Jump to content
Objectivism Online Forum

SpookyKitty

Regulars
  • Posts

    510
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    8

Everything posted by SpookyKitty

  1. Well, yes, but there's more to it than that if you read the paper. 1) The definitive rejection of even a single component of the Objectivist theory of concept formation might seem small, but it is an important advance. It implies that there are innumerable concepts with less than two referents, and to which measurement omission cannot be applied. I didn't want to address the whole of the theory, yet, because I think its better to focus on one thing at a time. 2) We now have a meta-theory of concepts which we can stand on when analyzing Objectivism, and it allows us to avoid many of its presuppositionalist characteristics. 3) I believe I have identified what logical form anything that replaces the Objectivist claim that there must be at least two referents for any concept cannot take. Right. They are simply assumed to exist. But the concept of existing things without identity is not assumed to exist (but is implied by axiom 19 and claim 20). Concepts like these are not axiomatic in Objectivism, and so they fall under Claim 20.
  2. Abstract. We show that Rand's theory of concept formation, more specifically, the requirement that every concept subsume at least two entities, is inconsistent with her “axiomatic concepts” of existence and identity. We show how that requirement leads to the conclusion that at least one thing without identity must exist. We then conclude that in order to preserve logic and the axioms of identity and existence, the requirement that every concept subsume at least two entities must be rejected. Hoo boy, well here it is. I gotta say, challenging Objectivism is no easy task. I've thought the hardest in the past couple of days than, well... almost ever. But I'm really happy with this paper, even though its still not complete in some ways. objCrit2.pdf
  3. But arguing for the idea that human beings do have some innate ideas, although contrary to Objectivism, is not a ciriticism of Objectivism specifically. I'm not at all saying that one can't perform a non-strawman critique. I'm saying that it is what you appear to be saying.
  4. Is there any way to perform a non-strawman critique of Objectivist epistemology at all, seeing as how Rand never wrote anything more advanced than an introductory text about the subject?
  5. It seemed as if you were saying that primeness is obtained by comparison with non-primeness. So I pointed out that in Rand's examples, length is never compared to something which is not also a length. My only point is that of the measurements of the entities involved in concept formation, at least one must be different from all the others. (I also argue elsewhere that there are concepts with one or less referents, but that's a separate issue) Exactly. That's why according to Rand's theory, such a concept should be impossible. You can't compare shades of red to blue and get a coherent concept (though you can compare the color red to the color blue (as colors) after you've formed the concept of red and blue and so on, though that should not be taken to mean that one can't observe colors unless one has a concept of them) If you agree with me that measurement omission might not work for all concepts, that's fine for you and me, but not for Rand. She only says that man must form concepts within the context of his own knowledge (as opposed to someone else's, or some ideal sort of knowledge, or whatever). Not that the same concept would mean one thing here and another thing there. Here's the most pertinent quote about contexts in ITOE: So "context" means "the entire field of a mind's awareness or knowledge at any level of its cognitive development" and not something like "situation". Presumably, then, the fact that sticks appear to bend in water may or may not be accounted for in the concept formation of a stick, but it would not lead to two different concepts of "stick" or anything else. It's not a statement at all (with or without truth value) because it lacks a verb. Ok. I'll have to address those in the future. Obviously, but another "one" doesn't exist. If it did, then the one in "one apple" and the one in "one orange" could fail to be equal.
  6. Rand says in ITOE: Therefore, there need not be at least three entities, but at least two. Later on, she also says: It's not as if one of the things has no length at all, nor is it that one of the object's areas or volumes is being compared to the lengths of some others. Which again means that at least two tables are necessary, and not at least three. No, I'm not saying that at all. What I think Rand is saying is that one cannot form the concept of color before one has formed a concept of each individual color. As in here: EDIT: Point of all this is, although it may be the case that for some concepts one needs three or more entities, at least one of them has to have a different measurement from the others. But prime numbers all have the same amount of primeness. To reiterate, "what shade of red is blue?" also makes no sense. How does that lead to multiple concepts? I mean you are claiming that Rand's theory allows multiple concepts with all of the same referents, right? 1. "a number greater than 1 but which divides both 9 and 30" is not a statement. It cannot be true or false. It's not even a sentence in English. 2. But it is necessary. Are you claiming that there are intelligible abstractions which are not concepts? What are the other conditions needed to make an intelligible abstraction a concept? I have one apple. And I have one orange. Is the number of oranges the same as the number of apples? If so, then there is only one number of both, i.e., 'one'. Well I imagined it, but I'm not omniscient.
  7. @Eiuol said, That would make sense, but not within Rand's theory. It's clear that what Rand is going for is something like this "this match has some length", "this other match has another length", then we form the concept "length" by observing that things have length regardless of what that length actually is. And this is true for all of the examples of concept formation that Rand provides. An artificial, but totally clear example is, take the 'percepts' "1001101" and "1011101". We can think of each position in the sequence as a characteristic. The sequence of characteristic values determines the percepts. One observers that the two percepts differ in the third characteristic, and forms the unique concept corresponding to that characteristic "10x1101". The referents of this concept are then obtained by substituting one of the possible values of a characteristic for "x" in the 'definition' of the concept, i.e., "10x1101". Rand is right in requiring that her theory of concept formation requires the isolation of 'commensurable characteristics'. If the given percepts were "1001101" and "01101", then we wouldn't be able to form a concept from them because it isn't possible to find a natural matching 'commensurable characteristics'. This is because one could match the first characteristic in the second string with with the either the first characteristic in the first string, and get a matching like: 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 - - (the hyphens stand for blanks) And then you might be able to (assuming that integration over multiple characteristics is possible) get the concept 1xxx101 Or the second characteristic in the second string with the first characteristic in the first string, and get 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 - 0 1 1 0 1 - 10x1xx1 Or some other strange matching such as 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 - 1 - 1 0 1 Regardless, the uniqueness of concept formation fails because in each of the above cases we are attempting integration by using incommensurable characteristics. Another way to look at this is, by forming the concept of redness by abstracting from things that are different shades of red, one can then say "this entity is red regardless of the shade of red". One cannot do concept formation by comparing red things to things of different colors. That is, you can't say that "this entity is red regardless of its color". Because the first sentence makes sense and the second one doesn't, that means that shades of red are a commensurable characteristic pertaining to the concept of redness, while different colors are not. Objects of different colors are commensurable, but then one is led to the concept of color, and not redness. I realize this is kind of confusing, but essentially, the concept of red is supposed to refer to all red things regardless of the specific measurement of the shade of red. It cannot refer to blue things because no shade of blue is a shade of red. Yes. Can you expand on the second sentence? I don't understand what you're trying to say there. Given the two concepts "a natural number greater than 0" and "a natural number which divides at least one other natural number", which one should I reject or alter? Neither is better than the other, they are simply different concepts (although with the same referents). I did not establish that only one definition per concept is valid because the same concept can have multiple definitions. For example "a natural number which is a multiple of 7 or divisible by 5" is the same concept as "a natural number which is divisible by 5 whenever it is not a multiple of 7". According to Rand's theory, the concept "a number greater than 1 but which divides both 17 and 6" is invalid because it has no referents. But the concept is perfectly intelligible and can be meaningfully used in a true sentence as in, "'8 is a number greater than 1 which divides both 17 and 6' is false". The above statement is true and can be understood by anyone precisely because the statement '8 is a number greater than 1 which divides both 17 and 6' is intelligible but false. Every such statement is intelligible regardless of what number is placed at the beginning. Therefore, the definition 'a number greater than 1 which divides both 17 and 6' denotes a concept (with no referents). Can you expand on this? But "one" is a proper noun. Is "one", then, not a concept? Can you explain what you mean by this?
  8. What specifically doesn't make sense to you, Nicky?
  9. There's no shame in admitting you were wrong about something, MisterSwig.
  10. "natural number greater than 0" cannot possibly refer to a singular number precisely because it denotes the concept and not some specific number. EDIT: Furthermore, if you insist that "natural number greater than 0" must refer to a single specific number, then you run into the following contradiction: P1: 4 is a natural number greater than 0 P2: 5 is a natural number greater than 0 P3: Two things the same as a third are the same as each other Conclusion: 4 is 5.
  11. The difference between a "mere" proper name and a descrption of a concept is that the description of the concept contains conceptual content. "Natural number greater than 0" is only superficially the same as a complex proper name such as "migwit swamy blubber" (which we can define as "a natural number greater than 0"). The key difference is that "natural number greater than 0" allows you to determine all by yourself which numbers it does and does not refer to, for an unlimited number of numbers, whereas "migwit swamy blubber" does not. One can understand the concept of "natural number greater than 0" provided that one understands the concepts of "natural number", "greater than", and "0". None of this holds true for a mere complex proper name like "migwit swamy blubber". In fact, one can define "migwity swamy blubber" as "a natural number greater than 0" but you can't define "a natural number greater than 0" as "migwity swamy blubber". Now, you might claim that "natural number greater than 0" and "natural number which divides a natural number" are still the same concept. But they are not. The first depends on the concept of "greater than" while the second depends on the concept of divisibility. Someone who understands one might not understand the other. The difference in understanding can only be caused by a difference in the concepts that each has available to him. Thus, if one person utters "natural number greater than 0" but does not understand divisibility, and another person, who does not understand "greater than" utters "natural number which divides a natural number", although they would be referring to precisely the same numbers, they would not be mutually intelligible.
  12. No. Higher order concepts such as primes are formed by treating lower-order concepts as though they were percepts. This is abundantly clear from the Objectivist concept of conceptual hierarchy.
  13. This is a criticism of the Objectivist theory of concept-formation. Tell me what you think. objCrit.pdf
  14. Yeah, I guess it's about time for me to call it quits with Objectivism. In my reading of Ayn Rand, I noticed she liked to tell everyone that their shit stank no matter their lot in life. She criticized the cronies about as much as the welfare leeches, but she seems to be just about the only Objectivist to do that. In this thread, I see nothing (with the sole exception of Eiuol) but apologism for crony capitalism. I am honestly disappoointed in this community and philosophy.
  15. You are just harping on semantics. Come back to me when you have a real argument. 1. Get your head out of your ass. There ARE poor people in America. 2. You could have just said from the beginning that the poor are to blame for the lack of freedom in America. Would have saved everyone a lot of time. 3. Your only response to my argument that politicians are crooked because crony capitalists pay them to do that is to say that crony capitalists don't exist because they are "really" just welfare statists. That's exactly the same argument communists use to say that the Soviet Union wasn't "really" communist. If what you really want to say is that many rich people don't pay off politicians to do their dirty work, then just say it. Otherwise, re-evaluate your position. Either way, put up or shut up, and quit trying to hide behind semantic games.
  16. Well, that's easy. Politicians are paid by crony capitalists to write and pass favorable legislation for them. And by "favorable" I mean the anti-free market sort of favorable. And yes, you make a good point about how our education system teaches us that the welfare state is normal. And yet, there are many people who are against it. The buying and selling of political favors, on the other hand, is 1) Rarely discussed at all 2) Seen as normal and inevitable 3) Most people believe that it is protected under free speech 4) Virtually nobody challenges it. There is a much stronger case to be made here that our education and media institutions support crony capitalism, rather than the welfare state.
  17. Read between the lines. He says "we" need the government to pay for things like "food stamps" and "health care". The crony capitalists obviously don't need the government to pay for that for them.
  18. No, by all means, continue blaming the poorest and weakest in society for its ills. Why are so many politicians crooks? Oh I don't know, but it probably has absolutely nothing to do with all the crony capitalists paying them millions to loot the public treasury. Nah, yeah don't blame the plutocrats and their friends, blame yourself.
  19. I've kind of lost my train of thought on this issue. Confused myself, mostly.
  20. I think you've misunderstood me, but maybe I wasn't being clear. If the robot is unable to make a decision in certain test cases, then its decision algorithm is flawed in some way, maybe just because the programmer didn't care what happens in those cases or because the robot was deliberately designed to more or less ignore them.
  21. The robot will do what it has been programmed to do. Nothing more nothing less. If it is unable to decide which human proxy to save, that it is because the programmer either failed to take that possibility into account, or the design was deliberate.
×
×
  • Create New...