Eiuol

Thanks for pointing that out. Would've helped in the OP to get the whole quote. I don't read Rand as though later work supercedes prior work. Like any philosopher, I consider the point of their philosophy. Not that you said otherwise, I'm just clarifying. ITOE is usually a better source for Objectivist epistemology.

If you kill a person, you can't trade with them. That's not a man-made consequence.

Not really. It's more like if you have a specific reason to act, you'll act according to that reason if the same exact circumstances occurred again. So by your nature, the argument would go, you wouldn't act differently. Basically, it's "since your mind has an identity, it isn't truly free". While it's true you wouldn't act differently, that doesn't say anything about Rand's position on free will. What matters is the process of thinking, not just observable behaviors. The argument is fine against the libertarian (not the political philosophy) view of free will, though.

Right. You said that Rand said "every word we use is a concept". Grames pulled the real quote, which has "every word we use denotes a concept". So... yeah, the straw-man was there in the OP.

That experiment with the dog (literally one dog) wasn't replicated. Not that I deny the results, but the interpretation has no reason to propose telepathy. Dogs have incredible sense of smell, and the way the data is split, it makes sense to say it's more about a dog's sense of smell. And even if I jump down the rabbit hole, it doesn't demonstrate that one, humans can do this, or two, that there is a collective consciousness. Just to clarify and to not go so far off course of where I was originally, when I spoke of intentionality, I meant this definition: "the power of minds to be about, to represent, or to stand for, things, properties and states of affairs". This is very important to consciousness. One thing to ask first is what you need to have intentionality. Again, this is not intention, it's intentionality, a different concept. If you grant this as important, you need more than your idea that there is a middle truth or some sort of Hegelian antithesis. What is it that allows an atom to have intentionality, if everything is conscious? Perhaps you'll say they're too primitive for that, so are "dimly aware". At which point... there is nothing that differentiate rocks from people for having consciousness, and anything else. Still, awareness needs some kind of interpretation of information, anything less is talking about mere physics. So it doesn't surprise me that you speak about consciousness in terms of physics than information theory. As far as I see, your theory of consciousness is more like a theory of physics, i.e. how entities form relations. There is no explanation or use of information anywhere. Then I go full circle and find this implies denying intentionality, which is about information in some way or another. Elsewhere in this thread though, you offer a fine view of consciousness: "That is why I mentioned in the beginning that consciousness is like an engine. We move by our sheer will, which comes from our consciousness, which is within our mind, which is in our brain, the neuron network and neurological impulses." But it doesn't translate to "Society is conscious" at all. You spoke of neurons, and of course - they connect the mind. Society has no such connections, so... it can't be conscious. There is no means for it to be its own engine. Now, it's plausible to literally connect people someday in the future, but you're talking about telepathy even... Ugh, this would make more sense if you were trying to describe the plot of Serial Experiments Lain. Good anime, but... weird.

Yeah. "Idea conveyed" and "idea of the method of conveying it" can both be concepts. Or at least, you didn't say how the latter can't be a concept.

1 is fine. 2 is wrong for a number of reasons.

So what if its primary purpose is structure? That says nothing about if '(' is a concept or not. I didn't see any argument that concepts cannot refer to things that structure a sentence or a phrase. Or even the assertion!

Simply doing what? '(' would be a concept of a method, so of course you are *doing* something. You seem to be equating concepts with definitions. If concepts were just a definition, you'd be right, since talking about X doesn't cover the performance of X. But Rand explained that her theory of concepts doesn't say concepts or even words are their definition and nothing more. In what way do you think Rand fails to take into account "doings"?

I don't follow the analogy. Yeah, the meaning of those two boolean phrases are different despite having the same symbols. Not sure what you want to demonstrate. Rand's idea that we're discussing says that all words denote concepts. Rand didn't preclude other roles of words, but she certainly said that a role all words share is denoting a concept.

All those quotes show how the word is a unifier. A word in this case works like a function. There is only redundancy if a word is a separate thing to be unified and not the thing unifies. In a way, denoting a concept is just a matter of naming the unifier, the word. If a word is not doing the unifying, what do you suggest as an alternative? "otherStuff" conveys the nonessentials of concept formation.

So it's fair to say word(1 + 2 + otherStuff) = concept. You're saying Rand said word(1 + 2 + word) = concept. By represent a concept, I simply mean that once a concept is made, you use the word to denote the concept. Of course, having a word means you have a concept. The word is the last step. Your line of argument presumes that some words are not concepts.

1 and 2 are united by a word or symbol. A word by Rand's view is not 1, 2, and 3 united by a word or symbol because no word exists until 1 and 2 are unified. The word is the unifier. Rand clearly stated that her view is that words represent concepts. If you have no word, you have no representation.

Not much difference, that doesn't change a period as "sentence ending". If you don't need to convey "sentence ending", then don't. If you want to, go ahead. The sentence would be the same, albeit perhaps a little more ambiguous if it looked like you hit post by accident before you finished. A concept isn't "that which will destroy the meaning of a sentence if removed", since sentence meaning is not a sum of concepts within a sentence.

As far as I know, Rand never went that deep into philosophy of language, but I don't think anything she believed entailed that syntax is created by combinations of words, or that semantics are created by combinations of words. How to structure a sentence isn't a concept, but grammatical parts of a sentence like "and" are concepts referring to a method, just as the concept logic is referring to a method. I'm just trying to figure out why Rowsdower thinks anything used to convey grammar application is not a concept. Also, words *denote* a concept. Concepts are more than their definition; it's not quite right to equate a representation with what it represents.

1 and 2 don't lead to 3. You seem to be saying that the word *is* the concept - that's not Rand's position. Maybe that conclusion is not surprising, but how do you get there? Even if a sentence conveys more than merely adding concepts, it doesn't follow that some words in the sentence aren't concepts. "Sure you saw a satyr" can mean that you really did see a satyr, or it could be sarcastic and mean that I think you never saw a satyr. Each word is a concept, but the meaning of the sentence is not merely adding up concepts. If you introduce punctuation to indicate sarcasm, that would be a concept of indicating sarcasm.

Yeah, a sentence is a structure of words. Grammar is structural, yeah. So why can't a structural word or punctuation be a concept? I really don't see where you reach the conclusion that "and" isn't a concept. At best, you've shown that there is more to a concept than *only* meaning. My earlier post was getting at what might seem to be a non-concept.

You said you aren't arguing against the law of identity, while arguing against the law of identity. An ironic contradiction! It's not an "ultimate truth", it's just required to attain knowledge, by identifying what it is you are conceptualizing. It's not a matter of permanency, but context. The only examples thus far of cases when the law of identity doesn't apply are really just examples of referring to different characteristics and contexts. Don't complicate what the law of identity is about.

Grames, that reminds me of something I was thinking about. Take a word like "centaur". Would you say centaur is a concept, despite having no referents besides drawings? This isn't quite an invalid concept, since the idea of a centaur is made up of concretes, i.e. horse body, human torso and head. Basically what I want to know is: are invalid concepts a type of concept, or just the simplest way to describe something like god? Following that, is there a reason to say centaur is an invalid concept, too? This relates because rowsdower seems to liken "and" to phrases; "The sky is blue" is not a concept, it is a proposition, but it consists of concepts. If centaur is invalid as a concept, and since the word centaur has valid concepts that are assembled to imagine a centaur, it is possible that single words are not always concepts. My reasoning might be convoluted, but answering those two questions would clarify a lot.

This is why I'm skeptical of instinct as a concept, applied to both humans and animals. If we describe tendencies, that's a matter of statistics or a method of computation that results in a tendency towards a specific response. For animal learning, instinct isn't even an important concept, because many animals will figure out or compute an answer to reach a goal. You can say there are innate mechanisms available at birth to gather information to make decisions. Of course, reasoning is one way to make a decision, meaning humans have a better ability to make life-furthering decisions. To me, instinct seems to imply that a response can't be helped, or implying that a creature's mental state is irrelevant to action - all that matters is an urge without representation. But that's a remnant of a once-common belief that animals have virtually no mental life.

I was pretty specific saying that half-true is still wrong. Except, you were perhaps on the right track all along, and elements of the idea were probably correct. Thousands of years ago, someone thought the world was flat. Now due to some methods of geometry, we know that the world being flat is wrong. Portions of that idea were right, namely that the world is a surface, and curvature creates the appearance of flatness at great distances. It's even possible to represent the world as flat for maps. The problem is, part of the idea was maybe "all surfaces that look flat are flat", so the conclusion "the world is flat" is plain wrong, without qualification. Fortunately, concluding that an idea is false doesn't mean everything before is invalidated. The reason is, at least on the Objectivist account, that new concepts are built from earlier concepts, or as Rand phrased it, "abstractions of abstractions" (or from some perceptual content for a concept like chair). Smart/stupid was a bad example, because those are usually used as a continuum. I could argue that a person is smart with regard to say, set theory, but stupid with regard to meteorology. Context is always needed. A better example is "I am less than 6 feet tall". I can't simultaneously be greater than or equal to 6 feet tall. That's what the law of identity refers to. You seem to be saying that since context varies and something always changes, nothing will ever remain true as we previously thought. You're sort of right, but there's no need to say truth itself varies. Human methods to discover what is true often improve, or some people use terrible methods, but that doesn't mean facts transform to true or untrue as soon as our understanding changes. People used to believe that the world is flat is true, then later people discovered that's wrong. Not the same thing as the idea being true at one point, then not being true at another. Presumably this is just supposed to be an example we all likely know about. I'm sure she said that she believed a family member should be valued *because* they're a family member. There needs to be better reasons. But still, she valued some of her family members at least, like her father and sister. As I recall, her mother wasn't so great. So, this is not a good example of lacking compassion. But if you mean that not automatically seeing value in a family member as so many do, then your example is fine, except the supposed lack isn't about lack of compassionate emotion. ?? Contradiction.

Some context from psychology, there is emotional empathy, and cognitive empathy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy#Types_of_empathy

"Never in your lifetime? Or are you not interested in discovering it?" There is no such thing as an intention a person is unaware of, so it can't be discovered. Or at least, you need to provide reasons that I have intentions that I may be unaware of. Only Freudian psychology seems to entertain that as a possibility. "Another example is smart--stupid. A person can be called smart and (s)he may really be stupid or even become stupid later on and vice versa." Can a person be smart and not smart at the same time? I haven't said everything in the world is essentially static, and for Objectivism, the point is that what is true can't also be not true. No entity can be itself and not be itself at a single point in time. Yeah, there is modal logic to talk about uncertainties and possibilities, but even then you can't be certain *and* uncertain at the same time. You can be mistaken and be half-right, but half-right is still wrong, like half-finished paintings are still not finished. Anything else would be doublethink, as Orwell would say.

Yes. You seem to suggest that there is awareness outside of bodies while the awareness outside of individual bodies as part of, say, a global consciousness of society. So your continuum is between embodied consciousness all the way to a consciousness of the universe outside of your body. The problem is I have no particular reason to say consciousness or even awareness can ever be outside of an individual body, especially since it is impossible to share identical mental states. We can have similar goals, but that doesn't mean we share any thoughts/feelings. Plus, there is no existing mechanism to connect our minds so that they could even possibly integrate into awareness (at least integrated briefly even!). At best, my actions can impact yours, but we are not literally connected. So, the "other" side (the negative) is not something I think can exist, any bit of the negative is not real. That fits into the discussion on extremes. To get where we are coming from, use that same "dialectical continuum", 100% Object A is on one end, 100% Object Not-A on the other. Those are the extremes. You could be on either end, it depends on your knowledge. There is no "between" being A and not being A. An apple isn't 50% apple and 50% not apple. You could say a new fruit is 50% like an apple and 50% like something else, but it's wrong to take the "middle" where it is an apple but not an apple in the same sense. Basically, anyone should aim for being "extremely correct" because there is only one right answer. Replace those items for "True" and "Not True" and it's the same idea. You can use extreme to convey going off the deep end into irrational thought, but that's really the same as being willfully and extremely wrong. Hopefully I clarified above. I was asking for some evidence for a global/social/collective conscious. The Global Consciousness project seems more like a hypothesis without any evidence yet. Yup! That's where I was going. Even more, it means you can't become aware of your "true" intentions after the fact. You won't discover that you had an intent that you were unaware of, as if you were repressing the id's desire to satisfy visceral pleasures. I think Ilya is talking about something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesis,_antithesis,_synthesis

Being extreme or not isn't really anything that matters. You could say a philosophy or belief goes beyond any reasonable grounds, but extremeness in terms of beyond a middle ground is not a problem, as long as it does not contradict reality. From your reading so far, I imagine you understand that Objectivism does not advocated utter disregard for people, so it's wrong for you to say "selfishly not caring about others" right next to "bonding only with those who reflect one's values". You said the values should be "Global Communism", but how did you get from one's values to a global society? I'm guessing that stems from your idea that even if your actions incidentally help others, you therefore acted for others. You're right of course that a person got benefit, but people can't act for any end if they never had a drop of awareness about what they "really" acted for. In several of your posts, I haven't seen any sense that you believe consciousness is any "aboutness" to it, namely that it can't be about wanting or working towards an end or value. Instead, what I get is a sense that by being part of reality, you naturally act according to your own identity. Since reality is causal, I necessarily act toward a specific end as determined by reality which is presumably conscious without "aboutness". That reality is ultimately what everything acts towards, so we then say everything is conscious we mean nothing is seperable from reality. So... I bring this up again because the sharing you suppose doesn't seem to even exist. Yeah, Rand liked the Francis Bacon quote "nature to be commanded must be obeyed", so your environment does matter. I even follow your next post, until this sentence: Harmony is fine, but why is the harmony due to same purpose and future goals? Harmony does not depend upon shared values. In fact, research into game theory and social norms show ways harmony arises with little to no agreement on values. We can also have harmony if we have an identical goal such as happiness, that may be a way that harmony needs agreement, but we don't need a "grand" goal like "Global Unified Society".