Vik

Several works ago, I started compiling every appearance of "characteristic" in Rand's works. So far, I've only gotten through "concept formation" in ITOE before I lost interest to more pressing matters. Then I paraphrased the contexts of those appearances. Here's what I figured out based on the chapter on "Concept Formation": Characteristics can be used to isolate units. Definitions specify and retain the distinctive characteristics. Existents can have the same characteristics in different measures or degree. Differentiations are made in terms of characteristics possessing a common unit of measurement. Distinguishing characteristics represent a specified category of measurements. Concepts of adverbs are formed by specifying a characteristic and omitting measurements of the action and of the netities involved--e.g. "rapidly" which may be applied to "walking", "swimming", "speaking". Would you be willing to do something similar for chapter 3 and chapter 4? I think we can help each other out.

The equivalence principle represents higher-level knowledge. If you use it to interpret perceptual information, you're demonstrating that some perceptual observations require higher-level knowledge before they can be used to tell you what you want to know. I don't deny that you have knowledge of "local down". I'm just hesitant to apply certain words to certain things. Explanation below. I would say they qualify as knowledge only when you use them properly. Like you said, the inner ear merely reports on "local down", not the direction of gravity. It would be a mistake to regard the former as knowledge of the latter. We reach knowledge of certain particular, concrete facts through perceptual observation. That secures all higher-level knowledge to a perceptual base. You don't need to invoke "percept". More on the distinction below. Rand's definition of "knowledge" involves "perceptual observation", not "percept". And "A percept is a group of sensations automatically retained and integrated by the brain of a living organism. It is in the form of percepts that man grasps the evidence of his senses and apprehends reality." ~IOE, 1, pg5 I think it's only fair to her views that we don't treat her words as synonyms unless she explicitly said we could treat certain words as synonyms. If you want to talk about interpretations, I'd say the use of "perceptual observation" rather than "percept" or "perception" suggests that she believed we did something with percepts before we have "perceptual observation". I'm not saying my interpretation is correct, but I haven't seen anything to contradict it. Although honestly it's a minor point. What's important is that we reach knowledge of certain particular, concrete facts through perceptual observation. That secures all higher-level knowledge to a perceptual base, thereby avoiding the Kantian attack.

What I meant by "prerequisite" was that humans mentally do certain things before they form a concept of "knowledge". I'm not asking for an evolutionary perspective on the cognitive machinery that gives us knowledge. Insofar as that is concerned, I submit the possibility that cats can form abstractions about perceptual concretes. But many facts indicate they can't abstract from first-level abstractions. The fact that cats have more difficulty with televisions than mirrors is one of them. And you DID bring up a "difficulty" concerning humans: "Remember the old confusion of Phosphorus and Vesperus? The morning star and the evening star? " It takes quite a bit to grasp that two bright things in the sky are actually the same object. The ability to do the kind of work that astronomy and mathematics demands involves far more cognitive machinery than it takes to grasp that a reflection in the mirror is oneself. As for animals opening increasingly complicated latches, it's possible that animals can abstract from perceptual-concretes. I still have yet to see evidence that they can abstract from abstractions. The token-hoarding gorillas come close. I don't deny that cats and humans share some similarities. But if your goal is to find something more primitive than what we can do, you should distinguish it from what we can do. That was why I kept emphasizing levels of abstraction. That could be part of the continuum you're looking for. BTW, I didn't mean "truth". I meant something more advanced than "perceptual observation" but less advanced than "proven". I'm still not sure what the right word is. For now, replace with "fact".

Perception provides the *material* for knowledge, but you should be very careful what you call "knowledge". You wouldn't call the verdict of your inner ear knowledge of the direction of gravity. You have to integrate what you inner ear is telling you with other observations before you can determine your orientation with respect to gravity. The fact that knowledge can be reached through perceptual observation does NOT mean that undigested percepts qualify as knowledge.

Equivocation on "appearance". We were discussing the difference between a projection and reality, NOT whether two observations happen to correspond to the same object. Those are VERY different acts of cognition. But moving on. Discovery of general truths requires a level of cognition capable of identifying general truths. Discovery of particular truths requires only a level of cognition capable of identifying particular truths. I do not deny that cats can grasp particular truths about mirrors. But telling me that humans have difficulty with even higher levels of abstraction doesn't make my point about lower level abstraction irrelevant. Cats have far more difficulty with televisions than mirrors. Humans have little difficulty with either. There's a major, highly relevant difference there. If they do, they forget far more often than console gamers do. And you need to rule out alternate explanations for NOT attacking a television, such as the possibility that cats think there's an inaccessible animal behind an impenetrable shield. The fact of the matter is that I don't bat at a television screen. That's a *qualitative* behavioral difference, not a quantitative one involving levels of knowledge. There's a *qualitative* difference between cat cognition and human cognition, one that cannot be explained by any amount of gradation of "discovery". I don't doubt that cats can discover particular facts about particular objects such as mirrors and televisions. I even grant that they can (eventually) distinguish between mirrors and reality. But it would take an enormous amount of evidence to convince me that they can go beyond that and grasp the idea of "illusion" as such and apply it to EVERY type that we do. What I claimed was that grasping appearance as such requires a HIGHER-LEVEL abstraction evidence of grasping LOWER-LEVEL types of appearances, such as mirrors, does not in itself qualify as grasping appearance as such, particularly when we have evidence that ca Which animals and what evidence? As for infants, it's debatable. I do not deny that perception is required before you can have concepts, propositions, and knowledge of anything. But I deny that perception alone will give you knowledge. If all you had was perception, if you couldn't integrate any of it, if you had no ability to do logic, if you couldn't validate any of it, you'd have a loosely associated pile of perceptual concretes. Would you call THAT "knowledge"?

It's an excellent one. Thank you very much.

Several considerations are worth mentioning: It takes time to develop proficiency in any field. If you've already made some steps in that direction, and you still think it's possible, by all means consider trying to take another one. Be very careful with the criterion of "what you want to do". Anything you might want to do is a concrete action. What is the more abstract purpose? What other roads might head in that direction? Don't settle for just one road. Have a backup road. At the very least, develop the ability to identify multiple, alternative paths towards achieving your values. If you have to switch tracks, make use of what you already know and build on what you already have. If you're afraid of risk but can't quantify it, that just means you haven't researched the work sufficiently. Risk can be measured. Learn from others on similar tracks. And learn from errors. Try to figure out what they could have done differently to succeed. Remind yourself that failure presupposes the existence of an alternative course of action, if only you find the right one. Most importantly, don't let the outcome be your only source of happiness. Then you'll feel like you're working joylessly in the hope of something that always seems just out of reach. And the day you get the specific outcome you desire, you might find that the single, brief moment of happiness you get wasn't worth it. Draw happiness from the fact that you are choosing to pursue your values, whatever form that pursuit might take. The goal is happiness. Productive work is the means.

I know what you said. My point is that if cats can't generalize about the television, they have NOT learned the difference between an appearance and a physical presence. The mirror example tells us that they can distinguish an appearance *in a mirror* from physical reality. But it doesn't prove that they are capable of isolating the characteristics of appearance as such. And acquiring knowledge means learning about the characteristics, properties, potentials, etc. of things. So while cats certainly have some sort of "primitive grasp", what they have "learned" doesn't qualify as knowledge. It's something more basic. The way I see it, primate evolution took a radically different turn with cognition than feline evolution. Gorillas and chimpanzees will happily watch television. Only a cat will bat at it. The cat cases reinforce the idea that we need to clearly distinguish *our* kind of cognition from the other, dare I say more primitive, types of animal cognition. The fact that cats can grasp one subcategory of appearance *but not another* is very interesting. It suggests that they can abstract from perceptual concretes under certain circumstances, but they cannot abstract from abstractions. Perhaps they cannot grasp "appearance" as such. Perhaps they can grasp differences *only* when virtually everything else is the same but not when multiple things are different.

That forms the basic skeleton of the reduction of the concept of "knowledge" to the perceptual level, yes. It should be fleshed out with instances of each concept. Definitions should be adjusted when necessary. My fear is that if a careless reader focuses on definitions and ignores the necessity of examining instances, they'll end up as another victim of the analytic-synthetic dichotomy.

They weren't supposed to. Fragility is a potential for action, namely the action of fracture. My point is that you need to differentiate before you can integrate. The step you mention was implied, but I should have been explicit. You are correct in bringing it up.

BTW - I'm talking about *reducing* a concept to less abstract concepts and perceptual concrete referents. I'm not suggesting you deduce "knowledge" from first principles. That's rationalism, not Objectivism.

I've seen adult cats continually leap at the television screen, figure it out, and then leap at it again when a different program is on. They do NOT generalize. At best, the mighty television-hunters have knowledge of *particular facts*. If there are cats that are able to omit the particular program AND the particular television screen, that would prove they can abstract from particulars but that does NOT prove they can abstract from abstractions. Saying that cats learn is a far cry from saying they have a "notion" of knowledge. Most importantly, humans grasp the difference between reality and projection around the same time: 2 years. Cats, if they ever grasp the difference, figure it out in adulthood across a wide variety of ages.

Three aspects need to be differentiated: An explanatory law is the product of a process of generalization. Its open-ended character anticipates certain kinds of events yet to be observed. Explanatory laws can be used as source material for providing particular explanations of particular effects. An explanatory theory is a well-substantiated, well-supported, well-documented explanation for an open-ended set of phenomena. A theory predicts phenomena yet to be observed as well as explains familiar phenomena.. It has wider generality than explanatory laws or particular explanations about particular effects. A theory explains certain descriptive generalizations as well as specific observations.

What is an explanation--in general? Not merely a scientific one. Any of them. Here is one attempt: An explanation is a logical arrangement of propositions used to deduce a set of facts concerning an effect. (A full treatment of propositions is needed, but that is outside the scope of this thread, namely describing explanation) What is an effect? It's the action, event, phenomenon, etc. associated with a set of entities operating under certain conditions in accordance with their respective identities. So explanation involves showing how a physical interaction, under a set of necessary and sufficient conditions, produces an effect. Why do we try to deduce facts? So we can succeed at achieving some purpose. Our success depends on a *correct* explanation. A correct explanation shows how an effect necessarily follows from the constitutive properties of the entities involved.

Quantitative differences are often used to "explain" qualitative ones. But these merely describe what happens to certain entities at such and such quantities. The law concerning osmotic pressure *describes* the pressure associated with the number of ions present but it does not tell us *why* the ions "exert" the pressure. An explanation succeeds in explaining some effect (action, event, phenomenon, etc.) when it shows how the effect necessarily follows from facts concerning how certain entities operate under certain conditions. For a proper explanation, you need to talk about physical interaction. What we call an "effect" IS entity-action. But also consider the constitutive properties (such as structure) of the entities and the potentials made possible by those properties. After all, your grasp of nature is much more than a loose network of associated quantities.

Oh, well it's implied by the nature of sufficiency. If the determinist can't explain free will, he can't objectively say that what we call "choice" is determined. All he can do is say that some causal process is responsible for "compelling choice". But if *that* process is what we call the act of choosing, it would still remain true that it isn't awareness or external circumstance that "compels" choice.

I think this needs to be clarified. You aren't saying that lack of evidence for determinism *proves* that we aren't determined. You're just saying that we have *no objective basis* for believing in determinism due to the way we experience consciousness.

When I tried that back in 2008, I managed to isolate the following characteristics: grounded in observed fact arrived at objectively discovered through a process of applying logic to facts integrated with the rest of one's knowledge without contradiction correctly placed within the hierarchy of knowledge

Also "justified true belief". There are JTB that aren't knowledge. This also covers "underdetermined theories", where two theories explain a set of facts equally well and we lack sufficient information for going further. I think Peikoff's concept of "possible" is appropriate here. Or accepts as false claims which are true. Do you regard conceptual errors, such as package deal, reification, stolen concept, equivocation, etc., as errors in logic? The believers in "justified true belief" call this "justification", but "integration" seems to mean that knowledge isn't a species of belief. It seems to me that when I integrate, I don't "believe" that something has those aspects. I *know* that it does. As in the truth or falsehood of a proposition is determined by consulting the body of knowledge available and performing the necessary mental actions? Also, what do you mean by "transduction"?

Out of what material provided by introspection can you form the concept of knowledge?

Other concepts that require fewer steps away from the perceptual level and which the concept "knowledge" depend on.

Two people have suggested that "fragility" refers exclusively to fracture toughness. What is the word for the concept that is more abstract than fracture toughness and includes special conditions like heat-treatment and embrittlement in its estimate of what the thing can do?

Grames, Good catch. I meant "proposition".

David, I am attempting to reduce the concept of knowledge to the perceptual level.

Mindy, First, strength has a very specific meaning in materials science and mechanical engineering. Calling hardness, ductility, and so on forms of strength confuses everything. Second, different materials have different values for fracture toughness. If two parts are made exactly the same way, but out of different materials, one will be more resistant to fracture than another. Third, two samples of the same material will show a difference in fracture point if one is subjected to special conditions. Embrittlement comes to mind. Fourth, you've misunderstood me. I'm well aware of the necessity of commensurable characteristics. I'm not suggesting you compare a mug to a piece of steel. I'm just suggesting you consider a wide variety of materials. Nor am I suggesting you compare a mug now against the same mug later. That ignores things like material fatigue and crack propagation. I'm suggesting that you study the constitutive properties behind the phenomenon of fracture, such as chemical structure, properties of grains (if there are any crystals), part design, the presence of initial cracks after creation of the material, etc.