Ilya Startsev

You correctly identified that there can be infinitely many things said about each concept, such as crow, sports, etc. How is it that we condense them so efficiently? We know them because of their contexts, and our minds are contexts and context-condensers that help with this task. We operate our minds as fields with our consciousness. The mental contents are our landscape of thoughts--out rational faculties and fields of awareness are contextual. So, we know that a crow is always a crow by its nature and identity because a crow lives within his environment, which we saved in our minds as a contextual concept. It does not matter what you say about the crow -- it will still be that crow within an environment. Surely, scientists can come up with other contexts to learn more about the nature of a crow, but philosophically it is enough to know that a crow is a body within an environment. I deem that my way of understanding concepts is most efficient when you identify them by their real contexts. You might have grasped this fact implicitly, but the idea of a firm, identifying context is missing from your explicit awareness. You choose to ignore it, but without it you cannot operate or think the way you do. edit: corrected an error

Like I said, I accept Objectivist epistemology, and I am going to read Kant, for sure. But why can't a crow be all of those attributes at the same time? A crow can fly, it is alive, has warm blood and two legs. Why would you break apart the crow based on his attributes? I understand that no attribute can be apart from the object it is describing.

Then you are telling me to connect objects to attributes. That is, to specify attributes by reference to objects. I have used "context" as it is, but you ignore actual contexts. You think that context is merely an attribute - "contextual." I have already shown that attributes are not merely objects. (So, the Universe is not merely contextual, but existential as an actual context.) OK, I will specify the categories (i.e., attributes) by what objects can be their referents. Living (in the sense of organic) - crow, sea turtles, penguins, humans, ostrich, giraffe, cow, wolf, oak tree, corn, lizard. Wales is not essentially living (but not dead as after apocalypse), although it includes living organisms. Bipedal - crow, penguins, humans, ostrich. Four legged - sea turtles, giraffe, cow, wolf. Plants - oak tree, corn. Animals - crow, sea turtles, penguins, humans, ostrich, giraffe, cow, wolf, lizard. Mammals - humans, giraffe, cow, wolf. Warm Blooded - crow, penguins, humans, ostrich, giraffe, cow, wolf. Rational - humans. Opposable Thumbs - humans. Capable of flight - crow.

None of the objects you mentioned are contexts (except of the dual interpretation of coal). Your "context" is not a context, but it's a quality/attribute or a genus, which is a collection of objects and thus does not explicitly include a context. A collection of bodies is subsumed under the concept of body, which is an object. Yes, I differentiate nouns from adjectives (even if they are "supposed" to refer to the same thing, but are left unspecified). I will specify collections or whatnot in my following object/context analysis of your suppositions: These are OBJECTS (whether organic or inorganic, but I take the first meaning): Crow - a body {environment unspecified} Sea turtles - bodies {environment unspecified} Penguins - bodies {environment unspecified} Humans - bodies {environment unspecified} Ostrich - a body {environment unspecified} Giraffe - a body {environment unspecified} Cow - a body {environment unspecified} Wolf - a body {environment unspecified} Wales - a society {nature unspecified} Oak Tree - a collection of tissues {environment and pulse unspecified, meaning: is it cut from environment, fresh, or dried out, considering it is not artificial} Corn - a collection of tissues {environment and pulse unspecified, same as above} Lizard - a body {environment unspecified} Plants - a collection of a collection of tissues {environment and pulse unspecified} Animals - a collection of bodies {environment unspecified} Mammals - a collection of bodies {environment unspecified} CONTEXT (or dual interpretation): Coal - a structure {this can be an object only if it is a part of an environment, say, a coal mine, but the environment here is unspecified; generally, if you are comparing it to molecules, coal will be a context} Miscellaneous. These are neither objects nor contexts and too general to be included in either: Living - an attribute {the first organic level of Organelle--Cytoplasm unspecified} Bipedal - an attribute {tissues and body unspecified} Four legged - an attribute {same as above} Warm Blooded - an attribute {same as above} Rational - an attribute {[im]pulse and mind/aura unspecified, although you may automatically specify it by definition, but, in the general meaning, this is an attribute of two unspecified contexts} Opposable Thumbs - an attribute {tissues unspecified; taken to mean an adjective phrase, since the definition is "capable of grasping..."} Capable of flight - an attribute {same as above} EDIT: If an attribute is kept unspecified, I will consider it a context, namely, thought qua thought (a [im]pulse as a part of mind).

A concept is based on objective knowledge that ultimately refers, by means of directly corresponding units, to concretes or their relationships. A definition of a concept must include a genus and a differentiating description. A concept obviously needs a word. That's epistemology for you. I love Objectivist epistemology, so I have no qualms with you on it. What I am particularly concerned with is the "what" part. And, specifically, on your view of objects and contexts. In my view, objects and contexts are inseparable distinctions. You cannot say that a context is merely an object or vice versa. Objective reality is objects and their relationships. That is, reality is not only an object; reality is a context where some particular objects necessarily exist.

OK. You seem to be quite knowledgeable on the topic of existence, universe, spacetime, and relationships. I have some questions for you. In Lecture 7 (Introduction to Logic), Peikoff states: "So, our goal is to insure that a concept has a firm identity, and the means we employ is to select the essential characteristics of its units. In other words, the fundamental ones, which make those units what they are and differentiate them from everything else. And we then state these essential characteristics in a single statement, and that statement is the definition." Question 1: What are the units of the concept Universe? "The definiend and the definiendum must be logically equivalent." Question 2: Is "the Universe is existence" equivalent to "existence is the Universe"? "The other type of concept which you can only define ostensibly is certain fundamental philosophic ones, metaphysical concepts, such as existence, consciousness, entity, action, and so on. Now, in connection with this kind, you are dealing with primaries, irreducible fundamental concepts, and as such you simply cannot break them up or analyze them into constituents . . . And if you want to indicate what you mean by existence, you just have to spin around in a complete circle, waving your hands, and try to indicate to a person you mean everything, all actions, attributes, etc. . . . [Existence] does not tell what the thing basically is. Existence simply tells you that it is. It does not yet say what it is." Question 3: If existence is not a genus, how is it an ostensive, irreducible primary? Note: By waving your hands you are showing an environment, not the Universe (see different contexts in my Model). A context is a whole, like reality, that does not have fixed boundaries. In other words, a context is nonlinear and may be defined as a specific spacetime. Concepts, such as Cosmos, Nebula, World, Nature, Environment, do not refer to specific objects, nor to entities, actions, or whatever. Contexts can be defined only by a particular kind of relationships. "I certainly don't believe that relationship is irreducible because relationship is simply two entities which you focus on simultaneously" (my emphasis). Question 4: Does it mean that any two people in a market, a store, or a public transport, are in a relationship? What does "focus on simultaneously" imply that is reducible (or not)? "I do not believe time, for instance, is an ostensive irreducible primary. You can define time the same as space." Question 5: So, is time not ostensive as space or is time reducible because time is the same as space? Is space reducible? (Please do not answer the question by stating that space can be defined the same as time.) edit: corrected an error Note: all quotes from Peikoff's presentation on logic (lecture 7).

I wouldn't put it that Objectivism is holding contradictions in consciousness and that's why you clash with my theory. No. I meant that you choose to be at stage 2, even though there is evidence that you ignore that would put you at stage 3. What's missing is the change, as you correctly identified in my other comment. Your self starts with a relationship to your body ("A prior") besides making and/or breaking relationships with others. The overall concepts do not change existentially, but your specific contents do. For example, your body ages and thus changes, and your mood may change about yourself. One day you may be happy with yourself, and at another day - upset. This is still an identity - your relationship fundamental to yourself, and it changes not existentially but content-wise. Remember that existence is not content, but a form, an "essential" quality that for you metaphysically overshadows any specifics (your identifying process of what exists and does not contradict its own existence). I deem that Objectivism describes the first two stages of my theory, and so there is no conflict there. My theory simply adds a new stage that is essentially ignored by Objectivism. This stage not only retains the integration of body and consciousness, but also adds a contextual relationship to other bodies/consciousness whom you value. Is it an essential stage of human development? You decide. I cannot decide for you, so my job simply amounts to persuasion. As Harrison has shown with his argument, the sum of everything is not every thing, which means that the sum of everything is not some thing. If the sum of everything is taken as something specific, then "all existents are existence" is true, but it's false in this interpretation. So, Rand implied, when she said that existence is existent, that the existent is an indivisible entity. This is only possible when it is an abstract, metaphysical sum of concepts (as seen in her definition of existent), but not an actually specific sum, since a real sum is composed of separable things. The question remains: what makes the sum possible? Again, there is nothing on the topic of contextual relationships that I have so far found in Objectivism. P.S. Concerning the Universe, it should be clear that it is not definite or specific. It exists, but noone yet knows about the Universe as a specific, identifiable whole. Thus, the Universe is really an incomplete concept.

Although we are able to perceive light coming from galaxies, we are not able to perceive them with our other senses, specifically touch. From ITOE, Ayn Rand said: "the process by which you establish texture or hardness is simpler than the process by which you perceive visually. . . n the perception of sight we can identify a particular sensation, color, whereas in the sensation of touch, we identify roughness or smoothness, let us say, which is closer to the actual quality in the object: a given surface is smooth, and an uneven surface will give you a sensation of roughness. So that it seems—and I stress: it seems as far as we know—that the process there is simpler. But you could claim that the object as such is neither rough nor smooth, because those terms refer to your sensation, just as “color” refers to your sensation and not to the actual object. A rough object is merely of an uneven surface. But the difference [between sensory qualities] is only one of the comparative simplicity and directness by which you perceive one kind of sensory data vs. another" (my bold emphasis). I agree with Rand that our perception of touch refers more directly to our actual reality than what we see but cannot touch. This problem refers both, to a conflated understanding of existence (everything is something), to my division of realities through the Model, which you cannot understand, since you can't find yourselves in it, and also to my earlier discussion of perception and conception:

Here is what I originally posted: As applied to the situations and not removed from context as you have done, guilty, by Oist standards, is that there is no evidence known to Oists, whereas innocent is if there is evidence. The difference is a time interval. So, a non-arbitrary claim as an argument with evidence that is not definitely known is considered by me true (or innocent), rather than guilty from the start. Your idea of life on Venus can be true (since I have heard of such thing before and believe it) and it is not rejected from my Model, but it is only included two levels above ours. Our level is our reality, but anything above is not specifically our reality. So, although there may be an extraterrestrial race on Venus, it does not exist where we exist, namely, in our environment. If you are working for a secret government agency and correspond with aliens from Venus directly, then this will be true of your reality, but still not true of ours. Either way you look at it, my Model includes all knowledge, possible or even, by your standards, impossible.

About friendship: Peikoff says that in order to form the concept of "friendship," one "must have formed many earlier concepts, including “man,” “knowledge,” and “pleasure,” "several concepts of consciousness, such as “value,” “interest,” “affection,” "esteem," "free will." In my theory of relations, "man" matches with "body" and the rest match with "consciousness." The remainder is whether you choose to be your relationships or not. So far, Oists ignore the nature of their relationships and are thus on level 2 of the theory. His mistake is that he implies that space can be independent from matter. To say that space is expanding is necessarily to say that matter is expanding. One cannot go without the other. Following Einstein, he said "mathematically beautiful." And that philosophy is useless. I liked that he said we do not "understand everything." You do not have a hierarchical model of knowledge and thus cannot show that you philosophy has no schism. The one that Piekoff showed in Understanding Objectivism is merely abstract metaphysics that to me does not tell the specifics of our reality (except the later points, starting with 10). There is no life on Venus in our context of knowledge. And since you have a financial motive, it shows that you are not concerned with knowledge as such.

What you do not realize is that there is an irreparable schism in Oism between your exhaustive axioms (e.g., what Plasmatic said) and the actual world we perceive (what New Buddha said). Knowledge is indeed contextual, and it is also different from person to person. The person can think he knows everything abstractly (as in your axiomatic definition), but you cannot know everything contextually. I agree with New Buddha that specific knowledge is necessarily condensed, but I interpret it as a lack of evidence. Here is what Peikoff says on Lecture 2 (Logic): Peikoff explains two situations in different years: [situation A:] "The onus of proof is on the one who claims that phenomenon, there is no evidence, therefore I say no - it does not exist . . . [and situation B, when we learn that] after all there is evidence, therefore the proposition exists, it is true, isn't that the case where ignorantiam led you astray because when you followed the onus of proof principle, it lead you to the falsehood? And my answer to that question is no." He explains it that "[y]ou cannot make any claim within the context of omniscience." So, knowledge is contextual, and your axioms are unknowable because they are not contextual. To me the situations can be described as: A. Guilty until proven innocent. B. Innocent until proven guilty. Although I have nothing against the onus of proof, I still pick B because it simply depends on your choice. If some idea is not in conflict with my own base of knowledge, then I accept it until there is evidence to show that it's false.

Lecture 3: Peikoff claims that "human knowledge is contextual." And then Peikoff claims that "obviously there is nothing other than or outside the Universe to operate as its cause." Is Peikoff omniscient to make such a claim? And if so, how is his knowledge contextual?

I see Krauss contradicting Objectivism because Objectivism does not take something that does not definitely exist as a part of existence.

Here is an excellent presentation on how the Universe came from nothing (and that completely avoids the question of God):

Atlas Shrugged: Part 1: NON-CONTRADICTION; Part 2: EITHER-OR; Part 3: A is A. All three are the logical laws of Aristotle, but shuffled. Thank you for your analysis and help with my problem, though. Let the class of all existents be the universe. Here are the definitions of the universe from dictionary.com: 1. the totality of known or supposed objects and phenomena throughout space; the cosmos; macrocosm. 2. the whole world, especially with reference to humanity: "a truth known throughout the universe." 3. a world or sphere in which something exists or prevails: "his private universe." 4. Also called universe of discourse. Logic. the aggregate of all the objects, attributes, and relations assumed or implied in a given discussion. 5. Also called universal set. Mathematics. the set of all elements under discussion for a given problem. 6. Statistics. the entire population under study. Here are some more from British Dictionary: 1. (astronomy) the aggregate of all existing matter, energy, and space 2. human beings collectively 3. a province or sphere of thought or activity 4. (statistics) another word for population (sense 7) Please pick one, so I can know the specific meaning of existence. Now, in my definition, the Universe (our universe) is Cosmos. Cosmos includes black holes, black matter and energy (which comprise 95% of the mass of the universe and are seen as vacuum), all stars and nebulae, etc. Today, astrophysicists do not know exactly the shape of the universe or how it looks exactly. All we know is the metagalaxy, also known as the observable universe. However, scientists know that before the Universe there was nothing, so this does not match with Objectivist assumtion that there was always something.

From Peikoff's presentation on Logic: Lecture 1: "If you hold a contradiction, you deny identity to the subject matter that you are discussing. A contradiction is the violation of identity." What about the new identity that is created? If it has no identity, it is nothing. Why can't identities change from one thing to another (e.g., from tissues to organs, or bodies to groups)? Law of contradiction: "nothing can be A and non-A." How come everything can be (the sum of) everything and something "at the same time"? You advocate the premise of existence, but at the same time you say you cannot know all of reality. What really happens in your logic is that you irrationally know the Truth and are somehow not omniscient. The entirety of the premises of Objectivism are self-contradictory. The only time when you may be consistent is when you do not deal with your premises.

OK, premises. If all existents are either a sum of existents or are some existent, as you imply in interpreting my Premise 1, then, by restricting "all" to a "sum," not "any," we can get Premise 2: An orange is an example of existent (as in "an orange is an example of something," but "something is not an orange"). Would conclusion then be: An orange is an example of existence? Bah, all of this is ridiculous, since you avoid any logic whatsoever with all of your neither-true-nor-false (but both) premises. Aristotle never intended his logic to become a (neo)religious faith, like in your case. Nah, Peikoff said that symbolic logic is corrupt and does not reflect reality, not realizing that by that statement he flouted Aristotelian logic as well. Your premises are not logical, they are arbitrary. Your position is to avoid logic, to retain the state of meaninglessness of your premises that you reify into something, which it's not.

By what you are telling me, Harrison, the following is an example of the necessary way you think: Allow the fact that the following definition is exhaustive: Rich (adj.) is "having wealth or great possessions." Say a poor person works his whole life and finally is, by imitating the definition above as closely as he can, "having wealth or great possessions." If you do not contradict yourself, you say that the person who began poor is NOT rich. Your implicit reasoning is that a definition cannot precede the percept it defines. Your logic: existence first, then definition; percept first, then definition.

OK. Then the sum cannot be broken down into specific existents to be called existence. And this is exactly the view of my philosophy, not yours, because in my philosophy spacetime plays a role that no existent can have. You say that existence is the universe. Is the universe existence? Existence is the universe or any other existent, since existence is the sum of everything (in your definition) or something (in Peikoff's definition). But in reverse, the sum of everything is existence, but not something is existence. Does it make perfect sense to you that your "definitions" are not equal?

I will check out Peikoff's course. But before I do, would you please explain, in light of your two definitions, whether my definitions are wrong? Your definitions: 1) All oranges are existents. 2) Some existents are oranges. My definitions: 1) An orange is an existent. 2) All existents are existence.

Peikoff wrote that everything is something, paraphrasing existence is existent. So we have implication that existence is everything, and existent is something, not the other way around. However, now you are saying that "the sum of everything" is existence. If that's the case, how is that different from my Premise 1: All existents are existence? P.S. And stop making your false conclusions about me. If you had read the thread on Integrating Objectivism and Science, you would have learned that I defined "everything" as not every (one) thing. This metaphysical stupidity of making everything into something is purely Objectivist, not mine.

It's very problematic to work with "Existence is Identity" because there are no rules of logic for this statement, which is both a logical identity and an implication, it's both one value and two values. Very confusing. We know, from Peikoff, that existence is everything, and at the same time we know that existence is something. If it were a pure implication, then we could say that if existence, then everything, or not everything, therefore not existence. But existence is Identity, so we cannot use modus tollens here. We cannot say that something is Identity, even though we know that Identity is something. Do you see my confusion now? Or does this all pass you by without a tingling of fascination?

Maybe so. It is peculiar, though, that a true statement will be: everything is not existence. Congratulations to Harrison for answering and disproving the original premise that started this thread!

You missed the point that the conclusion was false only because premise 1 was incorrect. I flipped your definition, but otherwise the reasoning was correct. The problem was with my misunderstanding of the definition (specifically, it's monoconditional nature).

How can it be a fallacy of composition when the set of all existents is also not existence? It makes no difference whether a part or a set of parts is not the whole of your axiomatic concept.