Another View of Ayn Rand

[merjet]

I stumbled upon this webpage earlier today. The author is a professor in the Department of Philosophy, Los Angeles Valley College. An interesting aside is his uncle and father started and grew the Kelly Blue Book that gives information on used car prices.

I wasn't sure what category to put it in. The owner(s) can move it if desired.

[Ellen Stuttle]

Thanks for posting the link, Merlin.

I found the article very interesting, maybe the best of its type I've ever read. Errors of detail, but mostly it's in line with my own views on Rand.

Among the errors of detail: Ross (Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D., the author) much simplifies the issues re The Split. And he accepts as true Murray Rothbard's story re Murray's being told that he must divorce his wife if she didn't convert from theism within six months, and Murray's non-acceptance of this purported demand being why he became "estranged" from Ayn.

Another detail: Could Ross be right that Pennsylvania Station was the model for the Taggart Terminal??!! Surely not, please tell me -- anyone who has reliable information. It has to be Grand Central, doesn't it? The way the Taggart Terminal is described is so much a depiction of Grand Central, not of Penn Station. And the Taggart Building towering above the concourse: Again, that's like Grand Central and the Pam-Am Building (I think it isn't still called that), not at all like Penn Station.

I hope that Ross acquired his belief that Penn Station was the model simply on the basis of assuming from the railroad history he recounts. Surely anyone who knows well, from living in New York and passing through both Penn and Grand Central on a regular basis, what the respective stations look like -- also anyone who's familiar with coming into Grand Central through the tunnels under Park Avenue -- would never think that she meant Penn! (I think that I'll be "devastated" if she did: all these years in which I've visualized the Taggart Concourse, and the tunnels, and the Taggart Building as certainly being based on the Grand Central configuration.)

Ellen

PS: What most of all I like so much about the article is that he's respectful and fair -- he gives her her due despite critiques. He shows no rabidity in either direction, that of either over-praising or over-panning.

___

Edited July 15, 2008 by Ellen Stuttle

[Brant Gaede]

There's a famous Rand photo with Grand Central Station, before the building of the Pam Am Bldg, in the background.

--Brant

[merjet]

What most of all I like so much about the article is that he's respectful and fair -- he gives her her due despite critiques. He shows no rabidity in either direction, that of either over-praising or over-panning.

I pretty much agree.

The section with the red rats and green rats about 2/3rds down the page is worth reading, too.

[Darrell Hougen]

I stumbled upon this webpage earlier today. The author is a professor in the Department of Philosophy, Los Angeles Valley College. An interesting aside is his uncle and father started and grew the Kelly Blue Book that gives information on used car prices.

I wasn't sure what category to put it in. The owner(s) can move it if desired.

I also found the article interesting and found the author, Ross, to be fair in tone. However, I don't think he gives Rand enough credit for knowing what she was saying. For example, in reading Rand's theory of concepts, which I view as incomplete, I never got the impression that Rand meant to imply that a concept includes all characteristics or aspects of an object, whether known or unknown, which seems to be the theory of Leibniz. Rather, I assumed, and it would make more sense, for a concept to refer only to the known characteristics of an object. Similarly, he seems to assert that she makes no distinction between essential and inessential characteristics when that distinction is central to her philosophy. Therefore, while I enjoyed the article, it did not appear to demonstrate a deep understanding of Rand.

Darrell

[merjet]

Darrell,

ITOE2 = Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 2nd edition.

"Concepts stand for specific kinds of existents, including all the characteristics of these existents, observed and not-yet-observed, known and unknown" (ITOE2, 65).

"The definitions of concepts may change with the changes in the designation of essential characteristics, and conceptual reclassifications may occur with the growth of knowledge, but these changes are made possible by and do not alter the fact that a concept subsumes all the characteristics of its referents, including the yet-to-be-discovered" (ITOE2, 65).

"Concepts represent condensations of knowledge, "open-end" classifications that subsume all the characteristics of their referents, the known and the yet-to-be-discovered; this permits further study and the division of cognitive labor" (ITOE2, 86).

Similarly, he seems to assert that she makes no distinction between essential and inessential characteristics when that distinction is central to her philosophy.

I suspect he'd reply that he doesn't assert that, since the universal captures the essential characteristics.

Merlin

Edited July 18, 2008 by Merlin Jetton

[Paul Mawdsley]

This is a great way to describe my own relationship to Rand's work: "like most philosophers, Rand is better taken as a goldmine for ideas than as authoritative doctrine." I have found her to be a particularly inspiring "goldmine" who's vision has had a powerful resonance with, and influence on, my own.

Paul

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Darrell,

This point usually misses the point—and badly—with Rand's critics.

Rand was essentially saying that a concept denoting an entity will still be the concept denoting that entity irrespective of how many new characteristics are discovered for it. She called this thinking in entities. She stated more than once that entities are the only metaphysical primaries.

Her critics often consider attributes (etc.) to be metaphysical primaries. How these attributes can exist without their respective entities, I don't know, but there it is. Thus, they take her statements to mean that she is claiming to have knowledge of something yet unknown.

A concept is like a file folder standing for something that exists. It will still be that same folder regardless of how thick it gets with details or how different, new or old, the details are within it. I find this obvious.

What's weird is that I have actually encountered many people who have difficulty understanding it when dealing with concept formation. Rand complained somewhere (and I can't find it right now) that men have not really thought in entities since Aristotle. I found that exaggerated at the time, but I have encountered several people I consider brilliant who get very confused when we start discussing the nature of concepts denoting entities.

Michael

[Darrell Hougen]

Darrell,

ITOE2 = Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 2nd edition.

"Concepts stand for specific kinds of existents, including all the characteristics of these existents, observed and not-yet-observed, known and unknown" (ITOE2, 65).

"The definitions of concepts may change with the changes in the designation of essential characteristics, and conceptual reclassifications may occur with the growth of knowledge, but these changes are made possible by and do not alter the fact that a concept subsumes all the characteristics of its referents, including the yet-to-be-discovered" (ITOE2, 65).

"Concepts represent condensations of knowledge, "open-end" classifications that subsume all the characteristics of their referents, the known and the yet-to-be-discovered; this permits further study and the division of cognitive labor" (ITOE2, 86).

Similarly, he seems to assert that she makes no distinction between essential and inessential characteristics when that distinction is central to her philosophy.

I suspect he'd reply that he doesn't assert that, since the universal captures the essential characteristics.

Merlin

I think Michael did an excellent job of defending Rand's view and I haven't read ITOE recently, so I may not be completely accurate in my comments, but the notion of a file folder is an excellent way of thinking about her concept of concepts. For example, in your first quote above, the fact that she says that "Concepts stand for specific kinds of existents ... " is significant. Because concepts stand for existents, they do not necessarily constitute knowledge of those things that are unknown. Rather, they are labels that are mentally connected to a specific set of referents in the world much as file folders have labels for their contents. The label, itself, does not contain the information about the contents of the folder, it is merely a way of looking up that information. It, therefore, refers to that information and because it refers to existents, in her view, it also refers to things that are unknown about them. Similar comments could be made regarding the other quotes above.

A concept should be distinguished from a description which represents what is known about an object. It should also be distinguished from a definition which specifies the category to which it belongs and its essential distinguishing characteristic(s).

Darrell

[merjet]

Darrell,

I largely agree with you and Michael. Post 6 was to respond to your impression in post 5 and to show the author wasn't "just making stuff up" when he made the comparison to Leibniz.

Merlin

Edited July 18, 2008 by Merlin Jetton

[Dragonfly]

A concept is like a file folder standing for something that exists. It will still be that same folder regardless of how thick it gets with details or how different, new or old, the details are within it. I find this obvious.

It isn't obvious at all. A concept is a mental construct (literally that what we conceive) and not something that exists in physical reality. It corresponds to our best knowledge about some thing in reality, which should not be confused with the thing itself, nor with the label that we may attach to a concept. The concept "atom" is not the same as the word "atom" (that would be the label, the unchanging file folder), nor is it the atom itself (something in physical reality), it is how we conceive some small building blocks of our physical universe, it represents our knowledge about them at a certain moment. The atom of Democritus was not the atom of Dalton, which was not the atom of Rutherford, which was not the atom of modern science. The name has remained the same and the physical entity itself has not changed, but the concept atom (the way we conceive the atom) has drastically changed. Concepts are not static entities, they evolve in the course of time and they may even die, like the concepts phlogiston and luminiferous aether. It is therefore incoherent to say that "a concept subsumes all the characteristics of its referents, including the yet-to-be-discovered", a concept represents knowledge, not potential knowledge, which isn't knowledge at all. When tomorrow an asteroid hits the Earth and destroys all life, there will be nothing further discovered, so what is the yet-to-be-discovered in that case? It doesn't exist! Therefore it's meaningless to include it in the definition of a concept, as it makes the concept unknowable.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dragonfly,

Nobody ever claimed that a concept is not a mental construct, so I don't really follow the first part of your objection. As to the rest, let's put it this way.

Entities exist. We make mental images of them and put names on them. We learn more about them, add to them and change them, but we still keep the names and the original mental images.

The concept corresponding to human being will still stand for human being regardless if it is in ancient times or we map the genome.

You are a human being. You would have been a human being in primitive times. You are a human being today.

I don't find this complicated at all. In fact, I find it obvious.

Michael

[Dragonfly]

Entities exist. We make mental images of them and put names on them.

The mental images are the concepts, the names are the words that are used as labels for those concepts.

We learn more about them, add to them and change them, but we still keep the names and the original mental images.

If we change them they are no longer the original mental images. The entities may be the same and the names may be the same, but the mental image= the concept has changed.

The concept corresponding to human being will still stand for human being regardless if it is in ancient times or we map the genome.

You are a human being. You would have been a human being in primitive times. You are a human being today.

Don't confuse the entity itself with the concept of that entity. We may extrapolate the concepts of today to the past (i.e. conclude that the entities described by our current concept also existed in the past), but in the past the concept was different, even if it referred to the same kind of entities. In the future it will be different from now and it will finally disappear.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Darrell,

Dragonfly's comments are what I was talking about. We will always talk past each other.

I think he is brilliant, but he doesn't accept the idea of entities as primary existents. So to him a concept refers to something different than what Rand was talking about. I don't understand that kind of thinking, but I have encountered it in many places.

Michael

[sbeaulieu]

We learn more about them, add to them and change them, but we still keep the names and the original mental images.

If we change them they are no longer the original mental images. The entities may be the same and the names may be the same, but the mental image= the concept has changed.

Dragonfly - I think I see what you're driving at, but from an "unseen" perspective. By unseen, I mean not having seen with my own eyes. Take extraterrestrials for instance. I've never seen one with my own eyes, but I have a concept (or mental image) of what one is. Should I see one and it varies from my initial concept, the picture on the folder would change...

~ Shane

[merjet]

The atom of Democritus was not the atom of Dalton, which was not the atom of Rutherford, which was not the atom of modern science. The name has remained the same and the physical entity itself has not changed, but the concept atom (the way we conceive the atom) has drastically changed.

I don't think this invalidates the file folder analogy. Those are "file folders" of different people that have the same label and referent.

It is therefore incoherent to say that "a concept subsumes all the characteristics of its referents, including the yet-to-be-discovered", a concept represents knowledge, not potential knowledge, which isn't knowledge at all.

I don't buy "incoherent." I said "largely agreed" above because I believe her wording could have been a little better, maybe "a concept refers to its referents as a whole, so it implicitly refers to its unknown characteristics, too." In the file folder the analog to the unknowns could be some blank pieces of paper.

[Darrell Hougen]

Darrell,

Dragonfly's comments are what I was talking about. We will always talk past each other.

I think he is brilliant, but he doesn't accept the idea of entities as primary existents. So to him a concept refers to something different than what Rand was talking about. I don't understand that kind of thinking, but I have encountered it in many places.

Michael

Actually, Michael, I am a little uneasy with Rand's usage of the term, "concept." Rand seems to equate a concept with its label. More precisely, a concept corresponds to some thing or collection of things in reality. Dragonfly's notion seems to be much closer to common usage, i.e, a concept is our mental image or description of the entity or collection of entities in question.

Rand has basically redefined what a concept is. Her definition works in the way that she uses it but it doesn't correspond to common usage. She would probably argue that common usage is incorrect and incoherent, much as common usage of the word "selfish" is incoherent. She would argue that a concept should not be viewed as being equivalent to its description. Just as a percept corresponds to some single object or event, so a concept corresponds to a set of objects or events that have been logically grouped by the their common, essential characteristics. In this sense, a concept embraces all of the characteristics of those objects or events, known or unknown, though its description represents only that which is known. This also implies that a concept, per se, can be nothing more than a label for the set of objects or events which it encompasses. You don't know what you don't know.

Rand's usage of the term, "concept," appears logically coherent. However, Dragonfly's objection is, in some sense, valid --- in the sense that her usage is non-standard.

Darrell

[Darrell Hougen]

Rand has basically redefined what a concept is. Her definition works in the way that she uses it but it doesn't correspond to common usage. She would probably argue that common usage is incorrect and incoherent, much as common usage of the word "selfish" is incoherent. She would argue that a concept should not be viewed as being equivalent to its description. Just as a percept corresponds to some single object or event, so a concept corresponds to a set of objects or events that have been logically grouped by the their common, essential characteristics. In this sense, a concept embraces all of the characteristics of those objects or events, known or unknown, though its description represents only that which is known. This also implies that a concept, per se, can be nothing more than a label for the set of objects or events which it encompasses.

Actually, I should clarify myself. A concept isn't a label, it is the collection of things to which the label refers. So, when we think of a concept, we think (either explicitly or implicitly) of all the individual instances (of which we are knowledgeable) to which its label refers.

Darrell

[Darrell Hougen]

Darrell,

I largely agree with you and Michael. Post 6 was to respond to your impression in post 5 and to show the author wasn't "just making stuff up" when he made the comparison to Leibniz.

Merlin

Not to mince words, but for me to say that Ross does not display a "deep understanding" of Rand is a far cry from saying that he was "just making stuff up." More to the point, he argues that Leibniz philosophy displays a problem in that it requires infinite (God-like) knowledge and that Rand's philosophy displays the same problem, depending upon how it is interpreted. My argument is that it is not obvious that Rand's philosophy displays any such problem.

Darrell

[tjohnson]

Actually, I should clarify myself. A concept isn't a label, it is the collection of things to which the label refers.

Let me get this straight, the concept is the collection of things we call 'cow', for example? It never ceases to amaze me how confusing things get when trying to use the word 'concept'. This is why Korzybski recommended abandoning the term. If anything, 'concept' refers to something in your brain, not outside it, like a visualized image of some sort. It is imperative that we distinguish between events occurring inside our brain and events occurring outside of it.

[Brant Gaede]

Actually, I should clarify myself. A concept isn't a label, it is the collection of things to which the label refers.

Let me get this straight, the concept is the collection of things we call 'cow', for example? It never ceases to amaze me how confusing things get when trying to use the word 'concept'. This is why Korzybski recommended abandoning the term. If anything, 'concept' refers to something in your brain, not outside it, like a visualized image of some sort. It is imperative that we distinguish between events occurring inside our brain and events occurring outside of it.

In any case Darrell is wrong about what a concept is. I don't believe in God--the metaphysical God--I do believe in the idea of God. Concepts are ideas. Every common noun is a concept. Trees are referents of the concept tree. People are referents of the concept man. To say concepts are referents is to say they are metaphysical not epistemological. It is to say, actually, that concepts don't exist. They do exist just as God exists as a thought in my brain. Thoughts are physical, btw, for everything has something physical about it. The axioms have to be intertwined. The universe can exist without man, but man cannot exist without the universe--i.e, outside it. Axioms are all inclusive. To knowingly have a concept is to have an idea about an idea. The concept of concept. No metaphysical referents there. (Note, physical is not strictly analogous to metaphysical. A thought has physicality but is not metaphysical because it has no value to the thinker to think of thoughts that way. That doesn't make the mind go. Choice makes the mind go this way or that with this or that focus for this or that reason. Your foot does not make the car go when you step on one pedal or stop when you step on another. Nor does the engine or gasoline or brakes. All those things are extant, given. Your choice of stepping on what pedal makes these things happen. Your choice not to do anything does not mean the car will then do something anyway.)

--Brant

edit: concepts can be referents to other concepts.

Edited July 19, 2008 by Brant Gaede

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Darrell,

Rand didn't use the word "category," but that's all a concept is. A mental way of compiling correct information about the world so we can act toward our survival. That's the way I understand she uses it.

And you can't categorize something unless there is a referent for it. That, added to the primacy of entities, was her main point.

Michael

[tjohnson]

They do exist just as God exists as a thought in my brain. Thoughts are physical, btw, for everything has something physical about it.

Yes, an image or idea in your brain does exist as some sort of neural structure - even if we can't isolate it. This situation is no different than postulating the existence of neutrinos etc.

Edited July 19, 2008 by general semanticist

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Brant,

Rand called concepts "mental entities," but stated that this was a metaphorical way of stating it since they were not real entities. She said was not up for coining a jargon term. This is in the workshops to ITOE.

Michael

[Darrell Hougen]

Actually, I should clarify myself. A concept isn't a label, it is the collection of things to which the label refers.

Let me get this straight, the concept is the collection of things we call 'cow', for example? It never ceases to amaze me how confusing things get when trying to use the word 'concept'. This is why Korzybski recommended abandoning the term. If anything, 'concept' refers to something in your brain, not outside it, like a visualized image of some sort. It is imperative that we distinguish between events occurring inside our brain and events occurring outside of it.

I was afraid this might cause some confusion. A concept is, in Rand's view, the mental identification of the set of things to which the label refers, not the things themselves. That is to say, the set or collection exists in the mind. That is not to take the nominalist position, however. The concept represents a logical grouping of things that results from the identification of a real grouping that exists in the world. Cows are not only cows conceptually, but in reality as well. A cow is not a pig in reality.

So, my clarification was not that clear.

Darrell