RoR: Forum

but nothing in the new concept invalidated anything known about the two old concepts

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*!

Actually, you're right�I'll withdraw that statement, even though I don't think it's necessarily true that two concepts like those of the stars are implicitly defined to refer to distinct entities.

But here's a better example. Consider these propositions:

P₁: Clark Kent is a man.
P₂: Clark Kent lives in Metropolis.
P₃: Superman is an alien.
P₄: Superman can fly.

This knowledge is fine without contradiction, and leads to the formation of two concepts: Clark Kent, a man who lives in Metropolis; and Superman, an alien who can fly. But if we then introduce:

P₅: Clark Kent is Superman,

things get tricky. The meaning of P₅ is that the two concepts are equivalent, and everything that is true of one must be true of the other. So, restated in terms of the entity Entity001 to which both �Clark Kent� and �Superman� refer, our knowledge about this entity is:

P₁: Entity001 is a man.
P₂: Entity001 lives in Metropolis.
P₃: Entity001 is an alien.
P₄: Entity001 can fly.
P₅: Entity001 is Entity001,

Now, it's obvious that P₁ and P₃ are now contradictory; Entity001 cannot be both a man and an alien simultaneously. So one of them must be discarded as false (in this case, P₁). But, P₂ and P₄ are still true of Entity001.

So my point would be better stated as: Most of what we know about the two original concepts remains true of the combined concept, except for that which would contradict their equivalence.

Post 161

Tuesday, December 14, 2004 - 8:37pm

Dan,

Popper's Three World theory is supportive of epistemic dualism. I think you underestimate the role of epistemic dualism vs. epistemic monism in fostering these kind of conflicts (check the conflation of "sense/concept" and "referent" that you exposed in Nature's post, and see OPAR, page 51 for some of Peikoff's comments on mediated perception), but I'm not in the mood to flesh it out now.

This troll has gotta roll :). Later.

Post 162

Tuesday, December 14, 2004 - 8:44pm

Nature writes
>So my point would be better stated as: Most of what we know about the two original concepts remains true of the combined concept, except for that which would contradict their equivalence.

Nature, I agree with your logic here.

It means we can confidently say the following about concepts: they can not only be merged and have elements added to them, but can also be *de-merged*, and have elements *subtracted* from them. And often these changes will be most unexpected! The two stars that appear at two different times of the day turn out to be one and the same; the sun that we see every day travelling above our heads turns out not to travel at all; and that mild mannered reporter at the Daily Planet turns out to be a space alien with superhuman powers...;-)

Would you agree then we can fairly say this about concepts?

- Daniel

Post 163

Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - 1:36am

Nature:
>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?

Hi Nature,
A definition is nothing more than a kind of recipe, or formula, or laundry list that describes an idea or a thing. If I were you, I would not get too hung up on it. Remember, the only things that require the exact words in order to work are magic spells...;-)

A concept is just a general idea, just like it says in the dictionary.

>Now, you seem to be positing a false alternative between arguing exclusively with words and definitions and arguing without words and definitions.

Let me make it perfectly clear: I am not calling for the above.

To summarise: I am calling for a shift in emphasis away from words, definitions and concepts - all of which are useful if kept in their place - and towards problems and theories. The assumption that you require true definitions (ie: to know what something "truly *is*" )and "perfectly definite" concepts *before* you can begin the search for truth I say is a kind of optical illusion. This method, inherited from Aristotle, does not work as advertised. I argue that, rather than giving us the component precision that is assumed necessary to make precise arguments, this method works in reverse, paralysing arguments before they start - firstly by encouraging argument from definition, secondly by entering into a couple of intractable logical problems which actually make meanings fuzzier, thirdly by encouraging verbal hi-jinks that can hide our errors from our critics, and more importantly, from ourselves.

I propose that the most fundamental error of all is the assumption that we require truth as a starting point before we can search for truth; for in fact the progress of human knowledge *begins in error* and from there moves closer to the truth - just like with the Morning and Evening Stars. I propose the best way to search for truth is not to argue over words and general ideas, but to formulate tests that those ideas must pass or fail in order to be accepted - so we can eliminate our errors by the law of survival of the fittest. Thus, they must be formulated into problems, and theories that can be tested by argument and/or experience as solutions. And the more severely tested, the better!

And that's roughly it. So hopefully you can see I am not proposing what you suggest.

- Daniel

Post 164

Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - 2:21am

Next Level,

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.

Ah, well no, you can't define everything in terms of words. There are very important exceptions called first-level concepts which use ostensive definitions (i.e., just pointing at an example) to define them (like "red", for example-- it would be difficult to define "red" in terms of other words). I suppose that you could do the same for "tree" too. These are the kinds of concepts that children first form when they are learning their first words. However, it's a different matter to say that if a child can't pick out a red block from blocks of other colors that he doesn't have the concept of "red".

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.

That all depends what you are talking about. For instance, if you wanted to communicate the idea of "red", you would find a few objects that resemble each other in pretty much every way except for color, and point to the red ones and say "how these are different is what I mean by 'red'". Here perceptual information is very important to get a good idea of what the concept is. However, in areas like mathematics, the direct perceptual referents of the concepts aren't dealt with directly, and you proceed on a basis of words to express what you mean. You certainly couldn't teach a child what "topological space" is in the same way as teaching a child what "red" is, since the concept of a topological space is too far removed from the perceptual level.

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.

Whose ideal view of knowledge are we talking about here? Who is doing the judging, and who holds the 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.

I don't think that you would hold a definition for very long if in the context the definition did not refer to the referents that it was supposed to.

If human beings build a civilization on Mars, wouldn't there be Martians?

Yes.

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.

What does this mean?

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).

Those weren't your definition of Martian. If you had defined Martian as "the fictional sentient beings from Mars depicted in Tim Burton's Mars Attacks", then the statement "martians have green skin" could be considered.

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.

Well, for example, "God is the basis of morality" is another such meaningless, or arbitrary, statement, since we have no referent for the word "God."

Post 165

Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - 2:47am

Hi Daniel,

(Sorry to jump in, Nature, but I have to respond to a few things in Daniel's summary.)

I am calling for a shift in emphasis away from words, definitions and concepts - all of which are useful if kept in their place - and towards problems and theories. The assumption that you require true definitions (ie: to know what something "truly *is*" )and "perfectly definite" concepts *before* you can begin the search for truth I say is a kind of optical illusion. I propose that the most fundamental error of all is the assumption that we require truth as a starting point before we can search for truth; for in fact the progress of human knowledge *begins in error* and from there moves closer to the truth - just like with the Morning and Evening Stars.

All definitions are contextual-- I sincerely apologize if I have said anything that would suggest otherwise. I would certainly agree that if you want a definition of a concept which holds in all contexts, then you can't begin to argue anything. However, a definition in the context of your knowledge is correct if keeping in mind everything that you know, the definition differentiates the referents of the concept from everything else. Once again, you seem to be arguing Intrinsic/Subjective-- I am not arguing either. Note that this means that while the old definition is invalid after you learn more, it was perfectly valid at the time to distinguish the proper referents of the concept.

Anyway, it's time I added my two cents about the Morning and Evening stars-- it'll be a good example of what I'm talking about. Back when people identified stars ostensively (simply by pointing at them and specifying a time of night) there seem to be two distinct stars; they were designated the Morning Star and the Evening Star. Eventually, when people accepted the heliocentric model and observed these stars through telescopes, they were found to not only not be two distinct stars, but the same planet! So it makes sense to refer to the old stars as a single new planet, since it better captures what we have found out about them. This is a new level of knowledge-- the Morning and Evening stars were found to have the same referent, and hence we refer to the planet and not the individual "stars". However, in some contexts, we can still refer to the Morning and the Evening star (say when simply referring to the star in the proper time of night, or in poetry). The definitions of Morning and Evening star were no longer valid in the widened scope of knowledge, but so long as you properly understand the context of those old definitions you are free to use those terms. There's no contradiction of the type: "The Morning Star and the Evening star are the same things and different things at the same time" if you remind yourself of the context of the definitions of these words, and the knowledge that we had to gain before we could make the definitions.

Nate

Post 166

Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - 8:09am

However, it's a different matter to say that if a child can't pick out a red block from blocks of other colors that he doesn't have the concept of "red".

Nate,

Think it out a little bit more. If the child notices that the blocks are of different colors, are you really claiming with certainty that he doesn't have the concept, "red" or that he hasn't associated the word, "red", with the concept?

That all depends what you are talking about. For instance, if you wanted to communicate the idea of "red", you would find a few objects that resemble each other in pretty much every way except for color, and point to the red ones and say "how these are different is what I mean by 'red'". Here perceptual information is very important to get a good idea of what the concept is. However, in areas like mathematics, the direct perceptual referents of the concepts aren't dealt with directly, and you proceed on a basis of words to express what you mean. You certainly couldn't teach a child what "topological space" is in the same way as teaching a child what "red" is, since the concept of a topological space is too far removed from the perceptual level.

No, it doesn't depend on what I am talking about. If I granted you your claim that people learn things the way you say that they do, what words would show that a person understands topology in mathematics?

Most of the referents of mathematics are mental constructs and operations, but even in that case, understanding is not strictly about the words.

Words and many other symbols, including certain actions, when structured in the right way, communicate ideas. It is true that a person who understands topology would be highly unlikely to lack the ability to communicate it in some form. However, testing understanding is not a matter of words or symbols, but about the systematic inferences you draw from a person's use of those words or symbols. And it is possible to make the wrong systematic inferences (wrong in the sense that they do not capture the ideas that a person intends to communicate), though we often make reasonable or correct ones.

Whose ideal view of knowledge are we talking about here? Who is doing the judging, and who holds the standard?

The ideal of knowledge as "true, justified belief." The practical standards of truth and justification cannot be set in advance of knowing the context. Sometimes, the standard is a high correlation between cause and effect. Sometimes, it involves local proximity of causes. Sometimes, it is the view of the most advanced experts. Sometimes, it is whatever is enough to make informed practical decisions.

I don't think that you would hold a definition for very long if in the context the definition did not refer to the referents that it was supposed to.

Thanks for agreeing. This shows that I can know what I mean even if I have defined it erroneously or improperly communicated my meaning and that meaning comes before definition. Moreover, it is only by being empirically motivated (focusing on referents rather than definitions or concepts) that one widens the context.

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.

What does this mean?

I overlooked the grammatical error. My apologies.

If I asked you whether Dagny Taggert died in Atlas Shrugged, you would say that she didn't. You know that the book is a work of fiction, but you would still say that it is it is TRUE that Dagny Taggert did not die. You would be willing to rely upon your understanding of the concepts (Dagny Taggert was a woman and she was alive at the end of the book) and other statements in the book to verify your claim.

However, if I asked you whether President Ronald Reagan was dead or not, you would say yes, he has died. In this case however, even though you think of the issue of life and death essentially the same way, the standard of proof revolves ultimately around realistic considerations, not just someone's ideas.

You can apply standards of truth and falsehood to hypotheticals the same way you do to other concepts. It is the realistic referents of concepts that affect how the standards are applied in scientific contexts, not the fact that the referents are hypothetical.

This is important because hypotheticals of the sort found in fiction are a very important part of scientific predictions and epistemology in general.

If human beings build a civilization on Mars, wouldn't there be Martians?
Yes.

Glad you agree, but if someone assumed that I meant that Martians had to be aliens given that they almost always are in science fiction, he could very well assume that I was confusing him. And nothing of scientific significance rests on fighting over the definition as long as we can agree on the referents and make judgments about them.

Those weren't your definition of Martian. If you had defined Martian as "the fictional sentient beings from Mars depicted in Tim Burton's Mars Attacks", then the statement "martians have green skin" could be considered.

How did my definition, and not your interpretation of it, exclude them?

Well, for example, "God is the basis of morality" is another such meaningless, or arbitrary, statement, since we have no referent for the word "God."

If you really think it is meaningless, fine, but I think you are being dishonest. You know what meaning you intend to communicate when you make that statement and you know the kind of kind of person who takes offense at that meaning. I would advise you not to mix up "meaning" and "truth" if I didn't know that you know better.

Post 167

Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - 8:30am

Even Objectivists in practice show how hard it is to keep up the facade of maintaining strict definitions for words.

When did "Morning Star" become a concept under the Objectivist definition of the word "concept"?

The point is still that definitions are simply used to identify things. Truth is about judgments and if you are saying that a definition is wrong or right, it is a kind of judgment about what the definition refers to. And if we agree on the referents, it is often a waste of time to get bogged down with the definitions at the start of the process - a good definition might be the result of the process of inquiry! You cannot expand the context by defining things at the start. You can only try to specify the context by doing so, and specifying the context is no guarantee that you have not ignored very important details which other contexts bring to light.

If you teach people or practice scientific inquiry, you will know exactly what I mean. Good definitions can be bad science. "Racialized medicine" can be treated as bad science if one considers race an invalid concept, but isn't it far more important to find out what the referents and evidence are than to get caught up in definitions if we are trying to be scientists? At the beginning, middle or end of the inquiry, one might find out that what you call "race" is not quite what the scientists who use that term call it.

Post 168

Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - 11:50am

Nate writes:
>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

I think you are conflating two separate things here, and this accounts for the problems I am describing.

The first thing you are referring to is the *sequence* of natural numbers. This indeed has no fixed end or limit, and so is fairly described as indefinite, or "open-ended" as the dictionary would describe it.

The second thing you are referring to is a *specific number itself* - for example, "2". This is definite - about as "perfectly definite" as it gets.

But they are not the same thing. By conflating them, you end up with the "perfectly definitely open-ended" formulation. That's the source of it: it's not a terminological dispute.

I believe the same thing holds with your example with the tyres, though it is slightly harder to see. I will run through it when I get a moment, though I would rate you as clever enough to check it out for yourself.

However, I will leave you with this question: when you talk about a concept being "open ended", do you mean the *variables* of a conceptual formula can change, or the *formula itself*?

- Daniel

Post 169

Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - 1:16pm

Nate: �The Morning Star and the Evening star are the same things and different things at the same time" if you remind yourself of the context of the definitions of these words, and the knowledge that we had to gain before we could make the definitions.�

Nate, I am having difficulty in understanding the way you use various terms. From what I understand of Objectivism, the concept is said to refer to/subsume/mean all its referents; the definition describes the essential aspects of the concept; while the word is a symbol that stands for the concept.

When you talk about the definitions of �these words� � �Morning Star� and �Evening Star� � do you mean these words as linguistic terms, or do you mean these words as symbols that denote concepts?

The reason I ask is two-fold.

1) If you intend the definition to encompass the concept, its referents are determined by reality, as you noted in an earlier post. But if the referent of �Morning Star� and �Evening Star� is the same object, there can only be one concept, and by extension, one definition. Any talk of two definitions implies a disconnect from reality.

2) If concepts require at least two similar objects, then �Morning Star� and �Evening Star� cannot properly be concepts in the Objectivist sense, since there is only one referent.

In both cases, what are you defining when you define these words? Are you talking about words as linguistic entities, or are you talking about words as the symbols that denote concepts?

Brendan

Post 170

Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - 5:01pm

Even Objectivists in practice show how hard it is to keep up the facade of maintaining strict definitions for words.

When did "Morning Star" become a concept under the Objectivist definition of the word "concept"?

To be fair, you're right—concepts in Objectivist epistemology are generally considered to be classes of entities rather than specific entities. Problem is that Rand didn't seem to have much to say about how specific entities should be thought of epistemologically, so it's rather difficult for me to say where exactly they should fit into the theory. I'd guess that they should probably be thought of as percepts rather than concepts, but I'm really not sure on that.

That being said, though, I think it's valid to think of specifics in the same was as concepts for the purposes of this discussion.

The point is still that definitions are simply used to identify things. Truth is about judgments and if you are saying that a definition is wrong or right, it is a kind of judgment about what the definition refers to. And if we agree on the referents, it is often a waste of time to get bogged down with the definitions at the start of the process - a good definition might be the result of the process of inquiry!

This is pretty close to what I've been trying to say. :-P

The problem, of course, is that “if we agree on the referents” thing. If you go into a debate assuming that all participants agree on the referents of a particular word/concept, and they don't, it's very possible for the debate to degenerate into meaninglessness, with everyone involved discussing their particular referents for a concept and not understanding why everyone else doesn't get it (because everyone else is thinking of his own referents).

So a good definition stated at the outset of a discussion makes it clear what the referents are. (Sure, the discussion may run into problems when no one can accept anyone else's definition at the outset, but isn't it more productive to argue about the definition then, when you at least know there's disagreement, rather than spending forever in the middle of the debate on some point and not noticing that everyone is saying the same thing but using different words to do it?)

Post 171

Thursday, December 16, 2004 - 4:11am

Next Level,

Think it out a little bit more. If the child notices that the blocks are of different colors, are you really claiming with certainty that he doesn't have the concept, "red" or that he hasn't associated the word, "red", with the concept?

If the issue you're raising here is vocabulary, then the child must have some word associated with the concept that most people designate by the symbol "red." In that case, the child does understand the concept, but doesn't refer to the concept using the same symbol as everyone else. Obviously if the child instead though that the concept we denote "red" was called "green" instead, the Kindergarten teacher would correct the child, and he'd be on his merry way. However, so long as the child has the concept (and some word associated with a concept) the child can learn the proper words for things.

Of course, just because the child grows up in America and learns a certain collection of words to symbolize his concepts, that doesn't mean that it's the only way possible-- there are of course many languages. But my point is this-- we can "decipher" and learn other peoples languages, since we know that their words and our words correspond to the same concepts.

This, however, wasn't my point. If a child can't tell the difference between a red and a blue block, or thinks that the red blocks before him are the sole meaning of "red", then that child does not understand the concept of "red," and can't (and wouldn't) associate a word to try to describe it.

No, it doesn't depend on what I am talking about. If I granted you your claim that people learn things the way you say that they do, what words would show that a person understands topology in mathematics?

For any mathematical system, they would have to present the definitions, and be sure that they understand the meanings of the concept presented in the definitions. There are no concrete "topological spaces" to point to in perceptual terms in order to say to a student "I mean this." With such an abstract idea, you need to give a definition to convey what you are talking about.

Most of the referents of mathematics are mental constructs and operations, but even in that case, understanding is not strictly about the words.

I agree-- that's the way "Education" theorists today seem to think that children learn today: by memorizing words. One must know the meanings of the concepts that the words symbolize. But unless you have yourself researched and discovered all of mathematics on your own (which would be an amazing, impossible feat), you were taught mathematics, and the way that people are taught mathematics is with definitions involving concepts.

Words and many other symbols, including certain actions, when structured in the right way, communicate ideas. It is true that a person who understands topology would be highly unlikely to lack the ability to communicate it in some form. However, testing understanding is not a matter of words or symbols, but about the systematic inferences you draw from a person's use of those words or symbols. And it is possible to make the wrong systematic inferences (wrong in the sense that they do not capture the ideas that a person intends to communicate), though we often make reasonable or correct ones.

Systematic Inferences? Do you mean guessing at what a person means? It shouldn't be necessary so long as the definition you present is correct. Presumably, a person in the position to learn what a topological space is knows what the genus (collections of subsets of a set) and differentia (which are closed under unions and finite intersections) mean. Given this definition, the next thing that you do is give the student a lot of examples of topological spaces to firm the idea, i.e., give the concept referents (what's known in the business as "motivating the definition"). This does not mean that the definition comes before the referents, since the student is already familiar with the examples.

The ideal of knowledge as "true, justified belief." The practical standards of truth and justification cannot be set in advance of knowing the context. Sometimes, the standard is a high correlation between cause and effect. Sometimes, it involves local proximity of causes. Sometimes, it is the view of the most advanced experts. Sometimes, it is whatever is enough to make informed practical decisions.

What you are describing as "practical standards" here is just what I mean by context. You can't have knowledge in absense of a context-- to claim that there is some ethereal "final truth" that is only approximable is to advocate omniscience as a standard of knowledge. And that, of course, leads to skepticism.

Thanks for agreeing. This shows that I can know what I mean even if I have defined it erroneously or improperly communicated my meaning and that meaning comes before definition. Moreover, it is only by being empirically motivated (focusing on referents rather than definitions or concepts) that one widens the context.

No, this shows that if you learn something that makes your current definition invalid, you have to go through the trouble of making a new one that better encapsulates what you know about the referents in question. I was reading Rand yesterday, and she makes an important point that a definition is, in effect, a condensation of everything you know about the referents that you are seeking to describe, so naturally if you find something new, you might need a new (and better) definition. Of course meaning comes before definition-- I agree with you completely on that. As far as "empirical motivation", when did I argue otherwise? Only by examining the nature of the referents can you make a valid definition, and if you find something new, your definition may cease to be valid.

If I asked you whether Dagny Taggert died in Atlas Shrugged, you would say that she didn't. You know that the book is a work of fiction, but you would still say that it is it is TRUE that Dagny Taggert did not die. You would be willing to rely upon your understanding of the concepts (Dagny Taggert was a woman and she was alive at the end of the book) and other statements in the book to verify your claim.

It's clear from the context what you mean by a person dying in either case, yes. Saying that Dagny Taggart died in real life doesn't make any sense, since Dagny is a fictional character.

However, if I asked you whether President Ronald Reagan was dead or not, you would say yes, he has died. In this case however, even though you think of the issue of life and death essentially the same way, the standard of proof revolves ultimately around realistic considerations, not just someone's ideas.

Be careful here-- if you want to argue about "perfect abstract ideas" versus "realistic empirical means", you could just as easily claim that you read the words of the pages of Atlas Shrugged to form the idea of Dagny in your imagination-- that's just as "empirical." To let you know, as a side note, the distinction between "pure ideas" and "empirical facts" is something called the Analytic/Synthetic dichotomy, which Objectivism rejects.

Glad you agree, but if someone assumed that I meant that Martians had to be aliens given that they almost always are in science fiction, he could very well assume that I was confusing him. And nothing of scientific significance rests on fighting over the definition as long as we can agree on the referents and make judgments about them.

I'm just going by your definition. It's clear that in most contexts that people know that there aren't real Martians running around on Mars, so people incorporate that piece of knowledge into their definition to mean something like: "A hypothetical inhabitant of the planet Mars, especially as a stock fictional character." (dictionary.com) But if you were to define Martians in your way, it could very well refer to humans that have colonized Mars, which isn't a possibility in the forseeable future, at least.

How are we to agree on the referents if we don't have a definition? List them explicitly?

How did my definition, and not your interpretation of it, exclude them?

Unless otherwise stated, a definition referring to something refers to it in reality. You have to make sure to note if your word refers to something imaginary.

If you really think it is meaningless, fine, but I think you are being dishonest. You know what meaning you intend to communicate when you make that statement and you know the kind of kind of person who takes offense at that meaning. I would advise you not to mix up "meaning" and "truth" if I didn't know that you know better.

The statement "God is the source of morality" (say), has several words in it. One of these words is "God", for which I have found no referent in reality. Therefore this statement is literally talking about nothing-- that's how I say that it's meaningless. The common definition of God is "A being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe, the principal object of faith and worship in monotheistic religions." (dictionary.com), and I have recongnized that no referent in reality can satisfy this definition. If other people choose to believe that such a being exists (or can exist), that's their problem.

Nate

Post 172

Thursday, December 16, 2004 - 4:36am

Hi, Brendan,

Nate: �The Morning Star and the Evening star are the same things and different things at the same time" if you remind yourself of the context of the definitions of these words, and the knowledge that we had to gain before we could make the definitions.�

Specifically, I wrote that "There's no contradictions of the type: �The Morning Star and the Evening star are the same things and different things at the same time" if you remind yourself of the context of the definitions of these words, and the knowledge that we had to gain before we could make the definitions.� Sorry if my sentence structure was awkward. I hope I explain my position better below.

Nate, I am having difficulty in understanding the way you use various terms. From what I understand of Objectivism, the concept is said to refer to/subsume/mean all its referents; the definition describes the essential aspects of the concept; while the word is a symbol that stands for the concept.

Right.

When you talk about the definitions of �these words� � �Morning Star� and �Evening Star� � do you mean these words as linguistic terms, or do you mean these words as symbols that denote concepts?

Thanks for pointing that out-- I try to be more precise than that usually. The definition of a word is nothing more nor less than the definition of the concept which it symbolizes.

The reason I ask is two-fold.
1) If you intend the definition to encompass the concept, its referents are determined by reality, as you noted in an earlier post. But if the referent of �Morning Star� and �Evening Star� is the same object, there can only be one concept, and by extension, one definition. Any talk of two definitions implies a disconnect from reality.

Definitions are contextual. As I mentioned to Next Level above, a nice way to think about a definition is that it is a condensation of all of the knowledge about the referents you are trying to describe. Remember that when people first looked up to the stars, they had a vague idea that stars moved across the sky gradually as the night wore on, but two particularly brilliant stars that appeared when the sun was just below the horizon seemed to be distinct, that is, there was no reason to assume that they were the same entity. Since they were particularly brilliant stars, people felt that they needed to name them the Morning Star and the Evening Star. However, eventually our knowledge about the referents of "Morning Star" and "Evening Star" was increased with the heliocentric model of the solar system and the invention of the telescope. People determined that the morning star and the evening star are in fact the same planet. Because of this, they gave it a single name (Venus).

Now in the context of the morning, when you're out stargazing, it is proper to refer to Venus as the Morning Star, since that's the name that that particular speck of light in the sky was known as for a long time. Ditto for the Evening Star (only in the evening, of course). But in saying this, you don't admit that the Morning Star and the Evening Star are different entities-- you merely have a new definition of these terms in terms of the extra knowledge you have as follows: The Morning Star is the planet Venus, visible in the east just before or at sunrise, with a similar definition for the Evening Star.

2) If concepts require at least two similar objects, then �Morning Star� and �Evening Star� cannot properly be concepts in the Objectivist sense, since there is only one referent.
In both cases, what are you defining when you define these words? Are you talking about words as linguistic entities, or are you talking about words as the symbols that denote concepts?

This (2) is something that puzzles me. If no one else here can give me an answer, I can look up what Rand says about it in IOE. Until then, I suggest we do as Nature suggests and sidestep the issue, since it's clear that we can refer to unique existents by proper names, despite the fact that I'm at a loss to describe how we are able to do it cognitively. In any case, thanks very much for bringing it up, since right now I'm trying to integrate the knowledge in IOE.

But I can give you an answer to the general question you ask: the definition of a word is just the defintion of the underlying concept.

Nate

*Edited for atrocious spacing.

(Edited by Nate T. on 12/16, 5:01am)

Post 173

Thursday, December 16, 2004 - 4:57am

Hi Daniel,

The first thing you are referring to is the *sequence* of natural numbers. This indeed has no fixed end or limit, and so is fairly described as indefinite, or "open-ended" as the dictionary would describe it.

Yes, but this is nonessential. The point is that you haven't observed every possible instance of a referent, be it because there are infinitely many of them (as in the case of the natural numbers) or someone could easily make another one (in the case of tires), but you can still recognize a referent when you see one.

The second thing you are referring to is a *specific number itself* - for example, "2". This is definite - about as "perfectly definite" as it gets.

The isue isn't the definiteness of the referents. The concept is definite if you can determine whether an existent is subsumed under the concept or not (so this is whether you can tell a natural number from an irrational number, or a tire from a donut, etc.)

But they are not the same thing. By conflating them, you end up with the "perfectly definitely open-ended" formulation. That's the source of it: it's not a terminological dispute.

... but I'm not conflating them! They are two different aspects of a concept. I'm not arguing that they are the same idea, I'm arguing that concepts have both of them as properties.

I believe the same thing holds with your example with the tyres, though it is slightly harder to see. I will run through it when I get a moment, though I would rate you as clever enough to check it out for yourself.

Well, you know a tire when you see one, and you don't need to know about every tire in the world to recognize a new one.

However, I will leave you with this question: when you talk about a concept being "open ended", do you mean the *variables* of a conceptual formula can change, or the *formula itself*?

A concept is not a formula, literally or in analogy. If we take the Pythagorean Theorem as an example, you could state that "If x, y, z are the legs and hypotenuse, respectively, of a right triangle, then x^2 + y^2 = z^2." This means that while the variables x, y, z can exist in any quantity (provided of course that they are the measures of the sides of a right triangle), they must represent some quantity. They are definite in that they must represent some quantity, and open-ended in that they can represent any quantity (with the caveats already acknowledged). So to answer your question, in this analogy the formula itself is a proposition (This is that, with conditions on this and that) and the variables are the concepts.

Nate

Post 174

Thursday, December 16, 2004 - 9:28am

Nate,

This, however, wasn't my point. If a child can't tell the difference between a red and a blue block, or thinks that the red blocks before him are the sole meaning of "red", then that child does not understand the concept of "red," and can't (and wouldn't) associate a word to try to describe it.

I get your point. My point is that your mode of expression sometimes mixes up the difference between understanding a concept and how you would test for that understanding. The second case (red blocks) you described is simply a verbal misunderstanding, and the second is compatible with some forms of color blindness, some of which disrupt the ability of the color-blind person to understand the concept red, but some of which do not.

For any mathematical system, they would have to present the definitions, and be sure that they understand the meanings of the concept presented in the definitions. There are no concrete "topological spaces" to point to in perceptual terms in order to say to a student "I mean this." With such an abstract idea, you need to give a definition to convey what you are talking about.

And if a person couldn't define "topological spaces", are you saying that he doesn't understand "topological spaces"? If the person simply gave good examples, would you not agree that he knew what he was talking about?

Systematic Inferences? Do you mean guessing at what a person means? It shouldn't be necessary so long as the definition you present is correct. Presumably, a person in the position to learn what a topological space is knows what the genus (collections of subsets of a set) and differentia (which are closed under unions and finite intersections) mean. Given this definition, the next thing that you do is give the student a lot of examples of topological spaces to firm the idea, i.e., give the concept referents (what's known in the business as "motivating the definition"). This does not mean that the definition comes before the referents, since the student is already familiar with the examples.

Not all guesses are blind guesses, and neither are systematic inferences. You are always guessing what a person means in that sense. There is always a probability of error. And your claim about what a person presumably needs to know before learning about topological spaces shows that you are arguing for importance, all other things being equal.

Which would you say is more important, the examples or the definition? I would say the examples and that the definition enables the organization of thoughts. The examples exist apart from the definition. The definition's claim to existence is mostly conceptual, with the caveat below.

Moreover, your view of definitions is more plausible in mathematics than in any other scientific field. Its limitations in mathematics show its limitations elsewhere.

What you are describing as "practical standards" here is just what I mean by context. You can't have knowledge in absense of a context-- to claim that there is some ethereal "final truth" that is only approximable is to advocate omniscience as a standard of knowledge. And that, of course, leads to skepticism.

I disagree that skepticism is a bad thing. In fact, justification and skepticism are flip sides of the same coin, and a healthy respect for justification should foster a healthy skepticism. You probably mean that extreme standards for knowledge foster extreme skepticism. That is true, but it is wrong to go from that claim to the claim that there is no reason to contemplate what knowledge would ideally look like, or that the ethereal "final truth" that you mock vitiates practical standards. It is also wrong to claim that practical standards, because they are the best we can attain, are not susceptible to error or do not have their limitations, and that if a proponent of ideal standards makes this point, we should deny it.

No, this shows that if you learn something that makes your current definition invalid, you have to go through the trouble of making a new one that better encapsulates what you know about the referents in question. I was reading Rand yesterday, and she makes an important point that a definition is, in effect, a condensation of everything you know about the referents that you are seeking to describe, so naturally if you find something new, you might need a new (and better) definition. Of course meaning comes before definition-- I agree with you completely on that. As far as "empirical motivation", when did I argue otherwise? Only by examining the nature of the referents can you make a valid definition, and if you find something new, your definition may cease to be valid.

You agree with "empirically motivated" inquiry, you agree that meaning comes before definition, but you fail to take seriously the implications on how language should be used or the role of concepts in arriving at truth, and you don't subject Rand's claim to criticism from your experience and those of others.

All judgments about anything are ideally made in the context of all your knowledge. Therefore, your idea of man will have all kinds of judgments related to it, but this is not your DEFINITION of man. Let's see if this claim about definitions condensing everything you know about the referents , to the degree that it is plausible, has anything to do with definitions. Definitions can be treated as judgments, but are ideally not treated as such, and what makes Rand's claim plausible, but ultimately wrong, are the successes and failures of language in reflecting thought.

1) Give me a definition of man, and explain to me how it condenses everything you know about man.
2) What are the differences between a) changing a definition, b) changing a concept and c) changing the referents of a definition and d) changing the referents of a concept and do these impact anything about a definition condensing everything you know about the referents? What are the effects on truth for each operation?

Definitions are used to identify and communicate ideas by framing them in terms of words associated with other ideas. If you agree with Rand that they are anything more than that, fine. But there is no way a definition can condense all your knowledge.

The most dangerous thing about dealing with mostly with definitions is that they can insulate you from knowledge that contradicts what you already think that you know. That is why scientists don't place too much emphasis on them (though most scientists would agree that language and communication of ideas between people and across civilizations makes definitions very important for other reasons).

It's clear from the context what you mean by a person dying in either case, yes. Saying that Dagny Taggart died in real life doesn't make any sense, since Dagny is a fictional character.

Since you still confuse meaning with judgment, I'm not going to spend much time on this. It makes sense and is a false judgment. "Dagny Taggart is a fictional character" is in conflict with "Dagny Taggart is a real living person", and we know the former to be true.

Be careful here-- if you want to argue about "perfect abstract ideas" versus "realistic empirical means", you could just as easily claim that you read the words of the pages of Atlas Shrugged to form the idea of Dagny in your imagination-- that's just as "empirical." To let you know, as a side note, the distinction between "pure ideas" and "empirical facts" is something called the Analytic/Synthetic dichotomy, which Objectivism rejects.

Thanks for the concern, but it is unwarranted. I'm arguing that the ideas, whether imaginative or realistic, are the same. It is the standards by which judgments are made about them that differ, with realistic judgments requiring appeal to considerations about what we know about the external world. We are treating Dagny as a woman, but we cannot investigate whether she would get breast cancer the way we would with a real woman.

I'm just going by your definition. It's clear that in most contexts that people know that there aren't real Martians running around on Mars, so people incorporate that piece of knowledge into their definition to mean something like: "A hypothetical inhabitant of the planet Mars, especially as a stock fictional character." (dictionary.com) But if you were to define Martians in your way, it could very well refer to humans that have colonized Mars, which isn't a possibility in the forseeable future, at least.

This sounds like a long way of agreeing with me.

How are we to agree on the referents if we don't have a definition? List them explicitly?

List them, present examples, or assume that we agree, start discussion and work out the disagreements as they arise.

Unless otherwise stated, a definition referring to something refers to it in reality. You have to make sure to note if your word refers to something imaginary.

I can accept this as
1) part of common sense or culture,
2) your understand of how definitions should be used

but not as a claim on

3) what I mean, or
4) a claim that my definition of "Martians" as "sentient beings residing on planet Mars" negates any use of my definition in a hypothetical context.

The statement "God is the source of morality" (say), has several words in it. One of these words is "God", for which I have found no referent in reality. Therefore this statement is literally talking about nothing-- that's how I say that it's meaningless. The common definition of God is "A being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe, the principal object of faith and worship in monotheistic religions." (dictionary.com), and I have recongnized that no referent in reality can satisfy this definition. If other people choose to believe that such a being exists (or can exist), that's their problem.

How is your use of "meaningless" to be contrasted with the common use of "false"? Is the claim that "God doesn't exist" meaningless too by your account?

Don't confuse meaning and truth.

Post 175

Thursday, December 16, 2004 - 11:46am

Hi Nate,

Thanks for you indepth reply. As there is only one of you, and a bunch of people asking you questions, I'll keep it brief so you don't end up having to write a book..;-)

I wrote:
>The second thing you are referring to is a *specific number itself* - for example, "2". This is definite - about as "perfectly definite" as it gets.

You replied:
>The isue isn't the definiteness of the referents.�

I take it then, that "2" is an example of a referent?

- Daniel

Post 176

Thursday, December 16, 2004 - 11:46am

(double post deleted)
(Edited by Daniel Barnes on 12/16, 3:12pm)

Post 177

Friday, December 17, 2004 - 12:05pm

Hi Nate,

You�re working overtime here, so I�ll keep this brief. Two points come to mind.

1) If �Morning Star� and �Evening Star� were regarded as Objectivist concepts, their referent and meaning would be determined by reality, and any definition would need to take this into account.

In other words, the concept would need to integrate �Morning Star�, �Evening Star� and �planet Venus�, and the definition would need to encapsulate the essentials of those aspects. I think this would be a pretty tall order.

2) But, taking your suggestion that we side-step the matter of whether the above could be integrated into a concept, one way of resolving this puzzle would be to shift the focus from concepts and definitions, to words and propositions.

Then we could say that a) the terms �Morning Star� and �Evening Star� are different senses of the same object; and b) that the terms have the same referent, the planet Venus. Keeping Occam's Razor in mind, these propositions provide us with a simpler way of dealing with the above puzzle than does using definitions and concepts.

Brendan

Post 178

Saturday, December 18, 2004 - 10:52am

Hi Nate,

Thanks for you indepth reply. As there is only one of you, and a bunch of people asking you questions, I'll keep it brief so you don't end up having to write a book..;-)

Thanks. I'm actually travelling right now, so I'm probably only going to reply to the short posts and save the behemoth post above for when I have a little more free time.

I wrote:
>The second thing you are referring to is a *specific number itself* - for example, "2". This is definite - about as "perfectly definite" as it gets.

You replied:
>The issue isn't the definiteness of the referents.

I take it then, that "2" is an example of a referent?

Yes, "2" is a referent of the concept "natural number". Even though "2" is itself a concept (whose referents are any two things of the same kind, as Rand puts it), it is itself subsumed into a higher-level concept of natural number.

Nate

Post 179

Saturday, December 18, 2004 - 11:07am