| | Mindy,
Ed T: Being a measurement and being measurable are drastically different states. The onus is on you to show they are equivalent. No, not really. Only for "debate points" (because I had said so earlier). However, my saying so was a mistake. Not because I'm wrong to answer you, but because you were wrong to ask in the first place (and it was a mistake to innocently answer you). You see, when Rand spoke of measurement-omission, she meant the second sense -- "being measurable" -- not the actual measurments. I spoke of this a couple of posts ago. You must've missed that.
Starting with this wrong view of what Rand meant by "measurement-omission" -- you have a need to figure out if "measurement" and "being measurable" are equivalent. However, if being measurable was all that Rand meant -- and that is all she meant -- then the question of actual measurments doesn't arise. Simply being measurable is enough.
Are you saying that propositions don't have meaning? No. I'm saying that words mean things. I know that sometimes we use the same word to mean a different thing, and that sometimes the same thing can be referred to by different words. What I'm saying is that you don't start or judge the epistemological enterprise of concept-formation on the level of propositions -- that would be the error of Linguistic Analysis:
... Linguistic Analysis came on the scene for the avowed purpose of “clarifying” language—and proceeded to declare that the meaning of concepts is determined in the minds of average men, and that the job of philosophers consists of observing and reporting on how people use words.
The reductio ad absurdum of a long line of mini-Kantians, such as pragmatists and positivists, Linguistic Analysis holds that words are an arbitrary social product immune from any principles or standards, an irreducible primary not subject to inquiry about its origin or purpose—and that we can “dissolve” all philosophical problems by “clarifying” the use of these arbitrary, causeless, meaningless sounds which hold ultimate power over reality . . .
Proceeding from the premise that words (concepts) are created by whim, Linguistic Analysis offers us a choice of whims: individual or collective. It declares that there are two kinds of definitions: “stipulative,” which may be anything anyone chooses, and “reportive,” which are ascertained by polls of popular use. ...
Linguistic Analysis declares that the ultimate reality is not even percepts, but words, and that words have no specific referents, but mean whatever people want them to mean . . . Linguistic Analysis is vehemently opposed to . . . any kinds of principles or broad generalizations—i.e., to consistency. ...
. . . To what sort of problems had [today’s philosophers] been giving priority over the problems of politics? Among the papers to be read at that [1969 American Philosophical Association (Eastern Division)] convention were: “Pronouns and Proper Names”—“Can Grammar Be Thought?”—“Propositions as the Only Realities.”
Ed
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