Proper Names

[dan_edge]

Hello All,

I would like to hone my understanding of the epistemological status of proper names. Rand mentions proper names briefly in the ITOE, but does not discuss them at much length. I am in the process of going over the "Objectivism as Open vs Closed system" debate again, and would like to better understand "Objectivism" qua proper name. I am assuming at this point that Objectivism is a proper name, designating the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Some questions:

1. Do proper names qualify as concepts? Concepts are integrations of two or more units; this description would not seem to fit proper names. However, we customarily use proper names in the form of genus and species, which is the same format we use to define concepts. A related question:

2. Do proper names require a formal definition? I have often thought that "Objectivism" can be defined as "the philosophy of Ayn Rand." This description has been challenged of late (via online discussion) on the basis that "Objectivism" is not a concept and as such cannot be defined in this way.

3. Are proper names defined ostensively? Is the only appropriate "defintion" of a proper name to point to its referent (i.e., John Smith is that guy *pointing*)? A simple ostensive definition of "Objectivism" is dissatisfying to me, but I can't figure out why, exactly.

4. Is there a concept designating proper names of abstract particulars, such as "Objectivism" or "Newtonian Mechanics?" Diana Hsieh onced used the term "abstract particular" to describe Objectivism, and I have considered incorporating this term into my vocabulary, if I can properly define it. Tentatively, I would define abstract particular as "a proper name designating a specific set of abstractions." This seems too broad, but I can't think of anything better at the moment.

Thanks for any response.

--Dan Edge

Sorry for the post duplication...

--Dan Edge

[dan_edge]

I was discussing this issue in your chat room this evening, and I believe I've come up with a resolution that satisfies me.

1. Objectivism *is* a proper name, and proper names *are* defined ostensively, i.e., by pointing to their referents. To say that Objectivism is "the philosophy of Ayn Rand" is merely an offhand way of pointing to the referents.

2. Based on this, I would say that the conecept "abstract particular" is a valid one, and can be defined as "a specific set of ideas or abstractions refered to by a proper name."

Thanks to Noah, EC, Metaphysical, and Neptune, who helped me tease this out in the chatroom this evening.

--Dan Edge

[Hal]

I'm not convinced proper names need to be defined ostensively. Noone has ever 'pointed' at Emperor Nero and told me that "this is the person the name stands for" - I've just picked up isolated fragments of information about him and know that (eg) he was a Roman emperor, that he is thought to be incompetant, and so on. I certainly couldnt recognise a picture of him and I'm not really sure that most of the things I 'know' about him are true, yet I'm able to understand and use the name properly despite this. Similar considerations apply to names like "Budapest", "Sydney", "Zurich" - all I know about these are that they are names of cities, but I couldnt tell you much about the cities themselves. I certainly wouldnt say that any of them have been ostensively defined, and I'm not entirely sure what an ostensive definition would involve here either.

edit: I think some clarification is needed on what 'pointing' means. Its clear what this word means when youre talking about pointing at a person, but not so obvious when youre talking about (eg) pointing at an abstract philosophy. If someone asked me for an explanation of Objectivism, my explanation would probably be structurally similar to the way I'd explain idealism, empiricism, or any other philosophy. Yet these last terms are concepts, not proper names. It would be perfectly possible for someone who had read some AR novels to not know that Objectivism was a proper name, and this person would definitely explain it like he'd explain any other philosophy. So if explaining Objectivism involves 'pointing', then so does the explanation of concepts like empiricism.

edit2: the 'abstract particular' idea sounds very useful, I'm not quite sure how I'd define it though. I dont think theres a fine line bewtween abstract particualars and concrete particulars - its more of a graded scale, with some names being more abstract and less tangible than others. A name like "New York" seems more abstract than "Tiddles" the cat, because I cant really point at a city (all I can do is point at individual buildings - to explain what 'New York' is I need to first explain the concept of a 'city', and this may not be trivial), yet less abstract than Objectivism.

Edited April 12, 2006 by Hal

[IAmMetaphysical]

Pointing doesn't have to involve a finger. There are "pointing WORDS" such as "this" or "that". So, while "philosophy" is a concept, "this/that" philosophy,i.e. the "philosophy of ______" is a proper name. It's about specificity.

[dan_edge]

Hal,

Let's consider other terms that are defined ostensively, like the concept "green." Green can only be defined by pointing to its referents in reality. Now, imagine that you are trasported to a place where there are no green enitites. Does that mean that you can no longer grasp the concept green? Even if your children grew up in the same place, with no green entities anywhere, history could record the former existence of the color and they could study it, with the understanding that the term was originally defined ostensively.

I think that your "Nero" example falls within the same category. You can only study Nero with the implicit understanding that, originally, the referent of the proper name Nero existed as *this particular guy*. Please let me know if this is not clear, I'm still thinking it through.

--Dan Edge

[JMeganSnow]

You're conflating two terms that are similar but not identical; definition and description.

"Philosophy of Ayn Rand" is a description of Objectivism; it names one aspect of Objectivism, (the part that's most useful for instructing people where to look for more information) but it doesn't tell you anything about the essential nature of Objectivism. The definition of Objectivism would be, well, the whole thing. That's why it's referred to by a proper noun. It's not an abstraction based on concretes, it's a name for a specific concrete.

"Green" is an abstraction, and you can define it as, say, "light reflected between such-and-such wavelengths" or some such. However, this doesn't tell anyone what sensation those wavelengths will produce in their brain, i.e. what green will look like, until they actually see it, any more than "four-legged hooved mammal" tells you what a horse looks like.

I think in ITOE Ayn Rand mentions that a lot of people don't really use formal definitions for low-level abstractions, those formed directly from sensory data, largely because by the time you know what a definition properly is you've already completely automatized the abstraction. It's important to have them so that you know exactly what your higher-level abstractions are based on, though. (This is why deconstrucivists get a kick out of demanding you define "but")

[DavidOdden]

I contend that proper names do not constitute concepts. Recall that a concept is "a mental integration of two or more units which are isolated according to a specific characteristic(s) and united by a specific definition", so "dog" refers not just to one dog but any dog. Even if there happened to exist only one dog at the moment, concepts are by definition open-ended, so they would refer to future or past dogs (as well as representations of dogs).

"Ayn Rand" is therefore not a concept, it is the name of a single being. It is true that there may be more than one person names "Bill Smith", but "Bill Smith" is not used as a term to refer to "anyone of the family Smith with the first name Bill", it is used to refer to a specific individual. Note that none of "feral dog", "pretty dog", "yellow dog" or "dead dog" are concepts, they are phrases. Concepts are not simply things that can be differentiated from other things in genus & species form (like these phrases can be), but are granted special status as mental units subsumed under one linguistic symbol (a word). The very fact that "Bill Smith" is a phrase including separate genus and species terms is exactly why "Bill Smith" is not a concept.

Now the crux of the matter is whether "Objectivism" refers, in closed fashion, specifically to the philosophy of Ayn Rand, or open-endedly to any set of ideas somehow similar to but not necessarily the same as those of Ayn Rand.

[dan_edge]

Megan,

I was using the "green" example to point out the nature of ostensive definions, and how these kinds of definitions might apply to proper names. I think you are right to distinguish between "definition" and "description," and therein lies the nature of my misunderstanding. The referent of a proper name is not defined (as I am wont to do), but described ostensively. That settles the issue in my eyes.

In a different forum, someone criticized my approach to this issue, saying I focus too much on "semantics." I think semantics are very important here. How am I supposed to move forward in my study of philosophy if I haven't defined my terms precisely?

Thanks for the comments, everyone.

--Dan Edge