Mindy

"Cognitive science" is a specific branch of psychology, and not one I take part in. Mainly, it attempts to model human knowing on computer architecture. Do you recall Aristotle's point about what is first known and what is better known? Do you happen to know about a speech Peikoff gave in NYC, during which he talked about a "spiraling" growth of knowledge, in which each return to a concept produced a richer, more precise conceptualization? Both of these recognize the order of development of knowledge as compared to the logical implications and relations of various ideas. -- Mindy

There's a mistake in this thinking somewhere. It is like saying that since you didn't add the straw that broke the camel's back, you didn't add to his burden. It isn't just "the straw that broke the camel's back" that breaks the camel's back, it is all of them! Each straw is "the straw." Or, in a group tug-of-war, you couldn't possibly beat the other team by yourself, but you can guarantee them a victory by not pulling your weight. Even if you don't cast the winning vote, your vote made it possible for someone else to cast that winning vote. If you don't take the trouble to vote, you're making some opponent voter's vote count double. Do you really want to double the influence of someone whose beliefs you oppose? That makes not voting the same as voting for the other guy! What you can't change is the fact that an election takes place, and decides something important. You might benefit by keeping in mind that it isn't our constitutional rights that are actually be voted on, etc. The separation of powers, and checks and balances protect us from being too much railroaded by particular elected officials. (Believe me, I realize how this sounds in the face of events of the last eighteen months, but it is still true.) I don't always vote, but when there is someone to support, or someone to defeat, I do, and I wish every right-thinking body would do the same. -- Mindy

Not humble enough. -- Mindy

Think of wealth as "extra" money, as net versus gross income. It is the essence of profit. It takes many organisms all their time and effort to stay in existence. Man, sapience at the highest level, can sustain himself these days with a few hours' work a day. The rest is luxury, pleasure, etc. The unconsumed profits a person possesses constitutes his wealth. Items like a fine house, expensive art, jewelry, etc., that are made use of but retain their value for sale to others, contribute to one's wealth. What in particular puzzled you in Francisco's speech? -- Mindy

My answer is logically equivalent to the next previous one, but I'm going to write it out anyway, in hopes that it might be easier to understand. The same symbol, x, is used in many different equations. In one sense, it means the exact thing in all of them--it means a quantity. But exactly which quantity it indicates varies with the formulations of the different equations. So in "x + 4 = 21," x means a quantity, and in "x - 4 = 25," x also means a quantity (I do realize you know this, just bringing it to mind.) Still, in the first equation, x = 17, while in the second one x = 29. Statements with an unknown all refer to some specific quantity, and that's what x means in every one of them. Which specific quantity satisfies the equation varies with the equation, of course, and that gives the generality, the categorical members of "x." The things that are meant by a given concept are exactly alike in being what that concept conveys, yet they are different in other ways, the non-essential ones and the variable (like now sitting, now standing) ones. Generality means the exact same thing is true of multiple particulars, but multiple particulars cannot be identical. Generality, thus, obtains only to abstractions, that is, to aspects of things. Meaning is thus ALWAYS abstract. (This is true of proper nouns, in that they mean an individual (person or thing, etc.) throughout its changing history. Even an "unchangeable" thing has changing relations, since other things, which define some of its relations, change. One way to think about conceptual meaning, that is, essence, is that it represents some invariance ("invariance" just means staying-the-same,) of any characteristic across multiple particulars, or across time for the same particular. So, being replaceable by a specific quantity is the essence of "x," because it is the invariable property of all Xs. That x is 17 is not essential, is not invariant over all instances of x. In the case in which there are constant features or characteristics of a class of things, we choose the invariances which entail the greatest number of other invariances. (Here I'm writing theory.) Defining man, in the much-used example, as the featherless biped is a poor definition because it tells so little about him beyond his being an organism. It tells us nothing about, among other things, his intelligence. Man's intelligence is fundamental to how he survives, and is part of the explanation of most of his behavior, so it entails volumes of facts about men. This is a slightly different statement of Rand's account of essence and fundamentality. She emphasizes that essential features have the greatest "explanatory value" regarding the full range of information pertinent to man. (The full range of information includes all facts about men: The range of sizes of men, their nutritional needs, their sexual behavior, their gestational period, their preferred postures, vulnerability to extremes of temperature, social and political and artistic, lingustic, etc. etc. behavior... and all other facts about specific idividuals, throughout time! That's where economy is so important.) One reason the concept of invariance is so useful (I find it so) is that it applies at all levels of cognition. As the basis of Gibson's theory of perception, it defines the relation between sensory energy in the environment and perceptual contents, and this relation is subject to experimental proof. It can be gauged of whatever is ostensible, of any manifestation or exhibition, that is, any quality, feature, aspect, object or part of an object, sensory content--any qualia whatsoever, and is thus a common denominator of great compass. It means the same thing when used to refer to objects and their characteristics as it means when referring to conceptual meaning or perceptual content, etc. The concept is simple in itself, and not subject to ontological puzzles. The most interesting part of all this is that it is known that nerve nets do, and how they can, extract invariances from sensory energies. Having gotten a bit off the track, I trust this is nonetheless of sufficient interest... -- Mindy

But don't you want to know WHY you like it? Aren't you worried that there is no reason to like it? The unexamined life, after all... -- Mindy

I think you missed the point on "fragility." True, it is a property of materials, but the point is that the tendency to fracture, which all materials have, is related to the chemical composition of a material, as well as its geometry or architecture. The opposite of fragility is toughness. Jade is very tough, so it can be carved into intricate, pierced figures. It would be impossible to do the same with diamond, even though diamond is harder than jade, meaning it takes great force to scratch it. Metals are normally tough, not fragile. They are also ductile, meaning they can be drawn out into wires, bent into sharp angles (without breaking,) or beaten into new shapes. You couldn't do that with jade or diamond. Metals tend, however, to be soft, easily scratched. So, there are "strengths" of diamond that jade and metals lack; strengths of jade and metals which diamond lacks, and strengths of metals that diamond and jade lack. An object is fragile only if its architecture, in combination with its molecular structure, both lend themselves to ease of fracture. You can't abstract "fragility" from two sets of instances, one in which things break, and the other in which they don't. If you take different materials in the same configuration and subject them to the same pressure differential, then you can say that the ones that break are more "fragile" than the ones that didn't. So, one can speak of whether or not concrete is a fragile material, or one can speak of whether or not a particular object, made of concrete, is fragile. Your examples of a mug's breaking one time and not another, or concrete's being fragile and then not being so do not define any characteristic. -- Mindy

You seem to ignore the fact that to give any credit to any idea, beyond what reason and evidence warrant, is to be irrational. You don't want to play around with irrationality because reason is a discipline. Do something right part of the time and wrong part of the time and you won't be very good at doing it. Eat a little food and a little poison, and you'll get pretty sick. Personally, I think any interest in transcendental powers, knowledge, etc. is a symptom of a serious problem. -- Mindy

I think you are under-valuing the issue. Religion is not irrelevant to life, because philosophy is not irrelevant to life. Someone who finds they must believe in God is, afterall, choosing blind faith over reason. If you think that won't ever be important in your life, you can't much credit the importance of an integrated code of values, right? I'm not talking about things we claim to believe or endorse, I'm talking about living. Especially the hard parts of life. I'd ask (and have done so!) my lover why he believed in God, given there was no evidence. It doesn't take much discussion to lay out the major arguments that make a belief in God irrational--the problem of evil, etc. What I've heard back is that when it comes to such things, he just goes with his upbringing and family beliefs, which means peer pressure. These guys were smart people, devoted to reason, disgusted with other's irrationality--up to a point. When the contradiction between their active values and their religious belief is openly acknowledged, at that point where they say they just "do," the fundamental difference becomes almost palpable--a silence that creates a distance between us--there is nothing to say, nothing to be done. It is unworkable. It isn't reason if it pertains only up to a point. It will be feelings or Biblical sayings or altruism, or fear of God's wrath that takes over at that point. Reason that gives way to anything else, from the beginning, or only at a certain point, is not any kind of discipline at all. If you value reason, truth, facts, science, etc., at all, you value them all the way. What do you say when your kid asks why Mom believes in God but you don't? If there's no reason to believe in God, why does Mom believe? How can Mom and Dad disagree about something that is so important? Is there a heaven or not? If you get mealy-mouthed on such issues, to avoid the contradiction between your beliefs, the child may suffer, may well be turned off deep thinking, becomes insecure due the rift in his parents' beliefs, not knowing how far it extends, whom to believe, who or what to trust whenever you two disagree... There's a reason that discussions about religion become heated. The differences matter. So I recommend you two have that conversation asap, and the atheist tries to determine how far the anti-intellectualism, atruism, supernatural tendencies, and failure to rely on reason goes in the believer. It really is a simple issue--do you accept reason or not. If you take yourselves seriously, you need to work this out before making a commitment. I wish you the very best of luck, but I fear the worst. -- Mindy

I thought I might need to qualify that. The original idea of empiricism is that all knowledge and information comes to us, in its original form, through the senses. The implication that has for a theory of universals, the process of concept-formation, propositional meaning and criteria of truth, etc., etc. has been construed in error, and in different ways, by different thinkers, some of who continue to call themselves "Empiricists," and some who use other terms. My reference to empiricism is only to the original idea, saying all knowledge originates in sensory experience. Does that satisfy? -- Mindy

I would disagree that one might rationally choose death over life. Galt saying that he would kill himself to prevent Dagny's being tortured is not his choosing death over life, but of choosing Dagny's protection at the cost of his life, with the proviso that what life would be possible to him once he endured her being tortured was less than life qua man. The valuing that life qua man implies is impossible to someone who has accepted the price of such torture. This is very much like suicide in the face of permanent, debilitating pain. Life qua man does not include lying drugged and moaning 24/7. For someone in that situation, life is already over. Disease has made living impossible, and suicide merely kills off the suffering, which is all that is left. I like to think of it as one's life versus one's living. The living of life can become impossible before organic integrity is wholly lost. But it is living, doing, that we want, and, in the absence of that, organic death doesn't matter. The significance I find in this context is organic life is a value because it is a prerequisite for living in the sense of being more than a vegetable--for living the life of man qua man, in Rand's terms. The "living" sense of life can never be rationally rejected. In that sense, one cannot rationally choose death over life. Death has not become a value. Organic dissolution can be a value when it ends pain, and when living is no longer possible. -- Mindy

Since we are empiricists, we classify mental contents, most broadly, as effects of the impact of sensory energy on our senses. Hearing a sound is being affected by the reverberatory energy of, e.g., the slamming of a door. Seeing a blue ball is the effect of the impingement on the eye of certain wavelengths of light (leaving out contextual factors.) Since perception is the primary level of consciousness, our sensory effects have been processed by the brain, and turned into a different rate/pattern of brain activity. The relation between the sensory energy that impinges on our sense organs and the primary level of consciousness of objects remains in part a mystery. I suggest the best way of conceiving of it is in terms used by Gibson's theory of perception, which is basically that there are invariances in the ambient sensible energy, and we extract those invariances in perceiving. This means the genus of the "integration" of sensory information into perceptual is "effect." (The genus of the verbal form is "processing." Sense organs are affected by ambient energy. Those effects are transduced and propagated by the brain, so they might as well still be called "effects." Alternatively, we could say simply that they are "conditions" of the nervous system, where "condition" doesn't only regard states, but such activity as propagation (one nerve causing another to fire, and so on.) The integration operates on effects, and produces different, but related effects on/within the brain. Notice that the propagation of peripheral (sensory) effects keeps them in existence beyond the incident of sensation. It also moves them centrally, and permits interactions among indivdual such effects. I did mark that you didn't want an answer in terms of physical factors, but I believe it is only an explanation of this sort that could prove satisfactory. -- Mindy

I'd like to make a couple of observations on the debate in general, not in response to the last post. One is that "contract" presupposes enforcement. You cannot rely on contracts to create reliable enforcement organizations. Also, the very common references to "objective laws," "objective society," etc. represent a huge mistake about the meaning of "objective." When Rand talked about the importance of objective laws, she did not mean "Objectivist" laws, she just meant laws that were explicit, laws that were specific enough to be enforceable, that were permanent, and thus could be relied on by citizens. The laws themselves might be wrong-minded and still be fully objective in the relevant sense. As an after-thought to that point, it amazes me that anyone can actually imagine a group of people could be vetted as "Objectivists," and they would represent an ideal, peaceful, right-thinking group requiring the intervention of enforcement agents very little if at all! Doesn't the history of the movement itself make you aware of how changeable, volatile, unpredictable, and contentious "Objectivists" are? The Constitution is the heart and soul of a good government. An explicit statement of the rights of men, and of the due process by which those rights may be interfered with, along with provisions for checks and balances, etc. is sufficient to put people's interactions on a civilized footing. Notice that due process is like objective, explicit law. Due process defines and makes explicit what law enforcement does in proving charges, sentencing a perpetrator, etc. It is the definition, the explicitness, the restrained processing of offenders, etc. that fosters justice. This quality of objectivity--of explicitness--cannot make up for a deficient constitution, but in combination with a right-minded one, such as ours, it serves well to institute peace and justice among men. The problem of corrupt individuals in government is addressed, in part, by the requirements of due process. Due process itself works counter to subjectivity. It puts each case into a common frame, allowing fair comparison, and thus revealing arbitrary decisions or treatment. A constitution, explicit laws, and due process are very much under-valued in most of the debate here, I find. It can't be emphasized too much that the idea of contractual enforcement agencies puts the cart before the horse. A contract presupposes a governing institution. What is the force of a contract if breaking it has no consequences beyond the anger of the other party to that contract? This is a fatal flaw, and ignoring it leads to hopeless and hapless schemes without the proverbial snowball's chance... --Mindy

OK, I get you now. I would suggest, though, that it wasn't "a long chain of reasoning," but, rather, a long process of conceptual development. The earliest, most rudimentary form of this is probably the voluntary orientation of sense-organs, which goes very far down the evolutionary scale. Organisms that have the capacity to orient their sense organs put a premium upon doing so. They will interrupt most activities to try to see/hear/smell, etc. something already intimated by sense-perception. The point is that they utilize a form of criterion for "knowing well enough." Such a functional equivalent of a concept of knowledge isn't what you are interested in, I realize. But it is interesting, no? The concept of knowledge is a product of introspection. Obviously one must have a good deal of knowledge before the opportunity to conceptualize it as such arises. So the question becomes, what variety of instances of knowing must be manifest to introspection, in order to support the abstraction of the differentiating characteristics of the concept, "knowledge?" And this leads to the question of where introspection starts, and how it occurs. Which I bring up to impress you with the complicated nature of your question. When a baby makes efforts to see something, is he introspecting? His behavior is deliberate, and aims at his becoming situated so as to "see," and in that way to know about something. Does not that qualify as a rudimentary concept of knowledge? A full-fledged concept of knowledge is probably not possessed by any but some life-long epistemologists. I do realize you mean the well-read Objectivist's grasp of "knowledge," but I'm pushing for a broad perspective on the issue. There are logical restraints on the answer to your question, but they play a minor part in answering it. The development of knowledge is a question of cognitive development, not specifically of logical connections. I think, therefore, that while we could create scenarios for acquiring the concept, "knowledge," they would have to be regarded, at best, as conjectural. I'll take a stab at creating such a scenario, if you're interested. --Mindy

The logical relation between these positions and an explicit knowledge of what is and isn't knowledge is undeniable. But that doesn't mean we reach these positions prior to developing a full-fledged understanding of knowledge, or even a mature concept of it. -Mindy

First a confession: I read the first three pages and the posts made in 2010 on this thread, but not the whole thing. I have a few comments to offer. One is that before birth, the baby is not an individual. This is true in the most basic and physical sense. The implanted, fertilized egg is tissue in its mother's uterus. It is a growth of her egg, that growth made possible by fertilization and implantation in the womb. Just as her eggs are her own cells, and not a crowd of little people-to-be, the embryo is her tissue until it has matured to the point of being able to be separated from her--until birth, in the normal course of things. It is wrong, I think, to conceive of pregnancy as a kind of going back on your promise--you had sex, so now you are responsible for a child. Accidental pregnancy is a medical problem for the woman, not a moral one. The comparisons with infanticide are rather alarming. Birth physically separates the infant--occurring at the point that the infant is ready to live in the world--and makes it into an individual. Parents have a moral responsibility to arrange for care for their child. That doesn't mean they have to keep it, though it does mean they have to hand it off to willing others. Choosing to kill one's new-born rather than handing it off in this way is a crime. I think we all recognize the value of the potential of an embryo, but the value of a potential cannot trump the value of an actual being. Even if the embryo can be called a being, its status as being human is only potential. And the being it has, actually, is not even that of an individual. Think of an embryo as the mother's egg, fixed within her other tissues. It isn't someone else, inside her, it is her own cells entirely. (Just to avoid an objection--the DNA contributed by fertilization is a molecular salt, not a cell.) Abortion is the solution to a problem, the problem of an unwanted pregnancy. That means the woman wishes to excise some of her own cells. When we develop technology to remove an embryo and sustain it outside the mother's body, the morality of a mother's choices may be changed. Since abortion itself is the removal of tissue, the morality of refusing to allow the embryo one is discarding to be fostered by another seems at first blush to be questionable, a view in line with the original questioner here. The anchoring context of discussions of abortion should be the fact that it is the woman's egg, her tissues, that make up the embryo. Also, that pregnancy involves illness and disability, and childbirth endangers the woman's own life. The obligation to raise the child is "icing" on the cake. This doesn't add up to an argument, so take it as comments. If there is any doubt: I am for abortion. -Mindy

I find this question interesting, but I don't fully understand what you are getting at. It is the "must," I think, that throws me off. Can you clarify? --Mindy

IQ is real. Exactly what it is and isn't responsible for is not settled. But in terms of being able to hold multiple items in memory, and to relate and manipulate them, people have clear differences from early on. It mainly affects how powerful a person is at making single abstractions, like recognizing patterns well. Ever played an old logic game called WFF 'N PROOF? That sort of thing. It doesn't matter a lot in living, because a less brilliant person will get the same place, just in two or more steps. The main variable among people is <i>overwhelmingly</i> what intellectual scruples a person observes. Mindy

I.Q. is not the main thing. One's habits of thought, intellectual "activeness" and intellectual honesty, account for most of the intellectual achievements of the world. It is a great mistake to take a fatalist view of one's potential such as I read in this thread. Neither Abelard, nor anyone else could win a false position against a right-thinking person who was well-appraised of the issues. That is some sort of Ivy-Tower legend. Being wrong is being wrong, and the flaws are there to be exposed. Fallacies are not beyond the ken of most people, if they become versed in them. Mindy

You fail to know where in a (can we suppose it is a video, not a still picture?) video of brain activity to point to pick out the mental happenings. If you look at very simple examples, this becomes less problematic. Imagine sand-paper rubbed on your skin, touching a mirror, and then a pin-prick. Imagine recording the nerve action to each stimulus, and finding they are different in terms of the rate of firing. Would it be puzzling to you that these three kinds of physical things produced different effects on your sense-receptors, that the nerves of your skin were caused to fire at different rates, and that three different sensations were produced? I do not find that puzzling. It seems pretty natural. If you try to couch the mind-body problem in terms of this sequence, doesn't it seem artificial? I think the answer to the M-B problem lies in a genuine epistemological dualism. I must emphasize that this is not the same as "aspect dualism" where that term is equivalent to "property dualism." What I refer to is an old, venerable, but also ignored point of view that says there are two radically different ways to take cognizance of the same thing, and we call the one "mind" and the other "body." These two ways of conceiving of the psychological/epistemological/mental catch just the tail of one another's full character. Mindy

There are a lot of equivocations in this post, Mikael. Also, some overly narrow claims. A contradiction may be about a specific time, but it doesn't have to be. It has to be about given aspects. The conservation of mass/energy, for example. It is one thing to merely claim you know you know, or that you know you do not know. Even these claims must, however, be proved. Could you prove the various claims of that sort in your post? Mindy

The painting/painter argument is a blatant fallacy of question-begging. Who says the universe is a painting? To say so is to take it for granted that it is the product of intelligent design--the painter. So ask the person who makes this argument how they know the universe is a painting. Their assumption of the very thing they set out to prove will probably come to light as they try--if they bother to try--to explain that. Mindy

This ought not to be a cause for anxiety: it is not rational to think that we may be mistaken about something until and unless something anomalous happens - i.e. until and unless the object we dubbed "X" doesn't behave as an X ought to (according to the logical implications of its identity). Hello, The above is a quote from the initial post of this thread. I'd like to point out an inconsistency in it, but I have not taken the time to read all of the responses. I may be repetitive, and will end up with egg on my face, but I hope, as my point is brief, it will be a minor faux pas if it is at all. The inconsistency here is that we have a sufficient degree of certainty to judge that X has behaved anomalously. If we can be certain of how X would behave if we identify it correctly in some test case, we possess the certainty in question. Challenges to knowledge always face the error of self-exclusion. Mindy

Yes, in a limited way, it is. It serves an evil end, and that makes it evil. But the formulation of his ends is not done intelligently. The efficacy with which he gets away from a scene, for example, if taken in isolation, is virtuous. Note that I am not saying he is virtuous in getting away with his crimes! = Mindy