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What is the validation of "tabula rasa"?

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I challenge you to provide an example of a sentence that is grammatical without having ANY meaning, since grammar is a method of organizing individual words into a context so that they have meaning.  Perhaps you (and apparently he) have different ideas of what the definitions of "sentence", "grammatical" and "meaning" are.

That Thurber guy being quoted (who I've never heard of) was flinging around a high specialized meaning of "grammatical" which is not accepted by most people in the profession -- what he means is "syntactically well-formed". In addition, he misunderstands the point. As example of an "ungrammatical" sentence, under that use, would be e.g. "*Book the off fell the table". The statement about grammatical sentences with no meaning is false, since even this egregious word salad can be assigned a specific meaning. The computability of meaning is the strongest aspect of language; concerns about form are much weaker, and serve primarily to speed processing or to distinguish between related propositions ("John saw Mary" v. "Mary saw John"). The underlying point of such statements about grammaticality and meaning (as exemplified in the "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously") is that words can be strung together into well-structured sequences obeying the syntax of English, without expressing a sensible proposition. Another example of that phenomenon would be the writings of Kant.

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I challenge you to provide an example of a sentence that is grammatical without having ANY meaning, since grammar is a method of organizing individual words into a context so that they have meaning.  Perhaps you (and apparently he) have different ideas of what the definitions of "sentence", "grammatical" and "meaning" are.

Murbles glurked arronkly.

Objectivism rejects any kind of behaviorism whatsoever

I said "behavioral," not "behaviorism."

Edited by Eric Mathis
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That Thurber guy being quoted (who I've never heard of) was flinging around a high specialized meaning of "grammatical" which is not accepted by most people in the profession -- what he means is "syntactically well-formed". In addition, he misunderstands the point. As example of an "ungrammatical" sentence, under that use, would be e.g. "*Book the off fell the table". The statement about grammatical sentences with no meaning is false, since even this egregious word salad can be assigned a specific meaning.

Anything can be arbitrarily 'assigned' a meaning, but the essence of language is that the meaning can be 'read off' from the linguistic signs in a way that speakers of the language would independently agree on. While the sentence you listed would probably satisfy this, an ungrammatical sentence like "ask fish of a red and you" would have no meaning at all (in this sense). 5 people given this sentence would probably interpret it in 5 different ways (if they could interpret it at all) - there is no question of the signs 'fixing' the meaning to any degree. Edited by Hal
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I don't read his post that way: perhaps you can say more exactly what you mean. For instance, I see him saying that there are no innate ideas, and that man has no innate conceptual knowledge (which refer to the same thing).

No, I think you misunderstand the term "conceptual".

Let me see if I can bring the discussion back to the root.

It is convenient, perhaps too convenient, to say that humans are born with an innate capacity and acquire conceptual knowledge by experience and reasoning. The human brain is not a computer with a blank memory but even if it were one would still have to make an artifical distinction between the software and the firmware and hardware.

The operational questions are: 1) to what extent are the differences between humans and other animals fixed at birth? 2) to what extent are differences between individual humans fixed at birth?

The extreme tabula rasa model that Rand seems to espouse requires ignoring some obvious aspects of human nature and individual personality, e.g. sex differences.

Also, it's not clear to me how much Objectivism relise on the extreme tabula rasa model, though I do see it being used frequently as a crutch in argument.

Here is an interesting analogy: In physics, current theory holds that determinism rules at the macro while indeterminism lurks in the micro. So it may be that higher level concepts are learned while lower level impulses are innate.

Communism was, in part, a grand experiment in the tabula rasa model. It failed because humans couldn't be molded into good communists no matter how controlled the environment.

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The extreme tabula rasa model that Rand seems to espouse requires ignoring some obvious aspects of human nature and individual personality, e.g. sex differences.
This is probably incorrect, but it would depend upon precisely what you meant. Rand believed that males and females were 'metaphysically' (which I presume means biologically) different in ways relevant to morality for instance.

Here is an interesting analogy: In physics, current theory holds that determinism rules at the macro while indeterminism lurks in the micro. So it may be that higher level concepts are learned while lower level impulses are innate.
Lower level impulses are almost certainly innate, but they wouldnt constitute knowledge in the sense being discussed. The 4 sentences "X knows how to breathe", "X knows how to learn a language", "X knows how to play the violin" and "X knows that Rome is the capital of Italy", are all completely different once we move beyond the level of surface grammer - the word 'know' is being used slightly differently in each case. Tabula rasa only concerns statements of the last type.

Communism was, in part, a grand experiment in the tabula rasa model.
Huh? Edited by Hal
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The operational questions are: 1) to what extent are the differences between humans and other animals fixed at birth? 2) to what extent are differences between individual humans fixed at birth?
1) Considerable and 2) Cognitively speaking, inconsiderable. It is true that humans become even less like animals upon maturation (infant vocal tracts look a lot like those of chimps, and they grow out of it).
The extreme tabula rasa model that Rand seems to espouse requires ignoring some obvious aspects of human nature and individual personality, e.g. sex differences.
One good reason to ignore it, in philosophy, is that it isn't clear or obvious how much of the observed difference is physically predetermined and how much is learned. To take a concrete example, some people like broccoli and brussell sprouts, others hate them. That might be learned, but it might be innate and due to the lack of a particular taste receptor on on the tongue (which was discovered maybe 15 years ago). The difference between my aesthetics and that of my son is partially because of my being somewhat colorblind. The tabula rasa claim is simply, strictly and purely about knowledge. It does not mean that man is born with just a pile of goosh in the skull. The goosh is organised, genetically and as part of what it means to be man, so that we can learn very well and conceptualize. Monkeys can learn, but they cannot conceptualize.
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What is your argument that this is a grammatical sentence? Perhaps I should first ask, what language do you claim this is a grammatical sentence in?

English.

The goosh is organised, genetically and as part of what it means to be man, so that we can learn very well and conceptualize.

I see. Man's mind is a blank slate except for that portion which is organized.

Edited by Eric Mathis
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English.

I dont think that would class as grammatical since the words you listed arent valid tokens of the English language. I can guess that you intended 'murbles' to be a noun, 'glurked' to be a verb, and 'arronkly' to be an adjective, but this is based on non-grammatical inference (ie I know that verbs often end in 'ed' and so on). From a purely syntactical point of view however, theres no more reason to read your sentence as being "noun verb adjective" than there is to read it as "noun-noun-verb" ('glurked' is just as likely to be a proper name as 'murbles' is).

A proper grammatical-but-nonsense sentence would be something like the one DavidOdden gave ("colorless green ideas sleep furiously"), where all the tokens are valid in English and belong to determinate categories.

English.

I see. Man's mind is a blank slate except for that portion which is organized.

There is a seperation between content, and form/structure. Tabula rasa applies to the latter. A blank slate can still have the form of a 'black rectangle made from charcoal, upon which you can draw with chalk'.

Edited by Hal
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I dont think that would class as grammatical since the words you listed arent valid tokens of the English language. I can guess that you intended 'murbles' to be a noun, 'glurked' to be a verb, and 'arronkly' to be an adjective,

I had intended "arronkly" to be an adverb. So I guess the example failed.

Edited by Eric Mathis
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[...] The human brain is not a computer with a blank memory but even if it were one would still have to make an artifical distinction between the software and the firmware and hardware.

The burden of proof is on those who claim that we have conceptual knowledge in our minds before our senses put us in contact with the world, not on those who deny it. The first thing such people have to do is show how it is possible to form a concept without percepts. If the claim is that we have _percepts_ in our minds before our senses put us in contact with the world, then _that_ has to be explained.

In other words, a full theory of concepts must be put forward before there is anything to discuss regarding rejection of "tabula rasa". None of the so-called "evidence" against tabula rasa is relevant or even interpretable in the absence of that.

[...] Communism was, in part, a grand experiment in the tabula rasa model. It failed because humans couldn't be molded into good communists no matter how controlled the environment.

Communism failed because it is a false doctrine from the ground up. That it contradicts the nature of man is only one aspect of that. But the contradiction wasn't that it held a tabula rasa view - it was that it held that the human mind and the initiation of physical force are compatible.

Mark Peters

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The burden of proof is on those who claim that we have conceptual knowledge in our minds before our senses put us in contact with the world, not on those who deny it.

Mark, I don't think anyone here is arguing that children are born with full blown concepts in their brains. Rather, the debate is over whether man is born with a tabula rasa "cognitive mechanism," as Rand argues in "The Objectivist Ethics." Cognition is generally regarded as the faculty of knowing. I have argued not that there are innate concepts, but that the cognitive mechanism is to some extent pre-programmed, and furthermore that certain behaviors and aptitudes are likely hereditary.

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The burden of proof is on those who claim...

"The burden of proof is always on you, never on me." I like that philosophy. Where do I sign up?

Communism failed because it is a false doctrine from the ground up. That it contradicts the nature of man is only one aspect of that. But the contradiction wasn't that it held a tabula rasa view - it was that it held that the human mind and the initiation of physical force are compatible.

And

Huh?

If tabula rasa were an accurate reflection of reality then Communism should have worked better than it did. One of the fundamental problems with Communism, why it was a "false doctrine from the ground up", was that it ignored human nature.

I might poke at Objectivism for it's apparent infatuation with tabula rasa but such affection pales in comparison to Communism. Communism truly set out to create a new reality on the assumption that man being tabula rasa he could be molded into a more moral society. Communism as well as modern political correctness reeks of tabula rasa.

History is full of successful societies that held that the human mind to be compatible with the initiation of physical force. Communism was not the least bit remarkable in that regard. It was only remarkable in how far it went and it went so far on the basis of tabula rasa, in its totalitarianism.

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Lower level impulses are almost certainly innate, but they wouldnt constitute knowledge in the sense being discussed. The 4 sentences "X knows how to breathe", "X knows how to learn a language", "X knows how to play the violin" and "X knows that Rome is the capital of Italy", are all completely different once we move beyond the level of surface grammer - the word 'know' is being used slightly differently in each case. Tabula rasa only concerns statements of the last type.

There doesn't seem to be a concensus about what Rand meant by tabula rasa but some have argued she meant the full monty.

To return to the original question, does Kant deserve some credit? Did Rand critique him with too broad a brush?

As I noted previously, drawing the line here doesn't necessarily solve the problem because even a clear boundary between "capacity for knowledge" and "innate impulses" and "knowledge" might be breached by the influence of the former on the latter. For example, personality is a complex interaction of innate and environmental variances but anyone who has been a parent of more than one child will tell you stories about how early their personality was expressed.

Personality, in turn, affects perception which is part of what Kant had argued.

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Most English speakers, I think, would recognize the S-V-ADV structure even without knowing the meanings of the words.
I don't know what that means (I do know what S, V and ADV mean), or how that has anything to do with grammaticality. Grammatical simply means "conforms to the rules of the grammar", and those rules vary from theoretician to theoretician. In particular, there are quite a number of theories which impose requirements of semantic well-formedness in additional to syntactic (etc) well-formedness, for instance LFG (not to mention good old Generative Semantics). Meaningless sentences are ungrammatical, given those models. Even your murbles sentence would be ungrammatical in the Aspects model (classic Chomsky). Ordinary English speakers do not have any such "grammaticality is worn on the sleeve" feeling (and I spend much time trying to teach the idea that structural problems are distinct from semantic ones -- yet still vast numbers of otherwise quite bright students fall back on the feeling "That just doesn't make sense"). Furthermore, I hate to tell you, most people cannot correctly identify nouns, verbs and especially adverbs anymore. So in no sense can I accept the claim that most speakers of English "recognize" S-V-ADV structure without meaning.
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Mark, I don't think anyone here is arguing that children are born with full blown concepts in their brains.  Rather, the debate is over whether man is born with a tabula rasa "cognitive mechanism," as Rand argues in "The Objectivist Ethics." [...]

The way Rand uses the term, "Tabula rasa" it means "empty of content". For humans, that content is conceptual, and it _includes_ knowledge of how to gain knowledge. We don't have any of that prior to awareness.

But our brain does have an identity, certain characteristics and/or ways of working that are fixed genetically and are present before we are aware. The phrase "cognitive mechanism" refers to that identity. Reduced to its essentials, it consists of "integration" and "differentiation".

That much, at least, is present prior to awareness, but that's all that is present.

Mark Peters

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"The burden of proof is always on you, never on me." I like that philosophy. Where do I sign up?

This is a deliberate dropping of context for the purpose of delivering an undeserved insult. As a consequence, I won't be responding to you any further.

Mark Peters

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Furthermore, I hate to tell you, most people cannot correctly identify nouns, verbs and especially adverbs anymore. So in no sense can I accept the claim that most speakers of English "recognize" S-V-ADV structure without meaning.

Perhaps our experiences are different on this point. Whenever I've brought up "Murbles glurked arronkly" (or a similar example), I've never had trouble eliciting recognition that the statement refers to some things acting in a certain way.

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But our brain does have an identity, certain characteristics and/or ways of working that are fixed genetically and are present before we are aware.  The phrase "cognitive mechanism" refers to that identity. Reduced to its essentials, it consists of "integration" and "differentiation".

If we don’t agree, then perhaps our disagreement is merely semantical. If the human brain contains “certain characteristics and/or ways of working that are fixed genetically and are present before we are aware,” then the brain is not a blank slate at birth. Yes, a blank slate in terms of specific knowledge of the world around it. But not a blank slate at all in terms or its innate or “hard-wired” aptitudes.

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If we don’t agree, then perhaps our disagreement is merely semantical.  If the human brain contains “certain characteristics and/or ways of working that are fixed genetically and are present before we are aware,” then the brain is not a blank slate at birth.  Yes, a blank slate in terms of specific knowledge of the world around it.  But not a blank slate at all in terms or its innate or “hard-wired” aptitudes.

To the best of my knowledge, I'm using the concept of "Tabula rasa" in exactly the same way Rand did, and that is the meaning Objectivism itself relies on.

The metaphor of a blank slate implies that somebody or something writes on it. The Objectivist view is that the individual does that via the conceptualization of sensory input - it isn't done by genes.

An "aptitude" is an ability, no? Because the mind has identity, it has certain fundamental abilities/aptitudes and not others, and those are fixed by genetics. To say that the existence of those refutes "Tabula rasa", and therefore constitutes a "problem" with Objectivism is a mistake. Those things aren't part of the concept to begin with.

Mark Peters

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Communism truly set out to create a new reality on the assumption that man being tabula rasa he could be molded into a more moral society. Communism as well as modern political correctness reeks of tabula rasa.

To following is true: Man is born tabula rasa.

The following does not follow (and is not true): Man, being tabula rasa, can be "molded" into anything we wish in denial of reality.

Communists love to claim that it was simply the nature of man (e.g. the fact that he is not tabula rasa) that led him not to be a "good communist". It was not. It was the impracticality of being a "good communist" that led to the downfall of communism.

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To following is true: Man is born tabula rasa.

The following does not follow (and is not true):  Man, being tabula rasa, can be "molded" into anything we wish in denial of reality.

The validity of this claim depends entirely on what is meant by tabula rasa. If this thread has demonstrated anytying to me it is that Objectivsts are not as clear on what this means as I had expected. Beyond that, and more interesting to me, is how the Objectivst definition and affinity for tabula rasa is reconciled with scientific observation. My guess is that the two can be reconciled but I haven't heard anything convincing there yet and I reserve my doubts on the details.

Communists love to claim that it was simply the nature of man (e.g. the fact that he is not tabula rasa) that led him not to be a "good communist". It was not. It was the impracticality of being a "good communist" that led to the downfall of communism.

This is an contorted argument. What was so impractical about being a "good communist"? Just take your tabula rasa child and imprint on him good communist values instead of evil capitalist values and off he goes to labor for the common good. If Communists are now arguing that it failed because of the nature of man (something I have never heard conceded other than, perhaps, those who have changed sides) then how is that different from good communism being impractical?

Edited by hernan
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