tadmjones

Tony most likely meant the subject in the video.

What I was trying to express to you (see what I did there?) , is basically what I think you mean (I did it again here ) when you ‘say’ you know what it means to experience a word. Do you mean when you hear or read a word , for example: marshmallow, you can introspect and follow the cascade of mental processing that brings some specific content to your immediate attention/comprehension/awareness? That is what I was trying to convey that the word as symbol points to the content of the concept you have formed and presumably retained and that content now ‘available’ is what I meant as the experience.

I didn’t mean for an equivocation between reason/metabolism , just trying to use an analogy for mental processes and functionality and other biological systems that produce results from structure and function. Either way my bad I suppose.

I remember frequenting a chat group but not sure if it was that particular one. Did they hold weekly live discussions and possibly a Jeopardy night ? As to words(symbols, like truncated pointers) working for concept apprehension, I meant the idea that ‘dog’ brings certain content to one’s own thinking when internally prompted , and that when someone wants another to bring or hold concepts in the other’s thinking or attention they prompt the other’s attention to the particular idea by using the words that correspond to those concepts. Human cognitive function is the only one known that can stimulate abstraction in another consciousness.

The digestion analogy was an example of how I understand Rand’s use of the word reason and the use of the words rational faculty, and frankly given it was off the top of my head , so to speak, it wasn’t terribly analogous. I just meant I was pretty sure they are/were used in the O’ist technical vernacular as fairly synonymous though perhaps one or the other would be ‘more’ technically correct given various contexts. Richness of concepts comes from the autodidactic nature of the contents of our minds. According to O’ism one starts tabula rasa and via conscious application of our innate faculties and capabilities create and acquire one’s own knowledge. The richness would connote all the explicit and implicit mental associations formed or held in relation and integrated into the ‘file header’ dog. Rand said our cognitive functioning depends on tags or words to designate open ended concepts and communication via language is a supplemental function. An observation that aligns with the idea that the hemispheres of the brain need to communicate with ‘each other’ in order to make sense of the world and survive in it. The right brain ‘sees’ everything as an integrated whole in constant flux and the left brain wants to identify or disambiguate specific ‘things’ and grasp them, in order to function and survive ‘they’ have to communicate and agree to act toward a specific goal facilitated by having a common ‘vocabulary’. Symbolic language verbal and otherwise can be seen as a phenotypical expression of the rational animal’s cognitive make up, no? The necessary and sufficient cause of social conditioning. As to concepts not being experienced, only learned , created or used , one can only ask how are learning , creativity or usage not instances of conscious experience? How are they outside or not reducible to awareness ?

Actually I think it fairly well accepted that Rand’s philosophy formed and grew within her fiction. With its most explicit exhibition in AS , especially, obviously Galt’s speech. The nonfiction came later, but if rules are rules…

It’s more the tendency stems from concepts as experienced subjectively are ‘richer’ than the words. Words are objective symbols or ‘pointers’ used to guide a conscious apprehension of a particular concept which are experienced subjectively. Losing sight of the distinction invariably diminishes the important role consciousness plays in experience of reality, as gauche as that may sound to an objective ear.

I’ve always ‘heard’ O’ism speak of reason and ‘the’ rational faculty akin to metabolism/ digestive tract with the implied resource management as a system operation. So in my understanding I had reason/rational faculty as I suppose more synonymous than intended? When I look at the lexicon , I see what lead to my misapprehension , what with all the entries that show Rand describing reason as a faculty. All the times I saw it described incorrectly in print , I’ll have recheck my premises before I comment on the distinction in the future. But I do like good cop/ bad cop.

Reason isn't a faculty according to Rand? Or have I misinterpreted what O'ism says about reason? And ps , I did use police on purpose for exactly the effect you described, but you do get that , no ?

An ideology to become dominant would be one that is adopted or integrated into most intellectual spheres by its explanatory power and internal consistency or lack of contradiction. An ideology that corresponds to the faculty of reason. Advocating for a specific ideology should put a hefty burden on its champions to police exemplars. And in that vein should also place a burden on self identified exemplars to scrutinize their own communications in its advocacy, lest the example be taken for the rule. Brainwashed people can't/don't pretend, societies can't be brainwashed as the concept of society is an abstraction identifying relationships among aggregates of entities. Reason is the faculty that is brought to bear on arguments, principles and ideas and should not be listed as an equivalent, and none of them are specific language dependent.

I suppose I am niggling over 'incurable' ie the volitional nature of refusal.

Is there an incurable mis-understanding of reality? One can ascribe to a philosophy that when fully integrated would result in accepting propositions that result in contradiction. But that doesn't mean that they can not check their premises and adjust their view to a more reality consistent philosophy.

If a transporter can violate ‘here’ and ‘there’ as it pertains to the relationship of an object and its ‘location’ , then the argument about sameness amounts to asking if a thing is itself the self same thing. If the transporter interacts with a object in such a way that could be described as some kind of disassembly and reassembly, then the argument about ‘sameness’ is trying to apply identity as a malleable attribute and not a metaphysical axiom. I didn’t mean Rand would use identity in the argument, it was the contrary. And the transporter scenario is not sci-fi hypothetical, it is a mystical and supernatural hypothetical used in a sci fi series.

Sameness is a floating abstraction in Rand , or an example of Whitehead’s misplaced concreteness , in the context of analyzing the ‘sameness’ of a thing transporterized. And it is a consequence of the analyzation being structured on strict physicalism.

The thread was sparse on philosophic arguments , I skimmed most of it the first time through because the discussion was mainly focused on technical mechanics of a highly improbable hypothetical. I did notice later someone commented on the possibility that equating identity with information violates A is A. Which from what I gathered was closer to the intent of the OP , but for the most part that was drowned out by back and forth on the physics of the hypothetical. Not to mention a full rending of Rand’s integration of body/mind. I respect your decision to not respond to any posts you choose to ignore , including and especially mine , just like in the past.