| | Hmmm. Judging by Linz's, Bill's and Regi's reponses I seem to have confused everyone with my little attempt to play the pedant. Imagine - the one time I couldn't find an Objectivist who'd offer a definition!
I am not a Linguistic Analyst, nor anything like it, and neither is Popper (hardly!). I was hoping to show just how pedantic the demand for definitions can get when applied consistently, but it seems to have backfired somewhat - no-one took me up on it, and people seem to think I was genuinely making the demand! And after all my dismissals of this same idea...Oh well; this is my blunder, and will take it on the chin and do my best to clear it up, and try and get my point across better. I'm a Critical Rationalist, as they say, and I can't let the old school get an even worse name through my misfiring strategies!
Bill makes the interesting point that the regress of definitions may not be infinite or circular. I am not so sure, but will think that one through a little. However, whether it is infinite or not, it certainly has the potential to be very, very long, particularly by the time sense and context are also argued over. Surely it is not really just the little hop-skip-jump your diagram makes it out to be? So, like the very title of this thread, there are all these preliminaries before even the first word of an argument can be uttered, let alone getting an argument underway. Further, there also appears to be an another regress, even at Bill's most basic-level terms - his "full" and "empty" ones. For these must be *taught* - unless somehow our child will teach herself language purely from the "referents in reality"; rather like Tarzan, only without the aid of his schoolbooks. But if they are to be taught then they must be taught by someone else, and who is to say *they* have it right? After all, these are fundamentals of a sort - bedrock from which more sophisticated definitions will be built, if I understand it correctly - and their teachers are not likely to be Objectivists, who know how this sort of thing is to be done. Quite the opposite, most likely. And the teachers too must be taught, and their teachers so on, all without error, back to prehistory. So it seems hardly the simple system of guaranteed truth in language one might expect. But we will see. I have a few other questions about his theory and will write more later when I get some time - it is nonetheless one of the better posts on this thread so far.
Then there is the issue of the tautology of definitions, which as Regi correctly says "is just the same ideas *in different words*. As I *meant* to say, this is precisely why we must avoid *putting too much emphasis on them* (rather than just "avoid" them) . For it is an all too familiar feature of philosophy that the same old ideas go round and round - just with different words - and this is precisely the problem one would expect with a method that puts definitions at its centre!
Do I say that words have *no meaning*? No. From a Critical Rationalist point of view, words are extremely useful, and troubles only come from placing too much emphasis on them, and not enough on *problems* and *theories*. That's why none of the usual verbal problems - absolute precision, senses, definitional circularities, regressions etc really affect it at all. Questions like "what does this word *really* mean?" should, in the CR view, therefore be replaced by "what problem are you trying to solve?". Then it can become clearer whether the problem is genuine, or just related to some of the other problems words encounter and the ensuing verbalist blather.
Perhaps, then, I should make clear what problem *I* am trying to solve with my suggestion (adapted from Popper) that Aristotle's method has had a less than benign effect on philosophy in general, and things like Objectivism (and Linguistic Analysis for example) in particular. The problem seems to be what you might call Objectivism's "failure to thrive". What other philosophy has multi-million selling novels, movies, interviews in Playboy, an entrepreneurial ethic, an inspiring vision and scores of enthusiastic young folk signing up? Yet it has been 50 years since Atlas Shrugged, and as someone complained recently, judging by its history nothing short of a "miracle" would make it soar past the original ideas of its founder.
There are a number of competing theories as to why: the culture, the state, the inherent stupidity of sheeple, Ayn Rand herself, the ARI, the heretical breakaways, bad cover artwork etc etc. And as a philosophy it does seem to have some good things going for it; existence exists, primacy of existence, volition, objective knowledge, all of which I for one would pretty much agree with (with a couple of caveats). Yet for some reason it produces an awful lot of *words*, but it must be admitted, hardly new *ideas* or *things*. I wondered whether this might be a result of not of Objectivism's environment or people, but perhaps of the *method* it uses. It seemed that only an outsider would make a criticism of it, as it is something of a sacred cow. I've never encountered an Objectivist criticism of it - perhaps to do so would mean you were no longer an Objectivist. And if you thought words were really important, you might really care if this happened to you! But nonetheless this method of relying on definitions - the meanings of words - puts words *first* in the method. And if the definitions are already true - and they are, as they are tautological - the *discovering* of new ideas, and new facts of reality will be at a something of a disadvantage from the start.
This is a rather off-the-cuff example, but consider the following:
Non-Objectivist scientist: "I think birds might be reptiles"
Objectivist scientist: "Oh dear. Clearly modern science has corrupted your method, as this simply cannot be. Things are what they are - do you not know that? A bird is a bird, and a reptile is a reptile - they can hardly be anything else, and they cannot be each other! Check your premises! You have come to this irrational idea because you have not properly integrated your definitions into the correct concept for "bird" and "reptile", which have already been established according to repeated observations of the facts of reality."
Now this is a little unfair, of course. Objectivism encourages independent thought, at least in principle, and after examining the facts of reality the Objectivist scientist may soon see past all that, and evenutally add "reptile ancestry" to that of "bird". The point is: do you see what a head start the non-Objectivist scientist has already? Doesn't have to wade through the dictionary checking his terms, infinitely or somewhat less. Doesn't have to wonder whether his rivals will condemn him for "irrationalism" in pursuit of his theory. He doesn't even need to worry to what degree his theory is *true* - whether they are *entirely* reptiles, or partly, or once were, or whatever.His only concern is that his creative idea, however it occured, is *fruitful*. And such an idea certainly is. However, as this example suggests, should it be approached from the Objectivist scientist's point of view, it stands a good chance of being strangled from the start - most likely by *himself*.
I can't help thinking the latter tendency - Aristotelian scholasticism, basically - is holding the philosophy back far worse than the "statists" or Leonard Peikoff ever will. I've belonged to discussion groups for 10 or more years, and I don't think I ever see propositions like "You can have 3/8ths of dog cadaver but not 3/8ths of dog" regulary treated like serious ideas -as advances in "mathematical epistemology"!. It's like something out of the Middle Ages. Now, this is not because I have a "closed mind" to wild ideas, for this would defeat my own argument. It is simply this: if you asked "What problem is this argument trying to solve?" what would the answer be? Similarly, this is not to say the people are stupid - they're not. Regi, who I regularly mock for such pointless nonsense, is one of the few people - including Objectivists - I've encountered who understands the arguments for non-physical consciouness. But then, because of this stupid method he spends half the rest of his time with stuff like "But for any organism, to be means to be the kind of organism an organism is--not just the perpetuation of protoplasm"; and to my mind, wasting what appears to be a considerable brain. He's channelling either the Middle Ages, or Jacques Derrida. Or both. and therein lies the problem: Objectivism perhaps shares a few more of the failings of modern philosophy than it cares to admit.
Ah - I can hear them already: Would Objectivism still truly be Objectivism without the Aristotelian emphasis on words and definitions, and adopted, say, CR's emphasis on theories and problems? I pass on that one. But then I say: if a philosophy is fruitful, who gives a damn what you call it?
And if it isn't, the same applies.
-Daniel
|
|
ch
-l
