Objectivism: Entity ontology or Substance ontology?

This thread is in response to the proposed divergence from Objectivist principles of Tim Scobey, a new RoR participant. I've seen and dealt with this question before (references escape) but it's a very interesting one deserving a revisiting. Here is how Tim put it:

Objectivism, as I understand it, has EXISTENTS at its metaphysical base. For me its BOUNDARIES. EXISTENTS are THINGS created (epistemically) by awareness for the purpose of categorization.

I'll do a little research first (and contemplation/reflection) and try to address this issue. It's a little less clear than one would expect. I hope it generates discussion (especially from Tim) besides.

:-)

Ed

Post 1

Saturday, August 16, 2008 - 4:03pm

Ed has taken the liberty to entitle this thread "Entity ontology or Substance ontology?" Thanks Ed. Could you please clarify for me what you mean by "Substance ontology?"

I want to briefly explain what I meant by my comments because I get the sense that Teresa has either pegged my lack of integration correctly or she may have misunderstood what I meant.

Teresa:
Yeah, it's integration all right. Otherwise, I never existed before you became aware of me, when I know for a fact I was here the whole time!

Teresa, when I say that BOUNDARIES are the base of my ontology and that EXISTENTS are created by me for the purpose of classification (categorization)I am not saying that you don't exist until I think about you. The METAPHYSICAL BOUNDARIES that make you you are there and when I "bump" into them I can fit you in with all the other THINGS that I have categorized in my mind. When I use the words CREATE and EXIST I do so from the point of epistemology and NOT from the point of metaphysics.

Existence is Identity and consciousness is identification but unless there is a consciousness that goes about the process of identification there is no identity without consciousness. Existence is what it is regardless of how we classify it but we may classify it any way we choose as long as:

1: Our classifications are done so on the basis of some boundary

2: On the basis of no boundaries but the purpose is to understand some aspect of what is.

We may classify things a number of different ways but because reality is some way and not no way there will be a limited number of ways that it can be classified and this is what differentiates a subjectivist approach from my own version of the objectivist approach.

An ENTITY is created by me when I select a portion of reality, "outline it," and treat it as a separate thing. Separate here does not mean that it is separate but that it is separable from the stuff around it.

I'll stop there.

Post 2

Saturday, August 16, 2008 - 4:36pm

This looks like a pretty straighforward example of a stolen concept. Boundaries are boundaries of entities or between them, so entities are prior.

A couple of points deserve mention about the claim that entities are "created by awareness." The first is that, while as a matter of psychological fact we have to learn to perceive them (Rand might disagree), we have to learn to perceive boundaries, too, so this does not make entities any less fundamental.

The second is that, while what counts as an entity is in some respects relative to us, this does not prevent entities from being objective. Rational beings very much larger or smaller than we are, or with different sensory means, or with the same means but in a different range (e.g. seeing or hearing in a different frequency range), or with faster or slower nervous systems, might identify different entities from the ones we do. They would still be perceiving the same reality. Their identifications would still be right or wrong, and entities would still be prior to boundaries.

Branden touched on this in his NBI basic course. I believe P. F. Strawson did, too, in Individuals. Quine, in Word and Object, takes the opposite position, apparently claiming for reasons I don't recall that we could divide the world into entities any which way, none of these ways having a stronger natural claim than any other.

What's a "substance ontology?" This is an interesting question historically, because "substance" is the traditional but misleading translation of Aristotle's word ousia, whereas "entity" is much truer.

Post 3

Saturday, August 16, 2008 - 4:46pm

I have written a response here, Substance and Entity.

Post 4

Saturday, August 16, 2008 - 6:05pm

I'm starting to wonder what I would do without you, Ted.

Post 5

Saturday, August 16, 2008 - 5:55pm

This looks like a pretty straighforward example of a stolen concept. Boundaries are boundaries of entities or between them, so entities are prior.

I agree that ENTITIES are things that are surrounded by a boundary. What about a light casting a bright spot on a floor? It has a boundary but would you classify it as an ENTITY? In my view it is because I decide to select the boundary, draw a border, and give it a name - spotlight.

The second is that, while what counts as an entity is in some respects relative to us, this does not prevent entities from being objective. Rational beings very much larger or smaller than we are, or with different sensory means, or with the same means but in a different range (e.g. seeing or hearing in a different frequency range), or with faster or slower nervous systems, might identify different entities from the ones we do.

Exactly. Our scale of perception is going to in part dictate what is an isn't an ENTITY. If I look at a chair my scale of perception will automatically dictate that the chair is a separate aspect of existence. By focusing on the chair I can choose to draw borders around different aspects of the chair - legs, back arm - each being an ENTITY separable from the chair. If I move to the particle level the "chair" seems to be nothing but space and is comprised of bits of matter. If probed further into the quantum world - I am pretty sure this is a thorny issue - the question of probability arises - is there something there or not. (I am reaching the limits of my science here.) The point is that it doesn't matter per se as long as there are some borders allowing me to classify.

However, there need not be any METAPHYSICAL BOUNDARIES at all providing my purpose is to understand some aspect of what is. For instance, if I decided to take 3 cubic feet of dirt and call it an ENTITY I may. There are no BOUNDARIES to speak of other than I chose those 3 cubic feet. The issue here is one of purpose. Which brings up another interesting point - where do we find "feet." It doesn't matter - reality is what it is and we can measure reality any way we choose. If you ask me to show you a foot - as Piekoff does in OPAR - I will hold up a ruler.

I think we are dancing around a similar idea really. The problem with saying that ENTITIES are prior is precisely because a different form of consciousness would view things differently. The problem that I see with the commonly held view of an entity ontology is that it is based on the scale of human perception - i.e. it is implicitly bowing to a form of subjectivism. [Entities are entities because the human scale of perception "says" they are.] A boundary based ontology makes all entities the same because it recognizes the scale of perception as part of the process.

Ted
It might be hard to say whether a plant with three trunks is a sparse bush or three merged trees. But a living human is an individual, even if the living individual has a parasitic conjoined "twin."

Some ENTITIES have very explicit BOUNDARIES and so it is very easy to classify them as a separate ENTITY. Such is the case of a living individual. Some ENTITIES have fuzzy BOUNDARIES that make it more difficult to classify them - fog. If I were to exist as an atom it would be difficult to conceptualize a living individual but if I were to chose to draw borders around the living individual, name it as such, and then classify it it would be perfectly in my right to do so. If I wish to draw borders around a fog bank and call it an ENTITY I find there to be nothing wrong with it.

Ted
Whatever our needs, the underlying reality is what it is regardless.

And that is exactly the point - existence is what is regardless but as long as my purpose is to classify some aspect of what is based on measuring and comparing other chosen bits of what is my process can only be called objective.

Post 6

Saturday, August 16, 2008 - 8:25pm

A Matter of Focus

Let's look at the example of a spot of light on a wall. What you are considering here depends on your focus. In the widest context, you have the light source, which is one entity - "thing" - or body. You have the wall, which is another thing. The spot of light is not properly a body or a thing, although you can treat it as such, and a cat, which will not normally see such light spots in nature, may also be confused, and think of it as such.

None of this makes the "spot" real or unreal. It certainly exists. It can be isolated from its background perceptually. It is real in the way that a surface is real. Surfaces are always surfaces of "things.' You always come down to bodies in the end. (See my other brief essay on the bodily as given.) Underlying a light spot, there must be at least two bodies - the illuminating body and the illuminated body. (And perhaps a third, if you want a consciousness of the spot of light.) The illuminating body gives off light which impinges on the illuminated body. You do not even have to see the light source - like Plato's' cave dwellers, you might be looking at the wall, and not the fire. Then there must be the illuminated body. It can be a solid wall, the surface of water, a cloud, the many bodies of dust floating in the air. In all these cases, there are bodies of some size and scale, each arranged in some way that you can view the illumination.

Now, consider the full moon. We don't say that we see a "spot" of light on the moon, since the illumination is wider than the illuminated surface. But the phenomenon is essentially the same.

If we see a light spot on a wall, although it is truly dependent upon the two bodies, illuminating and illuminated, we may not even be aware of these bodies as such. What if the wall stretches beyond the horizon? Or the wall is the horizon - it is the visible sky? Consider the "bat signal." Imagine you are lying in a field on your back in a starless sky. All you see is a blue field with a lit up area, perhaps in the shape of a bat. You do not see the spotlight, or the sky per se - although this is a matter of focus. In seeing the bat, you are seeing the sky, and you are also seeing the spotlight in a certain form. (See David Kelley's brilliant Evidence of the Senses for a full discussion of perceptual form.) The bat is one of the ways in which we see the spotlight and one of the ways in which we see the sky. The same is true with atoms. In a sense, we do not see atoms per se. When we look at a television screen, we see the image on the screen. We do not say that we see atoms. But what, really, is the image? It is a compilation of excited pixel elements (in an old fashioned TV set at least!) each of which has a red, green, and blue color spot which glows when it is hit by the stream of electrons exiting the cathode tube. These spots are simply areas where certain pigment molecules are collected. The molecules are made of atoms, and they glow when the electrons circling the atoms in these molecules are excited and vive off photons. We are seeing the glow of excited atoms when we watch TV. Whether we say that we are seeing a television set, a TV image, a pixel, a molecule, or even a photon depends upon our focus, because, in truth, we are seeing all these things simultaneously. The distinction is one of conceptual focus, as well as perhaps optical focus!

Back to our spot on the wall. Is it real? That is, does it exist independently of our seeing it? Of course. The wall at that point will be slightly warmer than elsewhere. A leaf at that point of the wall might photosynthesize, where elsewhere it might die. Whether we say we see the spot, the wall, the light source - all of these things are again, a matter of our chosen focus. The light spot is real, even though it doesn't have a weight or a sound or a texture our skin can feel. Perhaps the deepest thing you can realize metaphysically is that strict reductionist materialism is false. The spot is real, even though it is not made of matter - it can't be put in a bottle like a piece of plutonium. Not all things are bodies - but all things do exist if not as bodies then at least in relation to bodies.

In the end, one is left with two concepts - ontological pluralism, and physical (or bodily) monism. Ontologically, there are all sorts of ways for things to be. (Just as you can think in English, or in any language you chose.) A TV image is real, the TV itself is real, the thing seen on the TV is in some sense real - that is, it has some cause, even if there cause in the case of seeing Barbara Streisand and seeing Bart Simpson is of a different kind - one distressingly direct, and the other so far dericved from direct perception thaty we have no choice but to call it art! The pixel is real, the light is real, everything, in its way, is real. But everything always exists in some relation to body. The TV is a body, as is its screen, and you are a body, as are your eyes which see the screen. The image on the screen is the image , at some remove, of a body. It is all a matter of focus.

(Edited by Ted Keer on 8/16, 8:58pm)

Post 7

Saturday, August 16, 2008 - 10:16pm

Tim Scobey writes:

Existence is Identity and consciousness is identification but unless there is a consciousness that goes about the process of identification there is no identity without consciousness.

I disagree. I would revise that statement to say there is no identification without consciousness. If existence is identity, and if existence has primacy over consciousness, then identity exists regardless of whether a consciousness exists to percieve it in some capacity.

Post 8

Saturday, August 16, 2008 - 10:22pm

Exactly, Warren.

Sunday, August 17, 2008 - 2:33am

Peter,

You said, "... while as a matter of psychological fact we have to learn to perceive them [entities] (Rand might disagree)..."

I don't think Rand would disagree. She said that we automatically integrate sensations into percepts and that sensory awareness, as sensations, is not available to us after some point during infanct - she refers to the infant as being at the sensory level of awareness. And the fact that learning to perceive things as separate happens automatically doesn't preclude calling it learning.

However, entities in the sense of concepts, need to be distinguished from perceptual entities (units that are perceived). That is, there is a dog in front of a very young child and for the first time the child perceives Fido, the family mutt. The child hasn't yet formulated the concept of dog, but just seeming something that isn't Mom, yet is animated like she is, as opposed to the chair or the wall is the beginning. A first, rough concept might result from the intellectual process that occurs the next dog is seen. Rand definitely believed that the conceptual mode needed to be learned.

Post 10

Sunday, August 17, 2008 - 9:01am

"Edges, Entities, and Existence"

Tim Scobey,

The first word uttered by my partner�s grandson was �ba� meaning �ball� as an object and as key to certain activities (G). Wouldn�t our earliest concepts be more likely to be of objects and people and activities, rather than boundaries? If so, wouldn�t we just continue to build the organization of our concepts around these? When we come to have the concept of boundary, wouldn�t it be most natural to take it for an attribute of entities?

It is good to organize our concepts by essentials; it is good for economy, for explanatory thought, and for fruitful inductions. Incorporation of causal relationships into our concepts is a grand help for such a good organization of concepts. Boundaries of entities are pertinent to causal accounts, but so are many other features of the entities having the boundaries. Isn�t it epistemologically more natural and economical to take entities as central in the organization of one�s concepts?

Of Related Interest

Carolyn Ray and Tom Radcliffe

"What Are Entities?"

David Jilk

Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 5(1):67�86

Boydstun Notes

Bounds of Durations

Entities and Existents

From "Existence-Is-Identity Axioms", this on Rand�s concept of entity:

She uses entity in the initial statement of her law of identity: �To exist is to be something, . . . it is to be an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes� (AS 1016). On that page, it is clear that she takes for entities not only what are ordinarily called objects such as leaf, stone, or table, but micro-objects such as living cells and atoms, super-objects such as solar system and universe, and substances such as wood.

Now we have a modest problem. If we say �to exist is to be an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes,� we seem to say that attributes are either entities or are not existents. Consider for attributes �the shape of a pebble or the structure of the solar system� (AS 1016). To avoid the patent falsehood that the shape of a pebble does not exist, shall we say that not only the pebble is an entity, but its shape is an entity? Rand reaches a resolution by a refinement in her metaphysics nine years after her first presentation. In 1966 she writes �Entities are the only primary existents. (Attributes cannot exist by themselves, they are merely the characteristics of entities; motions are motions of entities; relationships are relationships among entities)� (ITOE 15). Let us say then that to exist is either (a) to be an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes or (b) to be some specific character in the nature of entities.

In ITOE Rand also makes the refinement of taking materials, physical substances, to be not fully specific entities. �Materials exist only in the form of specific entities, such as a nugget of gold, a plank of wood, a drop or an ocean of water� (ITOE 16). Materials, for Rand, would seem to fall under both (a) and (b), and I do not see any defect in that.

Stephen

(Edited by Stephen Boydstun on 8/17, 11:38am)

Post 11

Sunday, August 17, 2008 - 9:08am

What I mean by substance ontology is the notion that existing things don't have to come in "packets" or "as" entities -- but have primacy more primary than our notion of entity is (in reality, metaphysically).

Aristotle said substance is that which has an independent existence (not requiring another thing to exist). Substance ontology goes a step further and says matter (material or substance) can exist without form (i.e., without identity as an entity).

Entity ontology, in contrast, says that all things such as matter, material, or substance are simply matter of-, material-of, or substance-of "pre-"existing entities. Here's Rand on the subject (ITOE, 198-276):

Introduction to "the problem" (p 198)
=========
Prof B: ... we can view this book as one entity, as two halves, as one hundred pages, etc.

AR: That's right.

Prof B: But isn't there some special metaphysical status to the fact that it is one entity? ...

AR: More metaphysical than what? Than saying that it is one hundred pages, or that it is two halves of one book?

Prof B: ... it remains metaphysically the same.

AR: It remains the same. But you know where you might sense a distinction? It's that the term "one" is the concept "entity." And the concept "entity" is the base of your entire development. ...
=========

Perception as the direct perception of entities (p 198-9)
=========
Prof E: Is there a distinction in meaning or referent between the concept "unit" and the concept "one," in the sense, for instance, that you grasp that this is one ashtray, or one book? ... Is that same perspective involved in grasping that it is one?

AR: Before you have a concept of numbers?

Prof E: Yes.

AR: You will perceive that it is one as an animal would, but you couldn't grasp the concept "one" without a concept of more than one--without a concept of numbers.

Prof E: Perception gives you directly a certain kind of quantitative information.

AR: Yes.

Prof E: Even prior to either implicit or explicit concepts?

AR: That's right.

Prof E: And is it true that quantitative information is presupposed, before you form even the implicit concept "unit"? In other words, a young child would have to perceive that this is one, even though it has no implicit concept of that, before it could even form the implicit concept "unit."

AR: Of course, and here is where we have to be Aristotelian: everything that exists is one. "Entity" means "one." But we couldn't have the distinction between what we mean by "one" vs. what we mean by "entity" if we didn't have the concept of numbers more than one which, after all, are only multiplied ones or divided ones.
=========

"One" (which means "entity") as metaphysical -- i.e., not epistemological (p 199-200)
=========
Prof E: Am I correct in saying that "one" and "many," as concepts, are metaphysical, while "unit," as a concept, is epistemological?

AR: That's right.

Prof E: Is it correct to say that "quantity" is a metaphysical concept and "measurement" an epistemological one, in the sense that if human beings and consciousness were erased, there would still be quantities, but there would no longer be such a thing as measurement. Measurement involves a human act of establishing relationships.

AR: Of establishing quantity, that's right.

Prof E: And is that why you formulate the nature of concept-formation in terms of omitting measurements rather than omitting quantities?

AR: Right.

Prof E: Because you omit the relationships that you could establish?

AR: Yes. But the quantities continue to exist whether you measure them or not.
=========

Entities as metaphysically primary (p 264)
=========
Prof K: ... you state, "entities are the only primary existents." Now, does this imply that you grant that there is a metaphysical status of entity apart from whether or not something is a perceptual entity?

AR: Certainly. ... Actually, I was speaking here in the Aristotelian sense of the primary "substance"--which is a very misleading term, but what he meant was that the primary existent is an entity. And then aspects of an entity can be identified mentally, but only in relation to the entity. There are no attributes without entities, there are no actions without entities.

An entity is that which you perceive and which can exist by itself. Characteristics, qualities, attributes, actions, relationships, do not exist by themselves.
=========

The expected confusion from conflating "parts" with "attributes" (p 264-5)
=========
AR: But, now, if you ask me what is the relationship of parts of an entity to the entity: metaphysically they exist, so that if you, for instance, cut off the legs of this table, the top will exist by itself and the legs will exist by themselves.

Now, epistemologically, you could regard the top and the legs as attributes of the table in the sense that, if you cut them off, what remains is no longer a table. But that would be only an epistemological method of regarding a part of an entity [as if the part were an attribute]. Metaphysically, the separated parts will continue to exist, only they will no longer be in the form of a table. ...

Included in the very concept of attributes is the fact that they are parts which you can separate only mentally, but which cannot exist by themselves. That is the difference between "part" and "attribute."
=========

An entity IS its attributes (p 266)
=========
AR: Now, what is an entity? It is a sum of characteristics. ...

Prof A: I don't want to seize on a formulation which may not have meant to be taken literally ...

AR: Don't take "sum" literally, no. Not in the sense that you would say "sum of its parts." Usually when I write I say the entity IS its attributes. To be exact, you'd have to treat them as inseparable.

Prof A: That follows from "existence is identity"--in other words, there can't be a "substratum" that has no identity with the attributes just inhering in that.

AR: Exactly. You mean the Lockean idea?

Prof A: Yes, where each attribute--

AR: --is hung on an ineffable substratum. No--the attributes ARE the entity, or an entity IS its attributes. The attributes are really separable only by abstraction.
=========

Living things as "living proof"? (p 267-8)
=========
Prof E: ... a living thing has a kind of unity that no mechanical juxtaposition of parts could possess, ... there is a metaphysical basis for distinguishing a living whole from any other type of wholes.

AR: Oh, but that is almost self-evident, isn't it? That is implicit in the distinction between inanimate objects and living entities.

Prof E: ... in the case of inanimate things, you could explain the behavior of the totality exclusively on the basis of the characteristics of the parts, without taking into account the additional fact that they are combined into a whole. ... therefore, living things have a kind of unity that the inanimate doesn't.

AR: But you can establish that by other means. In other words, you don't have to go into the issue of relationship of parts to whole, in order to prove something which is apparent by means of other observations. ... if you try to base it all on just that observation about the parts, I'm afraid you would have a Rube Goldberg set-up--trying to prove something [philosophically] which can be demonstrated as a consequence by a different method.
=========

Of mountains and mole-hills and inches of ground (p 268-9)
=========
Prof B: Is a pile of dirt an entity? Or a mountain?

AR: A mountain would be an entity.

Prof B: But it's just a heap or pile of sand.

AR: It's not a pile of sand, no. It's minerals, metals, and whatever else a mountain is composed of, which are welded together in a certain form. You know how I would draw the distinction here? We call an entity that which is welded together physically and about which we can learn something, to which we ascribe certain properties, as a whole. But now as to a pile of dirt, ... there is nothing we can learn about the pile as a whole, nor does it have any particular attributes qua pile. It's only separate entities put together with no consequent change in their status or in their aggregate potentialities.

Prof E: Suppose you took that pile of dirt and poured glue into it ...

AR: It would be an entity then.

Prof E: Well, what would you learn about the total qua total?

AR: Only the things which it would do then--that it could roll but the pile of dirt couldn't ...

Prof E: You're not bothered at all by the fact that the mountain is not spatially separable from the earth? You don't regard spatial separability as intrinsic to an entity?

AR: What do you mean by spatial separability?

Prof E: The mountain is stuck to the earth.

Prof B: So is a tree.

Prof E: Yeah, but you could uproot a tree.

Prof B: You could uproot a mountain, if you were strong enough.

Prof E: That's true, I never thought of that.

...

AR: ... It's the same issue as inbuilt furniture in a room, like a desk which is built into the room, it doesn't become entity-less by being attached to the wall; it's still a separate entity, only it's attached to the wall.

Prof F: So is a built-in closet an entity?

AR: Yes, certainly. Because you distinguish it from the room; it's not the room.

But let me give you the arch-example of this type of consideration. What about a square inch of ground? Is that an entity or not? You can, from an epistemological viewpoint, regard any part of an entity as a separate entity in that context. And a square inch of ground would be just that. The entity would be the whole ground; you delimit it and examine one square inch of it. In the context of your examination, it's a specific entity, that particular inch, even though metaphysically, in reality, it's part of many, many other inches like it. ...
=========

Of men and masses (p 270-1)
=========
Prof F: Would there be any context in which an individual human being would not be an entity?

AR: Almost all of them today.

[laughter]

Prof E: That's an equivocation.

AR: I know, that wasn't a serious comment.

Prof F: You certainly can't subsume an individual into society in the same way that you can subsume the liver into an individual.

AR: Oh, no. That's a very important point.

Prof F: So there seems to be no context wherein you can say and individual human being is not an entity. Well then, that's an exception to the generalization you made.

Prof B: No, it wasn't said that everything can be viewed in some context as not an entity. It was the other way around: every part of an entity can in some context be viewed as an entity.

Prof F: I thought that what Miss Rand said was that whether you view a thing as an entity or not depends on the context in which you are viewing it.

AR: Oh, no. You can view part of an entity as an entity without dropping the context: you will have to include the context that it is part of an entity, such as the human vital organs. ... You can narrow or widen your view, but you can never drop the identity--the basic definition--of the entity which you are considering.

Similarly, there is a way in which you can in fact not consider man as an entity--speaking metaphorically: if you discuss a society.

Prof E: Not an entity!

AR: Now wait. For the purpose of your discussion ...

...

AR: But it is welded together when you are talking about a society. It is welded together by certain laws and by geographical location. You can consider it that way, but that doesn't mean you then consider human beings as dispensable cells of it, which is precisely the mistake all the collectivists make. ...
===========

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 8/17, 3:54pm)

Post 12

Sunday, August 17, 2008 - 9:30am

Hi Tim,

Would you provide your definition of �boundary� such that it is not circular and does not presuppose �entity�?

I think your view implicitly challenges the underlying Objectivist notion of causation. As I understand it, Objectivism associates causes with entities � what a thing is determine what it will do � i.e., entity-based causation. But because you view entities as products of consciousness (derived from boundaries in existence), you would subsequently need to view causation as a product of consciousness as well if you are to retain entity-based causation. Is this accurate?

For you, rather than saying existence is identity � which, I think, implies "entity-ness" � wouldn�t it be more appropriate for you to say that existence is boundedness?

Jordan

Post 13

Sunday, August 17, 2008 - 8:08pm

Tim,

The problem with saying that ENTITIES are prior is precisely because a different form of consciousness would view things differently. The problem that I see with the commonly held view of an entity ontology is that it is based on the scale of human perception - i.e. it is implicitly bowing to a form of subjectivism. [Entities are entities because the human scale of perception "says" they are.]

This line of reasoning is essentially Kantian: that all we ever get is "processed" knowledge ("humanly processed" knowledge) -- essentially making knowledge, at least initially, subjective. Would you agree that that is an accurate account of your position on the matter?

Some ENTITIES have fuzzy BOUNDARIES that make it more difficult to classify them - fog. If I were to exist as an atom it would be difficult to conceptualize a living individual but if I were to chose to draw borders around the living individual, name it as such, and then classify it it would be perfectly in my right to do so.

There's an issue of boundaries that are very easily "perceptually-given" or "self-evident-to-perception," and there's a potential issue of boundaries that are supposedly less or are supposedly more "conceptually-given." Would you please clarify which of those you mean -- when you talk about explicit vs. "fuzzy" boundaries?

I hope that you don't find the current landslide of posts-to-read and questions-to-possibly-reply-to too daunting. As you may have already noticed if you were first lurked here for a few weeks or months (before signing-up as a participant), we're a very curious bunch who think ideas are very important (to human beings).

:-)

Ed

Post 14

Sunday, August 17, 2008 - 8:36pm

I started posting because I wanted some help with logic - here I am trying to defend a boundary ontology! LOL!

I have been very busy today and could not get to these replies. I will read them and try and answer them as best I can. Please be patient with me.

Post 15

Monday, August 18, 2008 - 1:07pm

Honestly guys, my head is killing me! In my first post I said that I have to visualize things in order to grasp their relationships... well, I have been reading through your posts and trying to grasp them and my head is literally hurting from doing it.

Here is the problem as I see it. Rand seems to imply that some things metaphysically are entities on the basis of a metaphysical principle irrespective of a person. She says that we can call some things entities for epistemological convenience but then there are other things that really are entities. It is my thinking that these "real" entities are nothing more than the scale of perception. Don't get me wrong, this is significant in that we are a part of reality but I don't think it ought to hold any metaphysical significance with regard to our categorization of existence.

Tim says:
Existence is Identity and consciousness is identification but unless there is a consciousness that goes about the process of identification there is no identity without consciousness.

Warren says:
I disagree. I would revise that statement to say there is no identification without consciousness. If existence is identity, and if existence has primacy over consciousness, then identity exists regardless of whether a consciousness exists to perceive it in some capacity.

Here is what I mean. Yes, there is no identification without consciousness, however, if consciousness is constructing entities i.e. if consciousness (or probably more accurately - awareness) is the process of drawing borders around different aspects of existence for the purpose of categorization, then the identity of the object is going to be influenced by the borders I draw. Therefore, there is no entity identity without a process of awareness.

Stephen says:
The first word uttered by my partner�s grandson was �ba� meaning �ball� as an object and as key to certain activities (G). Wouldn�t our earliest concepts be more likely to be of objects and people and activities, rather than boundaries? If so, wouldn�t we just continue to build the organization of our concepts around these? When we come to have the concept of boundary, wouldn�t it be most natural to take it for an attribute of entities?

Rand talks about the concept existent in a way similar to how I grasp boundaries. I seem to recall that she says that the concept cannot be understood until the latter stages of conceptual development. Hence, I don't see how this would undermine my idea of boundaries being a conceptual identification of an intrinsic metaphysical feature.

Jordon says:
Would you provide your definition of �boundary� such that it is not circular and does not presuppose �entity�?

I would define a BOUNDARY as an change in value along a given dimension. If I were to sit in my cubical and not focus on anything in particular there would be a number of changes in value within the dimension of my cubical. My means of perception gives me pre discriminated objects and if I choose to do so I can focus on those. As I continue to focus I can choose to isolate aspects of those objects and call them entities. Rand endorses this and calls it an epistemological convenience. But to this I say - what identification isn't a matter of epistemological convenience? It's just as Stephen says - "Wouldn�t our earliest concepts be more likely to be of objects and people and activities..." - but I recognize that my perception is playing a part in grasping the world in terms of objects.

Jordon says:
I think your view implicitly challenges the underlying Objectivist notion of causation.

... that a thing acts in accordance with its nature. But what is "its nature" other than being the sum of its parts. "These parts" are just other chosen aspects of the thing based on borders. I think the rule still applies. I think it would only undermine the Objectivist viewpoint if "its nature" is a real thing making the entity what it really is.

Jordon says:
For you, rather than saying existence is identity � which, I think, implies "entity-ness" � wouldn�t it be more appropriate for you to say that existence is boundedness?

Interesting way to put it. Existence, according to Piekoff in OPAR is the sum of all existents - a collective noun. The problem I have with this is that it implies something static or solid and static and/or solidity implies scale. I have considered understanding it in terms of the sum of all boundaries but I want to avoid understanding boundaries in terms of the static. I have thought of something like dynamic boundaries to incorporate the idea of constant change. I have not reached a conclusion on this.

Ed says:
This line of reasoning is essentially Kantian: that all we ever get is "processed" knowledge... essentially making knowledge, at least initially, subjective.

All of our awareness is part of a process of identification so I guess I don't see what the big deal is. I am not versed in Kant in ANY way so I have no clue of what he says. I will assume that for Kant there are real things out there that our means of perception processes them and because it does process them our conceptual faculty is cut off.

If the above is true then Kant misses the mark for me Because there aren't any really real objects. Everything is the result of boundaries - objects are the result of boundaries, the pre discriminated result of perception and my awareness of it.

Knowledge is the result of purposefully choosing some aspect of existence and via the method of logic integrating it.

This is probably the first time I have ever had to attempt to defend a position of this magnitude. Quite frankly I feel out of my league. Like I said - my head hurts and that is no joke! There are so many other things that you guys have posted that I need to personally explore. You know I could probably spend the next year just reading thinking through what you guys have provided here - thanks.

Post 16

Monday, August 18, 2008 - 1:44pm

This is what I was working on this weekend - I know it has nothing to do with this post but I said I was busy and now you know why. The building on the right side of the image what something I modeled and added.

Here is another view from the street.

Post 17

Monday, August 18, 2008 - 3:22pm

Hi Tim,

Thanks for the replies. I want to explore my causation question with you a little more. If a thing is the sum of its parts, and if those parts are parts by virtue of our choice to lump them together based on their metaphysical borders, then a thing is derivatively a sum of our choices. And if causes exist by virtue of things, then it follows that causes exist by virtue of choices, if we are to hold to entity-based causation. Hence, causes - like things - would be epistemic rather than metaphysical. Is this right? It's odd to think that causes are epistemic. I'm not judging you here, but this does seem rather subjectivist. You might take solace in the fact that many well-accepted philosophies discuss and incorporate much of your view. Maybe not. :)

Jordan

Post 18

Monday, August 18, 2008 - 7:27pm

That is certainly something to think about. From here on out I am going to go by the "received" Objectivist version of entity so as to not cause confusion for myself or anyone else. I want to do this because I don't think I can adequately defend it at this time - or it may be that it can't be defended at all and I need to jettison the idea.

Thanks all for giving me a lot of things to chew on - really. This has been very good.

Post 19

Monday, August 18, 2008 - 7:58pm