Another View of Ayn Rand

[Darrell Hougen]

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

Michael,

I basically agree, but I think there was some confusion over whether the category (or group or collection) exists in the mind or in the world. A concept is a mental category that corresponds to a real category that exists in the world, e.g., cows. This fits nicely with her correspondence theory of perception.

Darrell

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Darrell,

I look at it this way. Out in reality (apart from man) there are many things. These things (entities) exhibit differences and similarities in different aspects.

Concepts abstract and group these things and aspects according to the differences and similarities that actually exist.

Once a concept is treated like an entity, this provides much more flexibility in breaking entities down into parts, actions, relationships, attributes, etc.. or relating them to other individuals and forming wider groupings.

Now here is where I actually have a difference with Rand on metaphysics. I do not believe that the entities in the universe are restricted only to the size of man's perception. For instance, an atom can be an entity, although it belongs to some entity greater than itself. Ditto for a planet or star.

I hold that there is a size of groupings that are best suited to man's sense organs and I believe that there is an important principle that normally gets missed in Objectivism by holding the essential nature of the universe to that size.

We are definitely individuals, but we are also definitely part of a species. Whether one wants to call that species an entity or not, the fact remains that a human being is not a cow, he did not come from cows and he will not have cows as offspring when he reproduces. Man, the individual, is not only an individual, but a part of something bigger than himself (the human species).

He is an individual something.

That something is organized much like normal entities are.

Interestingly enough, the Objectivist theory of concepts reflects this perfectly (growing indefinitely in both directions, big and small) although this concept of metaphysics is not classic Objectivism.

Michael

[Darrell Hougen]

Now here is where I actually have a difference with Rand on metaphysics. I do not believe that the entities in the universe are restricted only to the size of man's perception. For instance, an atom can be an entity, although it belongs to some entity greater than itself. Ditto for a planet or star.

...

Interestingly enough, the Objectivist theory of concepts reflects this perfectly (growing indefinitely in both directions, big and small) although this concept of metaphysics is not classic Objectivism.

Hi Michael,

Knowing you, you probably have quotes to back up the above assertion re Rand's metaphysics, but, again, I never got the impression that Rand was restricting entities in the world to the size range that people are capable of perceiving directly. In fact, I think I could probably find passages in which she allows for microscopic and astronomical entities. Certainly, OPAR has such such passages. Otherwise, I agree with you.

Darrell

[Nicholas Dykes]

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.

This article contains so many half-truths and inaccuracies that I'd be inclined to dump it. The problem is, the other halves of the half-truths are issues that Objectivist philosophers seriously need to deal with. Objectivism -- in it's truly ~philosophical~ manifestation -- often seems to me like fragments from some Ancient Greek philosopher we know little about: tantalising glimpses of something great but not yet realised. The basics are sound, but to be truly persuasive at the ~philosophical level~ we need to be expounding our ideas with the rigour, clarity and detail of a Brand Blanshard. There is so much work to be done, but, as far as I am aware -- after long years of absence I admit -- there seem to be so few people doing it. Nicholas Dykes.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

... I never got the impression that Rand was restricting entities in the world to the size range that people are capable of perceiving directly.

Darrell,

There is a rather subtle point here. The issue is not perceiving directly, but perceiving at all. Scientific instruments allow us to go bigger and smaller, but they always end up putting information from the world into a form that human beings can experience directly.

Notice that all entities fit into three categories: those about the same size as man, those bigger and those smaller. And that's the way Rand thinks about them.

She doesn't think "separate entity" without qualification if it is smaller since it will be part of a larger entity within man's size of perception. Her example was a dismembered arm. It became a separate entity, but only in relation to the original one. See here (ITOE, "Appendix—Entities and Their Makeup," p. 270).

You can view a part of an entity as an entity without dropping the context: you will have to include the context that it is part of an entity, such as the human vital organs. Or: if you cut off an arm, what is it? Well, it's a human arm, but now it will not function as a living part of a living being. Still, it is an entity of a certain kind: a dying part of a human being. In the same way you can look at an inch of ground and consider it an entity, but that doesn't mean that you can then drop the context and say, "This inch is hanging alone in a vacuum, it's not part of a plain."

This gets her into all kinds of logical trouble, but the way out was to call anything beyond the human size of perception a "context" or a "priority" or several other words. She never said, to my knowledge, anything about size of perception being a standard, but if you look at all her statements, you will see that this is the governing principle.

Rand was reluctant to call larger constructions (such as the universe) "entities" without a whole bunch of qualifications because (I imagine) this would clash with her idea that each individual human being was an end in himself. See in that discussion where she walked on thin ice by calling a society an entity, then saying it wasn't.

This is another instance where Rand uses more than one definition for a term in the same discussion. It gets confusing until you start defining what she meant where and allowing for this usage error. If I have time later, I will extract some quotes.

Michael

[Darrell Hougen]

... I never got the impression that Rand was restricting entities in the world to the size range that people are capable of perceiving directly.

Darrell,

There is a rather subtle point here. The issue is not perceiving directly, but perceiving at all. Scientific instruments allow us to go bigger and smaller, but they always end up putting information from the world into a form that human beings can experience directly.

Michael,

You've hit on a whole range of issues that aren't necessarily related. The question of whether something exists if it cannot be perceived is very interesting. For example, do quarks exist? Well, they fit nicely in a mathematical theory of elementary particle physics, but if they don't leave independent tracks in a bubble chamber, then that leaves a big question mark about their true status.

That is not to say that the existence of an entity cannot be deduced indirectly, but if one were to assert that it could never be observed, that would border on mysticism. That is to say, a mathematical theory which uses "invisible" particles is just that, a mathematical theory. It would be folly to state that one can conclude that the invisible particles of the theory actually exist.

Notice that all entities fit into three categories: those about the same size as man, those bigger and those smaller. And that's the way Rand thinks about them.

She doesn't think "separate entity" without qualification if it is smaller since it will be part of a larger entity within man's size of perception. Her example was a dismembered arm. It became a separate entity, but only in relation to the original one. See here (ITOE, "Appendix—Entities and Their Makeup," p. 270).

You can view a part of an entity as an entity without dropping the context: you will have to include the context that it is part of an entity, such as the human vital organs. Or: if you cut off an arm, what is it? Well, it's a human arm, but now it will not function as a living part of a living being. Still, it is an entity of a certain kind: a dying part of a human being. In the same way you can look at an inch of ground and consider it an entity, but that doesn't mean that you can then drop the context and say, "This inch is hanging alone in a vacuum, it's not part of a plain."

This gets her into all kinds of logical trouble, but the way out was to call anything beyond the human size of perception a "context" or a "priority" or several other words. She never said, to my knowledge, anything about size of perception being a standard, but if you look at all her statements, you will see that this is the governing principle.

This is an entirely different kind of question. Is a single "check" on a plaid shirt an entity? Is a brown patch of grass in an otherwise green lawn an entity? These things are perceivable, so, in some sense they exist. Yet, they only exist in the context of the entity to which they belong. If the lawn was entirely brown, a brown patch would not be perceivable as such. If the shirt to which the check belonged were the same solid color as the check, it would disappear. This is a phenomenon that has nothing to do with the size of the entities involved. It foreground/background nature of some entities. The entity is only an entity if it is viewed as the "foreground" in the scene under consideration.

Rand was reluctant to call larger constructions (such as the universe) "entities" without a whole bunch of qualifications because (I imagine) this would clash with her idea that each individual human being was an end in himself. See in that discussion where she walked on thin ice by calling a society an entity, then saying it wasn't.

This is yet another issue. Is a set of entities an entity? In some contexts, this may be a valid usage and in others it may not be. Again, this has nothing to do with the size of the set, except in the case of the universe, which could be infinite, in which case it would not be considered an entity. A society could be considered an entity as long as human traits are not attributed to it. A society does not have needs and wants in the same sense as a human does, nor can it make decisions or act for its own survival. In fact, a very stable seeming society may disappear or change completely if the people that comprise it change their behavior.

I'm not saying that Rand was always consistent, of course, or that none of her definitions are problematic.

Darrell

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Darrell,

Each one of these issues can be and has been called "entity." That makes it confusing because, as you implied, they are only marginally related. (I also have a problem with deducing unobservable facts by running math one way or the other, then calling them hard facts, but that's all we have at extreme levels so far.)

I personally think the background/foreground format is the way the universe is constructed, all the way from the mega to the micro. This fits everything I have seen and read so far. And I believe that's why humans evolved cognitive awareness in this manner. Entity will always be the foreground, but that sounds so imprecise that I am not too comfortable with the word "entity" to denote this and be the root of causality (as Rand claims). To be clear, I do believe the foreground generates the causality of the foreground, but not the background's causality. The word "entity" comes across as too human-size-perception-specific for such all-inclusiveness.

I once got into a discussion with a guy (who has since passed away) named Nathan Hawking. He wanted to establish a fundamental axiom about organization ("organization exists") and made the quip about it being turtles all the way down.

This has nagged at me since that time and I believe he was on to something.

If we mentally imagine ourselves on a "higher level" or "lower level" so to speak, we see this same background/foreground pattern of organization at all levels.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Is a set of entities an entity?

Darrell,

This is the basis of reductionism and I see no way to deny it. If, for one example, you break down entities into smaller chemical components, then rearrange them and mix them together, you get a new entity that never existed in nature before. This is how human beings make things like steel bars or buildings (or almost anything else).

Those smaller chemical components, once divorced from the entity from which they were derived, are entities in their own right. When you combine these smaller entities, you get a bigger one that has nothing to do with the original entity.

btw - This is what "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts" means to me.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

Is a set of entities an entity?

Darrell,

This is the basis of reductionism and I see no way to deny it. If, for one example, you break down entities into smaller chemical components, then rearrange them and mix them together, you get a new entity that never existed in nature before. This is how human beings make things like steel bars or buildings (or almost anything else).

The Hauptszatze, the ur-principle of Reductionism is an assertion of the form:

A is nothing but B

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Darrell Hougen]

I personally think the background/foreground format is the way the universe is constructed, all the way from the mega to the micro.

I don't think so. A picture or image may have a foreground and a background, but many entities exist independently of any background. A person is a person regardless of the background in front of which he is standing. But, a white square from a checkerboard only exists so long as the checkerboard exists.

Darrell

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Darrell,

The checkerboard is the background, or a good part of it. The surrounding area, too.

Michael

[Darrell Hougen]

Darrell,

The checkerboard is the background, or a good part of it. The surrounding area, too.

Michael

Yes. The checkerboard is the background. The point was that some objects, such as people, don't require a background to exist.

Darrell

[tjohnson]

Yes. The checkerboard is the background. The point was that some objects, such as people, don't require a background to exist.

Darrell

Can you elaborate on this?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Yes. The checkerboard is the background. The point was that some objects, such as people, don't require a background to exist.

Darrell,

Do you mean you exist as a singularity in some dimension without the space around you? I don't understand.

Maybe if we agreed on a common meaning for background...

Michael

[Darrell Hougen]

Yes. The checkerboard is the background. The point was that some objects, such as people, don't require a background to exist.

Darrell

Can you elaborate on this?

I thought my examples above were clear, but let me try again. Imagine a brown area in a green lawn. Now, imagine a brown area in a brown lawn. In the green lawn, the borders of the brown area are plain. The brown area is something that is perceived by the human visual system. It is not simply imaginary. It exists. The brown area in the brown lawn is only imaginary. There are no perceptible boundaries between the brown area and the rest of the lawn. Therefore, the existence of the brown area is dependent upon the existence of the green lawn. If the green lawn ceases to exist --- if it turns brown --- then the brown area ceases to exist as well. It can no longer be perceived. There is no scientific test that will allow the area to be perceived or measured or delineated. It does not exist.

Now, consider a cow. The cow may be standing in a green pasture or a brown field. It may be standing in front of a background with black and white spots that make it hard to see. It may be standing in the dark and be impossible to see. It doesn't matter. It is still a cow. If I want to see it in the dark, I can turn on a light or use a flashlight. I can use an infrared camera to find it. I can feel it. I can measure it. I can determine its dimensions. Its existence does not depend upon the existence of anything else. Yes, it may die for lack of air, water or food or it may burn up in a volcano, but all of those things involve changing the cow. In the example of the brown area, I didn't alter the brown area, I altered the green area. Altering the green area altered the existence of the brown area. Nothing I can do to the area surrounding the cow can alter the existence of the unless it directly affects the cow.

In summary, the cow is an independent entity that exists without reference to any particular background. The brown area is not. It exists only in reference to the green lawn.

Darrell

[Darrell Hougen]

Yes. The checkerboard is the background. The point was that some objects, such as people, don't require a background to exist.

Darrell,

Do you mean you exist as a singularity in some dimension without the space around you? I don't understand.

Maybe if we agreed on a common meaning for background...

Michael

Space does not exist. Space is the absence of existence. It makes no sense to state that you exist in reference to that which does not exist.

You must always stand in front of some background (unless you're in space) but your existence does not depend upon that background. See my reply to "general semanticist."

Darrell

[tjohnson]

I thought my examples above were clear, but let me try again. Imagine a brown area in a green lawn. Now, imagine a brown area in a brown lawn. In the green lawn, the borders of the brown area are plain. The brown area is something that is perceived by the human visual system. It is not simply imaginary. It exists. The brown area in the brown lawn is only imaginary. There are no perceptible boundaries between the brown area and the rest of the lawn. Therefore, the existence of the brown area is dependent upon the existence of the green lawn. If the green lawn ceases to exist --- if it turns brown --- then the brown area ceases to exist as well. It can no longer be perceived. There is no scientific test that will allow the area to be perceived or measured or delineated. It does not exist.

Now, consider a cow. The cow may be standing in a green pasture or a brown field. It may be standing in front of a background with black and white spots that make it hard to see. It may be standing in the dark and be impossible to see. It doesn't matter. It is still a cow. If I want to see it in the dark, I can turn on a light or use a flashlight. I can use an infrared camera to find it. I can feel it. I can measure it. I can determine its dimensions. Its existence does not depend upon the existence of anything else. Yes, it may die for lack of air, water or food or it may burn up in a volcano, but all of those things involve changing the cow. In the example of the brown area, I didn't alter the brown area, I altered the green area. Altering the green area altered the existence of the brown area. Nothing I can do to the area surrounding the cow can alter the existence of the unless it directly affects the cow.

In summary, the cow is an independent entity that exists without reference to any particular background. The brown area is not. It exists only in reference to the green lawn.

Darrell

While it may be more difficult to isolate the "brown area in a brown lawn", in principle there is no difference that I can see between that and the cow, in terms of "existence", that is.

[Dragonfly]

Space does not exist. Space is the absence of existence. It makes no sense to state that you exist in reference to that which does not exist.

Then how is it possible that something that does not exist has 3 dimensions?

[Dragonfly]

While it may be more difficult to isolate the "brown area in a brown lawn", in principle there is no difference that I can see between that and the cow, in terms of "existence", that is.

Right, a brown lawn has infinitely many brown areas, so there is not one single brown area that can be uniquely distinguished, but that doesn't mean that they don't exist.

[tjohnson]

Well, the statement "brown area in a brown lawn" implies that there is some area which is different in some way to it's surroundings - other than color. If Darrell is asking me to imagine a random patch of brown grass in the middle of a brown lawn then that is pretty well meaningless/impossible, as far as I can see.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Then how is it possible that something that does not exist has 3 dimensions?

Darrell,

I'm with Dragonfly here. Space is the ultimate background. Time too. Or does time, in your view, not exist either?

Even according to Objectivist metaphysics (which I find vastly oversimplified), everything in the universe is interconnected. Interconnection does not allow for singularities.

Michael

[tjohnson]

Even according to Objectivist metaphysics (which I find vastly oversimplified), everything in the universe is interconnected. Interconnection does not allow for singularities.

There is no such thing as an object in perfect isolation - at the very least there must be an observer.

[Darrell Hougen]

While it may be more difficult to isolate the "brown area in a brown lawn", in principle there is no difference that I can see between that and the cow, in terms of "existence", that is.

Right, a brown lawn has infinitely many brown areas, so there is not one single brown area that can be uniquely distinguished, but that doesn't mean that they don't exist.

Dragonfly, general semanticist and Michael,

It is exactly the quality of distinguishability that makes such an entity an entity in the first place. If some region cannot be distinguished, then no entity exists as such. The substance from which such entities could be composed exists, but the existence of entities as such depends upon the organization of the substance into distinguishable areas or regions. It is only in the imagination that a brown lawn has infinitely many brown areas. It does not have those areas perceptually or in reality.

Darrell

[Darrell Hougen]

Well, the statement "brown area in a brown lawn" implies that there is some area which is different in some way to it's surroundings - other than color. If Darrell is asking me to imagine a random patch of brown grass in the middle of a brown lawn then that is pretty well meaningless/impossible, as far as I can see.

Exactly!

Darrell

[Darrell Hougen]

Space does not exist. Space is the absence of existence. It makes no sense to state that you exist in reference to that which does not exist.

Then how is it possible that something that does not exist has 3 dimensions?

Does it? What evidence do you have that space has three dimensions?

Darrell