Today I posted my answers to 2nd set of questions from ITOE. Sharing sample answer to one of the questions for wider audience.
Q5. What are various stages “awareness of any existent” goes through in man’s mind[after it is perceived]? And what is it that changes as the awareness moves in these stages?
Ans: The three stages are :
- Entity stage [or attribute stage, action stage etc., if the existent being conceptualized is an attribute,action etc. - Existent stage in general (apart from Entity stage, remaining terminology is my own and I will use it later)]
- Identity stage
- Unit stage
Explanation of three stages:
1. Entity Stage:
From ITOE - The entity stage is described as “the first stage in a child’s awareness of existents, of things - which represents the (implicit) concept entity”.
My further analysis:
When T1 is perceived in A1, PT10 is created in conscious mind. But as soon as the focus shifts to other entity like C1, awareness of T1, PT10 that is, moves to subconscious mind.
The analogy can be data moving from computer memory to hard disk.
Later when T1 is recalled, PT10 moves back to conscious mind, and it can be further processed after this recollection. But as soon as the entity is perceived first time, entity stage is completed.
It will be stored in some location L1 in subconscious mind to enable later recall.
So representation of percepts in entity stage can be
Existents = {(PT10,L1),(PC10,L2),(PT20,L3),(PT11,L4),(PC20,L5),(PB10,L6)}
That is percept PT10 is in location L1 of mind/memory, PT11 is in location L2, PT20 in location L3 etc.
Further, while here I mention solid entity like table as the existent perceived. In most cases the first perception of existent involves perceiving array of existents like table, chair, flower vase, bowl in a single percept. Person’s sense organ(particularly sight) focus on one entity after observing array. Implications of percept involving single entity or array will be considered later.
2. Identity stage
From ITOE - "
The second and closely allied stage is the awareness of specific, particular things which he can recognize and distinguish from the rest of perceptual field - which represents the (implicit) concept “identity” .
"
My further analysis of identity stage
At the end of entity stage, the percepts of entities or arrays are distributed in various locations inside subconscious mind. However, since at the end of identity stage child has learned to distinguish entities, so their corresponding percepts should be stored differently.
Here if L is the location in mind where percept is stored, L+1 is the adjacent location where another percept is stored. L+2 being adjacent to L+1. (See footnote at the end of this section for further details).
The advantage with this arrangement is that if percept stored in location L is recalled, then percepts stored in L+1 and L+2 can get loaded into conscious mind without explicitly recalling these percepts.
That is, once the focus shifts from PT10, next percept will automatically come into focus. Philosophically, adjacent locations storing percepts or concepts can be referred to as “context” or prior knowledge.
So representation of percepts at the end of identity stage is as follows :
{(PT10,L),(PC10,L+1),(PT11,L+2),(PT20,L+3),(PC20,L7),(PB10,L8)}
(C2,B1 might still not be stored in locations adjacent to other percepts, and so their locations are represented differently ).
For brevity, I can represent above set simply as
{PT10, PT11, PC10, PT20, (PT30,L7),(PB10,L8)}
If no location is specified, we can assume that the percepts are stored together.
These sets illustrate that not “all percepts ultimately subsumed by concept” might be grouped together in mind at the end of identity stage(PT30 is still in different location), but only number large enough to enable distinction between percepts.
In general, grouping together of “existents that can be later distinguished” is the distinctive characteristic of identity stage.
Footnote to identity stage :
A. One might wonder how can different percepts stored in different locations get grouped together in adjacent locations in identity stage.
I think there are few possibilities for it :-
a.) The percepts like table and chair are seen together in A1, A2 etc. That is table and chair are together in the room, and therefore perceived as an array or one after the other. And hence get stored one after the other. Here the identity stage follows entity stage almost immediately.
b.) The grouping might happen when the child perceives some of the existents together indirectly, through mediums like books, television, charts, computer etc. Here the pictures taken at different times are placed together, and child can group the percepts of existents located in other locations and shot at different times.
c.) For more complicated concepts however, child and adult are able to co-relate existents that are not in same location or perceived one after the other. These I think are grouped while forming prior concepts. The identity stage of concept helicopter for example can have grouping of different helicopters perceived at different time and places, percepts of aeroplanes, percepts of birds etc. Here these may be grouped together under the concept flying objects(which would have to reach unit stage - see 3.), before these are further classified as helicopters, airplanes and birds.
d.) As adults we can actively seek grouping for forming concepts or other universals like generalizations ( described in later chapters ). For e.g. by designing experiments for study, writing outline for the book, making models of equipments or houses etc. This can help us to group existents that otherwise might rarely be together. For e.g while forming concept “acceleration as a vector quantity”, Newton grouped circular motion of object tied to the rope, and circular motion of ball rolling in the bowl, because they had force pulling or pushing them inside.
[in the text, Ayn Rand refers to entity-identity-unit stages only at initial level. But for reasons given in b-c-d, I think these are applicable for all types of concepts and percepts].
B. Further, one might ask why am I supposiong that it is necessary for percepts (or even concepts) to be located together in order to be distinguished. My understanding is based on the study of data collection systems like hard disks, RAMs etc. And that if data is located in different locations, loading it is time consuming. So often, context switch is done when such situation happens. So in brain too, I think much more effort will be required for differentiating, if the data is not located together. Thats why I think when we start doing something for the first time, it is hard, as during that time corresponding existents(guidelines in this case) are not located together in mind.
3. Unit stage:
From ITOE - "The third stage consists of grasping relationships among these entities by grasping similarities and differences of their identities.
This requires the transformation of the (implicit) concept “identity”.
When a child observes that two objects (which he will later learn to designate as “tables”) resemble each other, but are different from four other objects(“chairs”), his mind is focusing on a particular attribute of the objects(their shape), then isolating them according to their differences, and integrating them as units into separate groups according to their similarities.
Note that the concept “unit” involves an act of consciousness(a selective focus, a certain way of regarding things), but that it is not an aribitrary creation of consciousness: it is a method of identification or classification according to the attributes which a consciousness observes in reality.
MY FURTHER ANALYSIS OF UNIT STAGE
Some more terms(apart from the ones introduced previously) that will be used in explanation.
TC refers to the set of concretes that are subsumed under concept table.
TS refers to the specification of concept table. Specifically, it includes the similar characteristics that child has identified in different concretes(or units) that he now subsumes under the concept table,once he has reached unit stage for concept table.
T refers to the concept table at the end of unit stage. As child does not have vocabulary at this point, it would be stored as pictorial symbol like lined drawing of table. Further, it will point to the locations of TS and TC.
So at the end of unit stage, percepts of entities are organized as follows
All existents = {PC10,T,PB10,PC11,PC20}
T={TS,TC}
TC={PT10,PT20,PT11,PT30}
TS={visual symbol of shape table} OR {Just PT10}
(Why the similarity may be stored as just one of the percept(PT10) will be explained later.)
While TC refers to collection, and TS to similar characteristics, I was trying to figure out how the fact that “T1,T2,T3” are similar to each other and different from “C1,B1” will be stored.
How can a mind of child that has no vocabulary or even symbols to represent “similar” and “not different” store these specifications.
So while at later stage TC={PT10, PT20,…} can be stored more optimally, in case of child(or primitive man) I think it would be something like
All Existents ={PC10,{TS,PT10, PT20, PT11, PT30}, PB10,…}.
So basically child reorders the percepts from order that was in identity stage. And further he creates a new virtual percept TS, which he will later identify as concept.
The virtual percept TS psychologically behaves similar to percepts like PT10, PT20 etc. That is it can be moved from one location to another, attributes and actions abstracted from it etc.
But unlike actual percepts it does not “directly” refer to any real world existents like T1, C1 etc. Instead it refers to a set of percepts PT10, PT20 etc.
And while the grouping of entities that can be distinguished happens in identity stage. Actually distinguishing the entities, and marking as similar entities that are less different is done in the unit stage. So tables or their percepts will be grouped together as units of concept table, because their differences when compared to differences with chair are negligible.
In general, grouping based on similarites is the distinctive characteristic of unit stage.
EXPANSION OF CONCEPT
After forming the unit for concept table, child observes that another table(T4) has a characteristic shape that is similar to specification of table. So now he adds PT40 also to TC for concept table
So after expansion of concept, the concretes subsumed by concept table will add PT40 as
TC = {PT10, PT11, PT30, PT20, PT40}
Further, he might also observe other similarities between the existents that are subsumed under concept table.
TS = {Shape of the table which is also abstracted as the visual symbol of concept, Use of table stored in the form of imagery like toys or food items on it}
Thus we see that concept formation involves forming concept from similar concretes by ordering percepts of these concretes together in mind, and also selecting similar characteristics ( in next chapter some of these similar characteristics are termed as “conceptual common denominator” or CCD ). Then adding new concretes based on those similar characteristics, or adding new similarities observed in the existing concretes.