| | Jordan,
Again, more good questions for which I think you.
I'm still not clear how you view the ontological status of actions. Are actions on par with entities?
There are only existents, at the physical level, only entities. All actions (or events) are actions of entities. Without entities, there are no actions or events; events are only what existents do.
Do you view entities as ontologically reducible?
I am not sure what this means. Reducible in what sense? Simpler components? Some external cause? I'm really not sure what the questions is.
Seems like you might be adopting the ontology of "bundle theory," which asserts that entities are simply bundles of properties, except you seem to be going one step further in arguing that all of those ontological properties are actions.
In one sense, entities are only what their qualities are. But the difference between "bundle theory" and the Objectivist view is, the qualities of an existent have neither existence or meaning except as qualities of existents. Qualities do not make a thing what it is, they are because a thing is what it is, and if a thing is, it must have some nature, and that nature as perceived are perceivable qualities (red, round, smooth, for example), and as understood, are objective qualities (made of these chemicals in this arrangement, for example).
All the ontological properties are (or can be reduced to) actions. Why this would be a difficulty I do not know, unless you are assuming action means action of something other than the existent itself. In one sense, an existent can be thought of as an event, an event with two aspects: those aspects that change and are the existent's action, and those aspects that do not change and are the existent's continuity. The thing that does not change may itself be an action that continues without variation.
I think the problem might be you are assuming a things properties are what makes a thing what it is, in the sense of causing it to exist. It is really the other way around. If a thing exists it must be something and have some properties. The properties it has are the result of or manifestation of its existence, not, as your question seems to imply, the cause of its existence.
And I don't quite understand this w/r/t causation, despite your explanation, so I'm still not clear on the irreducibility of actions themselves. They are still actions of something, yes?
Yes. The existent itself is the "actor." All events are only what entities do. What they do and how they do it is determined by the nature of the entities. Therefore, the root of the notion "cause," is in the fact, all events must be what they are, because they consist only of the behavior of existents and the relationships between them, which are determined by the nature of the entities acting.
But this would suggest that they are either not ontologically basic (for they can be reduced to whatever they are of), or there is something else that shares the status of being ontologically basic.
The actions are not ontologically basic, the existents or "entities that act" are ontologically basic. Remember the action can be either actions in relationship to other existent, or 'internal' action of the existent itself.
Elsewhere, I'm working with the problem of "negative universals," which are qualities that no member of a given class has (e.g., no duck is 3-winged), or they are negative qualities that every member of a given class has (e.g., every duck is a non-three-winged bird). (Sidenote: with what should we replace term "negative universals"? Impossible qualities? Necessarily negative qualities? )
Good grief! Who foisted these non-concepts and floating abstractions on you. They deserve to be shot.
I have no idea what the intended purpose of "negative universals" might be. For anything known, there is an infinity of things that cannot be true about that thing. What is the point of a concept for what cannot be true of something?
I will make only one observation about the examples you give for these so-called "negative universals." (Since there are no universals at all, there certainly are not negative ones.) All your examples are "synthetic concepts." All of them take attributes from actual perceivable existents and artificially clump them together, on the basis of no principle, to create a "fictional" concept. "Three-winged bird," is identical in nature to a unicorn or cyclops. They are artificial concepts constructed of attributes abstracted actual perceived existents. They are "fictions."
There is no need conceptually to imagine and identify every possible attribute a thing cannot have. The only time that question comes up is when something suggests some characteristic might be an attribute of something, if there is some reason to suspect it. Then a scientific or other investigation can be made to discover if the attribute in question is possible to that thing or not. (This happens in medicine frequently. Consider the still debated nature of HIV.)
The simple answer to your question is, the pseudo-concept of "negative universals," is cognitively meaningless. They are mere fictions, and therefore cannot be true of any material existents. There is no reason to ask the question.
Problem is: how do I show that, for a duck, the quality of having 3 wings is impossible?
A wing is not a necessary quality of a duck. It is a necessary quality of a normal duck. But a duck might have one wing or three wings and still be a duck so long as it is one genetically. Mutations frequently produce extra (or missing) organs, but they are mutations, and are biological mistakes or abnormalities. I am going to avoid a discussion of normality, which is very important to philosophy, but generally neglected, these days intentionally, by Objectivists.
But how do we know his genetic make-up disallows these qualities?
I assume that question is rhetorical. The genetic identification (genome) of most features have been identified, at least conceptually. The question is biological, however, not philosophical.
Also, before we knew about genetic make-up, how were we to regard the possibility of dogs having feathers or gills?
We are not born with a head full of concepts for which we then spend our lives attempting to discover which are valid and which are not. No one has a concept of feathers or gills or dogs until feathers, gills, and dogs are encountered in life and identified. After learning about enough actual existents, one can conjecture, "I wonder if these creatures with these attributes (those by which we identify dogs, for example) could have any attribute of these other creatures (birds, for example). Pegasus, is just such an imaginary concept, a fiction, an intellectual synthesis of attributes abstracted from different creatures; unless such a creature is actually encountered in life, that is how it ought to be regarded. If one is encountered in real life (think platypus) it is not regarded as a new kind of duck, but a different kind of creature.
Should it have been considered possible back in the day, or would we have been wrong to do so?
Certainly not, if you mean the identification of necessary attributes by means of genetics. It is necessary to identify things only within the scope of ones actual knowledge.
Consider this taxonomy: Animal--mammal--carnivore--cat--Siamese--Fluffy. I've moved from wider to narrower categories. I'm guessing you'd say that concepts to the left of 'cat' are epistemological concepts, but I'm not sure how you'd classify everything to the right of cat. Are 'Siamese' and 'Fluffy' ontological concepts? More ontological perhaps (which I'd need explained to me) than 'cat'?
First, my use of the distinction between ontological concepts and epistemological concepts was only for the discussion at the time, nevertheless it can be a useful one, in this way, if a concept's referents are ontological existents, the concept is ontological and can be verified by observation; if the referents of a concept are other concepts, the concept is epistemological, and can only be verified by logical examination of the concepts themselves. But all concepts are ultimately rooted in material existence, and it is that existence which is the ultimate arbiter of the validity of all concepts.
Here is how I would classify the concepts in your taxonomy: animal, mammal, and carnivore are epistemological because the referents of carnivore are the concepts for different animals that eat meat, mammal is epistemological because it narrows the field of concepts of carnivores (excluding carnivorous insects, birds, and marsupial, for example), and animal is obviously epistemological because it subsumes the concepts for all possible creatures. But notice, the immediate referents of "animal" is cows, dogs, fish, birds, or Bowser (in other words, any concept for any animal or class of animals) but "an animal" can only refer to one specific animal, meaning, the ultimate referents must be ontological.
Cat, Siamese, and Fluffy are all ontological concepts, because the immediate referents are ontological. Cat "refers to" any actual cat, Siamese to any actual cat with specific qualities not common to all cats, and fluffy to one specific cat. (Ayn Rand did not recognize "Fluffy" as a concept, a mistake in my opinion.) Siamese might also be considered an epistemological concept, if it is only the concept cats it is being considered an abstract quality of. (An abstract quality is one like "feline" which subsumes all of the necessary qualities specific to cats, or "human" which subsumes all of the necessary qualities specific to man.)
I think I have answered your questions, but am sure the answers will raise more questions. I would like to ask you a favor. I do not mind answering your questions, no matter how many you have, but would like to reduce the number of questions to one or two at a time so these post do not become too long.
Thanks again!
Regi
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