciate your initiating assessment of Rand's conception of concepts against the desiderata of Prinz. I see there is a review by James Beebe complementary to yours.

I have to go back to the book as I forget at this point. I started writing a review of it in 2006 and didn't complete that. What I've placed here is just culled from that.

I also recommend Prinz's book on emotions, but that's a topic for another discussion -- one I hope we can have here soon.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm in midst of moving, so I had to retrieve my copy of Furnishing the Mind from my new library to more fully respond. Prinz does address the issue of logical connectives in chapter 7 "The Perceptual Basis." There he examines counterexamples, but it's more of a list of strategies for dealing with them -- concepts of logic (disjunction, etc.), mathematics, and other seemingly non-empirical ones -- than anything else. And, re-reading it very quickly this morning, he doesn't list a motor experience strategy. (A few years ago, I emailed Prinz regarding mathematical concepts -- specifically citing Kitcher's The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge and your and my review of that work, but I didn't get a substantive reply and he was unfamiliar with Kitcher's work.) He doesn't commit to any strategy in the end, but in this chapter is merely out to show that the counterexamples can be countered by some strategy rather than to settle on a particular one.

I actually had some notes on his not using processes for his proxytype theory. I want to raise some of my criticisms later on this site, but three I think should be raised now is he doesn't deal explicitly with "abstractions from abstractions," he doesn't have perceptions of processes exactly down (which would give him the whole Kitcherian shebang, no?), and, at one point, he even goes so far to offer that "negation" might not be a concept (p183). This last seems like limiting scope -- one of his criteria -- to suit the theory.

The site to the Pledge states:

"As a sovereign individual, I assert the exclusive right to my life, my liberty and my property, as guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution."

This makes me believe the person who made up that site hasn't read or understood the U.S. Constitution. It's actually a means of limiting individual rights, particularly to life, liberty, and property.

Yes Ba'al:

I like his approach. Good mind.

Adam

Thank you, but don't you fear this praise might go to my head?

A first rate essay! You do know your stuff. Just one little nit. Natural integers can be reduced to sets. Let S be a set. Then the cardinal of S is the class of sets S* which can be put in one to one correspondence with S. Integers are cardinals of finite sets.

Please share more of your thoughts. You really know what you are talking about.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Thank you, though this is not so much an essay, so much as maybe the beginning of one -- of a review essay. I don't know how much further I'll get with this here. Also, I'm merely summarizing and commenting on Prinz's book -- not doing much intellectual heavy-lifting here.

Regarding your "little nit," have you read Benacerraf's "What numbers could not be"? It seems to call into question set theoretic reductions -- despite the fact that they otherwise seem to work, are quite useful, and seem intuitively appealing.

Regards,

Dan

Dan:

Thanks.

This is a discipline that I have always been intrigued by, but am not familiar with current iterations, until your post.

What makes his approach controversial in "academia"?

I have always been amazed by what is controversial in "academia" particularly when I was part of it. I was considered quite rude, but I did not lose many serious debates within the "community."

Adam

My understanding is conceptual empiricism -- under which proxytypes falls -- is a bit controversial in the field. I don't attend their conferences, so I'm only guessing this based on what I've read. Since some rivals to Prinz's theory can be empiricist, I don't think empiricism is completely out of fashion at this time. (Prinz's definition of concept empiricism is the view that "concepts are copies or combinations of perceptual representations." I don't think that would be controversial for Objectivists -- save for the use of "perceptual representations" which might make them think of representationalism a la Descartes.)

The rivals I mean are things like prototype theory and exemplar theory. In prototype theory, concepts are formed from typical feature of members that fall under a concept. Think of a typical features of a dog -- such as having fur, barking, wagging its tail -- to build one's concept of "dog." You might gather where there's a problem with this view: what's typical to you might not be typical to me, yet it's likely both us use "dog" to mean the same thing.

Exemplar theory is similar to prototype theory, but uses one or more examples of something to form the concept -- sort of like using your neighbor's dog to build your concept of dog. In this case, one might say, the examplars are literally stored in memory to use as the concept. Anyhow, rather than go into further detail, I think you can see these are both empiricist in outlook -- or that they mesh well with conceptual empiricism. And both these theories have their respective followings.

Despite my starting this discussion off, I haven't mention what proxytypes are and how they differ from other views -- even the two I just mentioned. Let me save that for another post.

Dan:

Welcome to OL.

I gather Prinz's "new empiricism" is controversial.

"This article examines the role of concepts in the so-called 'new' empiricism that is currently emerging from the writings of Gilles Deleuze. It asks what concepts are, and how they might be put to work to present the 'pure difference' of the empirical world. In addressing these questions, a number of parallels and contrasts are drawn between the writings of Deleuze and Max Weber. It is shown that many of Deleuze's key arguments about concepts- in particular, that they are pedagogical, multiple, networked and problem-oriented in basis - are anticipated by Weber's sociological methodology of concept formation. This leads, finally, to a consideration of whether the creation of concepts as a practice belongs primarily within the domain of philosophy (as argued by Deleuze), or if it is a key part of social scientific work more generally."[ Nicholas Gane UNIVERSITY OF YORK, UK, from the of European Journal of Social Theory]

Adam

Thank you for your welcome.

Regarding it being controversial, yes, I think it is, though Prinz does not appear to be influenced by the works or views of Deleuze. Instead, he seems to be harking back to the British empiricists, though updating their views in light of modern philosophy, linguistics, and science as well as the intervening period of criticism of those earlier views. He's not merely warming over, say, Locke and Hume. (I'm not a Deleuze scholar, but it seems to me like his epistemology is merely an afterthought to his ideology. Perhaps someone might correct me on this.)

Daniel Ust, welcome to Objectivist Living!

Thanks Stephen!

I hope my partial review makes sense.

What are concepts? Where do they come from? What do they do? How do they work and work together? Jesse J. Prinz’s Furnishing the Mind: Concepts and Their Perceptual Basis tries to answer these questions in light of modern epistemology, cognitive science, linguistics, psychology, and neuroscience. This broad approach to these problems challenges any reviewer coming to the task with less than an encyclopedic knowledge of these fields. Yet as Prinz seems to score highly both in defending his particular theory, proxytypes (it's unfortunate he uses "proxytype" as this will likely lead to some confusion with "prototype" – and prototype theory is a major rival to his proxytype theory), and concept empiricism in general, this reviewer, lacking such wide-ranging knowledge, will still make the attempt.

The order of battle for Prinz starts with a set of criteria any viable theory of concepts would have to meet. Next, he measures other major theories against these criteria. After this, he presents his proxytype theory, evaluating in light of the criteria, prior theories, and evidence from many quarters.

Let me just open this discussion by mentioning his six criteria – or "desiderata" as he calls them. They are a checklist a theory of concepts should pass. It’s possible no theory will close the field, but missing any of the six criteria, it seems, means a theory is not even in the running.

The six are scope, intentional content, cognitive content, acquisition, categorization, compositionality, and publicity. Scope should be the easy one for the amateur philosopher: any theory of concepts should be able to handle all the various concepts posited. Of course, one way of special pleading for a theory is to redefine some alleged concepts as not the real McCoy. Prinz does do this and accepts the standard menu of concepts from "dog" to "electron" to "justice" to "disjunction." Any decent theory shouldn’t stumble on a concept like "virtue." (Later in the book, he backslides in one case. Cf. p183 where he states that "negation" might not be a concept. However, I see this as him stumbling and not his theory failing. Also, one might argue that a general theory of concepts has to meet this criterion, but a specialized one need not. While this seems a cogent reply, Prinz aims at a general theory of concepts and not one limited to, say, just concepts dealing directly with perception or with logical operations.)

For concept empiricism, scope can be especially vexing. After all, beyond obviously "empirical" concepts, such as "dog" and "yellow," many concepts seem to have little empirical content, such as the aforementioned "disjunction" and "virtue" – not to mention "infinite," "transcendent," and "ghost." Philosophers like Ayn Rand might get away with "abstractions from abstractions," but different routes to different higher-level concepts make this harder to defend. (See Rand's ITOE 2/e, pp19-28.)

Intentional content is a bit more technical. It is the notion that concept refers to something outside itself. In other words, the concept "dinosaur" refers to dinosaurs. (As one might guess, any form of concept empiricism will have at least some concepts that refer directly to experience, though wouldn't a non-empirical theory of concepts, e.g., Fodor's, do likewise?)

Reference, though technical, seems easy compared to his criterion of cognitive content. Prinz relies on Gottlob Frege’s distinction between the sense and reference of a term. Simply put, Frege splits meaning into two components. One is what a term refers to – the thing picks out in the world. This is its reference. The other is what a term means as distinguished from other terms – for Prinz, what a concept’s content is that distinguishes it from other concepts.

The archetypal example is having two terms for Venus – the Morning Star and the Evening Star. In Prinz’s view, this makes for differing cognitive content – different senses. Even though both terms mean Venus, they mean Venus in slightly different ways. Needless to say, for him, any theory of concepts would have to deal with this sort of cognitive content. (Here I must admit to being unconvinced by Prinz’s examples. I'm trying to work out my ideas on Frege's sense and reference, but that's a post for another time.)

A decent theory must "ultimately support a plausible explanation of how concepts are acquired." (p8) Prinz thinks there are two parts to this criterion: one ontogenetic, the other phylogenic – one about how individual concepts are acquired, the other about how the conceptual faculty itself evolved.

Some might stop with the ontogenetic side of the story – and, indeed, this seems to be where Rand stops. (In my view, Rand does not really present a phylogenic explanation of concepts, though she does offer that the conceptual faculty is humanity’s basic means of survival. This might seem to put her in the Darwinian camp, but she resists letting Darwinism intrude into philosophy.) One can heed the warning that wedding an epistemological theory too closely with specific evolutionary theories or findings could end in a faddish or simplistic explanation. As a purely practical matter, other might conflate this element of the theory with its essence and reject the whole theory if this element proves wrong. However, a theory of concepts should be able to either fit into the latest science or explain why it’s outside such science. (See Lionel Robbins' 1932 book An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science, chapter 5. Robbins argues that economics, like mathematics, should be above the particulars of empirical findings. See also Paul Benacerraf's 1965 paper "What numbers could not be" for why a set theoretic reduction of numbers doesn’t seem to actually reduce numbers to sets. In the same way, it appears other fields might be immune to such reductions. Whether this is a fatal blow to reductionism in general remains to be seen.)

This aside, the ontogenetic part of the criterion seem uncontroversial: how an individual comes to acquire a concept needs to be explained.

For Prinz, categorization encompasses "mechanisms for forming beliefs about what things fall under our concepts" and is, obviously, the "epistemic counterpart" to reference. (p9) Like acquisition, this has two different aspects: category identification and category production. The first refers to identifying the category to which something belongs – as in the choice: "True or false: canaries are birds." (p9) (This maps onto "extension" as usually understood. Simply put, a concept’s extension is "made up of all those entities… which fall under the concept." Flew A Dictionary of Philosophy, p117.)

The second is "intension" – which properties make up a category, such as "having feathers" for birds. In other words, while identification is about whether something belongs to a category – whether a canary is a bird – production is about why it belongs – the things that make birds birds.

Here Prinz mentions typicality – that more typical members of a category are easier to categorize. He also observes that mid-level concepts are "privileged" in many instances. He uses the example of classifying an object as a "dog" – rather than a "rottweiler" or a "mammal." (p10) (It seems this is the case because of context and unit economy – two key concepts from Rand. Most people would acquire “dog” earlier and use it more often because this usually and quickly identifies the object in everyday life. A dog will likely be among other pets or things, but not always other dogs. Thus, it’s economical to point to the neighbor’s dog – rather than the neighbor’s pet or the neighbor’s animal, or the neighbor’s rottweiler – in most circumstances. See also pp163-4.)

Compositionality means the ability to combine concepts together. Hume’s "golden mountain" is the classic example. (Hume An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Prinz does not bring up the golden mountain example at this point, but does in the next chapter when discussing Hume’s "imagism.") A good theory of concepts should account for this capability – indeed for its "hyperfertility" as Prinz aptly puts it.

Publicity is the ability for different people to share the same concepts. (Prinz also adds the ability for one person to hold the same concept across time – something he later elaborates on when discussing memory.) There’s room for much debate here, though his point seems valid: any decent theory would have to explain this feature of concepts. (A point of contention is deciding when two people actually share the same concept. If your concept of "fish" includes whales while mine doesn’t, are we really sharing the concept of fish? The same applies to deciding when one person actually has the same concept at different times. If you held a concept of "fish" that included whales yesterday, but today you’ve been enlightened so as to exclude whales, do you really have the same concept on both days? These examples might seem to be purely nit picking, but until two people do extensive note trading, how can they be sure that any of their concepts are really shared? The same goes for the single individual: How can she be sure any of her concepts are the same from one day to the next?)

Prinz considers sharing along conceptual and intentional lines as well – and the use of sharing in explaining linguistic communication and behavior.

I believe that's enough to chew on for now -- rather than extend this out to be a full length review. Comments?