Vik
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Posts posted by Vik
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H.W.B. Joseph notes that the sciences provide material for figuring out how to reason properly because they are the products of our clearest, most correct reasoning by intellects most involved with the relevant facts and therefore most likely to produce correct conclusions.
In order for reasoning to be "proper", it must follow rules like the law of non-contradiction and employ methods
But in order to know anything about non-contradiction you have to know something about propositions and arguments.
I mention this because Joseph focuses on "general principles" in his definition, which obviously includes the laws of logic.
And in order to have any idea of "proper reasoning", one must know that there is an element of choice in reasoning and that is possible to err.
I do not think Peikoff's principle of two definitions applies to logic.
Joseph's definition is not an A1 definition. A1 is supposed to be a permanent, objective demarcation. However part of objectivity involves following certain rules of method, such as can be found by studying logic. Joseph's definition is most certainly prescriptive.
Joseph vs Rand:
Joseph's definition addresses the study of how to reason properly. Rand's definition addresses the act of reasoning properly itself. Both are normative. Joseph's is normative in that it prescribes studying how to reason properly. Rand's is normative in that it prescribes non-contradiction, which has been a guiding first principle in logic since the ancients.
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Are there any philosophical differences that are simply a consequence of acquiring more experience and living life?
What philosophical ideas are a mark of emotional maturity, if any?
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A "brute force" method for reduction and unfreezing:
1) Premises that are further from the perceptual level than the conclusion are explicitly identified and set aside for later discussion. Otherwise you have to fight two fronts simultaneously, which can lead to a lot of tangential issues instead of systematic discussion.
2) The levels of abstraction between the conclusion and the perceptual level cannot be addressed simultaneously. We must start with the level just below and immediately, proximately, required by the conclusion. I think it is unwise to do a complete reduction for them all at once. Rather, one should focus on one level at a time.
3) Apparent disagreement needs to be distinguished from real disagreement. Statements by other should be restated in your own words to distinguish between real and apparent disagreement. Otherwise, parties will be unsure whether they are understood.
4) For each point of agreement, explicitly identify it as such with the caveat that you might agree for different reasons
5) For each point of disagreement, explicitly state there is a disagreement and have them focus on the level of abstraction just below the item of disagreement. Have them list reasons from THAT level ONLY. Else you run into problem mentioned in 2 where the parties wander all over the hierarchy and forget the point of discussing some detail.
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So I'm putting more on it than needs be? Differentiation is just isolating a particular entity from its background (including other entities) and integration is just grouping similar entities together based on their similarities. Observing the similarities is just a part of the integration process then, not a separate mental act?
Differentiation means distinguishing units from other things/aspects. Those units aren't necessarily entities. When you form wider concepts, you treat previously formed concepts as units.
Integration means doing something with units so the result is a new mental thing to be used as a single unit of thought. Similarities are certainly involved when you integrate concepts into wider ones.
But similarity is also necessary for making finer differentiations. When you subdivide a concept into subcategories, the distinguishing characteristic of the original concept is taken as a common denominator. The act of subdivision simply involves specifying measurements or adding on a category of measurements. "Fountain-pen" specifies how the ink is transferred to the tip. But "pen" leaves THAT aspect of the writing implement unspecified.
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Reference to an example might clarify some ideas.
There was a time when I didn't know what graphite or ink was.
I knew that if I gripped a pencil and pressed the black end down on paper it would leave a gray/black mark that I could erase. So the similarity between the two pencils was perceptual and distinguished them from other things with entirely different uses such as paper, desk, and so on.
Later I noticed some differences between pencils. Some pencils were shorter than others, some pencils were hexagonal while others were round, some marks were darker than others. The pencils I had observed possessed the same characteristics (length, color, shape, etc.) but in different degrees. I didn't have a word for length, but I was preparing my mind for abstracting "length". Likewise for "color", "shape", etc.
Then I learned about pens. I knew that pens left (relatively) permanent marks. So I differentiated pens from pencils on the basis of the permanence of the mark. The permanence of the mark was a common denominator. It served as a sort of "axis" along which I could distinguish pens and pencils from each other. At the same time I distinguished the marking substance of the pen from the marking substance of the pencil. I learned of two types of materials: graphite vs ink. I learned that regardless of whether the particular ink involved was blue or black or red, ink was more permanent than graphite. I abstracted "graphite" and "ink" as such by mentally separating (isolating) certain attributes from all things possessing those attributes.
So first I grasped a similarity among pencils. That similarity enabled me to mentally isolate pencils from the situations in which they appeared. Retention of the similarity helped me differentiate pens and pencils from each other.
Then I abstracted "writing", "graphite", "ink".
Similarity is a relationship between two or more existents possessing the same characteristics but in different degree.
Differentiation is the mental process of distinguishing two or more existents from all other existents.
Abstraction is the mental separation of a certain aspect of reality from the existents it is an aspect of.
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Wouldn't it be a true statement that salt's dissolution (behavior) is it's nature, it's identity? As is water's reaction to salt?
You can dissolve carbon in metal alloy solutions, but that doesn't distinguish carbon from other elements.
I think it would be better to say that what salt does is *within* its nature while ionic bonds, composition et al *constitute* the identity of salt.
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So this semester I have been enrolled in a seminar class on the topic of dispositions and causal powers (Usually, but not always, taken as the same thing).
Short hand, a disposition is a property of some entity that causes it to act in some way when acted upon. A paradigm case is the solubility of a tablet of salt. Salt has the disposition to dissolve when placed in water. These properties are standardly taken as the opposites of categorical properties. A categorical property is one which an object has through time. It does not have to be realizable. It just is. Standard cases are mass, shape, location.
It's hard to put the debate into two camps, but if we must, there are those who claim that dispositions are not essential properties but results of their categorical bases. And then, there is the much more varied group of those who think dispositions are essential, irreducible properties.
Would you say that one camp focuses on action-potentials while ignoring the nature of the entities while the other focuses on constituent properties at the expense of circumstances and context?
Would you say that an "event" is simply an entity doing an action?
However, if we take dispositions as essential properties to their bearers, it becomes a story that involves the identity of the properties and the entity that bears them and no longer a story about events and possibilities. Laws of nature are necessary. You cannot have a world where salt does not dissolve or where a rubber ball does not bounce, given the correct conditions.
Are we talking about how action-potentials arise from constituent properties?
e.g.:
Since salt is made of chemically bonded ions, salt has the potential for being dissolved because of the interaction between the water molecules and the ions
Since a rubber ball is made out of a highly elastic material, it will bounce when it collides with a sufficiently rigid body at sufficient velocity etc etc.
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"The change in the children's ability to integrate touch and vision happens too fast to be explained by major rewiring in the brain, Pascual-Leone says"
According to which model?
The "innate" people could make a lot out of this, while a Lockean would respond that the association between touch and vision is acquired after experience and therefore "no innate ideas" survives.
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Do all inductive generalizations lead to new concepts or re-definitions of old concepts?
Generalization involves ascribing a characteristic to every member of an open-ended set.
Given that open-endedness, I am not sure how you can avoid *something* conceptual.
In some cases we separate and unite previous identifications, arriving at new concepts which demand new definitions of old concepts. I indicated how this might work in the previous post.
Sometimes we see that an old concept actually applies somewhere we didn't and THAT leads to rethinking a subject. But I'm not sure whether such a process should be considered *inductive* so much as a *logical refinement*.
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Or let’s take: “Connecting wires to the ends of a battery and to the ends of a motor will operate the motor.” This could almost be definitional of “electric current,” but not quite, since “electric current” is actually broader than the inductive generalization given.
It describes what a motor will do given a closed-loop current.
If I knew nothing of motors but what happened when I strung components together, I might regard your formulation as a working definition for "motor-current". It would be fine for *that* stage of knowledge, but new discoveries would prompt new concepts and new definitions.
After I discovered that current can exist without a motor, I'd arrive at "electric current" as such. I might define it in terms of continuity of an effect given variation in certain measurable quantities.
But once I had the concept of "voltage-gradient", my definition of electric current would become something like "charged particles with a net direction of motion due to a potential gradient". If I wanted a mathematically rigorous definition, I'd talk about the time derivative of charge. Whatever is appropriate for the level of knowledge involved.
Also take the following inductive generalization: “Rapidly slapping hands together makes a sound,” which could be definitional of “clapping.” But is this true of all inductive generalizations? Do all inductive generalizations lead to new concepts or re-definitions of old concepts? Otherwise I think it would have to be shown that the human mind can deal with a sentence in the form of an inductive generalization as one mental entity, for my definition of an integration.
Not that you need a concept for the sentence. Just a concept of the *relationship* being asserted about the subject. Then you apply your concepts to narrow the units of the main concept in the subject and specify the relationship those units are in.
Or put the question another way, can the identification of a causal sequence be retained in the mind as one thing, perhaps one event? Is ”Scratching oneself can relieve itching” one mental entity? I’ve argued before that it is not one mental entity unless one can form a concept from it, otherwise it is many concepts united together via grammar. But I think this would have to be shown for one to say that concept formation and inductive generalizations have a similarity such that they can be integrated together into the same concept – i.e. ”induction.”
You can regard the specific entity described in any true proposition as a unit of a certain kind. After all, you aren't advocating that we form a concepts as narrow as blue-eyed girls shorter than 5' 4" walking through the grocery aisle. You're just asking whether we can regard something that narrowly defined as a unit. And we can.
It sounds like you're trying to get a better understanding of what exactly propositions do with concepts.
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I think it important to distinguish between individual instances of causal sequences and a causal connection as an abstraction, just as one distinguishes between individual entities and concepts for entities as abstractions. Induction for causality (IIRC) is not simply the identification of individual causal sequences, but recognising that the individual sequences one observes are instances of universals: all S does P under conditions X. It is not that individual event B happened to follow individual stimulus A, but that A causes B is a timeless principle of cause-and-effect that can recur again and again.
And if you want to determine whether the sequences are instances of universals, you look at P units, not the sequences per se.
You examine specific instances of P, hoping to find a unit that teaches you about the entities and constitutive properties responsible for P.
e.g.:
Instances of biological development in a chicken egg indicate stages in a process.
Instances of color have nothing in common but color, meaning that color depends on arrangement of parts rather than chemical components or other aspects.
Instances of fields tell us that we have found an attribute dependent on nothing but the entities themselves.
Instances of thresholds, such as phase transition of water into vapor, tells you that two things thought to be different have a common quantitative basis in entity-interaction independent of entity-composition.
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Concept Formation and Induction
04/09/2011
The identification of causal connections are also dependent on observations to come up with first-level inductive generalizations, but one must have many concepts first before the causal connection can be made explicit.
You also need the right kinds of measurements. Consider the history of the concept of burning. The idea of phlogiston raced ahead of measurement and claimed burning was a type of separation. A simple closed chamber and careful measurements would have informed them that ash was more massive than the original substance burned and that therefore burning involved *combination*, not separation.
It is the formation of concepts and organizing them into a sentence that can transform such observations into knowledge about how reality works.
And propositions "work" by taking open-ended classifications based on measurement omission, specifying some of the measurements, and predicating a fact about it.
e.g.:
"My floor is hard"
The phrase "my floor" specifies a smaller set of units than "carpeted floors".
The phrase "is hard" identifies a connection between some observable quality abstracted from the background and a physical entity that is capable of being hard.
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Understanding that 'bird', 'dog', 'cat' are considered first-level concepts, and observing my grandson playing with some magnetic toys recently would lead me to realize that "metal" is a first-level concept as well. The steel to which the magnet stuck had already been conceptualized already as "metal". The gold ring I wear and aluminum frames on some furniture were also conceptualized already as "metal" as well.
I do not understand what you mean by calling "metal" first-level.
There are metallic objects, but there is no such thing as "metal" as such independent of the objects.
A child would first learn that certain objects are called "toys". Later the child would compare and contrast his toys with other kinds of objects like "table" and "car" and "fork" to isolate their respective materials.
First you distinguish objects from the background.
Then you isolate their attributes.
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I am comparing, let us say, OPAR being presented to the world in a book format (as it is today) to it being presented in a PPT format.
My hypothesis is that a PPT format is better. My evidence for this is my own experience.
I find it quite easy to read PPTs versus books. This has been the case not only with simple 20-page PPTs, but also with 100-page PPTs where a full strategy work was captured in the PPT (I am an ex-McKinsey Strategy consultant).
I could think of following reasons for this:
1) PPT is visual as well as textual
2) PPT (at least McKinsey documents) are very hierarchical. This means that there is a clear conclusion as the title of each slide, and then the body of the slide supports that conclusion.
3) PPT slide is very structured. You can read the information in blocks. e.g. If I were to re-write OPAR in PPT format, I would put two blocks on a slide - one describing abstract theory, and another describing a concrete example.
I can elaborate further on the above points, if needed.
It sounds like you want a series of deductive arguments conjoined with examples.
If you convert OPAR or any work by Ayn Rand into a series of deductive arguments, you will lose out on a lot of the meaning. There is no substitute for context. There is no gain in forfeiting the mental workout of rising up from particular concrete examples to principles through successive levels of induction. If you or they try to apply the philosophy deductively, without reducing the principles down a ladder of abstractions to reality, reality will be lost in fuzziness.
PowerPoint removes the context and encourages mental laziness on the part of your audience. People end up feeling like they understand something when all they've done is memorized a deduction.
PowerPoint limits the number of levels of abstraction you can view at any given time. There is no way you can present processes such as reduction. It lets listeners get away with the method of a "continental rationalist", someone who deduces conclusions from unquestioned premises. But a large part of objectivity involves keeping abstractions grounded.
PowerPoint is inferior to plain written communication.
It is also inferior to other software in several respects.
If I want to identify key facts about a specific subject before addressing a concrete problem, I use TiddlyWiki. I can organize concepts and knowledge without missing context or discouraging the use of of reduction and integration. It is objectively better than PowerPoint, but there are limitations. It cannot show logic trees or successive levels of integration.
If I want to map out the *essence* of arguments, I use CMapTools. That program has enabled me to keep track of reductions and integrations for all kinds of subjects. I have a map of electromagnetism that traces a ladder of successive generalizations from observations and measurements all the way up to Maxwell's equations. PowerPoint couldn't possibly do that.
But, like TiddlyWiki or PowerPoint, there are limitations. While useful as a memory tool, the usefulness of CMaptools for presentation isn't much better than giving a basic picture of how I integrate facts with concepts, how I organize concepts into propositions, and how I form successive generalizations. I can show how I view a subject. And I can even show a logic tree outlining my plan for addressing a specific topic. But it is no substitute for argument.
And no medium of communication can be "best" overall. Something is "best" at *something*. Something is good *for* something. Something is a means towards a purpose.
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In their book Biological Self-organization Camazine et al. (2001: 8) define self organization:
‘‘As a process in which pattern at the global level of a system emerges solely from numerous interactions among the lower level components of the system. Moreover the rules specifying interactions among the system’s components are executed using only local information, without reference to the global pattern. In short pattern is an emergent property of the system rather than being imposed on the system by an external ordering influence.’’
Life emergent properties are not more magic than emergent property of a rolling ball as result of connection of its halves. None of it parts have a property of rolling, its only appears as a result of interaction between them. Such a property for the obvious reason cannot be reduced to the any part of the ball. So emergent properties of life like self-sustained self-initiated goal orientated action which appears as result of interaction of non-biotic parts cannot be reduced to them.
The funny thing is that some people try to say that science can "break things down" but "can't build them back up". It is as if they think that ignorance of when and where components produce an assemblage somehow invalidates the proposition that they DO produce the assemblage. I think an understanding of measurement-omission would clear that up.
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I'm wondering if there is a general consensus on whether there are emergent properties here, and if there is some consensus that there is, what is a general account of which properties are emergent (molecular properties not due to properties of the constitutive atoms, consciousness, etc.).
To put it another way, all interactions are caused by the constitutive properties of the entities, by their structure, etc.
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I'm wondering if there is a general consensus on whether there are emergent properties here, and if there is some consensus that there is, what is a general account of which properties are emergent (molecular properties not due to properties of the constitutive atoms, consciousness, etc.).
If you separated a water molecule into atomic hydrogen and atomic oxygen, it would no longer be a water molecule. A chemical bond is the sum of the interactions between the atoms keeping them together in a certain way. Bonding arises out of entity-interaction.
"Emergent properties" merely reflect how an assemblage behaves because it's an *assemblage* of *entities* subjected to such and such conditions.
Composition is not a license to sever action potentials from constituent entities. So anyone who says that the properties of a water molecule are not caused by the properties of hydrogen and oxygen are denying causality.
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Physicists try to determine which slit it "passed through" by throwing something at it or interacting it with by some less direct means. Since the same type of interaction happens with each electron that's sighted, they land in the same spot. Nothing mysterious here.
What's mysterious is that there's interference to begin with. What sort of a thing interferes in transit yet is quantized?
And why does this work for giant molecules such as bucky balls?
Obviously we're dealing with entities and actions of a different nature than all our old subcategories of entities and actions.
Abstraction from abstractions is desperately needed here.
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My university library search engine placed the "Sticking Tongue Out" emoticon on the results of a search for a book on private security.
To serve and protect
rivatization and community in criminal ...This is not the first time I ran into this. Both ® and © are annoyances when trying to cite a document produced in outline format.
Probably not right up there with the corporate income tax...
Would you say the programmer is mocking us by reusing inappropriate text-rendering code?
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Laws of Nature are to be distinguished both from Scientific Laws and from Natural Laws. Neither Natural Laws, as invoked in legal or ethical theories, nor Scientific Laws, which some researchers consider to be scientists’ attempts to state or approximate the Laws of Nature, will be discussed in this article.
A scientific law expresses a generalization concerning a relationship that is invariant with respect to certain conditions.
This distinguishes scientific law from the actual physical relationship.
I was thinking that the relationship itself could be called a "law of nature", but it seems that the phrasing is unclear. Perhaps it would be enough to emphasize the following distinctions:
1) existents, such as relationships
2) concepts
3) propositions about particulars
4) generalizations, such as scientific laws
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Such a path is composed of the past positions of the object. The past does not exist, therefore the orbit is not an existent. An orbit is imagined and constructed mentally. There is only one correct way to construct an orbit, which is where the "law" part of a "law of nature" enters as a guide to thought.
Time does not exist apart from the entities and changes used to measure it.
But doesn't it exists AS a measurement of change?
We are measuring something, namely a type of change in relationship among entities.
If orbits are not existents, then they cannot be relationships. But they are no mere mental constructions. So I'll accept that orbits are abstractions insofar as time has no existence apart from relationships.
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Vik, propositions and concepts are both existents because they are both attributes of the mind that has them.
I mean they have no existence apart from consciousness.
Relationships are existents also,
Yes.
so a concept or proposition can validly refer to a relationship.
Yes.
The sun exists, the planets exist, the distance and velocity relationships between them exist but there is no orbit.
If distance and velocity relationships exist, so does the relationship among the planets and the sun constituting an orbit.
An orbit is an abstraction referring to the set of position and velocity relationships between two celestial bodies that exist over time. In general terms, an orbit as a type of concept is an abstraction about a relationship of relationships.
An orbit is the gravitationally curved path of an object around a reference point. If that path exists by virtue of the entities involved, then orbits exist as much as any other relationship.
Note that it is not even true that the planets travel around the sun in ellipses, their paths are only approximately ellipses due to the precessions of the orbits.
That's why I never said "ellipses".
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This is a statement diametrically opposite of my statement that laws of nature are human artifacts. If my earlier statement seemed a bit curious it because I was looking ahead to this argument which hadn't been made yet.
Certainly some things are intrinsic. We have a set of concepts for entities and their intrinsic attributes, for example in physics such things as mass and charge and energy and magnetic moment. But the laws that relate them together cannot be assigned to the entities themselves nor should they be reified into separate existents, so the laws cannot be intrinsic.
The Objectivist three-fold way of analyzing the possibilities into the intrinsic, the objective, and the subjective is appropriate here. I put forward what I claim is an objective position, Leonid what can be fairly described as an intrinsic position. I doubt anyone will show up for the subjective side.
Propositions do not exist any more than concepts do.
But planets travel in elliptical orbits around the sun. THAT is existent by virtue of the entities involved.
Does that distinguish the objective position from an intrinsicist's position?
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And what you are ignoring here, is that in order to have a 'continuous flux' as you put it, requires that there be something (identity) to 'flux' into something else (causality: the law of identity applied to action)
This sounds like a statement from Hegel when he declares that "you can never step into the same river twice", which ignores that the concept river encapsulates the fact of moving water.
Your grasp of Nihilism (mentioned on another thread) being a destructive force is quite accurate. Embracing Hegel as the antidote to it, is exposing your susceptibility to one of many Philosophical Snake Oil Salesmen throughout the history of its development.
Or Heraclitus.
But whether one ingests "Dike eris" or "Aufhebung", expect paralysis.
Logic: Perscriptive, descriptive, both or neither?
in Metaphysics and Epistemology
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which is why he suggests (in the introduction) that we study the best examples of reasoning