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How are we advancing without concepts?

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So I'm sitting in on an economics class where my professor is telling us that "science is prejudice" because it's restrained by paradigm. Rationality is defined as "doing best with what you have". Abstract concepts are explained to students by pointing to concrete events. "Essentialism is when you have a boyfriend who leaves his shoes inside the house, even when you tell him not to. People don't change."

Throw in a whole bunch of random concepts taken from the middle of nowhere too.

 

This is not unique to this lecturer (one of the best in the economics department) but pretty much all university subjects seem to operate in some kind of vacuum where ideas and concepts are just plucked from the middle with no grounding definition. It's also something that occurs in all communication that starts getting far from the perceptual level. People stop talking and start making noises (including me!).

 

I've started noticing this after studying epistemology. 

 

Now I'm confused how the hell society is advancing if whenever we start discussing abstract concepts we are all referring to differing random concretes or feelings. Computers, cars, roads and technology is generally advancing. How is this happening?

 

 

I could go around my campus and ask people to define existence, man, society, freedom, knowledge, economy and I will get wildly different and sometimes very strange answers. How can we be reaching ever higher levels of abstractions when we have not even properly defined root concepts?

 

Rand's theory of measurement omission didn't exist in the early 1900's either but America still rapidly advanced technologically and conceptually. How?

Edited by LoBagola
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We're advancing by ignoring those people. No scientist or engineer thinks that science is prejudice.

Rand's theory of measurement omission didn't exist in the early 1900's either but America still rapidly advanced technologically and conceptually. How?

By using measurement omission. Rand identified what is going on in concept formation, but she didn't invent it.

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Rand did not invent the idea of objectivity either, but she did defend it.  It is not fashionable in the American schools nowadays, but what you see today was not always so.   Economics is not advancing, pretty much all humanities subjects are not advancing.  Hard sciences and engineering are advancing because they never abandoned the ideal of objectivity.

 

You ask about concept formation, I answer with something about objectivity.  They are of course closely related, so this is not off-topic.

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Don't take this the wrong way, but sometimes the answer to your question (actually a meta answer) is that the answer does not matter.

 

"We", or "America" is not something that has a consciousness, or free will, and any group you belong to, no matter what its extent DOES NOT reflect on you individually and your individual choices, certainly not if you march to your own drum... the same applies to your individual family members, friends and loved ones...so really... "we" does not matter.  Why other people are so mislead I think is due to a great many factors including mysticism, evasion,, disintegration and well popular philosophy which permeates the culture.

 

A great book on integration, misintegration and disintegration, "The DIM Hypothesis" by Dr. Leonard Peikoff will likely have many of your answers.  It addresses philosophy, science, education and politics.

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Now I'm confused how the hell society is advancing if whenever we start discussing abstract concepts we are all referring to differing random concretes or feelings. Computers, cars, roads and technology is generally advancing. How is this happening?

A few short centuries ago, "everybody knew" about common sense, freedom and the pursuit of happiness- and some people still remember that, today.  Those people are the motor of the world.  They may consider philosophy to be irrelevant and they may be unable to explain exactly what they already know about it- but everyone has a philosophy, whether they know it or not.

Many people today have good philosophies, although they've never identified or paid the slightest attention to them. . . They know about the good philosophies of yesterday because "everybody knew" about them then- and such knowledge doesn't vanish quickly or easily.

 

Today, "everybody knows" about consensus, duty and sacrifice- and that's what our children and grandchildren may remember, if we fail.

We are still moving forward on yesterday's momentum.  They won't.

 

Today's unchallenged absurdities are tomorrow's common knowledge.

Edited by Harrison Danneskjold
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By using measurement omission. Rand identified what is going on in concept formation, but she didn't invent it.

 

 

I understand that she didn't invent concept formation but if concepts are formed consciously, with thought, then how does one form higher level abstractions (those a few steps further from the perceptual level) without a validated concept-forming process (which she identified)?

Edited by LoBagola
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I understand that she didn't invent concept formation but if concepts are formed consciously, with thought, then how does one form higher level abstractions (those a few steps further from the perceptual level) without a validated concept-forming process (which she identified)?

Haphazardly.  Humans have been on this Earth for tens of thousands of years.  Progress has been excruciatingly slow.  

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