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Post 140

Thursday, December 9, 2004 - 4:34pmSanction this postReply
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Next wrote:
>Daniel,I'm amazed at your patience.

Hi Next. Well, as Socrates knew, we humans think rather lazily. We tend to believe what we are told, particularly from forceful or ancient authorities. And once we believe it, we often believe it passionately, in the face of logic or evidence. Nothing is quite so passionately defended as a sincere mistake! Which is why it is so important to examine what we believe critically, to see if it really is the truth, or whether we are basically kidding ourselves.

Unfortunately this takes time sometimes, because a combination of passion and verbalist arguments can conceal basically illogical positions - so you do have to be a bit patient. But we are nearly there. For in order to see just how badly Nate is kidding himself, all we need to do is examine the following of his propositions:

Nate (post 138):
>Concepts are perfectly definite. 

Yet in the next breath he says:
>...the open-ended nature of concepts...

Now, we know that the generally agreed meaning of "definite" is: 1."Having distinct limits..."*

And we know that the generally agreed meaning of "open-ended" is: "1.Not restrained by definite limits.."*

So, stripped of its important-sounding verbiage about "referents", "subsuming" etc it turns out what Nate believes - no matter how deeply he believes it - is a simple fallacy, defying the commonly accepted laws of logic.

Of course, this is not likely to be a situation he will willingly accept - nothing is so passionately defended as a sincere mistake - so he might try resorting to...wait for it... a "special" or "esoteric" definition of the above terms, in the hope - admittedly now faint - that it will get him out of his difficulty. Perhaps, by playing with words, he will try to say that there is some important "context" that is missing, or that there are some special meanings of "open-ended" and/or "definite" that we non-Objectivists do not or will not understand. Whatever, all he will be doing is trying to drag the argument into one about *the meaning of words* and away from *the illogical nature of his propositions*; into Clintonian waffle, and away where his problem can be clearly seen.

But I'm afraid it will be too late.

- Daniel

*both definitions are from Dictionary.com





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Post 141

Friday, December 10, 2004 - 2:57amSanction this postReply
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Daniel,

Thanks so much for the running commentary about how I don't understand anything; very helpful--  I must have really hit close to the mark for you to dismiss my point in third person.  It shows that you haven't been following my arguments. 

Also, I love your little rationalistic parading of dictionary terms intended to refute my entire post.  You didn't strip my post of "important sounding verbiage", you just stripped it of context.

I've already explained to you my terms.  I've already explained to you what "open-ended" means when applied to a concept.  Stop hiding behind the word games you claim to reject.

Nate

(Edited by Nate T. on 12/10, 4:42am)


Post 142

Sunday, December 12, 2004 - 4:46pmSanction this postReply
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Nate writes:
>Thanks so much for the running commentary about how I don't understand anything; very helpful

I have no doubt you do understand a great many things, and that you are no doubt highly intelligent. However, one can be intelligent and also in error, and I assure you that you are very much in error here even if you do not realise it. For it appears there is at least one thing you do not clearly understand, and that is a rule of logic called "the law of the excluded middle". So there can be no doubt, I will break down the issue as clearly as possible, and show you exactly where you're going wrong.

Here is an typical example of this law from the Wikipedia:

If your proposition (or P) is "Joe is bald" then "Joe is bald, or Joe is not bald" is true.

Likewise, if your proposition is "concepts have distinct limits", then "concepts have distinct limits *or* concepts do not have distinct limits" is true.

Unfortunately, you are claiming that concepts do have distinct limits (and that is the dictionary defintion of "perfectly definite") *and* that they do not have distinct limits (they also are "open-ended" ie:"1.Not restrained by definite limits, restrictions, or structure"). Accordingly, this claim cannot be true.

So you can clearly see that "context" changes nothing. Concepts do not and should not possess any magical immunity from this law; indeed, this is why it is called a *law*; because it does not and should not vary regardless of whether it is in the context of a cost estimate, or a concept, or Joe's baldness.

So, Nate, you have arrived at what Ayn Rand used to call an "either/or". Either concepts are "perfectly definite" *or* they are "open-ended". They cannot be both.

Which is it to be?

(For the record, I believe concepts are "open-ended", exactly as the dictionary defines the term. That is, "indefinite or inconclusive". )

Nate:
>It shows that you haven't been following my arguments. 

But I have - very closely. In fact, I have shown your key argument is based on a simple logical error. And your lesser ones are no better. For example:

Nate(from post 138)
>To say that a concept is "indefinite" means that you don't know to what in reality the concept corresponds.

See, Nate, this is just false. You seem to think that if a concept is "indefinite" then you don't know *anything at all* about it - which is obviously incorrect. For instance, physicists use the concept "gravity" , yet no physicist would claim to know *definitely* what gravity is (the question is still an "open-ended" one).

And indeed, this is what you say here:
>This is the reason that the open-ended nature of concepts is so important-- without the fact that there may be other referents that can be subsumed under the same concept, you have no way to use your concept in new situations.

And I of course agree with this. What is silly, however, is that you then turn around and try to say that this is somehow "perfectly definite" too!!

Nate:
>This is basically a passage of Ayn Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.  I recommend that you read it-- it will probably answer some of your questions.

I have read that particular book several times. It is easily the weakest thing in her oeuvre, and I would approach with caution. It contains many of the same errors you've fallen into here.

Nate:
>I've already explained to you my terms.  I've already explained to you what "open-ended" means when applied to a concept.

Yes. And I have now explained, as clearly and thoroughly as I can, why your claim about concepts is completely false.*

- Daniel

*actually now I think it would have been much simpler just to invoke the law of non-contradiction. Oh well!



(Edited by Daniel Barnes on 12/12, 6:08pm)


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Post 143

Sunday, December 12, 2004 - 7:16pmSanction this postReply
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Daniel writes: "Unfortunately, you are claiming that concepts do have distinct limits (and that is the dictionary defintion of "perfectly definite") *and* that they do not have distinct limits (they also are "open-ended" ie:"1.Not restrained by definite limits, restrictions, or structure"). Accordingly, this claim cannot be true."

The Pythagorean Theorem is both definite and open ended. It is definite in that it applies to triangles of a certain specific (ie, definite) type. It is open ended in that it applies to *all* such triangles regardless of their dimensions.

Similarly, concepts are both definite and open ended.

There is no contradiction.

Post 144

Sunday, December 12, 2004 - 9:00pmSanction this postReply
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>The Pythagorean Theorem is both definite and open ended. It is definite in that it applies to triangles of a certain specific (ie, definite) type. It is open ended in that it applies to *all* such triangles regardless of their dimensions.

Actually Rick, I think the fact that it applies to *all* triangles of that type shows that this theorem is *not* "open-ended" at all! It is perfectly definite.

But you certainly right to focus on *theories* rather than concepts, for exactly this reason.

- Daniel

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Post 145

Monday, December 13, 2004 - 3:51amSanction this postReply
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Daniel,

I glad that things are at least getting  more civil.  Onto your post:

Unfortunately, you are claiming that concepts do have distinct limits (and that is the dictionary defintion of "perfectly definite") *and* that they do not have distinct limits (they also are "open-ended" ie:"1.Not restrained by definite limits, restrictions, or structure"). Accordingly, this claim cannot be true.

This is where the context-dropping happens.  A concept is definite because you know exactly to what in reality it corresponds (the concept "red" is definite if you can tell a red thing from a non-red thing), and a concept is open-ended because it doesn't just refer to a fixed number of referents, but one can recognise that there are other referents out there that are included in the same concept (red isn't just all the red things you've ever seen).  Something isn't a real concept if it doesn't have these two properties.  These two aspects are not in contradiction to each other, so it can be (and is) true that a concept is both definite and open-ended.

A nice (and analogous) example would be the set of natural numbers in mathematics (what Rand calls the "arithmetic sequence").  If I give you a real number, you can tell me whether it is a natural number or not-- hence the natural numbers are definite.  However, you cannot explicitly list every natural number-- in that sense, they are open-ended.

So you can clearly see that "context" changes nothing. Concepts do not and should not possess any magical immunity from this law; indeed, this is why it is called a *law*; because it does not and should not vary regardless of whether it is in the context of a cost estimate, or a concept, or Joe's baldness.

Of course, the Law of the Excluded Middle holds in all contexts.  However, you must be sure that the statements you are comparing are really negations of each other.  In this case, "Concepts are definite" and "Concepts are open-ended" are not mutually exclusive, in the sense I explained above.

See, Nate, this is just false. You seem to think that if a concept is "indefinite" then you don't know *anything at all* about it - which is obviously incorrect. For instance, physicists use the concept "gravity" , yet no physicist would claim to know *definitely* what gravity is (the question is still an "open-ended" one).

No, no, if a concept is "indefinite", it means you aren't quite sure to what the concept refers in reality; this is the case whether you have absolutely no idea, or whether one has a "rough" idea.  In this sense, an "indefinite concept" is a contradiction in terms, since all concepts are definite.  If a child in elementary school can't pick out a red block from a blue block when asked to do so, we would say that the child doesn't understand the concept "red", or I suppose you could say that the child's "concept" of  "red" is not definite.  And you can say a similar thing about "open-endedness" too; certainly the child doesn't understand the concept "red" if the child think that an object is "red" if it is an object that the Kindergarten teacher has pointed at while uttering the sound 'red'.

Your example of gravity was somewhat confusing.  Every physicist (and hopefully every high-school physics student) knows what gravity is; in fact, if I may 'pull a Daniel' and look it up on dictionary.com, we would see that Gravity is "The natural force of attraction between any two massive bodies, which is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them."  This definition serves to identify gravity as a force and to distinguish it from other forces.  What isn't definite about this?  What's more, you seem to equate knowledge of the force of gravity (knowledge of the referent) with what gravity is (referents subsumed under the concept).  The sense in which you use "open-ended" there is certainly now how I'm using it, as you can see above.

It seems like you have misgivings about the word choice of Objectivists to use terms like 'open-ended' and 'definite' to refer to concepts, since you keep appending standard definitions to the word "concept" as a whole and deducing that the terms contradict each other.  Word choice is a totally different issue (but for the record I do believe that Rand picked the proper terms to discuss these properties of concepts).  Now that I have explained what it is about concepts that are "definite" and "open-ended", please direct any criticism to those concepts, not to the choice of words.

Nate

(Edited by Nate T. on 12/13, 3:56am)


Post 146

Monday, December 13, 2004 - 5:50amSanction this postReply
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Somewhere in the middle of this argument, a switch was made from "words" to"concepts".  I think Dan probably encouraged it with his focus on Nate's supposed contradiction, but if we grant Nate the sense in which he intended to use those words, there is no contradiction. 

Nate intended "definite" as a statement as we know what kinds of referents we would classify under some concepts e.g. he gave the example, "red", and he intended "open-ended" as something about the number of referents to which the concept could be applied.  This, however, is not the same thing as the ambiguity of words, which have lots of senses applied to them, some superficially similar. 

Though Nate helps his case by choosing an adjective (or a concept related to attributes) tied to objects given in perception rather than something on a higher level, I think that his case is sound.

Is there a generally-agreed sense for the words "definite". "indefinite", "concept" and "word" in this discussion?  Not in the sense that someone has defined them, but in the sense that people have agreed to understand what is being said by their opponents and to test for understanding?

Concept can be synonymous with "idea", "theory", "judgment", "plan", "thought" and "universal", to name a few.

Is the claim that concepts (in the sense of "universals" or "a mental construct that unites two or more existents") are indefinite a claim that

1) we do not know what we refer to when we use concepts - I cannot know what I refer to when I use the word, "red",
or
2) we do not know everything about whatever we refer to when we use concepts, even if we know enough to refer to them - I cannot know everything about the referent of the concept "red", even if I know enough to refer to red objects (Daniel used the example, "gravity")
or
3) we know what we refer to when we use concepts, and there are potentially an infinite number of such referents in some contexts.

It seems that there is some mix of all three is at work in this discussion. 

Dan seems to be arguing sense (2), claiming that Nate is guilty of contradiction by arguing sense (3), but does not agree with sense (1). 

Nate is arguing sense (3) and is trying to saddle Dan with sense (1), and has not even touched upon whether sense (2) is coherent or not, which is Dan's point. 

There may still be disagreements, but this seems to me like talking past each other at its finest.

And the original focus of the discussion was on words and the claim that definitions are useful to the degree they allow for common agreement on what words mean, and not to the degree that they allow for a self-serving class of referents (unless one is being a lawyer, who wants to win the argument, and not a scientific thinker, who cares about the truth).  The rest of a search for truth should be judgments about the nature of reality and not attempts to refuse to discuss this or that because it doesn't fit the *true* definition (issues of scope should be made using considerations other than self-serving definitions)

For example, I can refuse to discuss the concept "red" as applied to red-haired women called "reds" or Communists called "Reds" because they don't suit the context in which I speak and my discussions of "red" in a scientific context wouldn't make sense when applied to them, but complete ethical theories that define man as a "rational animal" shouldn't refuse to address issues with infants or retards because such ethical theories probably would affect to some degree, the moral status of infants and retards.


Post 147

Monday, December 13, 2004 - 6:47amSanction this postReply
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Next Level,

As far as the senses you listed go, it should be clear where I stand about what 'definite' and 'open-ended' mean.

And the original focus of the discussion was on words and the claim that definitions are useful to the degree they allow for common agreement on what words mean, and not to the degree that they allow for a self-serving class of referents (unless one is being a lawyer, who wants to win the argument, and not a scientific thinker, who cares about the truth).  The rest of a search for truth should be judgments about the nature of reality and not attempts to refuse to discuss this or that because it doesn't fit the *true* definition (issues of scope should be made using considerations other than self-serving definitions)
The purpose of a definition is not to allow for a "common agreement of what words mean"; definitions are much more important than that.  They identify exactly what the referents of the concept are in some context.  If your definition doesn't do that, it doesn't determine what the word you're trying to define means.  Also, what in the world is a 'self-serving class of referents'?  Are you talking about people abusing definitions (like Daniel's example of Plato's 'Justice'?)

Nate


Post 148

Monday, December 13, 2004 - 6:49amSanction this postReply
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Double post.

(Edited by Nate T. on 12/13, 6:50am)


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Post 149

Monday, December 13, 2004 - 9:19amSanction this postReply
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Nate,
As far as the senses you listed go, it should be clear where I stand about what 'definite' and 'open-ended' mean.
For me, meaning always begins with the mind.  Therefore, unless I am involved in a pissing contest, I am concerned with the meaning that a person intends to convey first and foremost, and not the words or concepts that he uses to express them or whether he uses them correctly. 

If you don't have any quibbles with what I wrote when I talked about those words, then I will assume that I have sufficiently captured your meanings until I hear otherwise.  Apparent clarity doesn't always foster true agreement, and apparent obscurity can hide true agreement.

For example, if a person says, "Determinism is self-refuting nonsense" or even makes the simpler claim, "roses are red", I would ideally like to understand what he or she considers "determinism" and "nonsense" to mean, or what she considers a "rose" and "red[ness]" etc., though practically, I would probably assume that the referents of our thoughts are similar enough in both judgments and that we can agree and disagree meaningfully.
The purpose of a definition is not to allow for a "common agreement of what words mean"; definitions are much more important than that.  They identify exactly what the referents of the concept are in some context.  If your definition doesn't do that, it doesn't determine what the word you're trying to define means.

I do not think that you are totally wrong - I just think that your claims are sweeping empirical difficulties underneath the rug.
 
Context is defined by realistic and mental considerations, so you can't escape the mind.  In my view, it is the mind that subjectively identifies what referents are associated with a concept.  The objective sense of a concept can be identified in a variety of ways, but it is related to some ideal conception of knowledge, and it is still dependent on (some) subjective conceptions of knowledge to some degree.

I do not try to uncritically separate "definitions", "words", and "referents" from the mind.  The definition doesn't identify the referents, the mind does, and it is the degree to which the definition communicates what the mind would ideally consider referents that the definition is successful.  The degree to which the definition is true or false makes it less a definition and more a judgment, a judgment about whether the definition properly identifies its referents.  Judgments can be true or false.  Definitions, to the degree that one treats, them as true or false, can be judgments.  But they are different things.  I can define a "Martian" as "a sentient creature that inhabits Mars", but whether that is a good definition or not, it doesn't say anything about reality unless I say, "Martians exist", in which case, we can start to adduce evidence for and against the claim.
Also, what in the world is a 'self-serving class of referents'?  Are you talking about people abusing definitions (like Daniel's example of Plato's 'Justice'?)
Yes, that is one example.  But I was talking about people who do something like say that a dead man isn't a man because the man is dead or other such verbalist nonsense.  Or the war on Iraq isn't a war because it wasn't declared by Congress.  Those are verbalist arguments (and can be useful in law), not scientific ones.(Edited for clarity and for one point).

(Edited by Next Level on 12/13, 9:44am)


Post 150

Monday, December 13, 2004 - 9:46pmSanction this postReply
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Nate writes:
>Your example of gravity was somewhat confusing.  Every physicist (and hopefully every high-school physics student) knows what gravity is (he "does a Daniel" and quotes a dictionary definition of gravity..;-))

Hi Nate,

Ah, this is a good example. What you're talking about here is just a rough working model that basically describes gravity's effects. No high school student knows what gravity *is*, let alone any physicist. For example, it may turn out to be the basically same force as electromagnetism, just as electicity and magnetism were for a long time thought to be different forces (this idea lies behind the attempts to find a "unified field" theory). Or it may not. We simply do not know, so any claim that we have a "perfectly definite" concept of gravity cannot stand, as while we can describe what it *does*, we do not know what it *is*. (Nor, tellingly, does this not-knowing-definitely hold back the progress of human knowledge. Otherwise we would put space flight programmes on hold until we found what gravity "is"...!)

And this "working idea" or rough formula is what a concept is. And concepts, if they are to be products of human knowledge (which is very incomplete) and not some pre-existing Platonically perfect item, must be works-in-progress, and thus "open-ended" in the typical dictionary sense. And indeed they must be to change as we learn about the universe, as "gravity" undoubtedly will.

Now, at this point we should make the distinction between *concepts* and *theories* which I believe turns out to be very useful.

While we use concepts as instruments, as rough "works-in-progress" as we try to learn about the universe, we can gain far greater precision by formulating *theories*. Now, Rick's example of Pythagoras's Theorem is also excellent. For I would say that this theory is, in contrast to concepts, about as *definite* and *conclusive* as we can humanly get. While I do not want to argue over words, I would say that to claim that this theory is "open-ended" in any meaningful sense is simply mistaken.

For the theory's formula is as follows:

"The sum of the areas of the squares on the legs of a right triangle is equal to the area of the square on the hypotenuse."

While there are many different ways of expressing this (or proofs), the result is *conclusive* that is: the sum of the areas on the legs *always the same* as the area of the hypotenuse. And this formula *cannot change* (although it can be written in different ways) . The only thing that is "open-ended" about it is not the *theory* itself, but merely its variables - which, naturally, vary...;-) - and which are - and I draw your attention to this - the very general concepts "length" or "size" or "dimension" that are used to construct the theory.

If we had to argue over these concepts - and Next, I appreciate your point, but I consider concepts only slightly less pointless to argue over than words - it would lead only to a war of words - "ah, but what do you mean by size?" - and, in the hands of a wily metaphysician, Clintonian wafffle.

Whereas we can test Mr P's *theory* by both argument and experiment and get a clear result. And while the *concept* of gravity may morph unrecognisably over a thousand years, including and expelling everything from angels to gravitons, and may yet include a multitude of things we do not know, Mr P's theory can simply be found *true* or *false*.

Of course, not all concepts are as vague as gravity, and not all theories are as definite as Mr P's. But do you see what I'm getting at?

- Daniel







(Edited by Daniel Barnes on 12/13, 10:04pm)


Post 151

Tuesday, December 14, 2004 - 1:19amSanction this postReply
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Nate:
>A nice (and analogous) example would be the set of natural numbers in mathematics (what Rand calls the "arithmetic sequence").  If I give you a real number, you can tell me whether it is a natural number or not-- hence the natural numbers are definite.  However, you cannot explicitly list every natural number-- in that sense, they are open-ended.

Hi Nate,

All you are saying here is that natural numbers are infinite. If that is the sense you mean by "open-ended", then you are saying that concepts too are infinite. Once again, I do not think this is very compatible with "perfectly definite". So I believe my original point still holds.

- Daniel

PS I have nonetheless awarded you an Atlas point for an engaging post, even though I think it is in error...;-)

Post 152

Tuesday, December 14, 2004 - 3:29amSanction this postReply
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Dan,

If we had to argue over these concepts - and Next, I appreciate your point, but I consider concepts only slightly less pointless to argue over than words - it would lead only to a war of words - "ah, but what do you mean by size?" - and, in the hands of a wily metaphysician, Clintonian wafffle.
I definitely agree, but only to the degree that you can separate a concept from a judgment or proposition.  I think that most of the time, we human beings are acquainted with concepts initially as part of truthful (or somewhat truthful) propositions. Therefore, we find it hard to distinguish between a concept and its use in propositions.

There are other things, but I think (and correct me if I'm wrong) that you accept epistemic dualism and subjective perception.  If you do, I doubt that we can disagree on anything but the finer points.


Post 153

Tuesday, December 14, 2004 - 4:14amSanction this postReply
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Next Level,

There are a few things that I'd like to address about your post.

If you don't have any quibbles with what I wrote when I talked about those words, then I will assume that I have sufficiently captured your meanings until I hear otherwise.  Apparent clarity doesn't always foster true agreement, and apparent obscurity can hide true agreement.
Actually, upon rereading it, there is something about the way you summarize my position that isn't quite right: when you say that "open-ended" refers to something about the number of referents.  Open ended really doesn't have to do with the number of referents of the concept-- it has to do with the fact that if another existent comes along, you can recognize (if necessary) that it needs to be subsumed under the concept or not.  Without this, concepts would be useless to humans, since they would only refer to a static collection of referents.
 
Context is defined by realistic and mental considerations, so you can't escape the mind.  In my view, it is the mind that subjectively identifies what referents are associated with a concept.  The objective sense of a concept can be identified in a variety of ways, but it is related to some ideal conception of knowledge, and it is still dependent on (some) subjective conceptions of knowledge to some degree.

I'll take your suggestion from earlier in your post and ask what what you mean by the "objective" and "subjective" sense of a concept?  Remember that if you don't know exactly which referents are subsumed under a concept, you really don't have one yet (c.f. the kindergartener example).

I do not try to uncritically separate "definitions", "words", and "referents" from the mind.  The definition doesn't identify the referents, the mind does, and it is the degree to which the definition communicates what the mind would ideally consider referents that the definition is successful.
Well, if you do have a concept, you know exactly to what in reality that the concept refers.  Therefore, you should be able to, in a given context, to propose a statement that fundamentally distinguishes the referents you're interested in from the rest of them.  This statement is a definition, and your definition is correct if it refers to the same things that the concept does.

I can define a "Martian" as "a sentient creature that inhabits Mars", but whether that is a good definition or not, it doesn't say anything about reality unless I say, "Martians exist", in which case, we can start to adduce evidence for and against the claim.

The only way that you could meaningfully talk about Martians would be as objects of imagination (since, as you rightly point out, all of the evidence that we have suggests that there are no sentient creatures inhabiting Mars.)  Hence, you could say something like "Martians do not exist," but you couldn't say "Martians have green skin," since there are no referents to the concept.

Yes, that is one example.  But I was talking about people who do something like say that a dead man isn't a man because the man is dead or other such verbalist nonsense.  Or the war on Iraq isn't a war because it wasn't declared by Congress.  Those are verbalist arguments (and can be useful in law), not scientific ones.

If all you're worried about is that people don't play semantics when they're trying to argue a point, I agree with you.  To be fair, however, a dead man isn't a man-- it's a pile of decomposing organic chemicals that was a man.  Whether such points are relevant would depend upon the argument (for instance, the distinction between a man and a dead man would be useful if, say, the government tried to give corpses rights by arguing that they are men).

Nate

(Edited by Nate T. on 12/14, 5:03am)


Post 154

Tuesday, December 14, 2004 - 5:00amSanction this postReply
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Hi Daniel,

Ah, this is a good example. What you're talking about here is just a rough working model that basically describes gravity's effects. No high school student knows what gravity *is*, let alone any physicist. For example, it may turn out to be the basically same force as electromagnetism, just as electicity and magnetism were for a long time thought to be different forces (this idea lies behind the attempts to find a "unified field" theory). Or it may not. We simply do not know, so any claim that we have a "perfectly definite" concept of gravity cannot stand, as while we can describe what it *does*, we do not know what it *is*. (Nor, tellingly, does this not-knowing-definitely hold back the progress of human knowledge. Otherwise we would put space flight programmes on hold until we found what gravity "is"...!)

You seem to say here that we don't really know what a thing is unless we know everything about it first.  You say that gravity may turn out to be the same force as electromagnetism, but that wouldn't then be the definition of gravity-- if you tried to explain that gravity and electricity were the same thing to a person who hadn't grasped the concept of gravity yet, it would cause an immense amount of confusion-- there wouldn't be enough similarity at that level to justify integrating the two existents under a single concept.  If we do someday find out that gravity and electromagnetism are in some sense the same force, this adds to our knowledge about gravity (which is another very important aspect of the open-endedness of concepts), and we can use this extra knowledge to tell us more about the word and exploit the relationship for our purposes.  However, when we talk about gravity, we still mean that force which was described in the dictionary.com definition.

And this "working idea" or rough formula is what a concept is. And concepts, if they are to be products of human knowledge (which is very incomplete) and not some pre-existing Platonically perfect item, must be works-in-progress, and thus "open-ended" in the typical dictionary sense. And indeed they must be to change as we learn about the universe, as "gravity" undoubtedly will.
Ah.  Your comments suggest that you hold something called the Intrinsicist/Subjectivist dichotomy, which states that unless concepts are intrinsic (i.e., exist in an ethereal "Platonic" realm), they must be subjective (i.e., we can only have a rough idea, or an incomplete idea, of what concepts refer to).  But this is a false dichotomy-- concepts are objective, which means that concepts refer to definite referents in reality, but we can subsume new referents under the same concept, if necessary.  This means that while concepts are indeed constructs of the human mind (not intrinsic in the referents somehow), once we have grasped a concept, its referents are determined by reality, not by social opinion or whim (not subjective, i.e., they are determined by the nature of the referents).

A theory, on the other hand, is "A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena." (dictionary.com)  Now 'a group of facts or phenomena' is really just knowledge about the nature of existents here-- however, if we don't know exactly which existents our concepts refer to, how can we be sure that our theory has any validity whatsoever?

All you are saying here is that natural numbers are infinite. If that is the sense you mean by "open-ended", then you are saying that concepts too are infinite. Once again, I do not think this is very compatible with "perfectly definite". So I believe my original point still holds.

If the infinite nature of this example is bothering you, I can come up with another analogy.  For example, there are only a finite number of tires in the world, right?  But that doesn't mean that the concept "tire" refers to only these tires-- they refer to all the tires that exist, ever did exist, and ever will exist (another important aspect of the open-endedness of concepts).  If someone creates a new tire, then there are still a finite number of tires in the world, but you can still use your concept to refer to it as a tire.

But in any case, just because a set is infinite, that doesn't mean that it's indefinite-- remembering that definite just refers to whether you can tell whether a number is natural or not.

Nate



Post 155

Tuesday, December 14, 2004 - 7:29amSanction this postReply
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We simply do not know, so any claim that we have a "perfectly definite" concept of gravity cannot stand, as while we can describe what it *does*, we do not know what it *is*.


But could we also not have a “perfectly definite” concept of “red” until we learned about the electromagnetic spectrum? I should say not—people who don't know anything about wavelengths are still usually pretty good at telling what is red and what isn't, even if they don't know why.

And that's the real extent of concepts—they don't need to be based on all the metaphysical information about their referents, but only that which is sufficient to distinguish instances of one concept unambiguously from another. If you can say without error whether something you are shown is red or not, then you have a perfectly definite concept of “red,” whether or not you know what a lambda or an f is. Similarly, if you can look at something moving and say without error whether it is moving as a result of gravity or as a result of something else, then you have a perfectly definite concept of “gravity.”

Now, sometimes concepts do change and do get combined with other concepts—the classic example is that of the “morning star” and “evening star.” Once it was recognized that these were in fact the same object, the two concepts could be combined—but nothing in the new concept invalidated anything known about the two old concepts. Similarly, if gravity and EM are united, they will need to be combined into a single concept, but everything we know about gravity or EM will still be true of the new concept.

It is also worth noting that the amount of information necessary for a valid concept is, like most things, contextual. For a random guy driving to work, his concept of “red” needs to include just enough information to distinguish a red light from a green light. An artist painting in a thousand shades of red, however, needs to know more. A scientist studying distant objects by means of “red shift” needs to know more as well—but not necessarily more than the artist, and certainly not the same things as the artist.

Post 156

Tuesday, December 14, 2004 - 7:48amSanction this postReply
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Nate,

Actually, upon rereading it, there is something about the way you summarize my position that isn't quite right: when you say that "open-ended" refers to something about the number of referents.  Open ended really doesn't have to do with the number of referents of the concept-- it has to do with the fact that if another existent comes along, you can recognize (if necessary) that it needs to be subsumed under the concept or not.  Without this, concepts would be useless to humans, since they would only refer to a static collection of referents.

That is how I understood you.

I'll take your suggestion from earlier in your post and ask what what you mean by the "objective" and "subjective" sense of a concept?  Remember that if you don't know exactly which referents are subsumed under a concept, you really don't have one yet (c.f. the kindergartener example).
The kindergartner in your example has a concept attached to the word "red" - just not the one you want him to have.

Your latter statement sounds a lot like the claim that if I can't define a tree in words, I have no coherent concept of a tree.  I obviously disagree, but I am not sure if that is your claim.  Testing sufficient understanding of a concept is done in different ways, but I have no respect for the view that makes it mostly a matter of words.  There are many good reasons to respect words and languages, including their role in communication and transmitting culture, but the idea that possession of knowledge is strictly embodied by being able to express it in words is not one.

The objective sense depends upon some ideal view of knowledge (usually scientific).  It is usually bound up with absolute judgments of truth and falsehood in the widest context, but is practically surrogated by some standard. 
The subjective sense of a concept is how an individual defines a concept - it might agree with the objective view, but it might not.  And within the context in which the individual defined the concept, the individual that possesses the concept has usually found it sufficient.

Well, if you do have a concept, you know exactly to what in reality that the concept refers.  Therefore, you should be able to, in a given context, to propose a statement that fundamentally distinguishes the referents you're interested in from the rest of them.  This statement is a definition, and your definition is correct if it refers to the same things that the concept does.
Yes, this is fine, as long as it is not being used to make thought subservient to language and its practical limitations are accepted.  Those practical limitations would lead me to a weaker (and inevitably more verbosely expressed) view:

1) If you have a concept, you have a good idea of what an instance of it (or a referent ) would look like if you came across it in introspective thought or perception. 
2) To communicate your ideas, or maybe to record (and clarify) the nature of and changes in your thoughts as you continue your inquiry, you define it in a statement so that you can distinguish it from i) other concepts with other referents, ii) from other concepts with the some similar referents but which do not capture the sense in which you want to use this concept.
3) This statement, correctly understood, should enable you to identify what you are discussing with others and to use it to make judgments which you and others can appreciate. 
4) This statement is a definition, and if it communicates your ideas to others, or clarifies your ideas, it is serving its function adequately. 
5) To the degree that the definition, after enabling easy identification of the referents and understanding of your ideas, makes a judgment about the nature of its referents and that judgment is true, the definition is correct.  To the degree that it fulfils both in the functions in the widest context, it is objective.

Note that a referent can be other ideas or thoughts.
The only way that you could meaningfully talk about Martians would be as objects of imagination (since, as you rightly point out, all of the evidence that we have suggests that there are no sentient creatures inhabiting Mars.)  Hence, you could say something like "Martians do not exist," but you couldn't say "Martians have green skin," since there are no referents to the concept.
If it is currently the only way if I intend to speak of Martians as existents in the external world, what bearing does that have on my claim?  If human beings build a civilization on Mars, wouldn't there be Martians?  The distinction between imagination and reality is the standard by which judgments attached to them.  The way we conceptually refer to them is the same.

I can say that "Martians have green skin", but once again, it is the meaning in the mind that is important.  It could be a judgment about the external world, or my imagination, or some popular work of fiction(Tim Burton's Mars Attacks). Yes, my current use is imaginative or hypothetical. I have advanced no argument for it, have adduced no evidence for it and I know of the cultural status of Martians.  I would be more careful making such statements about God around Christians even though I regard gods essentially the same way.

If all you're worried about is that people don't play semantics when they're trying to argue a point, I agree with you.  To be fair, however, a dead man isn't a man-- it's a pile of decomposing organic chemicals that was a man.  Whether such points are relevant would depend upon the argument (for instance, the distinction between a man and a dead man would be useful if, say, the government tried to give corpses rights by arguing that they are men).
I agree with what you written, and it only enforces my point that meaning is what matters first and foremost.


Post 157

Tuesday, December 14, 2004 - 11:42amSanction this postReply
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Next writes:
>There are other things, but I think (and correct me if I'm wrong) that you accept epistemic dualism and subjective perception.  If you do, I doubt that we can disagree on anything but the finer points.

Next, it's even worse than that! I am actually an epistemic "trialist"! I use the rather radical formulation proposed by Karl Popper, which I will sketch here.

1) Objective reality exists (bricks, planets, forces etc) 2) Subjective human experience exists (internal thoughts, emotions, imagination) 3) Objective human knowledge exists (language, theories, mathematical systems, art etc).

These 3 "worlds" are evolutionary or emergent ie: each unexpectedly emerged from the other at some point, just as life unexpectedly emerged at some point from the dead matter of the universe. While they are different, they all *interact*. For example, a man might build a house for the woman he loves ("World" 2). This will result in an architect making an abstract plan ("World" 3) that will then have an impact on World 1 when the house is actually built. Or you might have a drought in the physical world 1,which will lead to the experience of hunger (World 2), which leads to the formulation of an irrigation plan (World 3) which in turn gets written down on paper in the physical World 1 (and finally dug there too). That sort of thing.

It's important to realise that the difference between subjective knowledge and objective knowledge is that while both are human creations, the latter also *stands outside* ourselves (from the Latin root, which means something in our path). Thus, for example, an objective mathematical theory can be usefully criticised - indeed, may contain errors the inventor did not realise - while a feeling of love obviously cannot be....;-)

That's the schema roughly. I think it's an intriguing idea that solves a lot of the problems that shoehorning everything into a monism or dualism creates - though, like every theory, it has some problems of its own. I have no doubt Nature and Nate will strongly disagree with this idea - but it's not important in this discussion, as we all agree on the rules of logic, that objective reality exists etc.

- Daniel





Post 158

Tuesday, December 14, 2004 - 4:07pmSanction this postReply
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Nature wrote:
>Now, sometimes concepts do change and do get combined with other concepts—the classic example is that of the “morning star” and “evening star.” Once it was recognized that these were in fact the same object, the two concepts could be combined—*but nothing in the new concept invalidated anything known about the two old concepts* (emphasis DB)

Nature, this is incorrect. I believe you have overlooked something very important here.

For the new concept *did* invalidate an extremely important part of both former concepts! For formerly it was *known that they were two different things*!

So your statement above is actually false.

Further, to demonstrate the weakness of the style of argument that places great emphasis on concepts and definitions, imagine you had written the definitions of the concepts "Morning star" and "Evening star" *before* that discovery. They would inevitably state, based on arguments and observations of reality which had already occurred, that they were two different things.

Then I come along and say hey Nature, I have this theory that the Morning Star and the Evening Star are actually the same thing.

You would first consult the definitions of each concept, and then reply: "But Daniel, you cannot be correct. Because the concepts "Morning Star" and "Evening Star" *are different by definition*..."

And that is why in science one does not argue from definitions!

Now, in terms of this "concepts are perfectly definite" vs "concepts do change" confusion - which appears to be more than a purely verbal one - I suggest the following may be the source of it.

I assume you and Nate know the difference between changing the *variables* of a formula, and *changing the formula itself*?

- Daniel















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Post 159

Tuesday, December 14, 2004 - 6:49pmSanction this postReply
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They would inevitably state, based on arguments and observations of reality which had already occurred, that they were two different things.


Not really—my definition of the “morning star” would be something in the line of “the star that appears in the morning at azimuth X and elevation Y,” and that for the “evening star” would be similar.


You would first consult the definitions of each concept, and then reply: "But Daniel, you cannot be correct. Because the concepts "Morning Star" and "Evening Star" *are different by definition*..."

And that is why in science one does not argue from definitions!


Nope—just why one doesn't try to argue by treating definitions as equivalent to the words they define.

A point that I half-seriously brought up earlier with the intent to pursue it, but that I let drop: How do you define “definition”? What information does a definition need to include to be considered a definition? And how, if at all, does it differ from a concept?

Now, you seem to be positing a false alternative between arguing exclusively with words and definitions and arguing without words and definitions. But let's look at how you would actually convince me of your strange theory of the equivalence of the two stars.

Say you give me a telescope and tell me to look at the morning star. I know what star you mean, because we share a common definition of that object. So I look at the place in the sky where I know that star to be (either by knowing that it is the brightest object in that part of the sky, or by looking at the place in the sky where it is expected to be). I see that through the telescope, it looks like a big yellow cloudy sphere. Now you tell me to do the same with the evening star, which I similarly know how to locate. It looks much the same as the morning star. This might be enough to convince me; if not, you might show me that the paths known to be followed by the two objects match up nicely if plotted in a heliocentric solar model, or take me out into space and let me observe the object's motion directly.

Now, this is more than playing with definitions and logical axioms; expanding a concept or combining two concepts requires empirical observations. But it's also not a demonstration completely divorced from concepts or definitions; we need to have a definition of both objects so we'll be able to identify what the heck we're talking about (not to mention a common concept of planetary motion, what telescopes do, etc.). Definitions are not the entirety of an argument, but an argument must rest upon definitions.

Honestly, though, I think that both sides here are saying more or less the same thing; it's just that we don't want to use your terms, and you don't want to use ours.

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